Gospel Reading: John 15:1-27

Dear Community of Christians

If we start from the image of the vine, we first recognize that it is a familiar growth of a fruit in nature, on our earth. The writer of the Gospel, who was deeply connected with Christ, could see in this image the becoming of the human being is unconditionally connected to the powers of resurrection, for their growth and further development.

The event of the resurrection took place 2000 years ago. That means we can no longer comprehend this event just in terms of measures, counting and touching.

On the other hand, with the help of our consciously developed thinking, we have the possibility today to understand the event of 2000 years ago with our clear thinking.

We meet this in the words of the Act of Consecration: “Take this into your thinking. And so live in our thoughts the new confession, the new faith.”

On this basis of new human understanding, we can take a broader view of death and resurrection.

Not only people with near-death experiences have encountered the resurrection light. Also, those with a cultivated fine sense bear witness to the light powers of the Risen One that permeate the earth and cosmos.

Looking to nature we encounter these eternal cycles of becoming and passing away. We can also recognize these cycles inwardly as true for the human being, and yet the human being is also more than natural. In the Sermon on the Mount it is said: “are you are not much more than they?”.
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Who can still have doubts that the soul is immortal? Death only means the transition of the soul from life in a physical body, where Christ is in us, to a state of the soul without a material body, where the light of Christ embraces us. If we become more and more aware of these facts, then we will bear rich fruit through our actions on earth.  But if we are tempted not to take this fact seriously then “he withers like a branch that is cut off - such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire and burned.”
We can celebrate an external Easter 1000 times, it will not become a force in us until we bring Easter actively to fruition in us, every day, all year round.  

Gospel Reading: John 10: 1-25

Dear Community of Christians,
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The door is a crossing of the threshold. Entering or leaving a room requires that we step over the threshold. There are rooms in which we enter that are flooded with light, as well as those which are devoid of light in which we cannot orientate ourselves at first.

Birth and death are physical, and spiritual thresholds, transitions into light and darkness. We experience both these polarities past the threshold.

In our present time, the fear, the fear to face physical death is omnipresent. What does it mean for our life here on earth if this fear, through our materialistic world view, prevents us from clearly seeing that life will be lived intensively after the transition from earthly to spiritual space as well? What could happen if we fail to prepare for a completely different, yet very real world after death?

Testimonies about experiences of the spiritual world, experiences after life, are multiplying.  

There are reports of this realm containing much suffering. Because our whole life is unrolled before our spiritual sight after death. The spiritual door, or our spiritual eye will be opened for a new pure consciousness. Without being hindered by our physical body, we look back relentlessly on our life.

If man behaves like a God and intervenes in the divine creation with purely materialistic motivation he sinks into that materialism. He becomes disconnected from the spiritual world. His belief is that today’s medical science is solely responsible for human health; and that with the medicine man can even defy death. With this attitude, humanity can misstep over the threshold into a dark, lightless space. Because man is eating from the tree of life. By pushing through the threshold and breaking this barrier, the death of the soul of humanity is imminent.

But Christ is risen and has performed a new act of creation in which all humanity is included.

Our need for salvation can only come through the conscious awakening of this creative gift, by opening wide the door for the “I am” - Christ in us.

We can then penetrate ourselves with divine light. We will walk through the right door and follow Him who calls us every day anew.

Dear Community of Christians,

In his first letter to the Corinthians, St Paul challenges us:

If Christ did not rise again, then…..
The power of our faith in your hearts is an illusion.

This points to Christianity in its essence as simply the religion of, the cultivating of the community with, the risen Christ. In St john’s description of this cultivating of community, different stories are told. Mary Magdalen and two disciples finding the empty tomb and being deeply puzzled by this riddle. Mary returns and lingering alone, then encounters two angels, then in an inner turning meets the Christ. Christ appears to the disciples in the Conaculum, the upper room, and shows his hands and side. Thomas, who was absent, disbelieves and wishes for his own direct experience. Then eight days later Christ appears again and Thomas is asked to touch the risen Christ’s body as a foundation of perceived experience for his belief.

We can be deeply grateful to Rudolf Steiner that we can now begin to understand these stages of community with the risen Christ. From a questioning, a living with this riddle, to a slowly growing afterimage as a basis for belief. From intelligent disbelief to a step through perception and thinking into a supersensible experience.

To begin to understand this risen body of the Christ requires a true science of the spirit, which deeply understands the incarnation and excarnation processes. That before death the Christ so deeply inhabited his physical body that it, crystal like, could hold its form and life-forces without physical substance. This crystal-like vessel, purified of matter and filled with His life-forces can now walk before us.

These very individual pathways to the risen Christ are embedded in the different destinies of the disciples. In the words of the transubstantiation, we hear – 

On the cross the body bears the new confession,
From the cross will flow the new faith.

Our physical body can be likened to a musical instrument which we play on the cross of our individual life’s destiny. When the peace can be with us, we can also begin to experience this great riddle on the edges of perception, these dawning after-images, this eight day’s journey from intelligent disbelief towards an awakened nurturing of community of heart with the risen Christ.

Gospel Reading: Mark 16: 1-8

The stone had been rolled away, and the stone was very big and heavy.

Dear Community of Christians,

This was the unexpected experience of a very small group of women, early on Easter morning. Without understanding, they looked into the empty grave. The experience deeply shocked them and was completely incomprehensible.

Isn’t it very similar today? Do we really know what Easter means, with all its consequences for our daily life?

Through the open souls of these women, it was possible that for them to hear the message of the angel. They heard that the one they loved, the one they deeply revered had risen. They still couldn’t fully believe and understand it.

Today the Christian world celebrates Easter, as a day free from work, hopefully with sunny weather, and in nature with Easter egg hunts.  But if the Easter mystery doesn’t live in the human soul, man could neither develop free powers of love, nor feel compassion, nor find the will to further develop our humanity. Without the overcoming of death by the human God, mankind would be without a human future. Despite the failing of our understanding and our endless doubts,  He is truly risen.

It is a reality that the stone of 2000 years ago lies heavy today as hard immovable materialism on the souls of the people. Who will move it away? Is there any readiness at all, any will in the souls of men, to free themselves from this heavy, materialistic stone that lies on the feelings and thinking?

We don't really know!

​The only thing we can know is our own willingness, our open hearts to seek the Risen Lord and receive resurrection power through Him, as responsibility, as courage and as the security of His presence.

Gospel Reading: John 19: 1-15

Dear Community of Christians,

If we are honest with ourselves, we must realize again and again how difficult it is for us to see everything that is material, and physical as the outer expression of the spirit. The crucifixion was an external physical event that took place on our material-physical earth. And at the same time, it was the highest spiritual event with rising new divine light for the earth. As long as we only look at the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth and are not aware that at the same time the crucifixion, the death of the supreme Christ being, has taken place, we will be bound to our materialistic, intellectual thinking and feelings.

Despite the spring and the bright light outside, our soul is surrounded by deepest darkness. It is the dark night of the human soul that we experience now. The human soul is totally disoriented. Decisions are being made by people who are ignorant that mankind is drifting towards the abyss. Dark decisions which could mean that the development of humanity will no longer be possible. Will a future generation one day say, “back then the human soul was nailed on the cross of hardened materialistic consciousness?”

​It is up to each individual human being whether we recognize evil in its clear form. And, whether we are able to push back against these powers today with the resurrection power, at work in the world over the last 2000 Years?