Readings: Genesis 1:1-5, Psalm 51:1-17, Secrets of Heaven 20, True Christianity 773 (see below)See also on Youtube
Photo by Merlin Lightpainting: https://www.pexels.com/photo/woman-with-blue-hair-and-blue-eyes-11138000/ Okay, here we are in Lent. The part of the liturgical year when we are asked to take the blinders from our eyes and really sit with our failings, to not shy away or make excuses, but to face them head on. With the emphasis on spiritual growth and regeneration in the New Church, I used to joke to my Lutheran classmates that it is Lent all the year round with Swedenborgians, but of course, that is not necessarily sustainable. Like a breath in and a breath out, we need times to focus and times to rest, times to mourn and times to celebrate. And today, we enter into the practice of seeing and feeling what we have done wrong, and what we can do better going forward. Soon enough, we will be celebrating Easter, we will be bathed in the joy of the resurrection. But for now, with courage and seriousness, we recognize our limitations, we recognize our shortcomings, we recognize our capitulations and our complicity. We confess. We convict. But it is important that we do so in the context of God’s essential character. This is how Psalm 51 begins, by establishing the qualities of God that make reconciliation and relationship possible. It begins with asking that God “have mercy” or “be gracious,” the language reflecting the famous benediction from Numbers 6:25 “The Lord bless you and keep you. the Lord make his face to shine upon and be gracious unto you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.” These are things that the Lord is known to be, thus they are called forth in blessing. The psalmist asks for mercy because God has shown mercy so many times before. Bur really, how can the psalmist be so sure? We are further told that God shows mercy “according to your unfailing love.” The word here translated as unfailing or steadfast love is hesed. This word is used frequently in the psalms and is central to God’s character. It is a little more complicated than the phrase “steadfast love” though….it is inherently relational and covenantal. It is about acting appropriately in a relationship, about knowing how to *maintain* community and relationship. When God is showing mercy according to hesed, this is not just about sentiment, or even loyal sentiment, it is about the wisdom that knows how to love well, how to maintain connection. And God also shows mercy according to God’s “great compassion” which is also sometimes translated as “tender mercies”. This Hebrew word is related to the word for “womb.” So it might well be better translated as “motherly compassion.” This is how we are to be held as we make known our sin, as we look unflinchingly at our own failings. We are held in God’s womb, safe and surrounded with God’s motherly compassion. So, we learn from the psalm that God will give mercy because God will always be there, God knows how to be in relationship, God sticks around when things get messy, God has abundant compassion. And so we can enter into the rest of the psalm, we can enter into the practice of repentance because, as bad as it feels, as scary as it feels, it is remarkably, impossibly, NOT existentially dangerous to us. It *feels* existentially dangerous to admit we are wrong. Our survival instincts kick in because we don’t want to endanger our relationships as they stand, our dynamics of power, our structures of privilege. For example, it might be really hard for a parent to admit they are wrong to their child, because it seems like their child may not respect their authority anymore. Or, I ask myself, Why so hard to admit to my husband when I am wrong? Maybe I think I will be less lovable, less worthy of love, maybe I don’t want to concede some kind of power that I think I have? Even with small things, small admissions, let alone the big ones, our fight or flight systems kick in, and we are ready to encounter abandonment, to encounter loss of respect and power. In a survival world, power and respect are everything. And using *that* framework, admitting wrong-doing to God, the most powerful being of all, should be suicide. But God turns that whole deal on its head. “The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart you will not despise.” The world often *does* despise brokenness…just see how we talk about poverty, about mental illness, about addiction. The world sees weakness and cannot bear to encounter what it means, that it could easily be each of us, for the one thing we all share is humanness. For God though, our brokenness, our wrongness, our failing is held in the context of our belovedness. God expects much from us, because we are loved so completely. And so, We can be sure of our safety in repentance because, in the words of one of my commentaries: “The reality of God’s steadfast love is more fundamental than the reality of sinfulness. While sin is inevitable and pervasive in the human situation, it is not ultimately the determining reality.” (1) The determining reality is the Divine Love of God. Evil and sin do not have existence in and of themselves, rather they are situations that involve a lack of, or denial of, or perversion of, the love of God. An Example from science: “cold” is not actually a thing. I feel ridiculous preaching this in the middle of February, but it’s true; In and of itself, coldness does not exist. Coldness is the absence of heat. Cold comes about by the removal of thermal energy from a system. Likewise, evil is the turning away from divine love, the removal of divine love from a system; it has no true existance of its own. And of course, this removal of Divine Love is never enacted by God, but rather when we remove ourselves from God’s presence, like a teenager who retreats to their room and shuts the door. Lent is about taking a look these times, and these tendencies. Taking a look at the times we have not trusted in the presence of God, taking a look at the times when we surrender to false idols and false suppositions, taking a look at the times we have not trusted the determining reality of love, not trusted that God will not despise a broken and contrite heart. As we will learn with the Easter story in several weeks, God demonstrated as clearly as possible that God does not despise brokenness. Jesus’ broken body on the cross was a “sacrifice acceptable to God”, not because God was angry and demanded the death of something innocent as an appeasement. Jesus broken body on the cross was God’s broken body, God’s broken heart, God’s ultimate statement of steadfast, motherly compassion. The cross is communicaing: “Here, look, there is nothing you can do that I haven’t seen, that I haven’t felt.” There is simply no state of brokenness that is too broken to be held within God’s love, no state of brokenness that cannot experience resurrection, that cannot experience vivification, that cannot feel the renewal of life. But we must open the door. We must believe in the solidarity that God is communicating. We must dismantle the walls around our hearts. We must crush the defensiveness, cast away the pride, stare down the fear. And if we do, God has promised life. God has promised mercy….and not the world’s mercy, which is often a reluctant bestowal of appeasement, a half-hearted condescension, a distracted forgetting. God’s mercy entails entrance into a cycle whereby resurrection is the answer to loss, every time. As characterized by St. Bonaventure: God’s creation, God’s perfection, is a circle. In a circle, there is nothing left behind, nothing left outside. Verse 10 of our psalm harkens back to this primordial creation when it says “Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.” This hebrew word for create, bara, is used to indicate an exclusively divine activity, the kind of creating that only God can do. And thus the Message Bible translates verse 10 as: “shape a Genesis week from the chaos of my life.” We heard in our Swedenborg reading that this work of creation is on-going. Our mothering God is always hovering over the waters of our crazy life, our chaos, our brokenness, looking to speak a word that will separate the light from the darkness. We might cling to the darkness for our various reasons. But, the creation of a pure heart, a new heart, can only be done when we bear open our chests and let God get to work in us. Another way of looking at this is from the author Glennon Doyle. She coined a new word to describe her experience of transformation: “brutiful”, an amalgamation of beautiful and brutal. An addict who rebuilt her life, Melton recognizes that showing up to the parts of her life that were hurting and broken, embracing her humanness, is what helped her become, in her words, “better, kinder, softer, stronger.” This is not the idea that suffering itself is beautiful, this is not about martyrdom, but rather, the idea that beauty and love can never be contained. Beauty and love and truth will find their way to us, like water flowing on a circuitous path, looking for the way that is open to flow. Beauty and love and truth will flower from even the smallest encouragement; we’ve all seen plants growing and flowering in between the cracks in concrete. Beauty and love and truth will reach deep into loss and pain and bring out resurrection, if we let them. Because that’s the way that God works, a divine circle of loss and renewal. So, Help us, Lord, to find balance in this Lenten season, let us step into the divine circle. Let us see, that if our Lent experience is all beauty, then perhaps we are not being honest with ourselves. If our Lent experience is entirely brutal, then perhaps we are forgetting the love of God. Let our path be “brutiful,” let our path be one of abundant creation. Let God shape a Genesis week out of the chaos of our lives. Amen. (1) The New Interpreter’s Bible p447 Readings: Genesis 1:1-5 1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. 3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day. Psalm 51:1-17 1 Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions. 2 Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. 3 For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me. 4 Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight; so you are right in your verdict and justified when you judge. 5 Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me. 6 Yet you desired faithfulness even in the womb; you taught me wisdom in that secret place. 7 Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow. 8 Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones you have crushed rejoice. 9 Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquity. 10 Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. 11 Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. 12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me. 13 Then I will teach transgressors your ways, so that sinners will turn back to you. 14 Deliver me from the guilt of bloodshed, O God, you who are God my Savior, and my tongue will sing of your righteousness. 15 Open my lips, Lord, and my mouth will declare your praise. 16 You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings. 17 My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise. Secrets of Heaven 20 And God said, Let there be light; and there was light. This is at the outset when a person starts to realize that good and truth are something superior. Thoroughly external people do not even know what good is and what truth is, for they imagine that everything which comprises self-love and love of the world is good, and that everything that panders to those loves is truth. Thus they do not know that the things which they imagine to be good are in fact evil, and that those which they imagine to be true are in fact false. But when a person is conceived anew, first they start to recognize that the good in them is not really good, and then, when they enters more into light, to recognize the existence of the Lord and that the Lord is good and truth themselves. True Christianity 773 …These are the two goals of [the Lord’s] Coming. His ultimate purpose in creating the universe was exactly this: to form an angelic heaven made up of people…The divine love that God has, and that is his essence, cannot intend anything other than this, and the divine wisdom that God has, and that is God, cannot produce any other outcome than this. The universe was created for the purpose of having an angelic heaven made up of members of the human race, and also for the purpose of having a church in the world, since the church gives the human race access to heaven. In addition, saving people, which requires that they be born in the world, is itself an ongoing act of creation. For this reason the Word sometimes uses the word "create," and means by it "forming people for heaven. "
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Readings: 2 Kings 2:1, 6-12, Mark 9:2-9, True Christianity 222 (see below)
See also on Youtube If you listened carefully this past week, you might have heard a collective groan go up among preachers as they contemplated this week’s text. The transfiguration is notoriously hard to preach, for a number of reasons. It is often taken out of its place in the narrative, as we see it is this week, having made the jump quickly from chapter one last week to chapter nine this week. It is filled with references and allusions to the Old Testament and so can easily become a laundry list of explanation. And, it is also just a little weird to modern sensibilities; a shining Jesus, voices from heaven, babbling disciples. Just how are we supposed to hold and understand this startling, magical, otherworldly story? Let’s begin by placing the episode in its narrative context. What has just happened in the story that would precipitate the transfiguration? We find that Jesus has just predicted his death to the disciples for the first time, and schooled them in the way of the cross. We read from verse 31 in chapter 8: He then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again. He spoke plainly about this, and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. Crazy right? Peter began to rebuke Jesus. Now look, we can understand. He didn’t want to lose Jesus, his beloved teacher. We all share this instinctual “No,” this rising up of protest to the idea of loss and of suffering. This can be a good thing. In addition to being a valuable survival instinct for ourselves, when directed towards others, it can guide our sense of empathy and justice. But not in this case. Jesus says, famously: Get behind me, Satan! You do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns. Or in the words on the Message Bible: You have no idea how God works. He continues: For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? It is with these powerful words still ringing in the air, that we are told that six days later, Jesus takes Peter, James and John up to the mountain and is transfigured before them. Jesus receives a divine blessing (This is my Son, whom I love) and the disciples receive a divine instruction (Listen to him). Just two weeks ago, we spent some time with Deuteronomy, learning about how God would raise up a prophet like Moses…and the divine voice at the transfiguration echoes Moses’ prophecy “You must listen to him.” Listen to what? Listen to what Jesus says he must do, listen to what he says the kingdom will look like, listen to what it means to take up their cross. In the transfiguration there are a number of revealings: a revealing of divine reality, a revealing of Jesus identity, but also a revealing of Jesus’ purposes. To understand Jesus’ purpose, let’s pause for a moment and consider the presence of Moses and Elijah. They are often understood to represent the law and the prophets and to demonstrate that Jesus is a fulfillment of the law, and is in solidarity with the prophets. In one sense, this is true, Jesus *is* a continuation and fulfillment of these things. But in another interesting sense, Jesus is a contrast to Moses and Elijah. This is because the Jewish tradition had long believed that neither Moses nor Elijah had actually died, but had been taken up to be with God. For Moses, this was believed because his burial place was never actually found or acknowledged in scripture. For Elijah, it is because of the transition story that we heard in our reading today, of Elijah being carried up to heaven in a whirlwind and chariots of fire. So, to the original hearers of the gospel, it would make perfect sense to see both Moses and Elijah there talking with the transfigured Jesus, and in the presence of the divine voice. That’s where they understood them to be, alive with God. The fascinating contrast is that Jesus, clearly elevated above both Moses and Elijah, designated the Beloved Son, had just been telling the disciples that he was going to have to die. Elijah had served well, Moses had served well, Jesus had served well…but their fates would be very different because their mission was different. Moses and Elijah were messengers. Moses had delivered the law and Elijah had delivered the prophetic word. They had done so in good faith, and at great peril. But, Jesus intended not only to be a conduit of God’s word but to usher in the kingdom of God in a new and powerful way. In a Swedenborgian sense, Jesus represents the Word in this story, God’s Divine truth for us, God speaking to us and the whole world, communicating and reaching out. And as static as the Word might appear on the page, we know that internally it is living, it is truth accommodated to level upon level so that it may speak to us wherever we might find ourselves. That it might always be doing its work of revealing and uncovering the truth of ourselves to ourselves, so that we might be free enough and clear enough to love other people well and fully. The Word is God’s stake in the ground, this is God continuing to show up for us day after day as Divine Love in the form of Divine Truth, illuminating reality, clearing our path. The Transfiguration shows us there is glory and holiness at the heart of it all, that this source of all things, God’s Divine Love is benevolent and beautiful, and shines brightly and continuously. But as Peter’s reaction shows us, we humans are alternately dazzled and frightened by the brightness. We are easily captivated and distracted by ideals, and beauty, and shiny things. It is not a bad thing to love beauty and to strive for ideals. But if our eyes are always on the bright light, then our world around us becomes like nothing, the people behind us forgotten and unworthy. And God means to save everyone. So, God’s brightness became veiled in humanity, so that it might become present to suffering and pain, that the brightness might be embodied in sacrifice so that no one will be left behind, no matter how oppressed, broken, tired, mistaken, or forgotten. God’s humanity through Jesus will effect the divine reach into every experience, God’s divine love found within and through humanness. And this is the reason for what is called the “Messianic secret.” We might remember examples of Jesus warning those healed not to say anything about it. Here, Jesus orders that the disciples not tell anyone about the transfiguration until after he had risen from the dead. You see, Jesus wasn’t a magic trick. God is not only revealed in the glory of the transfiguration but in the suffering of the cross; God’s character is manifested in both the brightness *and* the sacrifice. In the first, the divine love shines in delight with Jesus, a representation of how divine love delights in being manifested through divine truth. In the second, divine love is revealed in sacrifice, reaching in and through suffering and death in order to transform them, a picture of how divine love works for our salvation. The disciples were having a lot of trouble understanding this. And Jesus is fierce about correcting them. He calls Peter Satan! He tells them: You have no idea how God works. Jesus understands that he must be killed and then be raised to life, must be brought down and then lifted up, must suffer and then be exalted, because this is, incredibly, the actual good news: that a dying can lead to a living. This is the principle that makes the universe just, makes the universe loving. This is a big deal because if we can’t countenance the death, we can’t get to the resurrection. If we can’t countenance dying to our own selfish desires, we can’t experience life in the kingdom. “For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life to me will find it.” Peter, in his objections, is voicing all of our common, understandable survival instincts. There is nothing in the culture of the world, on the face of things, that tells us when we lose our life we will find it. What we see, is that when we lose our life we lose it. What we feel, when we are asked to lose some very integral parts of our self-identification, is that we will die without these things. How many of our cherished habits and ways of thinking feel impossible to sacrifice? Who here like me, might cling tightly to control in their life, for example? Who else might feel like they always have to be completely on top of things? What about the temptation to control other people, boy, what a relief it is, how gratifying when other people do things as we wish. And then, how does it feel when we are forced to let go of control in these situations? To me, not good, like things might completely collapse, that my conception of myself might actually fall apart. Who am I, I might wonder, if I am not able to control my world, see my will come to pass? But is that really living into the kingdom? Might these parts of us, and many other parts of us, actually have to die, so that the rest of ourselves, our souls, can live? Today, Transfiguration Sunday, is the last Sunday before Lent begins. On one side of Lent, Jesus is up on a mountaintop, transfigured in glory, and on the other side of Lent we find him on another high place, crucified (1). The whole point though, is that God is found in both, and in between. For, Lent is not a time of the absence of God. Lent is not a time in which we get it all together so that we can approach the Lord at the resurrection. Jesus prevented the disciples to speak of the transfiguration because we can’t understand God’s love fully without also understanding God’s sacrifice. He prevented them from characterizing the story as “this is where God really is,” and not allowing God to enter into the rest of it. So, even as the placement of transfiguration takes us out of the narrative, its placement is also very intentional. A bestowal of love and an exhortation to listen are exactly the tools we need as we enter into Lent. Because this means that God is going with us, to whisper love and encouragement along the way. In the transfiguration, God shares with us the possibility of delight blooming in us, in God’s beloved children, the possibility that love will shine brightly through truth, and though insight. And that insight may cause suffering for a time, we may learn about how we have persecuted Divine Love, or perverted Divine truth. We may learn about parts of us that need to die. But we also know that Jesus is walking this path with us. So we’ll be brave, and just maybe, a little hopeful too. Amen. (1) https://www.workingpreacher.org/podcasts/sb585-transfiguration-sunday Readings: 2 Kings 2:1, 6-12 1 Now when the Lord was about to take Elijah up to heaven by a whirlwind, Elijah and Elisha were on their way from Gilgal. 6 Then Elijah said to him, "Stay here; for the Lord has sent me to the Jordan." But he said, "As the Lord lives, and as you yourself live, I will not leave you." So the two of them went on. 7 Fifty men of the company of prophets also went, and stood at some distance from them, as they both were standing by the Jordan. 8 Then Elijah took his mantle and rolled it up, and struck the water; the water was parted to the one side and to the other, until the two of them crossed on dry ground. 9 When they had crossed, Elijah said to Elisha, "Tell me what I may do for you, before I am taken from you." Elisha said, "Please let me inherit a double share of your spirit." 10 He responded, "You have asked a hard thing; yet, if you see me as I am being taken from you, it will be granted you; if not, it will not." 11 As they continued walking and talking, a chariot of fire and horses of fire separated the two of them, and Elijah ascended in a whirlwind into heaven. 12 Elisha kept watching and crying out, "Father, father! The chariots of Israel and its horsemen!" But when he could no longer see him, he grasped his own clothes and tore them in two pieces. Mark 9:2-9 2 Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, 3 and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. 4 And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus. 5 Then Peter said to Jesus, "Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah." 6 He did not know what to say, for they were terrified. 7 Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, "This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!" 8 Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus. 9 As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead. True Christianity 222 When the Lord was transfigured, he represented the Word in its glory. Of the Lord's transfiguration before Peter, James, and John…I have been taught that in this instance the Lord represented the Word. His face shining like the sun represented the divine goodness of his divine love. The clothes that became like the light represented the divine truth of his divine wisdom… The shining cloud that covered the disciples represented the Word in its literal meaning. That is why a voice was heard coming from the cloud saying, "This is my beloved Son. Hear him. " All communications and answers from heaven come solely through outermost things like those in the Word's literal meaning. The Lord communicates in a complete way. Readings: Isaiah 40:28-31, Mark 1:29-39, True Christianity 438 (see below)See also on Youtube
Photo by Flo Maderebner As we continue in the first chapter of Mark, we hear about Jesus’ first healing. After preaching in the synagogue, Jesus goes to Simon’s home to find his mother-in-law sick with a fever. Post-pandemic, we can appreciate even more now, how in a world without antibiotics, a fever could be very serious. We are treated to a short but tender scene; Jesus goes to her, and takes her hand. Immediately the fever leaves her, and she resumes her duties. This healing episode follows the typical features of a biblical healing story: there is a description of the malady or challenge, a request for healing, the act of healing, and then the evidence that the healing has taken place. Most healing stories follow this intuitive formula. But of course, in doing this, the gospel is not only giving us a version of what happened and what Jesus’ did. It is also providing us with a picture of how God is with us now, how God heals us and regenerates us, and how God challenges us to respond. In the Swedenborgian worldview, sicknesses in scripture represent spiritual challenges. (1) Just as sicknesses can harm our earthly bodies, in a parallel way there are selfish feelings, desires, and perspectives that can harm our spirit. In recognizing that resonance, we can see that the outline for a typical healing story in scripture, might also be able to guide our own spiritual progression. First, the challenge must be identified. We can’t work on a problem that we don’t recognize that we have. This fundamental recognition is the starting point of all spiritual progress. The second part is the request to be healed. The implication in the story is that Simon’s mother-in-law was not getting better on her own. We heard in our Swedenborg reading that we cannot navigate our spiritual challenges all on our own. The third step is the act of healing itself, and of this we can do nothing but stand in awe and gratitude for the way God works within us for change. Swedenborg writes elsewhere that God fights for us and works for our salvation constantly (2). Isaiah reveals to us a beautiful promise: those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. The fourth part is the evidence of the healing, our response. Our conscious participation is crucial throughout the entire process, but how we respond to the miracle of transformation is the part that draws us into true partnership with God, that grounds any transformation within our character and within our spirit. Simon’s mother-in-law immediately responded with service. Now, I’ll concede on the face of it, this is a tricky anecdote. Her response is clearly gendered, clearly according to the expectations of the time. There are no similar episodes of a man being healed and beginning to serve others in the specific way that she does. In our day and time, when the cultural expectations of women’s work and men’s work are being rightfully deconstructed, it can be unclear how to interpret this story. There are all kinds of interpretations that try to explain away the gendered and historical nature of her response. But still, one can reasonably ask, wouldn’t true healing have freed her from cultural expectations as well? Her son in law dropped his net and abandoned his life of fishing in response to his experience of Jesus. Could not she do the same? And so we find that this is a story with an inseparable historical context. Perhaps in the end, it does not matter so much whether or not we now can impose some resolution upon it for the sake of our own peace of mind, but rather whether we pay attention to the question that it prompts us to ask. Which is: What is our response to the movement of God in our lives? In the gospels, there are various responses to healings: we see people spreading the news, walking around if they could not before, showing public gratitude, following Jesus and joining his movement. And we see here that one of the options is also service. We can’t know how Simon’s mother-in-law experienced her return to her duties. The problem is, we are not even told her name, much less her details of her inner experience. Did she serve with honor, with relief, with reluctance, with gratitude? Inside her own context, could she even have thought to ask for anything more or different? What we do know is that the kingdom of God would never ultimately call anyone into servitude, a structure that inherently places one person in power over another. The whole kingdom mindset is the reversal of earthly power structures…the last will the first. But just because servitude is rejected, doesn’t mean that the idea of service, serving one another, is likewise jettisoned. Servanthood, freely chosen, is exactly what Jesus exemplified; mutual love a hallmark of God’s heavenly realm. And so, even within the ancient context, we receive clues to this reality. The verb used to indicate Simon’s mother-in-law waiting upon Jesus and the disciples, diakoneo, is used earlier in the same chapter, when Jesus was tested in the wilderness and we are told that the angels attended to him. Later it is used by Jesus himself, when he is characterizing his entire mission: “I come not to be served but to serve.” And finally, it is echoed in Mark 15:41, at the crucifixion. After all the disciples have deserted Jesus, we are told some women remained. “Some women were watching from a distance. Among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joseph, and Salome. In Galilee, these women had followed him and cared for his needs. Many other women who had come up with him to Jerusalem were also there.” What is translated as “cared for his needs” is the same verb, diakoneo, and it is not hard to imagine that Simon’s mother-in-law might have been among these “many” women as well, just as was the mother of James, another disciple. This small moment in scripture lifts up another story not told. A story about women who followed Jesus and cared for him. Who followed him and served him, not out of expectation but out of love. Women whose story gets so little play because of the cultural repressions of the era, women who were never designated disciples but who dared to be present at the cross, who did not flinch or turn away. When we remember that Simon’s mother-in-law served, we can also remember that she and others persisted in presence when others ran away. But still, the tension remains. Our culture has certainly been tempted to take such stories and make them prescriptive, to make them about how women ARE, what they do BEST, and therefore what they *should* do. To resist this impulse against prescription, we remember that the framework for healing is the same for all us. We are all called to reflect, to compassionately but courageously convict ourselves, to ask for healing. And we are all called to respond as our heart calls us to respond, in some form of sacrificial servanthood in the mould of Jesus himself, the beating heart of the kingdom of God. This kingdom mindset that we are all called to is one of the reasons that Jesus would not let the demons he was exorcising speak. They knew who he was, but they did not have faith in him, or the kingdom of God. They might speak, but they would never act for the kingdom. In the broad scheme, to Jesus, the miracle was never the thing, the response was always the thing. To Jesus, his fame was nothing. Rather, Jesus knew that the most important part was still to come. He knew we might mistake the whole point if we did not wait until everything was played out. But we will be in Easter soon enough. Let us today honor the miracle of the way God always moves us toward healing, and that this healing can transform us. Amen. (1) Secrets of Heaven 5711 (2) Secrets of Heaven 1642, True Christianity 142 Readings: Isaiah 40:28-31 28 Do you not know? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom. 29 He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. 30 Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; 31 but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint. Mark 1:29-39 29 As soon as they left the synagogue, they went with James and John to the home of Simon and Andrew. 30 Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they immediately told Jesus about her. 31 So he went to her, took her hand and helped her up. The fever left her and she began to wait on them. 32 That evening after sunset the people brought to Jesus all the sick and demon-possessed. 33 The whole town gathered at the door, 34 and Jesus healed many who had various diseases. He also drove out many demons, but he would not let the demons speak because they knew who he was. 35 Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed. 36 Simon and his companions went to look for him, 37 and when they found him, they exclaimed: “Everyone is looking for you!” 38 Jesus replied, “Let us go somewhere else—to the nearby villages—so I can preach there also. That is why I have come.” 39 So he traveled throughout Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and driving out demons. True Christianity 438 Still, none of us can purify ourselves from evils by our own power and our own force. On the other hand, neither can we purify ourselves without having power and force as if they were our own. If we did not have apparent power, none of us could fight against the flesh and its cravings, although we have all been ordered to do so. In fact, we could not even think about battling them…. Clearly then, because we are rational in a way that animals are not, we have to resist evils using the powers and abilities the Lord gives us, although as far as we can tell, those powers and abilities appear to be our own. The Lord gives us all this illusion in order to regenerate us, attribute goodness to us, forge a partnership with us, and save us. Readings: Deuteronomy 18:15-22, Mark 1:21-28, Divine Providence 230:2, Secrets of Heaven 668 (see below)
See also on Youtube Photo by Eduardo Goody on Unsplash We join Jesus today at the begining of his minstry in the gospel of Mark, right after he has called his first disciples to follow him. They reach the town of Capernaum, and Jesus goes into the synagogue and begins to teach. It is not so unusual that Jesus would have engaged in a public reading and exposition of the Torah - this was the purpose of the synagogue - but rather that his teachings began to put him in conflict with the experts in the law, the scribes. He was starting to preach something different, something that made the people sit up and take notice, something that made the religious leaders uncomfortable. What is interesting is that Mark characterizes less what Jesus says, but how he said it. He tells us Jesus taught with “authority” and that was part of what the people, and indeed, the impure spirit, were responding to. We’ll leave modern interpretations of exorcisms to another day. For now, I’d like to focus on the question of authority: why did Jesus have it, and why was that important to the people listening? To understand why the Jewish people would sit up and take notice of someone teaching with authority, we need to take a detour through Deuteronomy. It is the fifth book of the bible, traditionally ascribed to Moses, and takes the form of various Mosaic speeches and acts, providing a supplement and an expansion of the of the original law, including the ten commandments, which we hear about in Exodus. The book experienced “several stages of growth and editing,” coming together during the Babylonian exile and after it, as Israel worked to reclaim its identity, both internally and politically. So in our reading, in the midst of this reclamation of identity and nationhood, we see the careful balancing of the powers in religious life. In making a covenant with the people, God had established Godself as the ultimate authority, but understandably, the people had always required some kind of accommodation of that authority in their context. So, God gave them the law, and the priesthood, and finally a king. But, the problem with authority passed down by inheritance, like the priesthood and kingship, is the rise of orthodoxy. Therefore, God also gave authority to prophets. When the authority of the king or the priests calcified into something that no longer served the people but served the elite, God sent prophets to preach a word that challenged the status quo. A word new enough shatter complacency but old enough to remind the people what had been true all along. These prophets are an incredibly important part of Jewish tradition, they are an embodiment of God’s continual care and love, a compassionate God who cares enough to send correction when God’s people have gone astray. This is one of the reasons that the question of “authority” was important to the Jews in Jesus’ context and why they were so attuned to it. They had a tradition of prophets rising up to challenge the status quo, and so the people were always on the look out. But, the particular people who wrote and collated Deuteronomy were not prophets but priests. They recognized the importance of prophets to the balance of righteous power but they also feared them. They feared for their own position, of course. Those ensconced in orthodoxy rarely believe it is right for it to be dismantled or reformed. But also, there is a potential dark side to prophetism. Such a back door into God’s authority can leave a space open for bad actors and profiteers. Vulnerable people will often believe anything that gives them hope. But not everyone who claims to speak for God, does. Not everyone who claims to speak the truth, does. So, the Deuteronomists were attempting to set up some boundaries. They wanted to limit the influence of outsiders, so they said prophet must rise up from “among your own people” and they wanted leave a high bar, so it needed to be someone “like Moses,” their most revered prophet. And then they also provided some guidelines for answering the question: how do we know when someone is speaking for God? How do we know if what they say is the truth? The first guideline is that the prophet should not speak in the name of other gods. On the face of it, that seems pretty simple. If they say it doesn’t come from the one true God, then it doesn’t come from God. But speaking in the name of other gods isn’t always so straight forward. In Swedenborgian sense, a name symbolizes the character, the essential nature of a thing. If you are familiar with the play by Arthur Miller, the Crucible, the main character is asked to sign his name to a document professing his guilt in order to gain his freedom. Many others had already done so. But he is not guilty of the crime and he cannot bring himself to do it because his name, to him, is not only what he is called by others, but what he stands for as a person. Speaking in the name of other gods is also about speaking with allegiance to the character of not only other gods, but other powers, other priorities. In the words of one of my commentaries it is preaching “doctrines which teach the soul to worship other things as supreme.” Other things like money, power, influence, celebrity, pleasure, security, the list goes on. So a true prophet does not lift up priorities that are antithetical to God’s kingdom, does not invite us to worship things other than God, does not call us to value things which God has cautioned us against valuing. The other guideline this chapter provides is that the word of prophecy must come true. Already, this is a tricky one. The Israelites, post-exile, were chastened that they did not listen to their many prophets who preached destruction, for that did indeed come to pass. And yet, we heard several weeks back the story of Jonah, about a prophet who did preach destruction but found that prophecy averted by the Ninevites’ repentance. As we know having come through a modern pandemic, it is often very hard to prove the realness of a disaster averted. But the prophetic word is not always about predictions of calamity; remember it is a new word about what has always been true. The prophets were bringing the people back to the covenant, back to what they knew was right. This is a type of word that can be proven true in the course of our own lives. Is it better to love than to hate? Is it better to tell the truth than to lie? What happens when we respect our parents, our neighbors, our spouses according to the commandments? What happens when we look after the most vulnerable among us? The truth of this type of prophecy is borne out everyday, right in front of us. The realness of God’s divine truth is not an abstract thing; its realness comes to pass in the small moments between people just as readily as in the “arc of the moral universe.” So, the first guideline is prompting us to pay attention to what a prophet is calling upon us to love and serve. The second guideline is prompting us to take a look at the form of the prophecy and the fruit that it bears. Do the words encourage us to love or hate, do the words encourage us to act with courage and integrity? Because, for something to be true, it must be giving form to love. If it is not giving form to love then it is not true. From our Swedenborg reading: no truth can be brought forth unless love exists within it. If it is giving form to love of the Lord and love of the neighbor, then it is true. If it is giving form to self-love, giving form to love of dominion, giving form to fear….then what is being preached is falsity, no matter how appealing, how pragmatic, how right it may sound. We will know a prophet by what they tell us to love and by what they tell us to do. So, the Jewish people of Jesus’ day were urgently waiting for a prophet to rise up and speak truth to power. As an occupied people under the boot of Rome, with a political and religious elite complicit in their efforts to retain control, they hoped and prayed for a word from God that would change their dire circumstances. By their tradition, they were finely attuned to the authority of the prophet, and they saw it in Jesus that day. We too look for prophets, in our day and age, even if we don’t necessarily understand people to speak for God as directly as in ancient Israel. Perhaps we don’t always look for religious prophets, but political and cultural prophets certainly. It is a natural human tendency to resist the calcification of our institutions, to try to introduce some fresh air into fossilized ways of doing things. God knows this, and the Deuteronomists knew this. But prophets are not always recognized in their day. Many did not recognize Jesus for what he was, many did not recognize the word of God being spoken in their midst. Likewise, often it is only the passage of time that proves the truth of the prophet. As many have reminded us this past Martin Luther King day, Dr King was not popular in his day. He is oft quoted now, and is much admired, but Gallup polls in the 1960s show a very different picture. In a a survey in 1963, the year before Dr. King received the Nobel Peace Prize, just under half of the respondents had a negative view of him, with a fourth having an extremely negative view of him. Much of white america did not approve of Dr. King’s actions during the civil rights movement. And we can see why; he was employing the prophet’s refrain…Repent! Open your eyes to the suffering of the marginalized! The *purpose* of the prophet is to make us feel uncomfortable, to help us see where God’s kingdom is yearning to be born more fully. And we don’t always welcome that reminder. But, let us apply the rubric: what was Dr. King calling on us to love? Our fellow human beings. What was he calling on us to do? Give form to that love through the granting of equal rights. Dr. King’s good friend and colleague, Rabbi Heschel has written, that “the purpose of prophecy is to conquer callousness….prophets remind us of the moral state of a people: few are guilty, but all are responsible.”(1) As we will learn as we journey though Mark this year, Jesus will not be satisfied with an understanding of power and authority that is apart from sacrifice. Many will marvel at his miracles, at his teaching, but Jesus meant for these to be a call to action, to responsibility, to an embrace of a kingdom in which servanthood and mutual love reign. Having our eyes opened to the moral state of our lives, individually, socially, nationally, can be very painful. But it can also be transformational, because the recognition of the authority of divine truth is just as much a call as any of Jesus’ disciples received. The question is: are we listening? Amen. (1) Abraham J. Heschel, The Prophets: An Introduction, p16-17 Readings: Deuteronomy 18:15-22 15 The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your fellow Israelites. You must listen to him. 16 For this is what you asked of the LORD your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly when you said, “Let us not hear the voice of the LORD our God nor see this great fire anymore, or we will die.” 17 The LORD said to me: “What they say is good. 18 I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their fellow Israelites, and I will put my words in his mouth. He will tell them everything I command him. 19 I myself will call to account anyone who does not listen to my words that the prophet speaks in my name. 20 But a prophet who presumes to speak in my name anything I have not commanded, or a prophet who speaks in the name of other gods, is to be put to death.” 21 You may say to yourselves, “How can we know when a message has not been spoken by the LORD?” 22 If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the LORD does not take place or come true, that is a message the LORD has not spoken. That prophet has spoken presumptuously, so do not be alarmed. Mark 1:21-28 21 They went to Capernaum, and when the Sabbath came, Jesus went into the synagogue and began to teach. 22 The people were amazed at his teaching, because he taught them as one who had authority, not as the teachers of the law. 23 Just then a man in their synagogue who was possessed by an impure spirit cried out, 24 “What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God!” 25 “Be quiet!” said Jesus sternly. “Come out of him!” 26 The impure spirit shook the man violently and came out of him with a shriek. 27 The people were all so amazed that they asked each other, “What is this? A new teaching—and with authority! He even gives orders to impure spirits and they obey him.” 28 News about him spread quickly over the whole region of Galilee. Divine Providence 230:2 We can see from this that in the Word, "the name of God" means both God and everything divine that is in God and that emanates from God. Since the Word is a divine emanation, it is a name of God; and since all the divine gifts that we refer to as the spiritual gifts of the church come from the Word, they too are a name of God. Secrets of Heaven 668 …Indeed no truth can ever be brought forth unless some good or delight exists for it to spring from. Within good and delight there is life, but not within truth apart from that which it derives from good and delight. It is from these that truth is given form and develops, even as faith, which is connected with truth, is given form by and develops out of love, which is connected with good. Truth is like light; there is no light apart from that which flows from the sun or flame. It is from these that light is given form. Truth is merely the form which good takes, and faith merely the form which love takes. The form that truth takes depends therefore on the character of its good, as does that of faith on that of its love or charity. Readings: Genesis 28:10-19, John 1:43-51, Secrets of Heaven #3539:2, #3701 (see below)
See also on Youtube Photo by Johannes Plenio: https://www.pexels.com/photo/spiral-staircase-1102913/ Today we hear the story of Nathaniel’s conversion. As a character, he does not appear in any gospel apart from John, and is absent from the other gospel lists of the twelve disciples. This is not surprising though; the gospel of John does not seem to define discipleship as narrowly, or formally, as the other gospels. In this gospel, Nathanael appears twice; in our text for today, and also later when Jesus appears by the Sea of Galilee after the resurrection. He seems something of a relatable figure, doesn’t he? Perhaps it is easy to recognize his skepticism in ourselves and others. Nathanael hails from Cana, and people from Cana generally despised folks from Nazareth. So, when he scoffs that nothing good can come from Nazareth, he is revealing his pre-existent bias. We all often fall into bias or prejudice, forming opinions from preconceptions, and we deserve to be challenged on it, drawn away from it, especially if we are public figures who set the tone for national discourse. Yet thankfully, Nathanael does not appear to be hardened in his ideas; he accepts Philips invitation to “come and see.” Upon seeing Nathanael, Jesus affirms his good character. His reference to Nathanael as an “Israelite” is meant to place him positively within the history of their tradition. Nathanael asks suspiciously, how do you know me? And Jesus reveals what Nathanael had been doing before Philip had come and found him. This hardly seems like much of a revelation; there could have been a number of ways Jesus could have found this out. But Nathanael is convinced. Perhaps it has more to do with the fact that a fig tree traditionally denotes a place where rabbis study the Torah, and to Nathanael it was revealing something of his own private nature and aspiration. We don’t really know. Even so, even Jesus seems a little bemused by the speed of Nathanael’s reversal, and shares rather conspiratorially, “you will see greater things than that.” As we imagine Jesus whispering the same thing to us, it feels like an exciting promise, that we are being let into an amazing secret. As we travel through the episode though, I believe that the true revealing of Jesus character is found not so much in the titles that Nathanael subsequently calls Jesus, but in verse 51, where Jesus says you will see the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man. This is a reference to the story of Jacob’s ladder in the book of Genesis. In our reading today we learned that, while Jacob was on a journey, he stopped to sleep for the night and he had a dream. And he saw what Jesus was referring to here: “a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.” The Lord is at the top, reiterating his promises to Abraham, Jacob’s grandfather, and making new promises to Jacob, including: I will not leave you until I have done what I promised you.” A Swedenborgian interpretation of this story of Jacob, involves the joining together of what is spiritual and what is earthly, essentially the process of our spiritual journey as earthly beings becoming spiritual beings. In order to be regenerated, we need to be able to raise up our understanding beyond the less than spiritual things that we love in this world. We need to be able to recognize the truth of God’s reality even if it is different from the habits and the loves we have formed in ourselves. For example, we might love winning arguments, but the truth of reality is that conversation and relationship is about connection not domination, and so should be opportunities for listening and empathy. Our relationships will likely suffer until we can arrive at a recognition of this fundamental truth. But this recognition *itself* doesn’t mean anything for our spiritual trajectory if we don’t bring that understanding back down to earth and enact change in our actual life. To do this, we would need to put aside the satisfaction that we get from besting our conversation partners, and thinking ourselves absolutely right, in order to really hear other people, and actually practice listening. The process of regeneration of our spirit, is that we ascend to realization and then we descend to actualization, the spiritual brought down and conjoined with the earthly. There are many ways to understand or to picture how this process works; the stairway suggests a connective loop but a spiral is also an image that is often and usefully employed. What I find especially interesting in the juxtaposition of these two stories are the two different promises that God makes to Jacob and to Nathanael, promises made to us as well, when we are in these different headspaces. To Nathanael, Jesus says “you will see greater things than these.” This is an exciting promise filled with potential. It is about what we are going to be able to learn, how we are going to be able to expand our minds and our worldview. We are going to be amazed by what God is and what God can show us. There is more to know and experience and understand and we are being invited into that knowledge. This is the promise that is spoken to us at the beginning of the ascent of the stairway. We begin here in all of our earthly details but sometimes we look up and we know there is more to life. We might be reasonably skeptical in our hope, we might take each rung carefully and that is okay. But the *promise* is that the stairway exists and it goes upward. The promise is that we can improve our state, ever increasing our capacity to love and make the world a better place. This kind of outward looking aspiration is what drives much of human learning, both secular and religious. The other promise is to Jacob. God says: “I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I promised you.” This is the promise of the descent. If the ascent is exciting and exhiliarating, the descent is not always so. Changing our habits, our desires, our selfish impulses, our social structures, is actually very hard work. Psychology has informed us that it takes nine positive thoughts to counteract one negative one, or that forming new habits takes three skills: attention, focus and purposeful repetition. Do any of those three things sound like they are supported and lifted up in this modern day and age? Not so much. Spiritual work can be discouraging, exhausting, and embarrassing. We will fail many times before we succeed. Think of trying not to lose our temper, for example. It is so very hard to dismantle our emotional habits around our various triggers. What about facing the reality of white privilege? Many of us will encounter layers and layers of shame and regret and defensiveness and uncertainty around this topic before we are able to contribute usefully to the dismantling of systemic racism. The promise of the descent though, indeed the promise contained within the incarnation itself, is that God does not stay at the top of the ladder while we go down into the scary hard work. God comes down with us, is present with us, through all of it. God’s whole purpose is to make a heaven from the human race, to connect the earthly and the spiritual within us, and this is a game way too important to coach from the sidelines. So God goes where we go, into the details, into the slog. And Jacob wakes up, recognizing that the lowly crossroads where he laid his head is the house of God; God was present and he didn’t realize it. And this is one of the ways in which we can become derailed in our process, whereby we think that God only presides at the top of the stairway and that freedom and peace and satisfaction only exist at the top. It is possible to become so obsessed with self-actualization, with aspirationally being our best selves, that we forget about the descent when it matters, forget to be present to our life. The mistake is when we see the stairway as an escape from our life, not the way to transform our life. The exact opposite case is demonstrated in the words of Thich Nhat Hahn, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk. He writes: “When I was in Vietnam, so many of our villages were being bombed. Along with my monastic brothers and sisters, I had to decide what to do. Should we continue to practice in our monasteries, or should we leave the meditation halls in order to help the people who were suffering under the bombs? After careful reflection, we decided to do both—to go out and help people and to do so in mindfulness. We called it Engaged Buddhism. Mindfulness must be engaged. Once there is seeing, there must be acting. Otherwise, what is the use of seeing?”(1) And the gospels of Jesus underscore this point, as we progressively see how Jesus follows up on his comment to Nathanael. When he said “You will see greater things” he could have simply meant all his superhuman miracles, the transfiguration, the resurrection. These were awesome, awe-filled things. But he also meant touching and healing the unclean, he also meant the garden of Gethsemane, he also meant the cross, he also meant his fellow people of Nazareth. Jesus entered into the most broken and despised aspects of human life, as well as the good parts, as well into the potential. With him, the angels were ascending *and* descending all the time: You will see greater things AND I will not leave you. Jesus’ glorification was, and needed to be, a reflection of our own process, a reflection of the ascent and the descent, a reflection of a whole and connected loop, because God means to offer salvation to everyone and redemption to everything. A manufactured superhero Jesus bids us escape our lives and our contexts, and sometimes we really do wish that is what redemption is about: escape. But it is not, it is about transformation. A very wise lady once said to me: There is no way out but through. And in the end, how else can we imagine that God and humankind could have any real partnership but with this balancing, this fundamental connection, between transcendence and immanence, between the great beyond and the right here. God powers the movement of the human spirit with a twin engine of divine promises: The divine carrot moving us forward, the divine companion holding us up. Praise be to God. Amen. (1) Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace is Every Step, p91 Readings: Genesis 28:10-19 10 Jacob left Beersheba and set out for Harran. 11 When he reached a certain place, he stopped for the night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head and lay down to sleep. 12 He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. 13 There above it stood the LORD, and he said: “I am the LORD, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying. 14 Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring. 15 I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.” 16 When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought, “Surely the LORD is in this place, and I was not aware of it.” 17 He was afraid and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven.” 18 Early the next morning Jacob took the stone he had placed under his head and set it up as a pillar and poured oil on top of it. 19 He called that place Bethel, though the city used to be called Luz. John 1:43-51 43 The next day Jesus decided to leave for Galilee. Finding Philip, he said to him, “Follow me.” 44 Philip, like Andrew and Peter, was from the town of Bethsaida. 45 Philip found Nathanael and told him, “We have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the prophets also wrote—Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” 46 “Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?” Nathanael asked. “Come and see,” said Philip. 47 When Jesus saw Nathanael approaching, he said of him, “Here truly is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit.” 48 “How do you know me?” Nathanael asked. Jesus answered, “I saw you while you were still under the fig tree before Philip called you.” 49 Then Nathanael declared, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the king of Israel.” 50 Jesus said, “You believe because I told you I saw you under the fig tree. You will see greater things than that.” 51 He then added, “Very truly I tell you, you will see ‘heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.” Secrets of Heaven 3539:2 The goal of rebirth is for us to develop a new inner self and therefore a new soul, or spirit, but our inner self cannot be remade or reborn unless our outer self is too. Although we are spirits after death, we take with us into the other life aspects of our outer self: earthly emotions, doctrines, facts—in short, all the contents of our outer, earthly memory. These form the foundation on which our inner depths rest. Whatever priorities determine their arrangement, then, those are the priorities that inner things take on when they flow in, because inner things are modified on the outer plane. This shows that not only our inner, rational self needs to be reborn or remade but our outer, earthly self as well. Secrets of Heaven 3701 And look: God’s angels going up and going down on it symbolizes infinite and eternal communication, and resulting union; it also symbolizes an apparent climb from the lowest level and then, when the pattern reverses, a descent. Readings: Isaiah 2:1-5, 60:1-6, Matthew 2:1-12, Heaven and Hell #141, Secrets of Heaven #9031 (see below)
See also on Youtube Photo by Jill Wellington: https://www.pexels.com/photo/lady-in-beach-silhouette-during-daytime-photography-40192/ Today we are extending Epiphany a little bit longer. So if you haven’t taken your Christmas tree down yet, don’t worry, I’ve got you. Two weeks ago, we heard about Simeon and Anna, and contemplated what it means for Jesus to have a particularly Jewish identity but also an identity with a larger purpose for the whole world. So too now, does Matthew hint at this broader scope with the visitation of the three wise men, referring back to Israel’s mythology of the last days, and how that involves all people. The gospel of Matthew is primarily written with the early Jewish-Christian communities in mind, and so it is very concerned with demonstrating that Jesus is a fulfillment of the Torah, the holy Jewish scriptures. This could very easily have translated into a completely insular gospel, an insider account, an inward looking endeavor. And yet, right here at the beginning, in the middle of very Jewish story, we encounter these foreign figures, these three Magi. We assume there at least three because there are three gifts detailed, but we are not actually told how many there were. The word describing them, magos, indicated a priestly class (though probably not a royal class) of Persian or Babylonian experts in the occult…meaning things like astrology and dream interpretation, soothsaying. It’s where we get the modern word “magic.” They were clearly pagan, and just very different from the Jews. Yet, here they are, paying homage to Jesus. Why would that be important? If Jesus was to be understood as a fulfillment of Jewish scripture, why should that matter to anyone other than the Jews? Because the Jewish way of understanding God’s end plan for the world always involved the whole world and not just them. Yes, the story of the Old Testament is the story of one group of people and their particular relationship with God, and their promises to God. But that doesn’t mean that they believed God was going forsake the rest of the world. We heard in our reading today, in Isaiah chapter 2, the prophet detailing a vision of “the last days,” where “all the nations” will stream towards the high mountain on which the Lord’s temple will be established, where people will beat swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks. God’s divine plan for humankind involves peace and acceptance amongst all people, that all should walk in the light of the Lord. This vision is reiterated in our other reading, Isaiah 60, a post-exile text, where during a time of searching for and reforming their identity, the Jewish people are reminded that their future is intertwined with the future of all peoples, and that further, their identity is now to, though God, become a blessing and a light to the whole world. We read: See, darkness covers the earth and thick darkness is over the people. But the Lord rises upon you and his glory appears over you. Nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn. What an amazing call to action to receive after years of oppression in exile. One would reasonably imagine that a people newly out of exile would be thirsty for revenge, desperate to reclaim their power in the world, bitter and prejudiced against anyone but their own people. But instead, God calls them to be the complete opposite. God calls them to be a light for the nations, God calls them to be bright and welcoming like the dawn. God calls on them to shine and let the glory of the Lord rise up in them. And it is to these texts, among others, that Matthew is alluding in his story of the Magi. The Magi represented the nations following the light mentioned in Isaiah, following the brightness that would lead them to a new dawn, and a new future for the world. Their presence was not only an indication that Jesus was special, that Jesus was to be worshipped, they represented an important part of the fulfillment of Israel’s destiny, a destiny that would not be complete without them, for it had always included them. Now granted, the nations in Isaiah’s vision that are to stream into Zion are doing so to pay honor to the one true God - the vision is inclusive but it is not relativistic. Yet, it is also not nationalistic either, but rather, God-centric - the nations are to come because of the greatness of the Lord, not because of the greatness of Israel. God had always been acting for and speaking to the whole world, and so like Simeon and Anna, the Magi had their eyes open, their minds watchful. When they saw something important rise up, they acted, they stood up, they moved. Verse 2:2 is variously translated “we saw a star in the east,” and “we saw a star when it rose” because the greek word anatole can mean both the east and “a rising,” like the rising of the stars or sun. These wise men, from the East, from the place of “the rising,” rose up themselves to follow the star to wherever it would lead them. In Swedenborgian terms as well, the east is a powerful image because “the east” represents the Lord. And this is because Swedenborg tells us that the Lord appears in heaven as the sun, a manifestation of divine love and divine truth, in the form of warmth and light. The Lord’s love shines like a sun, and everything that comes into being in heaven and on earth is ultimately from this source. To the extent that this warmth and light are accepted by us, to the extent that we allow this warmth and light to manifest itself as love and wisdom in our actions and our lives, then we learn from our reading that the angels say of such people “the Lord has risen among them.” Indeed, the “Lord is said to rise in the heart when a person is being regenerated, when he or she is governed by the good of love and faith.” The Magi embodied this state of being. They were driven by their holy curiosity, their desire to see what God was doing in the world and so they were open to noticing the star rising, open to the new possibilities of a journey, open to seeing beyond themselves. Herod, however, gives us the opposite case. Herod could not see the star. He too was a foreigner, an Idumean, from a region south of Judea, but there would be no searching for the light for him, no birthing of new possibility, because to the self-absorbed, all that is not the self is dangerous. With his eyes glued constantly to his own ascendency, to the consolidation and perpetuation of this own power…of course it was impossible for him to see the star, impossible to be open to a recognizing something good or true apart from his own self-interest. But that didn’t mean it was impossible for him to recognize the importance of the Magi showing up. Even in purely worldly terms, it was unusual. They ask where is the king? And of course, to Herod’s mind there is only room of one king: himself. There is no rising within his heart, no dawning of something new, because all newness to him is a threat to his power, to the status quo. To him, the promise of the star is nothing but annihilation and so he acts accordingly. And this is representative of the conflict within our own hearts, for we all have parts of us that are Herod, and parts of us that are the Magi. God is always wanting to rise within our hearts, always gently urging us to turn toward the east, to notice the star…but if our hearts only have room for ourselves we will not react with an expansion of spirit, we will not react with curiosity, we will not react by rising up ourselves, we will only contract, and act to shut the light down. And sometimes, honestly, this feels easier. The Magi did not know where they were going. Pilgrimage is scary, movement is scary, especially when we have no guarantees about where we will end up or what we will find. But Herod’s path is darkness and death, as safe and astute and pragmatic as it may seem. Herod’s path represents the setting of the sun, not its rising. So what does this mean for us? What lessons can we draw from the Magi? First, We can desire not to be insular. Whatever promises that we think God has made to us, God will always be speaking to all. The light was made for shining, and so salvation is open to all who will have it. God’s vision for our future involves curiosity and open doors. Second, We can learn that God constantly endeavors to rise within the human heart. Whether it is a huge bright rising sun, or small shiny star, or a tender gentle burnished dawn… there is always a possibility of a new state of being for us. People, including us, might not always react well towards newness, but God tells us to not to fear. May we believe in God’s perpetual dawning. Third, We can learn that when we sense something rising, then it is time to act. The Magi trusted the rising, they looked for it, they acted on it. Pilgrimage can be scary, movement can be exhausting, but can we also remember that the rising is a gift, that the end of the journey is always new life, a baby in the manger. Can we inhabit that space, and live into this paradigm? Fourth, we learn that God has called us to be a blessing and a light to the world. There will be times when we would rather shut down, times when we would rather lash out, for there is so much suffering in our own lives and in the world at large. In the midst of that though, God has said, Let there by light, and let it be you. God called forth the light from chaos in the beginning, and God calls it forth even now. The Magi were looking for the star, the Jewish people eagerly anticipated the coming of the nations…and that looks to me like we are all a people searching for each other, searching for our common dawning. So Arise, my friends, and shine, for your light has come. Amen. Readings: Isaiah 2:1-5 1 This is what Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem: 2 In the last days the mountain of the LORD’s temple will be established as the highest of the mountains; it will be exalted above the hills, and all nations will stream to it. 3 Many peoples will come and say, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the temple of the God of Jacob. He will teach us his ways, so that we may walk in his paths.” The law will go out from Zion, the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. 4 He will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore. 5 Come, descendants of Jacob, let us walk in the light of the LORD. Isaiah 60:1-6 1 “Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD rises upon you. 2 See, darkness covers the earth and thick darkness is over the peoples, but the LORD rises upon you and his glory appears over you. 3 Nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn. 4 “Lift up your eyes and look about you: All assemble and come to you; your sons come from afar, and your daughters are carried on the hip. 5 Then you will look and be radiant, your heart will throb and swell with joy; the wealth on the seas will be brought to you, to you the riches of the nations will come. 6 Herds of camels will cover your land, young camels of Midian and Ephah. And all from Sheba will come, bearing gold and incense and proclaiming the praise of the LORD. Matthew 2:1-12 1 After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem 2 and asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.” 3 When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. 4 When he had called together all the people’s chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Messiah was to be born. 5 “In Bethlehem in Judea,” they replied, “for this is what the prophet has written: 6 “ ‘But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for out of you will come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel.’ ” 7 Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. 8 He sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and search carefully for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him.” 9 After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen when it rose went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. 10 When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. 11 On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. 12 And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route. Heaven and Hell 141 The reason they give the name "east" to the direction in which the Lord is seen as the sun is that the whole source of life is from him as the sun. Further, to the extent that warmth and light, or intelligence and wisdom from him, are accepted among angels, they say that the Lord has risen among them. This is also why the Lord is called the east in the Word.1 Secrets of Heaven 9031 …It is similar with the Sun of heaven, which is the Lord; this too is said to rise. But it is said to rise in the heart when a person is being regenerated, and also when he or she is governed by the good of love and faith; and it is said to set when a person is immersed in evil and in falsity arising from it. Photo by Jessica Lewis 🦋 thepaintedsquare: https://www.pexels.com/photo/close-up-photography-of-bauble-1646331/
Readings: Luke 2:21-40, Secrets of Heaven #10574:11 (see below) See also on Youtube We talk a lot during Advent and Christmas about the coming of the light, and about the light shining in the darkness, and how beautiful and hopeful that light can be. This is often a lifeline to us; we need beauty and we need hope. But of course, the light did not come only to be beautiful, to be the object of our admiring gaze. The light came to inspire and effect the transformation of this world……in fact, the beauty and hope that is inspired in us by the light, the glory of it, is I believe, because we recognize its larger purpose. Today in our text we read the final section of Luke’s birth narrative. It tells us about what Mary and Joseph do before returning to Galilee. It does not often get as much attention as the manger scene but it is important nonetheless, because it makes a declaration about who Jesus is and what he is going to do. Among the various rituals that we hear described in the text, one of them is that Jesus is circumcised, as the law specified, on the eighth day after his birth. This event would mark his acceptance into the covenant community of Israel. Yet, this act is held in tension with Jesus’ naming, which Luke makes clear comes, not from Joseph or Joseph’s linage, but from God. We find that Jesus’ identity is both within and without established boundaries, he is both particularly Jewish, and but also something beyond that. So, as we will see throughout this passage, Jesus identity is of two realms. He is clearly Jewish, and his parents do all that they are supposed to do in order to fulfill the law. They are devout, they are diligent, and so will Jesus be. But, that is not all Jesus is to be. Jesus has also been given an identity by God that speaks to something larger than the destiny of Israel, it speaks to the coming of the kingdom of God. And so this tension that exists in the presentation of Jesus identity, can mirror the tension of how God is to be present in our own lives. God will always be “something else” to us, something beyond our expectations, for God shows up in ways that we cannot imagine. The Christmas story is an example: God showing up in all the places we do not expect…a vulnerable baby, born out of wedlock into poverty to a marginalized young woman of no particular birth in an occupied land. The Christmas story is so familiar that we sometimes forget just how unusual it really is, the gently sanitized versions of the stable belying the muck and the mess, and joy of the shepherds muting the terror and surprise of the heavenly host appearing to the lowest of the low. Praise be to God that the divine does not play by our rules, our bureaucracies, our systems of merit. Praise be to God that our concepts of where God is *allowed* to be are confounded again and again and again. God shows up where we do not necessarily expect. And also, as we hear in our text today, God showed up for the patient and devout Simeon and Anna, showed up for them in the very place that God had always said God would be: the temple. So, it’s not that God specifically enjoys being random or confounding us, it is just that God cannot be bounded by our ideas of God; it is impossible that the infinite should conform to the finite. But that doesn’t mean that the point of surprise is to humiliate and confuse us, or to have us believe that we cannot possibly rely on God in any way because God’s ways are so very mysterious. The point is that God must have as many means as possible to reach us. For Simeon and Anna, their God showed up for them through what they had always done: their diligent rituals, their devotion. They had patiently and devoutly transformed themselves into people who could see God in the everyday, and when Jesus showed up, they understood exactly who he was and what he was going to do. They were not put off by the poverty of his circumstances or the vulnerability of his infant state. They had long cultivated the kind of eyes that could see God, and so they *did* see God. It will not be long in the gospel story before we learn that not everyone was willing or able to recognize God so easily. And so now, as we stand on the threshold of a new year, we might find ourselves sitting in a similar tension. We have just witnessed the incredible gift of the birth of Jesus, and the incredible wonder of how God shows up, and now we must return to our lives as they are. And as we return we find it is also the time of year for resolutions, the time of year when we are called to think about how we want to live into the new year. To ask: how I can be a partner to God? To wonder: Is there a way that I can uncover God’s presence in the everyday, through my everyday, just like Simeon and Anna. For, we will always all be Shepherds, wherein the divine sometimes bursts in upon us, our eyes forced open by the sheer majesty. We will all always be Mary wherein the divine is found in unexpected opportunity, seeing God in circumstances that we never would have chosen on our own. But the question before us today is: can we also be Simeon and Anna, ready and waiting to see the divine because of the kind of life we have constructed for ourselves. Because clearly, we cannot control God’s coming, but we can little by little transform ourselves into the kind of person who recognizes God’s constant presence in this world, who sees the baby and declares the glory. For, the seeing of the light and declaring the glory of it cannot really be separated. We heard this in our Swedenborg reading: the light represents God’s divine truth, and the glory represents whatever is produced by the light. Here we come to understand that the function of the light is active. It is not just content to shine beautifully; it’s aim is to *enlighten*, to produce an outcome that increases the presence of God in the human heart, to be a way in which we can perceive something of the divine, a way in which we can be connected to the love of God. This is the way God is truly glorified, not by praise, but by outcome, by what happens when we perceive what the light reveals. And this is not always pretty. In Simeon’s words…”This child is destined for the falling the rising of many in Israel…so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed and a sword will pierce your own heart too.” The light of Divine Truth reveals, but we are not always happy about *what* it reveals. Change is scary, and growth is work. Yet, it gives us the opportunity to step into that which glorifies God, instead of that which obscures God. Swedenborg phrases it that “the glory” is everything that *springs* from Divine Truth. I do love how active that phrasing is. The enlightening, the revealing nature of Divine Truth wants to give birth to something alive and glorious, something that connects us more strongly to God and to each other, and given the smallest opportunity, our smallest cooperation, it will. And the question posed by Simeon and Anna today is how to keep our eyes open to the light on the non-Christmas days of the year when we are not assisted by a culture saying “Look here!” Barbara Brown Taylor writes: “No one longs for what he or she already has, and yet the accumulated insight of those wise about the spiritual life suggests that the reason so many of us cannot see the red X that marks the spot is because we are standing on it. The treasure we seek requires no lengthy expedition, no expensive equipment, no superior aptitude or special company. All we lack is the willingness to imagine that we already have everything we need. The only thing missing is our consent to be where we are.”(1) Of Anna, our text says: “She never left the temple but worshiped there with fasting and prayer night and day.” In reality, we never *do* leave the temple, we never can, for God’s presence is not mediated by space but by attention. The only thing missing is our consent to be where we are. God has made the world, and our lives, the temple. May we remember to pause and look around, for a tiny, precious, vulnerable revelation may be about to enter. Amen. (1) Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith, xvi Readings: Luke 2:21-40 21 On the eighth day, when it was time to circumcise the child, he was named Jesus, the name the angel had given him before he was conceived. 22 When the time came for the purification rites required by the Law of Moses, Joseph and Mary took him to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord 23 (as it is written in the Law of the Lord, “Every firstborn male is to be consecrated to the Lord” ), 24 and to offer a sacrifice in keeping with what is said in the Law of the Lord: “a pair of doves or two young pigeons.” 25 Now there was a man in Jerusalem called Simeon, who was righteous and devout. He was waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was on him. 26 It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not die before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah. 27 Moved by the Spirit, he went into the temple courts. When the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him what the custom of the Law required, 28 Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying: 29 “Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you may now dismiss your servant in peace. 30 For my eyes have seen your salvation, 31 which you have prepared in the sight of all nations: 32 a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of your people Israel.” 33 The child’s father and mother marveled at what was said about him. 34 Then Simeon blessed them and said to Mary, his mother: “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, 35 so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too.” 36 There was also a prophet, Anna, the daughter of Penuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was very old; she had lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, 37 and then was a widow until she was eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshiped night and day, fasting and praying. 38 Coming up to them at that very moment, she gave thanks to God and spoke about the child to all who were looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem. 39 When Joseph and Mary had done everything required by the Law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee to their own town of Nazareth. 40 And the child grew and became strong; he was filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was on him. Secrets of Heaven 10574:11 These places have been quoted from the Word because 'glory' and 'light' are mentioned together in them; and they have been quoted to make people aware that 'light' means Divine Truth that comes from the Lord, thus the Lord Himself in respect of Divine Truth, and that 'glory' means everything that is a product of the light, consequently everything that springs from the Divine Truth composing the intelligence and wisdom which angels possess, and which people in the world who receive the Lord in faith and love possess. Readings: 2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16, Luke 1:26-38, Divine Providence #96:5 (see below)
See also on Youtube Today we visit with King David, just after he has defeated the Philistines, brought the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem and settled into his new reign as king. David finally receives a break from war, and turns his mind to how he can glorify the Lord. He decides that it is time to build a temple for God, for the ark still remains in the tabernacle as it always has, essentially in a tent. David clearly has good intentions. He has been faithful, he has battled hard for the Lord, and surely now the time would be right to erect a monument to God, to place his people’s most cherished possession within a building that reflects its value in earthly terms. But the Lord sends a message to David via the prophet Nathan, and asks: Are you the one to build me a house to live in? There is much contained within this one sentence of gentle chiding. God draws David away from any grandiose plans he might have had, and reminds him that God has never asked for a grand temple. God has been present through every step of the People of Israel’s journey and will continue with them. That has never been in question. God instead turns the question to David’s purpose and inclination. Though David has a rest from battle now, throughout the rest of the book of 2 Samuel, he will be plagued with challenges, many of his own making. Part of what makes David such a relatable and beloved character is that he is both flawed and faithful; he is powerfully human. And perhaps this explains the Lord’s response. David will have plenty to contend with in the coming years. Very soon he will greatly displease the Lord by committing adultery with Bathsheba, and deliberately putting her husband in harms way. The Lord knew that David had some very different building he needed to do. David had faith already; what he needed to do was build his own ability to live according to that faith. Swedenborg writes that a building houses in the word can metaphorically relate to the building of our own willingness and intentionality.(1) David had brought much glory to the Lord already in battle, had brought together the tribes of Israel and made them into a powerful nation. He knew what God had done for him and his people, he knew the truth of God’s power and steadfastness, and he believed in it deeply. But he had not integrated that belief with his actions in a personal way. Swedenborg writes: In the Word the good that exists with a person is compared to 'a house', and for that reason one who is governed by good is called 'the House of God’.(2) David wanted to build a literal house for God, which was a fine idea, but he had forgotten about building a house for God out of his life. Even as he ruled, he would often govern by what was best for him, rather than being governed by what was best for others. And this why it would be David’s son, King Solomon, who would build the temple. David had established himself as a king through war, whereas the name Solomon is derived from the Hebrew word for “peace.” An adversarial mindset cannot build a house in which God can be worshiped. David even delivered Solomon detailed plans for the temple. But goodness and peace and love must build the temple. For love followed-through-on is what builds the house, the structure, the habits, the perspectives, in which God is truly worshipped, not just our ideas about what is good. We build the temple, the temple of our lives, day by day, when we are able to focus on embodying love to those around us, leaving the world just a little better than we found it; this is how our selfhood becomes a house in which God is glorified. It is tempting to default to a sense that David was not “good enough.” But that is not what it is about. It is not about earning our salvation, brick by brick. It is about recognizing that we are progressively transformed by the steps we take on each of our journeys. When God asked: “Are you the one who would build me a house to live in?” it is not meant to be framed as a rhetorical measurement, but rather as a reflection; did David understand what building God a house would mean? Fr. Richard Rohr writes: We all tend to aim for the goal instead of the journey itself, but spiritually speaking, how we get there is where we arrive. The journey determines the final destination. If we manipulate our way, we end up with a manipulated, self-made god. If we allow ourselves to be drawn and chosen by love, we might just end up with the real God.(3) And this why the temple was not important to God, why God never asked for it to be built. To God, the covenant was the thing that was important, and the covenant was just as active and relevant in a tent as in a temple. God was interested in how faithfulness to the covenant might lead each person might bring glory to God in their own hearts, minds and lives. This will be brought into an even fuller representation by Mary, betrothed to a descendent of David himself, many hundreds of years later, when her body would actually build a space for God to dwell inside. By this time the temple David had proposed had long been built, and was the center of Jewish life in Jerusalem. Surely the Lord must have been content with that grandest of buildings? But no, this is the point, of course. It is God's intent to dwell with us, personally, in the fullest of possible ways. The Lord does automatically dwell with us, inherently, within our will and our intellect, and the freedom that exists there.(4) This is how we are all images and likeness of the Lord. But God is not content to dwell like a boarder in the guest room, but wishes to dwell as someone who shares the life of the household. The fullness of God’s dwelling with us, the efficacy of it, the realness of it, depends on our response. When God reaches out, what do we do? This time, Mary’s answer to the question Are you the one to build me a house to live in? was a resounding yes! Her song that follows our reading for today, known as The Magnificat, makes clear that she understood what the coming of the Lord would mean, in her own life, and in the life of the whole world. She said: I am the Lord’s servant, may your word to me be fulfilled. None of us will be called to build an actual temple, or to gestate the incarnation of God, but we are called a mystical embodiment of God’s love nonetheless. We all place a plank in our own house of God every time we try to bring some goodness into the world. This is the kind of worship that God cherishes. God’s question to David really is the most perfect of Advent questions: Are you the one to build me a house to live in? May we receive the question as David, hearing any gentle chiding that we might need to hear, any adjustments to our perspective that need to me made, any follow-through to which we need to commit, any hypocrisy we need to abandon, any stubbornness we need to let go of, any indifference we need to relinquish. And may we hear also the question as Mary, as one who would say yes, yes to opening our minds wide for the coming of the Lord, yes to how that will stretch and grow our hearts, yes to building a dwelling place for God deep within us, a home where our very life is worship, a house where every moment is praise. Amen.
Readings: 2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16 1 Now when the king was settled in his house, and the Lord had given him rest from all his enemies around him, 2 the king said to the prophet Nathan, "See now, I am living in a house of cedar, but the ark of God stays in a tent." 3 Nathan said to the king, "Go, do all that you have in mind; for the Lord is with you." 4 But that same night the word of the Lord came to Nathan: 5 Go and tell my servant David: Thus says the Lord: Are you the one to build me a house to live in? 6 I have not lived in a house since the day I brought up the people of Israel from Egypt to this day, but I have been moving about in a tent and a tabernacle. 7 Wherever I have moved about among all the people of Israel, did I ever speak a word with any of the tribal leaders of Israel, whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, saying, "Why have you not built me a house of cedar?" 8 Now therefore thus you shall say to my servant David: Thus says the Lord of hosts: I took you from the pasture, from following the sheep to be prince over my people Israel; 9 and I have been with you wherever you went, and have cut off all your enemies from before you; and I will make for you a great name, like the name of the great ones of the earth. 10 And I will appoint a place for my people Israel and will plant them, so that they may live in their own place, and be disturbed no more; and evildoers shall afflict them no more, as formerly, 11 from the time that I appointed judges over my people Israel; and I will give you rest from all your enemies. Moreover the Lord declares to you that the Lord will make you a house. 16 Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me ; your throne will be established forever.’ ” Luke 1:26-38 26 In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, 27 to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. 28 The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.” 29 Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. 30 But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. 31 You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. 32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, 33 and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.” 34 “How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?” 35 The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. 36 Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month. 37 For no word from God will ever fail.” 38 “I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May your word to me be fulfilled.” Then the angel left her. Divine Providence 96:5 The reason the Lord dwells in these abilities [our will and our intellect] in each of us is found in the inflow of the Lord's intent, an intent that wants to be accepted by us, to make its dwelling within us, and to give us the happiness of eternal life. This is the Lord's intent because it comes from his divine love. It is this intent of the Lord that makes whatever we think and say and intend and do seem to be our own. Readings: Jonah 3:1-5, 10, Mark 1:14-20, Heaven & Hell #59 (see below)
See also on Youtube With today’s text, we are near the beginning of Mark’s gospel. Jesus has recently been baptized by John the Baptist, and then spends some time in temptation in the wilderness. Now, as John’s time in prison is foreshadowing the price that is to be paid for challenging the powers-that-be, Jesus steps into the public domain and begins his ministry. He starts by calling two sets of brothers to follow him. They are fishermen, and they *immediately* lay down their nets and follow Jesus. The greek word euthus, translated variously as “at once” or “immediately” is a favorite of Mark’s, and he uses it often. It lends an urgent tone to his narrative overall, where things seem to happen at a rapid pace. Let us think for moment about the disruptive nature of what these brothers did. Fishing was their livelihood; the livelihood of their families. In another 10 verses or so, Jesus heals Simon’s mother-in-law, so clearly at least Simon was married and likely had children. There would have been a clear expectation about how these brothers would fulfill their responsibility to the family business. Yet, James and John literally leave their father, Zebedee, in the boat. Certainly we can imagine his puzzled expression, trying to wrap his head around why they would leave him to follow this nobody from Nazareth, without so much as a goodbye, or an explanation. Let us now contrast this story with that of Jonah. Our text from today is pretty much the only part of the Jonah story that goes well. Jonah is famous, not so much for proclaiming God’s word, but for running away from God’s call. It is a well-known story. God asks Jonah to go to Ninevah, a large Assyrian city, to tell them to repent or they will be destroyed. Assyria at this time, was Israel’s number one enemy. So, Jonah says “no way” and hops on a ship going in the opposite direction. But the story says that God sends a storm to threaten the ship, and so Jonah eventually comes clean and allows himself to be tossed overboard so that the storm will stop. He is then swallowed by a big fish and remains in its belly for three days and nights. When it finally spits him up on dry land, Jonah agrees to go to Nineveh. To Jonah’s dismay, the Ninevites repent immediately and are spared, as we hear in the text. And Jonah is enraged. He feels like a fool, for he suspected this would happen. He says at one point: “I am so angry I wish I were dead.” Such a drama queen. But the Lord asks him (and the story itself ends brilliantly on this question) why should God not have a concern for a city comprised of 120,000 people? Why not indeed. So, in one story we see the brothers drop their net and stride with purpose away from the ocean. In another, Jonah ends up jumping into the ocean. One to become “fishers of men” and the other “fish food.” What else is different about these two stories? Certainly, the brothers followed God’s call right away, and Jonah did not. But neither will have an entirely straightforward path. The disciples will make many mistakes, including —a biggie—abandoning Jesus at the cross. This seems just as big a betrayal as Jonah’s reluctance, and Jonah did eventually do what God asked of him. Discipleship is clearly a winding path, with some successes and some failures. So I’m not sure it helps us to think that the brothers were perfect in their response and Jonah delinquent. Rather, I find it more interesting to explore the conditions surrounding their call. Even as much as the brothers were leaving the expectations of their context, they did not leave their context entirely. They dropped their nets and went away from social expectations but went into community. The brothers were with each other, they journeyed with Jesus in a group of disciples, and the bible tells us in the same chapter, returned to Simon’s house to heal his mother-in-law of a fever. In fact, they encamped there at Simon’s house to heal many many more people. As itinerant as this rag-tag band was, the gospels are filled with accounts of meals together in houses, of crowds gathering together to hear the good news, to be healed, to be fed. Even at the end, at the resurrection, it is Mary Magdalene and Salome, and Mary the mother of James, wife of poor puzzled Zebedee, who go together to anoint Jesus’ body. Jesus and the disciples are surrounded by layers of community, each stepping up when the other could not. Yes, they went out, they responded to the call, but not in a way that severed their connections to each other. But Jonah, throughout his story, seems entirely alone. Entirely alone in his truancy, in his distress, in his proclamation, and in his anger. There was no brother to assist him in his preaching, no family to help him countenance his reluctance, or process his anger. The belly of a fish held him fast as he repented of his desertion, but it is a poor substitute for the arms of a community. And it is true that a prophet and a disciple are called to different things. There is an aloneness to the prophetic voice that is perhaps unavoidable. But, we can also sense that Jonah’s pouting and his anger made him more alone than he needed to be. And sometimes, isn’t that how our challenging emotions make us feel? Our shame, our regret, our anger, our resistance gives us a kind of tunnel vision. We are reduced to nothing but that feeling and it is hard to see anything more. I’m sure we can all think of times when this has been he case for us, when our overwhelming feelings have led to a sense of social isolation. But what if it doesn’t need to be that way for Jonah or for us? What if Jonah had had community surrounding him? What might that have looked like? How do *we* make community for the Jonah parts of ourselves, for the times when Jonah rises up within us? When we want to run, when we want to hide, when we doubt, when we rage, when we cry. How do we enfold the disruption of God’s call, of God’s challenge to our status quo, within the structure of community? I read a quote this week from Professor Karoline Lewis, a quote that I know I really needed to hear: “Sometimes, I think we forget that being saved by Jesus, to follow Jesus, means that you have others around to save you on a daily basis. To remind you of who you are and who you are called to be. To see you and appreciate you and celebrate you. To tell you how far you have come and where God still needs you to go. To come alongside you so that you realize you are not alone. She continues: When Jesus calls the disciples in Mark, notice what’s absent -- no individualism, no being left on your own, no pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. No, “you can handle this, so, buck up, buttercup.” No, “follow me and good luck with that.” Rather, “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.” That is, follow me and more followers are to come. Follow me and you will never be by yourself. Notice -- Jesus calls them together, not separately. Andrew and Simon. Then James and John. Discipleship is not an autonomous profession.”(1) In discipleship, God calls us into community. And this is really important because to do what Jesus asks, as in verse 14, Repent and believe the good news, we need other people. As I preach over and over, spiritual work can be hard, scary, exhilarating, exhausting….and changing the way we think, trusting in the goodness of the world, all of these thing are harder done alone than with companions. God calls us into community, so that when we are asked to do the things that are difficult, and the Jonah parts of us rise up, we can stay with it. We might feel like we deserve to be in the belly of a fish, but we have a community to tell us differently. Being in a community doesn’t protect us from failing; from pouting like Jonah or constantly not understanding what the kingdom is about like the disciples. But the resurrection, God’s ultimate statement about the existence of a universe that stands for life, and growth and transformation, this brought the disciples back into community, and they went on to form christian community around the world, and through the ages. Now, Swedenborg doesn’t really tell us a lot about the phenomenon and practice of Christian fellowship. He writes a little bit about how a church should function ecclesiastically and about the responsibilities of its leaders, but not so much about walking together in Christian community, about “doing life together” in modern Christian parlance. What he does write about, a lot, is of course, heavenly communities. In Swedenborg’s worldview, heaven consists of countless communities of the heart, people joined together in fellowship because of the similar loves that they share. All these communities have different roles and functions, and they fit together in a cooperative and inter-related manner like a human body. Swedenborg calls this the Grand Human. The greater Christian world has a similar idea applied to the church: the body of Christ. Community and inter-relatedness are part of the divine design. The theologian Brian McLaren writes: Although you can learn beliefs in isolation, you can't learn love apart from a community.(1) Whether it is through communities of family, work, church or other, we need other people in order to learn how to love, to challenge us, to hold space for us, to trust us, to believe in us. The God of Divine Love would have it no other way. And as we stand on the precipice of a holiday devoted to gathering for the purpose of thanksgiving, let’s us praise a God who made us for each other. Amen. (1) https://www.workingpreacher.org/dear-working-preacher/you-are-never-alone (2) Brian McLaren, The Great Spiritual Migration, p56 Readings: Jonah 3:1-5, 10 1 Then the word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time: 2 “Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you.” 3 Jonah obeyed the word of the LORD and went to Nineveh. Now Nineveh was a very large city; it took three days to go through it. 4 Jonah began by going a day’s journey into the city, proclaiming, “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown.” 5 The Ninevites believed God. A fast was proclaimed, and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth. 10 When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened. Mark 1: 14-20 14 After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. 15 “The time has come,” he said. “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!” 16 As Jesus walked beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. 17 “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will send you out to fish for people.” 18 At once they left their nets and followed him. 19 When he had gone a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John in a boat, preparing their nets. 20 Without delay he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men and followed him. Heaven and Hell #59 The Whole Heaven, Grasped as a Single Entity, Reflects a Single Individual It is a secret not yet known in this world that heaven, taken in a single all-inclusive grasp, reflects a single individual. In heaven, though, nothing is better known. Knowing this, knowing particulars and details about it, is the hallmark of angelic intelligence there. In fact, many other things follow from it and do not come clearly and distinctly to mind without this as their general principle. Since angels do know that all the heavens, like their communities, reflect a single individual, they refer to heaven as the universal and divine human -"divine" because the Lord's divine nature constitutes heaven. Readings: Ezekiel 34:11-46, Matthew 25:31-46, The Doctrine of Faith #68, Divine Providence #101:3 (see below)
See also on Youtube Photo by Magda Ehlers In the gospel of Matthew, this story of the sheep and the goats will be the very last teaching that Jesus delivers before the plot against his life is put into motion and the march toward the cross begins. One imagines then that it is a pretty important teaching. We start out with a depiction of the coming of God’s kingdom, where there will be separation between kinds of people, pictured as the work of a shepherd. The sheep are those who ministered to others, not as a way to receive reward, but because it was the right thing to do. The goats are those to whom such ministry did not even occur. Both are surprised that their action, or lack of action, would mean something to God…but God reveals that God is present with those in need, with the “least of these,” and that how we act has relationship to who we become. Technically, this story is less of a parable, than it is an apocalyptic drama. In a parable, we begin with a familiar setting which is then tweaked a little in order to bring a new understanding, to demonstrate something about the nature of God’s kingdom. In this case, we first start with a description of what is going to happen in God’s kingdom, and then it is revealed by what means this will come to pass, through the grounded and familiar acts of caring for one another. This is actually what the word apocalypto in greek means: to reveal. In modern use the term has become associated with an idea of endings, but really, an apocalypse is simply a revealing, a lifting of the veil. What makes this lifting of the veil so powerful is that what we see behind the curtain is not otherworldly but decidedly earthly, the intersection of need and brokenness with compassion. Now, understandably, the Matthew passage will lead us to focus on our actions, our process, as we imagine ourselves as either sheep or goat. But first, I’d like a step back and recognize how this parable is a larger picture of God’s work in the world. I would like to dwell for a moment on the king in the story, the one who recalls the image of shepherd in Ezekiel, the one who reveals his own solidarity with those who are in need. From our reading today, indeed from the whole of scripture, we learn that loving God is inseparable from loving others. This is because we cannot love God without loving the character, the nature of God; and the nature of God is pure love. In Ezekiel, we see this nature pictured in God as a shepherd, a God who cares about his flock. In this picture, we learn that God notices and identifies with those who suffer. God is with us, among us, traveling with us. God is affected by our suffering, doesn’t want it to continue. God wants healing, wholeness, blessedness, plenty…and not for God but for US. We must remember again, that this was a very new concept in antiquity, that such a God could exist. Yet this is every human’s story: We find ourselves in exile or in need, we are lost sheep, yet God seeks for us, looks for us, bring us out of what is enslaving us, feeds us and cares for us. The exile might be due to our own sin, or it might not, but God’s presence does not depend upon the genesis of the suffering. God’s action may well change in response to different conditions, for a sheep wandering into a ravine on it’s own will require a different response to a sheep falling prey to a wolf, but the response of God’s heart is the same regardless; to reach out and to save. And so as we begin to approach the Advent season, we can see that the incarnation we will soon be celebrating is grounded in this kind of God, this shepherd God who tends and guides and protects. We are about to learn just how far this God would go. How far God would go for the hungry, the thirsty, the estranged, the entrapped, the vulnerable, for us. God would go as far as it took. God embodied, quite literally, this parable and calls us to do the same. And how easy it sounds, how poetic, these well known verses. How peaceful and pastoral this shepherd image might seem. But anyone with a knowledge of farming will understand how messy shepherding really is. How down and dirty one must become. How acquainted with mud, and food and weather and birthing and physical exertion. And this is when everything goes right! How difficult shepherding becomes, how difficult caring becomes, when we are afraid of each others brokenness. What struck me today, though, was the fact that both the goats and the sheep were surprised. This surprise is important, narratively. It’s purpose is to communicate that the sheep were not calculating - they did not care for others in order to get into heaven, they cared because they were moved by suffering. And for the goats, it is to communicate that thoughtlessness and self-absorption is not protective. Just because the goats did not cause the suffering of the least, does not mean their inaction was morally neutral. To quote the author Charles M. Blow: One doesn’t have to operate with great malice to do great harm. The absence of empathy and understanding are sufficient. And yet, of course, no one is purely sheep or purely goat. We all have sheep-y and goat-y tendencies, habits and impulses mixed up together. And now that the gospel has been proclaimed, now that we see this reality of what could be, we are called to exercise a ongoing separation of the sheep and the goats within ourselves. We are called to recognize the times we do not want to see the least, the times we shut our eyes, the times we justify our blindness, the times we argue that some people and things are just too hopeless to be resurrected. And, we are likewise called to recognize the times we *do* see with God’s eyes, the times we are moved to feed, house, bind, connect, the times we recognize God in the least, God connected to the world. And hopefully, in recognition of the king who acts like a shepherd, of a God who would get down in the mud, we call on our goat-y-ness to be transformed, and we do the work that would make it so. Where then is the surprise? Is there still room for surprise in the ongoing work of regeneration? In spiritual work, driven as it is by reflection and self-knowledge, surprise seems impossible. If we are trying to become like the sheep, it will not surprise us if we do become so. The thing about having a progressive theology of salvation, about recognizing that the sheep and goats are parts of all of us, is that the simple and instant judgment of the text today is revealed as a snapshot…the whole point is for the goats to become sheep-in-training, just as we strive to become angels-in-training. And so the surprise becomes less a pre-requisite for a sheep-nature, but rather the reward. To quote Helen Keller “there is joy in self-forgetfulness.” If heaven is a state of mind, a state of being, then perhaps the surprise is the peace and freedom that comes from not calculating anymore, from being able to finally forget our selfishness and fear. If heaven is a state of mind, then we must accept that, to get there, our goat-like minds will change over time, and we are an ongoing construction project. We heard in our Swedenborg reading today “life constructs a belief system for itself and constructs a faith for itself.” To me this sounds a lot like neuroplasticity, a term meaning the ability of the adult brain to change over time, that our experiences and actions can contribute to the alteration of the synaptic structure of the brain. Our life over time constructs the way we understand things. The sheep were surprised because their actions had re-made them. They had acted their way into a new way of thinking. When the veil is lifted on the kingdom, we will see that we cannot escape the imperative toward action through right or pure belief, for the answer does not begin thought at all. The answer is compassion, literally “feeling together,” the answer is connection, first and foremost. Transformation of the self is possible. What an amazing, simple, breath-taking hope…a hope and a faith that leads us straight into Advent, where a God believed in us so strongly that God would reach so far, straight into the heart of our vulnerability, our need, our blindness. Because the fact is, as we are now, sometimes we are the sheep, sometimes we are goats, many times we ourselves are the least, in body or spirit. We find ourselves on all sides of the equation, mired in suffering and need. And so was God. God was, and is, both shepherd and lamb, redeemer and sufferer, teacher and baby, both the king and the least. And for this we are grateful. Amen. Readings: Ezekiel 34:11-23 11 “ ‘For this is what the Sovereign LORD says: I myself will search for my sheep and look after them. 12 As a shepherd looks after his scattered flock when he is with them, so will I look after my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places where they were scattered on a day of clouds and darkness. 13 I will bring them out from the nations and gather them from the countries, and I will bring them into their own land. I will pasture them on the mountains of Israel, in the ravines and in all the settlements in the land. 14 I will tend them in a good pasture, and the mountain heights of Israel will be their grazing land. There they will lie down in good grazing land, and there they will feed in a rich pasture on the mountains of Israel. 15 I myself will tend my sheep and have them lie down, declares the Sovereign LORD. 16 I will search for the lost and bring back the strays. I will bind up the injured and strengthen the weak, but the sleek and the strong I will destroy. I will shepherd the flock with justice. 17 “ ‘As for you, my flock, this is what the Sovereign LORD says: I will judge between one sheep and another, and between rams and goats. 18 Is it not enough for you to feed on the good pasture? Must you also trample the rest of your pasture with your feet? Is it not enough for you to drink clear water? Must you also muddy the rest with your feet? 19 Must my flock feed on what you have trampled and drink what you have muddied with your feet? 20 “ ‘Therefore this is what the Sovereign LORD says to them: See, I myself will judge between the fat sheep and the lean sheep. 21 Because you shove with flank and shoulder, butting all the weak sheep with your horns until you have driven them away, 22 I will save my flock, and they will no longer be plundered. I will judge between one sheep and another. 23 I will place over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he will tend them; he will tend them and be their shepherd. Matthew 25:31-46 31 “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. 32 All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33 He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. 34 “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’ 37 “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39 When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’ 40 “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’ 41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42 For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’ 44 “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’ 45 “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’ 46 “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.” Faith #68 The failure of caring in the people described in Matthew shows that goats mean people who are devoted to a faith divorced from caring…A neglect of deeds is characteristic of people who are devoted to a faith divorced from caring because of their refusal to believe that deeds have anything to do with salvation or the church. When people so set aside caring—which consists of deeds—then faith fails as well, because faith comes out of caring… Divine Providence #101:3 In the spiritual world where we all arrive after death, no one asks what our faith has been or what our beliefs have been, only what our life has been, whether we are one kind of person or another. They know that the quality of our faith and the quality of our beliefs depend on the quality of our life, because life constructs a belief system for itself and constructs a faith for itself. |
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