Readings: Ruth 2:10-12, 15-20, True Christianity 126 (see below)
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Welcome to our second week journeying with the book of Ruth. Today we hear about what happened to Naomi and Ruth as they settled into life in Bethlehem. Without husbands, and more specifically, without ancestral land, they had no way to support themselves other than gleaning from the fields of others, essentially collecting leftovers from the harvest. This is how Ruth meets Boaz, a wealthy landowner. Now, as we had heard two weeks ago, the book of Leviticus stated that provision should be made in this way for widows and foreigners, people exactly like Naomi and Ruth. And it seems that this is what Boaz had been doing and we can imagine that Ruth probably wasn’t the only one gleaning leftovers from the harvest. However, we hear in the text a particular kindness from Boaz: he instructs his workers to leave extra gleanings behind for Ruth to gather.

When Naomi hears about the connection that Ruth made with Boaz, she is happy for more than one reason. Boaz is not some random benevolent landowner. He has a connection to their family, a connection that puts him in a position of responsibility for their welfare. She calls him their “guardian-redeemer.” 

This introduces another important theme in the book of Ruth: redemption. It is a theme that is explored at many levels. On one level, the term “guardian-redeemer” has specific meaning in Israelite law, one that has more to do with property and linage than with spirit or emotion. But we can also see that the book is exploring redemption in a deeper sense: how was Naomi going to be rescued from her bitterness? How might Ruth be rescued from a life of uncertainty and poverty and otherness? How might God be working for the benefit, the redemption, of the Israelite people? Scholars believe that the book of Ruth, while placed narratively in the time between the judges and the kings, was probably written much later in the days following the Israelites exile in Babylon, as commentary on how, and with what values, the Israelites might rebuild their nation. It was a book that spoke into the embodied redemption of beginning a society again.

So I thought today might be a good time to explore the idea of redemption in a theological sense. In several weeks, before we know it really, we will be entering the liturgical season of Advent, where we will hear plenty of “redeemer” language, as we tell the story of how God reached out into the world to be incarnated as a person like you and me. In the gospel of Luke, after meeting the baby Jesus, Zechariah sings “Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, because he has come to his people and redeemed them.” (Luke 1:68) A question we might have is: What does it mean to be redeemed? And how does a little baby born millennia ago redeem me now?

To redeem something, in basic everyday terms, means to buy, recover or exchange something, like redeeming a coupon. We give the coupon, and get a discount in return. When that idea is transferred to the world of theology, as in redemption, then we start to explore more existential shades of meaning, as we consider atonement, deliverance or rescue for ourselves personally, and how God might be involved in that.

And so we find that needing to be redeemed, reflects a situation of being or having one thing, and wanting or needing to have another. The process of redemption describes the journey from the first state to the second. The term redeemer describes someone to enables that journey to occur.

In the book of Ruth, we have our two main characters mired in a state of bitterness and poverty, and the story is tracing their journey from this first state into another different state, as we will see, an objectively better one. It tells the story of how they are redeemed physically and emotionally. Boaz helps them on that journey, and so is called their guardian-redeemer.

Likewise, in Advent, we tell a similar story in terms of the whole of humanity. The gospel of John begins with themes of light and darkness. The world was a dark place, and it seemed that people’s hearts were dark as well, and something needed to be done. Jesus, the light of the world, comes to help people on a journey of redemption, a light shining in the darkness, illuminating the possiblity of being different.
But often times, the theology of redemption is presented in very transactional terms.  A lot of traditional Christian theology pictures a God who is angry because the people of the world are so sinful, with hearts so dark that they were not listening to all the ways that God had offered redemption before. According to all kinds of ancient religion, when people transgress there must be a consequence, a price paid to God. So, some Christian theologies say, Jesus stepped in to pay that price for us, for humanity, to pay the price due to God for our sins, then and forever more. The ultimate sacrifice, the ultimate exchange, and the ultimate act of redeeming that will last forever.

So in personal terms, this is like if we do a dine and dash, and eat a meal at a restaurant but leave without paying. Jesus steps in to pay the bill, stopping the police from coming after us. Which certainly seems nice. But as Swedenborg has pointed out, this idea is undergirded by some untenable assumptions, and has some serious loopholes.

Because what Swedenborg was seeing in his own religious circles, was people praising Jesus paying the bill, but continuing to dine and dash, because, you know, Jesus was paying the bill. And Swedenborg wondered how this could ever be what the divine wanted or intended. Where was the room, where was the imperative, for human emotional and spiritual development?

And in addition, for Swedenborg, it was impossible that God should be angry and vengeful. God can only be divinely loving and wise, mourning our evil choices of course but never despising us, and never demanding restitution for God’s own sake, only desiring a holistic accountability anchored in our transformation. And if God is not angry and vengeful, demanding a price for our transgressions, then the whole redemption-as-an-exhange thing falls apart. And if it does, then what was Jesus’ sacrifice all about? How was Jesus redeeming us if not paying our bill?

So Swedenborg offered a different understanding of redemption. God, instead of solving things from outside of the process, entered into the process and life that has been ordained for us, became human, became a form that could actually be tempted by hell and used our common humanity as both a model for living and a way to concretely overcome evil and the love of power. This redeems us not by exchange, but by relationship. By entering into the process with us, God created a connection and a closeness that continues to serve us.

Because, when we consider the complexity of human experience, we see that redemption cannot ever be just about transaction, just about our bill being paid, just about receiving forgiveness, however good that might make us feel, or how grateful we might be for it. We human beings can suffer in a multitude of ways, both of our own creation, and completely not our own fault. And how we make the journey out of that suffering can be complicated. Our need is not always just forgiveness, sometimes our need is one of letting go, reframing, patience, evolution, and so many other things. Obviously then, redemption must be a personal journey, and if God is to effect our redemption, to be our redeemer, God has to be on the journey with us, has to be responsive to what we need in the moment. Paying our bill, or in traditional Christian language the forgiveness of our sins, is indeed be a good and kind thing in many a case, but is not sufficient for the totality of human spiritual development. We need more from our God, and thankfully, God gave it. God gave us a redemption that leads to partnership, that results in the kind of freedom and learning that each one of us really needs. This is a kind of redemption we must live into. Not earn, but live into. It is indeed a gift, and one given fresh every single day, not just Easter Sunday. 

And so, as we return to the book of Ruth, what kind of redemption, do we see, and shall we see, there? Today we see Boaz taking a sustained interest, seeing Ruth for who she really is, imagining what she might need in terms of protection, community, and sustenance, and providing for it. She was rescued from hunger and aloneness by a stranger enfolding her into community, and Naomi begins to be rescued from her cynicism and grief by the prospect of being seen. Next week the story of their redemption continues in both complicated and beautiful ways. The book of Ruth understands that redemption is indeed a journey, with many moving parts, actors and beneficiaries. It speaks to us clearly of redemption that is built on relationship: a more complicated way perhaps, but one that bears so much fruit. Thanks be to God. Amen.


Readings:

Ruth 2:1-12, 15-20

1 Now Naomi had a relative on her husband’s side, a man of standing from the clan of Elimelek, whose name was Boaz. 2 And Ruth the Moabite said to Naomi, “Let me go to the fields and pick up the leftover grain behind anyone in whose eyes I find favor.” Naomi said to her, “Go ahead, my daughter.” 3 So she went out, entered a field and began to glean behind the harvesters. As it turned out, she was working in a field belonging to Boaz, who was from the clan of Elimelek. 4 Just then Boaz arrived from Bethlehem and greeted the harvesters, “The LORD be with you!” “The LORD bless you!” they answered. 5 Boaz asked the overseer of his harvesters, “Who does that young woman belong to?” 6 The overseer replied, “She is the Moabite who came back from Moab with Naomi. 7 She said, ‘Please let me glean and gather among the sheaves behind the harvesters.’ She came into the field and has remained here from morning till now, except for a short rest in the shelter.” 8 So Boaz said to Ruth, “My daughter, listen to me. Don’t go and glean in another field and don’t go away from here. Stay here with the women who work for me. 9 Watch the field where the men are harvesting, and follow along after the women. I have told the men not to lay a hand on you. And whenever you are thirsty, go and get a drink from the water jars the men have filled.” 10 At this, she bowed down with her face to the ground. She asked him, “Why have I found such favor in your eyes that you notice me—a foreigner?” 11 Boaz replied, “I’ve been told all about what you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband—how you left your father and mother and your homeland and came to live with a people you did not know before. 12 May the LORD repay you for what you have done. May you be richly rewarded by the LORD, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge.” 

15 As she got up to glean, Boaz gave orders to his men, “Let her gather among the sheaves and don’t reprimand her. 16 Even pull out some stalks for her from the bundles and leave them for her to pick up, and don’t rebuke her.” 17 So Ruth gleaned in the field until evening. Then she threshed the barley she had gathered, and it amounted to about an ephah. 18 She carried it back to town, and her mother-in-law saw how much she had gathered. Ruth also brought out and gave her what she had left over after she had eaten enough. 19 Her mother-in-law asked her, “Where did you glean today? Where did you work? Blessed be the man who took notice of you!” Then Ruth told her mother-in-law about the one at whose place she had been working. “The name of the man I worked with today is Boaz,” she said. 20 “The LORD bless him!” Naomi said to her daughter-in-law. “He has not stopped showing his kindness to the living and the dead.” She added, “That man is our close relative; he is one of our guardian-redeemers. ”


True Christianity 126

Suffering on the cross was the final trial the Lord underwent as the greatest prophet. It was a means of glorifying his human nature, that is, of uniting that nature to his Father's divine nature. It was not redemption. There are two things for which the Lord came into the world and through which he saved people and angels: redemption, and the glorification of his human aspect. These two things are distinct from each other, but they become one in contributing to salvation. 

In the preceding points we have shown what redemption was: battling the hells, gaining control over them, and then restructuring the heavens. Glorification, however, was the uniting of the Lord's human nature with the divine nature of his Father. This process occurred in successive stages and was completed by the suffering on the cross. 

All of us have to do our part and move closer to God. The closer we come to God, the more God enters us, which is his part…

The union itself [between the Lord's divine and human natures] was completed by the suffering on the cross, because this suffering was the final spiritual test that the Lord went through in the world. Spiritual tests lead to a partnership [with God]. During our spiritual tests, we are apparently left completely alone, although in fact we are not alone - at those times God is most intimately present at our deepest level giving us support. Because of that inner presence, when any of us have success in a spiritual test we form a partnership with God at the deepest level. In the Lord's case, he was then united to God, his Father, at the deepest level. 

Readings: Ruth 1:1-22, Secrets of Heaven #1038 (see below)
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The book of Ruth is a powerful and emotional story. Even though it is told with relative economy, the text is filled with wordplay and callbacks that are often lost in English translations. It explores themes of lovingkindness, community, immigration, loyalty, responsibility and redemption. And it is by no means straightforward; interpreters continue to argue about what the book is trying to say, even today. It is a story grounded in an ancient context, many details of which are lost to us now, but it also functions as an extended parable, one in which we can see even our modern selves reflected.

We will be spending three weeks looking at the book of Ruth together, and today we start at the beginning of the story. We are introduced to the main characters: Naomi, and her daughter in law for whom the book is named - Ruth.  We are told that the story takes place during the times of the judges, the period that followed the leadership of Moses and Joshua, but before Saul is established as the first King of Israel.

The narrative for Naomi starts out with difficulty: she and her family need to travel to Moab due to a famine in the land of Israel, but, even in this time of famine, Naomi’s personal life is full. She has a husband and two fine sons. And while her husband dies, in short order, her sons find wives in Moab and it seems that all is good. But then suddenly, Naomi is beset by further tragedy. Both her sons die, without heirs. This is a very challenging situation for a women in ancient times, particularly for a widow. Naomi would have depended on her husband and sons for survival. So, she plays the only card she has left, to return home to Israel, her homeland, where thankfully, the famine was now over.

These are the first few instances of a running theme of the book: reversals and returns. Naomi’s life went from full in a time of emptiness to empty in a time of fullness; an enormous upheaval. And in times of such upheaval, we search for solid ground, we think about what we can and should return to, in order to make sense of our lives. And so this first chapter is full of the notion of returning. Naomi makes plans to return to her homeland, and she urges her daughters in law to return to their mother’s houses. 

The implication is, of course, that they are still young enough to marry again. If Naomi had more sons, Israelite law would have required them to marry their brother’s widows, but as Naomi colorfully explains, she has no more sons and certainly will not bare any more. Orpah and Ruth should go home and begin their lives again. 

Neither want to. It is a testament to the life they all must have had as a family together that they resist. Eventually though, Orpah is persuaded. But not Ruth. Ruth makes a stand for her relationship with Naomi and refuses to leave her. 

This speaks to another theme in the story: hesed. Hesed is an extremely important spiritual principle in the Hebrew scriptures. It is often translated as lovingkindness, but that word really only gets to about half of the meaning. Yes, it is about lovingkingness, but specifically the kind of lovingkindness that draws people into relationship with each other, that binds them together as kin and community, that speaks to their responsibility to each other. It is sometimes described as covenantal love, in that it is not pure sentiment, but rather a love that understands that it is enacted again and again over time in relationship. For this reason, it is sometimes translated as steadfast love, and is often used in describing God’s steadfast love toward us. The idea being that as we experience God’s steadfast love, we are called to model and embody that love in our relationships with others.

Naomi had already spoken of hesed in verse 8, that the Lord might treat Orpah and Ruth as kindly as they had treated her and her sons. She was invoking this notion of lovingkindness and connectedness within relationship as something that should happen to them over there, back in their mother’s houses, where in her mind they would clearly be back in the proper care of God. Naomi, it seems, had exempted herself from hesed. And of course, why wouldn’t she? She had lost so very much, and she was bitter and empty. She felt like the Lord had forsaken her. She states: “the Lord’s hand has turned against me!” And so she drew herself outside of the reach of hesed, outside of the reach of God’s lovingkindness, outside of the reach of anyone’s lovingkindness.

But Ruth disagreed. She was under no obligation stay, not by her society’s expectations, but still she re-drew the circle of hesed around Naomi. We hear Ruth not only say “Where you go I will go….” but also “Your people will be my people, and your God my God.” She is speaking not only of physical presence but also of identity. She weaves the two of them into relationship at a deep level, and in that moment, creates a community of two. She speaks into being an ongoing covenant between them. She speaks the language of our Swedenborg reading, whereby we are told that union with God comes from our willing reciprocation of love, the return of love to the Lord and the expansion of love towards others.

Naomi won’t really be able to hear or feel the fullness of that gift of hesed for a while. At first, Naomi is so fully within her own bitterness that she basically ignores Ruth when they arrive back in Israel. But we cannot be too harsh with her, for that is just the way grief works sometimes. “The Almighty has made my life very bitter,” she laments. Our reversals of fortune, our losses in this life, are sometimes so very hard to take. They hollow us out, and it is hard to believe that we might ever experience fullness and meaning again. But as you might have already guessed, the story of Ruth will have something to say about that, and we will hear more as we go along.

But for now, there is one more theme that is being introduced in this first chapter. As beautiful as Ruth’s sentiments are, this is not just simple story of kindness between two people. The context of the story speaks powerfully about insiders and outsiders and the purposes of God. This is a thread that runs throughout the entire Hebrew scriptures, as we saw last week. Again and again, outsiders to the people of Israel are woven into the fabric of Israel’s story in important ways.

Ruth was a Moabite, a people despised by Israel for generations. Perhaps this is a part of the kindness that Naomi offered in advocating for their separation. Surely, they both knew the difficulty that Ruth would have being a Moabite in Israel. We can now even more fully appreciate the act of courage that Ruth offers; in drawing the circle of hesed around Naomi, she placed herself in an uncertain position. As I preached last week ago, Israel’s God and Israel’s laws consistently advocated for the ethical treatment of foreigners, but as we all know even now, the distance between the ideal and the practice; well, that is where the hard work is. As the story progresses, this sense of Ruth being an outsider to Israel hovers over everything.

Now, at the end of this first chapter, with the characters and the stakes setup as they are, it might be fruitful to to ask: where do we see ourselves reflected? This need not be prescription, only observation. Which parts of ourselves are Naomi right now, emptied out? Which parts of ourselves believe we have somehow been placed outside the circle of hesed, or that we don’t deserve to be included? Which parts of ourselves feel like an outsider, or conversely wish to despise an outsider? Which parts of ourselves are willing to fight for relationship and community? This is the power of ancient story; that we might see ourselves looking back at us through the millennia, and we might know that God journeys with us both then and now. 

I hope this doesn’t spoil things too much, but by the end of the book we will come to understand that this is not just a story about two random women. This is the story of King David’s ancestors, about how “King David’s family tree [is] rooted in the loyal behavior of a foreigner…”(1) and about how the purity of bloodline is much less important than loving, ethical and courageous behavior. And so the whole story begins with a reversal of the readers expectations: that someone designated an “outsider” would model hesed so touchingly. May we all dare to reverse the expectations of our world, to re-draw the circle of hesed, the circle of love and belonging, to include all of God’s beloved children. 

Amen.

(1) The New Interpreter’s Bible, p263


Readings:

Ruth 1:1-22

1 In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land. So a man from Bethlehem in Judah, together with his wife and two sons, went to live for a while in the country of Moab. 2 The man’s name was Elimelek, his wife’s name was Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Kilion. They were Ephrathites from Bethlehem, Judah. And they went to Moab and lived there. 3 Now Elimelek, Naomi’s husband, died, and she was left with her two sons. 4 They married Moabite women, one named Orpah and the other Ruth. After they had lived there about ten years, 5 both Mahlon and Kilion also died, and Naomi was left without her two sons and her husband.

6 When Naomi heard in Moab that the LORD had come to the aid of his people by providing food for them, she and her daughters-in-law prepared to return home from there. 7 With her two daughters-in-law she left the place where she had been living and set out on the road that would take them back to the land of Judah. 8 Then Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, “Go back, each of you, to your mother’s home. May the LORD show you kindness, as you have shown kindness to your dead husbands and to me. 9 May the LORD grant that each of you will find rest in the home of another husband.” Then she kissed them goodbye and they wept aloud 10 and said to her, “We will go back with you to your people.” 11 But Naomi said, “Return home, my daughters. Why would you come with me? Am I going to have any more sons, who could become your husbands? 12 Return home, my daughters; I am too old to have another husband. Even if I thought there was still hope for me—even if I had a husband tonight and then gave birth to sons— 13 would you wait until they grew up? Would you remain unmarried for them? No, my daughters. It is more bitter for me than for you, because the LORD’s hand has turned against me!” 14 At this they wept aloud again. Then Orpah kissed her mother-in-law goodbye, but Ruth clung to her. 15 “Look,” said Naomi, “your sister-in-law is going back to her people and her gods. Go back with her.” 16 But Ruth replied, “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. 17 Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the LORD deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me.” 18 When Naomi realized that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped urging her. 19 So the two women went on until they came to Bethlehem. When they arrived in Bethlehem, the whole town was stirred because of them, and the women exclaimed, “Can this be Naomi?” 20 “Don’t call me Naomi,” she told them. “Call me Mara, because the Almighty has made my life very bitter. 21 I went away full, but the LORD has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi? The LORD has afflicted me; the Almighty has brought misfortune upon me.” 22 So Naomi returned from Moab accompanied by Ruth the Moabite, her daughter-in-law, arriving in Bethlehem as the barley harvest was beginning.

Secrets of Heaven 1038

The fact that a pact [or a covenant] is the presence of the Lord in love and charity is evident from the nature of a pact. Every covenant exists to tie people together; that is, the goal is for people to live in mutual friendship, or in a state of love. This is why marriage too is called a compact or covenant.

The Lord cannot unite with us except in love and charity, because the Lord is love itself and mercy; he wants to save us all and draw us to heaven — that is, to himself — with a powerful force. So we can all see and conclude that no one could ever be united to the Lord except through that which is the Lord, or in other words, without doing as he does, or making common cause with him. To do this is to love the Lord in return and to love our neighbor as ourselves. This is the only means of union. This is the most essential element of a compact. When union does grow out of it, then the Lord, of course, is present.

Readings: Leviticus 19:1-6, 9-20, 32-37, Apocalypse Revealed 586:3 (see below)
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Something that may have been on our minds lately is the topic of immigration. We have all observed how some politicians use the specter of immigration, illegal or otherwise, to rile up their base, to center their followers in fear and anxiety and the notion of white centrality and white supremacy, creating real consequences for already marginalized and vulnerable people. This election season is no exception.

The question of immigration is complicated one, for many countries the world over. The reality is that climate change and active conflicts, among many other events, have created large numbers of refugees world wide, and many countries are grappling with the logistics of accepting and integrating these refugees effectively and humanely. It takes a lot of resources and positive intention to do so, as well as foresight. The U.S. in particular is using asylum laws were written decades ago, and I think we are finding that these laws are really not up to the task. And of course, it is particularly frustrating then, when the issue of immigration is used as a political football, rather than as an issue that we all need to come together to solve as humanely as possible. As the world and our country grapples with the question of how to manage the flow of immigration thoughtfully and charitably, I think it is worth taking a moment to see what our system of faith offers the conversation, to ask how it grounds our guiding ethos and intention.

When one is wondering how the bible talks about immigration, one often turns to a famous passage in Leviticus:

‘When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. (Lev 19:33-34)

We don’t often refer to Leviticus in church. It represents part of our history as a tradition, but the tradition has evolved over the millennia and parts of this book might feel irrelevant to our modern context. This is understandable. Leviticus represents the faith and practice of a specific group of people in a specific time period; we no longer share their context and so we no longer share many of those practices. But, it remains one of our sacred texts. Why? Because we recognize and worship the God from which it came, we recognize that as specificity may fall away, principle and ethos remains.

A good part of the book of Leviticus, which specifically includes Chapter 19, is often called The Holiness Code. We can see this reflected in how Chapter 19 begins: Be holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy. Throughout the book of Leviticus, this statement or one similar occurs 152 times(1). But what is holiness exactly and how does it relate to all the very specific laws the book contains?

Holiness is one of those words that seems easily definable on its face, because we use it all the time, but more slippery when we interrogate it. Essentially, something that is holy is set apart, or different, or other, than what we experience in our everyday life. Think about how we understand our holy spaces, like this church. We treat them differently, reverently, because we want them to be something else, other than our everyday spaces. Or, when we want part of our everyday spaces to be holy, what do we do? We might arrange them differently, act in them differently, or speak a blessing (like grace at the dinner table) over them so that, even momentarily, the space is differentiated for us. Or perhaps you have had a holy experience? Maybe on a mountain top, or in meditation, or relationship with another. What was it about that experience that caused you to call it holy? I think it is likely because it felt different, it felt like the veil had been lifted back for a moment, you felt and saw and knew things differently, even though you were right here in the world as you always are.

This is why God is called holy. Not necessarily because God is good (although God is) or because God is powerful (although God is) but because holy is the word that we use to explain that God is “other” than us, or “beyond” us in some way. God is the source of whatever it is that is “different” to us in our experience of holiness.

But, God doesn’t want that essential otherness to equal remoteness or distance or inaccessibility. And so God is always inviting us into ways of thinking, appreciating, loving, seeing, and acting that bring us closer to God, that bring us closer to what we call holiness. And this is what the book of Leviticus is really about. It is a long list of rituals and laws the purpose of which would be to help the people of Israel live the kind of life that would let them feel and be close to God, a holy life.

But it is so important to recognize that the point of God inviting us into holiness is not for the purpose of rescue or escape, that we might become better than others, or so holy and pure that we can be drawn away from our world to get closer to God. As you might have noticed from our reading, so many of the laws were ones that would bring us into healthy relationship with the people around us. While the Hebrew word for holy means set apart, the english root for the word holy means whole, and both are getting at something important. 

Recall how many times, just in our reading let alone in the whole book, we heard the phrase “I am the Lord.” 

I will paraphrase: Leave the gleanings of your harvest for the poor, I am the Lord. Do not defraud, do pervert justice, do not anything that endangers your neighbors life, I am the Lord. Do not hate a fellow, do not seek revenge, I am the Lord. Over and over and over.

The character of God, the holiness of the Lord, was to be embodied, grounded, was to be found in the care that the Israelites showed one another. This is an ethos that we can draw from Leviticus that transcends time and context. It is as important to us now as it was to the Israelites then. And, then as now, loving our neighbor as ourselves is not just a rule to followed so that we can be called good, it is a reality to be evoked and created, it is completing a sacred circle. We are told: Love thy neighbor, align with the character of the Lord, and this holy connection with the people around us brings the holiness of the Lord into our midst.

Which finally brings us back around to immigration. The Lord entreats the Israelites to be kind to the foreigner among them, directly confronting tribalism by telling them to treat a foreigner as if they native-born, with no distinction. And how were they to be in touch with their own best motivations in this practice? Through empathy: Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. 

God understands who we are. God understands how hard it is to love others sometimes, how easily we get possessive and protective, how easily we retreat or get distracted. God understands how seductive group-based dominance and hierarchy can be, how it can provide us with a surge of powerful but shallow personal significance. God understands who we are.

So God tells us to be guided by empathy, to remember our commonalities as human beings. For the Israelites, they had a literal experience of being mistreated foreigners. These stories filled their narrative imagination, their escape to freedom defined their identity. So God called upon that memory as a guide, paraphrased by Jesus’ contemporary Rabbi Hillel as: what is hateful to yourself, do not do to another. The Israelites had a visceral experience of trauma at the hands of a despotic ruler, and God said: remember that and do not perpetuate that trauma upon others.

And the same spiritual principle works for us now. We thankfully, may not have personal stories of political persecution or trauma or displacement to guide our empathy, but we might not have to go very far in either our family histories or relationship networks to find someone who has.  My grandmother was a Latvian refugee in the second world war. I’m quite sure it changed her, as it did her whole family. And at minimum, at a basic level, we all know what it feels like to be afraid, to be despairing, to not know who we can count on, to not know where we belong, and to be afraid that we don’t in fact belong anywhere.

But we do, we all do, belong that is. This is the ethos of the holiness code. God stands apart, but only because *we* choose to be petty and small and blind. Of course God stands apart from that. But God, and God’s holiness, is deeply deeply present in the love that we show to one another, not as sanction or reward, but because when we love one other, enfold one another into community, especially when it is hard, we are living into the true reality that is the character of God, we are living into whatever it is that is behind the veil, that we can sometimes glimpse when we are quiet and open and ready.

With the eyes of our spiritual tradition, we can look upon the earthy challenge of immigration and see that it is an opportunity to practice holiness, that it is an opportunity to embody the character and ethos of God in our everyday. Of course, that is going to take a lot of work, political will, give and take, and probably some mistakes. And it also doesn’t mean that God doesn’t support healthy boundaries (and that is a topic for another day.). But what *is* clear, is that if we are looking to the bible to justify in-group and out-group thinking, it doesn’t. Our text today takes that completely off the table. That kind of thinking does not express the character of God; it is the opposite of holy. 

Our Swedenborg reading makes the distinction, that a spiritual life is not about being holy per se, but about being a vessel, a dwelling place, for truths and goods, for ways of thinking and acting, that are holy. The Lord alone is holy; may we reflect as many precious points of holy light as we can. 

Amen.

(1) The New Interpreters Bible, pg 520

Readings:

Leviticus 19:1-6, 9-20, 32-37

1 The LORD said to Moses, 2 “Speak to the entire assembly of Israel and say to them: ‘Be holy because I, the LORD your God, am holy. 3 “ ‘Each of you must respect your mother and father, and you must observe my Sabbaths. I am the LORD your God. 4 “ ‘Do not turn to idols or make metal gods for yourselves. I am the LORD your God. 5 “ ‘When you sacrifice a fellowship offering to the LORD, sacrifice it in such a way that it will be accepted on your behalf. 6 It shall be eaten on the day you sacrifice it or on the next day; anything left over until the third day must be burned up.

 9 “ ‘When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. 10 Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the foreigner. I am the LORD your God. 11 “ ‘Do not steal. “ ‘Do not lie. “ ‘Do not deceive one another. 12 “ ‘Do not swear falsely by my name and so profane the name of your God. I am the LORD. 13 “ ‘Do not defraud or rob your neighbor. “ ‘Do not hold back the wages of a hired worker overnight. 14 “ ‘Do not curse the deaf or put a stumbling block in front of the blind, but fear your God. I am the LORD. 15 “ ‘Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly. 16 “ ‘Do not go about spreading slander among your people. “ ‘Do not do anything that endangers your neighbor’s life. I am the LORD. 17 “ ‘Do not hate a fellow Israelite in your heart. Rebuke your neighbor frankly so you will not share in their guilt. 18 “ ‘Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD. 19 “ ‘Keep my decrees. “ ‘Do not mate different kinds of animals. “ ‘Do not plant your field with two kinds of seed. “ ‘Do not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material. 

32 “ ‘Stand up in the presence of the aged, show respect for the elderly and revere your God. I am the LORD. 33 “ ‘When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. 34 The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the LORD your God. 35 “ ‘Do not use dishonest standards when measuring length, weight or quantity. 36 Use honest scales and honest weights, an honest ephah and an honest hin. I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt. 37 “ ‘Keep all my decrees and all my laws and follow them. I am the LORD.’ ”

Apocalypse Revealed 586:3 
Those people who live according to the Word's truths are called saints, not because they are holy, but because the truths in them are holy; and truths are holy when they come from the Lord in them, and they have the Lord in them when they have His truths in them.

Readings: Isaiah 35:1-6, Mark 7:24-20, Divine Love & Wisdom 395:2 (see below)
​See also on Youtubeyoutu.be/0pVdNdopHRU
Photo by AbsolutVision on Unsplash

Welcome friends, to a new church year. Hopefully we have all been able to enjoy some restful times over our summer, taken some space to renew ourselves.

This is exactly what Jesus was trying to do in our text today. He had been engaged fully in ministry for a while, healing and teaching, which included some intensive debates with the religious leaders of this day. He was clearly exhausted. There are many ways that this gospel reading humanizes Jesus. The first is that we see he was not limitless; his mind and body were capable of exhaustion and overwhelm just as ours are. The second is more implied, but clearly, for Jesus to have been experiencing such tension and exhaustion over the course of his ministry meant that Jesus very much cared about his mission. He felt the stakes of it all. He wanted to succeed. Sometimes when we focus on the divine and other-worldly Jesus of the Easter story, we forget about the humanity of Jesus - he wept, he loved, he slept, he ate, he laughed. 

And he also made mistakes. Many times we don’t want to think about Jesus as someone who made mistakes. It makes us uncomfortable, for we base our entire tradition on things that he said and did. Can we base a whole tradition on someone who is fallible, even if just a little bit? But when we look at this entire story, we find that there is a deeper teaching, one that the gospel writers made sure to include. And I think we know from our own lives, we can learn just a much from our mistakes as we can from our triumphs, probably more even.

And so we have this exhausted Jesus, just trying to find a moment to himself to recharge. We know this person; he is us. We are told: He entered a house and did not want anyone to know it; yet he could not keep his presence secret. How frustrated, how grumpy he must have been to have yet another person come for a piece of him. He had nothing left in the tank to give. And so, as this Syro-Phoenician woman delivers her request, he lashes out at her with an insult. 

It is important not to try to explain this away. Many do, saying that it wasn’t really an insult in his day, or saying that Jesus was trying to test this woman’s faith. Neither of these things are true. It was an insult and it was intended as such. Dogs as beloved pets is a relatively modern concept, which we cannot overlay here. The woman was a gentile, of Greek and Syrian extraction. In Matthew’s version of this episode, she is explicitly termed a Canaanite, the Israelite’s antagonists of old. And even as Jesus encountered and healed different people from different places, he also had a specific mission for his beloved Jewish people. At a moment when it felt like he had nothing left to give, he didn’t want to waste his energy on someone outside of his tribe. In his exhaustion, he gave way to his own bias about this woman’s value. 

Which brings us to a discussion of a more modern concept: confirmation bias. In our increasingly divided and siloed cultural landscape, you may have heard of this idea already. Basically, it is the tendency to prefer information or interpret information in a way that validates our pre-existing views and conversely to reject information that contradicts our pre-existing views. It is the phenomenon behind what feels like the increasing intractability of all our positions, our inability to agree on even the most basic terms of fact, science, or reality. The truth is, once we have decided that something is true, our brains work very hard to justify that decision, latching on to anything that confirms it, and rejecting, ignoring, or re-interpreting anything that doesn’t. 

Studies have shown that when we receive information that confirms what we already think, our emotional centers in the brain light up. It feels really good to be right. Conversely, when we are given facts that refute what we already think, the reasoning regions of our brain “go dark.”(1) It feels less good to be uncertain or unsure, and so we instinctively avoid it. Evolutionarily, it may have benefited us to create mental patterns and structures upon which to make decisions, and to feel good when those constructs are borne out well. Could we imagine if every decision was made from zero? We’d never get anything done! But like any tendency, when it goes into hyperdrive, when we become overly reliant on the way certainty feels good, then we are tempted to constantly oversimply, to avoid flexibility of thought, and to habitually ignore reason itself. These habits, more than anything, invite us into us vs them thinking. There is no quicker way to boster our own self-esteem, our own sense of value and belonging, than to place ourselves conceptually into some sort of in-group, over and against “those people.” Confirmation bias is the way of thinking (or not-thinking) that more and more convinces us that we are right to do so.

Jesus, in his circumstances that we are considering today, was in a moment where confirmation bias could have been at play. All his life he was likely subject to a cultural confirmation bias about the gentiles, about anyone who wasn’t Jewish. The gentiles surely did the same for the Jews as well. It built up Jesus’ internal idea of who this woman was. In a moment of weakness and frustration, he relied on this bias instead of seeing the person who was in front of him. 

Yet, in a powerful moment of self-determination, the woman turns the insult around, refusing to own the intended injury but instead claiming it so that it might be wielded as a rhetorical reply in Jesus’ own style. She stood unshakable in her own dignity, and in her desire to save her daughter. 

Can we imagine then the multitudes that exist between v 28 and v 29 of our text today? The silence after her statement: “Lord, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” What did those seconds hold for Jesus? There were two ways that it could have gone. Jesus could have leaned in to his confirmation bias, let his rational mind ignore what he just saw, let his emotional mind get a glow up of superiority and rightness, and interpret what she said in a way that supported the insult he had delivered. “Those Syro-Phoenicians, so rude, so conceited, who does she think she is? How dare she say such a thing to me. These people are always taking advantage.” And we can imagine his next words might have been “Get away from me.”

But they weren’t. Instead, Jesus rejected the human tendency towards confirmation bias. He let his rational mind receive new information, and reflect upon it. He saw this woman stand firm with confidence and wit, yet without rancor. He saw the lengths a mother would go to save her child, a given among all cultures and creeds. He saw the courage it took to speak up in a culture where women were socialized to be deferential. And with this new information, Jesus saw that he had acted wrongly, and chose to act differently, the second time with more compassion.

This in itself is a small miracle. It’s not actually the norm. Studies show that when human beings are presented with facts and information that refute what we might think, that we tend to dig in to our strongly held notions, rather than entertaining new ones.(2) We want to avoid  uncertainty, and especially, avoid any repentance and repair that might be a consequence of our strongly-held ideas. We are not told how Jesus felt about this episode, but we can imagine him sinking to a chair once the woman had left, feeling regret for lashing out. Having to re-evalute our ideas about the world, and especially our ideas about ourselves, is not usually pleasant. Yet, the fundamental work of the spiritual life is change and growth.

We heard in our Swedenborg reading, how even in his time, it was clear that people will defend and justify whatever they want by any intellectual means that they can. Swedenborg writes that human beings were created with a will, to act as a vessel for love, and an intellect, to act as a vessel for wisdom, and it is through these two vessels that God can dwell within us. They mirror the relationship of God’s own Divine Love and Wisdom within Godself, and they are designed to act in concert, with love being the fuel for wisdom, and wisdom being the structure for love. For the sake of our freedom of choice, and the development of our spiritual life, we human beings have the ability to both choose what kind of love we ultimately want to serve, and to see the intellectual truth of something when our hearts haven’t quite gotten the memo yet. But when self-love becomes the fuel for everything we think, causing us to abdicate the ability to see anything else, then tendencies like confirmation bias are given free reign.

Today, in this one short episode, Jesus shows us that it doesn’t have to be so. A key discipline of the spiritual life is the ability to sacrfice short term good feelings like complacency or superiority or self-satisfaction, for the chance to grow in our ideas and perspectives, for the chance to grow in wisdom. For as we grow in wisdom, we make more space for empathy and compassion within us, which in turn helps us grow even further in wisdom, a holy virtuous circle. But this circle can’t get going unless we commit to regularly challenging our own ideas, and to keeping an open mind. Studies have shown that this can be as simple as training ourselves to notice our own thought processes. (3)

I feel for the exhausted and fallible Jesus in this story, and seeing him grapple successfully with a very human tendency, increases rather than decreases my faith in what he was trying to do. This small moment is a nitty-gritty miracle, theology embodied in relationship between two human creatures. What would Jesus do? Jesus didn’t hestitate to change course when he was reminded of the humanity of another. May it be so for all of us. Amen.

1. Amanda Montell, The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality, p174
2. Ibid, p181
3. Ibid, p182
   
   
   

Readings:

Isaiah 35:1-6
1 The desert and the parched land will be glad; the wilderness will rejoice and blossom. Like the crocus, 2 it will burst into bloom; it will rejoice greatly and shout for joy. The glory of Lebanon will be given to it, the splendor of Carmel and Sharon; they will see the glory of the LORD, the splendor of our God. 3 Strengthen the feeble hands, steady the knees that give way; 4 say to those with fearful hearts, “Be strong, do not fear; your God will come, he will come with vengeance; with divine retribution he will come to save you.” 5 Then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped. 6 Then will the lame leap like a deer, and the mute tongue shout for joy. Water will gush forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert.

Mark 7:24-30​
24 Jesus left that place and went to the vicinity of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know it; yet he could not keep his presence secret. 25 In fact, as soon as she heard about him, a woman whose little daughter was possessed by an impure spirit came and fell at his feet. 26 The woman was a Greek, born in Syrian Phoenicia. She begged Jesus to drive the demon out of her daughter. 27 “First let the children eat all they want,” he told her, “for it is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.” 28 “Lord,” she replied, “even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” 29 Then he told her, “For such a reply, you may go; the demon has left your daughter.” 30 She went home and found her child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.

Divine Love & Wisdom 395:2
From the intellectual faculty called rationality, and from the volitional faculty called freedom, a person acquires the ability to affirm whatever they wish. For the natural person can elevate their intellect to as high a light as they desire. However, a person who is caught up in evils and their resulting falsities does not elevate it further than the higher region of their natural mind, and rarely up to the region of their spiritual mind. The reason is that they are governed by the delights of their natural mind, and if they elevate their intellect above that, their love's delight perishes. If they do elevate it further and see truths opposed to their life's delights or to the assumptions of their own intelligence, they then either falsify those truths, or pass them by and scornfully leaves them behind, or they retain them in memory as means to serve their life's love and conceit in their own intelligence.