Readings: Psalm 27, Luke 19:1-10, Divine Providence 338:9 (see below)
See also on Youtube Photo by Tom Swinnen Today we begin with the question: What is salvation? It is certainly a word that one hears a lot in regard to religion. In a religious context, salvation seems to be something good that we can receive from being in relationship with God, or a higher power. In general terms, being saved, experiencing salvation of some kind, means moving from a set of undesirable circumstances to a different set of more desireable circumstances. A friend might come to save us when we have a flat tire on the side of the road. We go from being stranded to being at home, or we go from having a broken vehicle to having one that is drivable. A parent might grab their child when they are about to cross the road without looking. A co-worker might save us from an impossible deadline by helping us out with our work. There are so many macro and micro ways we are saved by each other in this world, and gratitude abounds for that. In Christian theological terms though, the traditional definition is narrower. The salvation that Christians receive has to do with the afterlife, not this world. Our positive relationship with God saves us from an eternity in hell, traditionally a place of torment, and allows us an eternity in heaven instead, traditionally a place of bliss, peace and happiness. But the traditional Christan view (which I will now try to paraphrase) has some caveats: Since God is wholly and completely just, and since humanity is so wholly bad (I mean, just look around), God demands accountability and reparation from us, because a truly just God could do no other. And of course, we are so bad all the time, in ways large and small, that we could never pay the cost. In that case, all human beings would be in hell all the time. So Jesus, out of love for us, stepped in to pay the bill for us, and God was so moved by this offering that it was accepted on behalf of us all forever - but only for those believe and accept what Jesus did. Thus, we are “saved” from the fate that was due to us by recognizing the value of, or having faith in, Jesus’ mighty sacrifice for us. And reformed Christianity doubled down on the importance of right belief, because of the idea that what we “do” or how we act, can never contribute to our salvation because our motives can never be pure. We will always be trying to get into heaven with what we do, and that is inherently duplicious and tainted no matter what. Only acts in which we have nothing to gain can be purely good, so we must be saved by faith, by belief first, then once freed from selfish motive, our actions can be purely good, if we wish them to be. We are saved by surrendering the idea that we could ever save ourselves. And much of this has made sense to many people, especially when there things to atone for that we feel like could never be made right no matter what we do. But there are also some problems. What do we do with the biblical decription of God’s steadfastness and love? Isn’t love inherently responsive and forgiving? Where is the balance to God’s justice? Is God so inherently transactional? Does this process of salvation reflect how human beings actually work, emotionally and existentially? Are we actually defined by one moment, one confession of belief, or is our selfhood, our character, created more progressively? Because, at it’s best, faith alone salvation does allow us to step off the hamster wheel of ego or fear-based striving, which can be its own kind of tyranny. We can surrender to the truth of the way Jesus has loved us all and know that it is enough. There is a very sweet and needed freedom there. And yet, at its worst, faith alone salvation gives free reign to humanity’s worst tendencies. When we imagine that all of our sins past and present have been forgiven due to one mighty sacrifice, well that creates a different kind of freedom - one that justifies any kind of bad behavior going forward. Just say the right words and it is done - the rest of life is gravy. Further, when we imagine that there is one right way, one right set of words to say and beliefs to profess, oh and by the way, we have them and we control them, this also gives the Christian church an enormous amount of power, which I think we can safely say it hasn’t used well. Would God design a system with such an enormous accountability-free loophole? Would God design a system that disenfranchises every single person who has never even heard of Jesus? Swedenborg thought that it could not be so. So he spoke of salvation as a progressive partnership between faith and action, a process that changes us from the inside. A process that keeps us accountable to the selfhood that we are creating. A process that does us the respect of giving our actions true meaning. Yes, we absolutely need to surrender our selfhood to God, surrender our notions of righteousness and judgment to God. We give our faith to something higher than ourselves, a framework of ongoing relinquishment that keeps us on the right and true path. But the problem is that we are not made in a moment. Our selfhood, our character, our life, is not made in a moment, even if it is a transcendent important meaningful moment. Our life is made up of all the moments that we string together, our character made of all the decisions we make one after another. We have to put our money where our mouth is for our faith to have any meaning at all, for it to “save” us. Like with our friend saving us from the flat tire on the side of the road, we’ll need to actually call them, we’ll need to help them haul the spare from the trunk, we’ll need to hand them the tools and watch the safety of the jack…because if we don’t, if we don’t see ourselves in partnership with the whole salvation situation, we won’t bother to avoid the potholes in the future, we won’t bother to replace the tires when they are worn out, we won’t bother with the ongoing maintenance and awareness that driving safely requires. It’s good to have a friend that we believe in and can count on. But we don’t want to be someone who relinquishes consequence and accountability because we happen to have a good and generous friend. We don’t want to be someone who just uses them to get home. Because, salvation is not just about getting somewhere, getting off the side of the road and back home, getting to heaven rather than hell. Heaven is not a reward, or a ticket we can buy, heaven is the home of our inmost heart. Such a home must match who we inherently are, or at least, who we are willing to work to become. One moment of faith, however well intentioned, and especially if not well intentioned, cannot make such a match for us. But a life of ongoing creation, one of partnership with God that progressively builds a heavenly selfhood, can. And this is why I especially like the way that Rev. Dr. Randy Woodley subsitutes “healing” for the word “salvation.” (1) He writes: I certainly believe it is a better theological choice. Healing is a process that requires our cooperaton.” And he rephrases our text for today: “[Healing] has come to this home today, for this man has shown himself to be a true son of Abraham.” We note how holistic Zaccheas’s experience was. He had an openness to something more, a *faith* in something larger than his current circumstances, his current way of doing things. He knew that Jesus was important but that knowing alone wasn’t enough. He needed to make changes to his life, make reparation for what he had done wrong. And this brought him into right relationship with his higher power and the people around him. Healing came to his home; where there was brokenness in his way of being, he repaired it. And this “saved” him but only because he was changed from the inside out. He was saved from perpetrating harm, and the ways that perpetrating harm would dictate who he was becoming. And actually, seeing salvation this way, as healing, reframes the whole process as almost mechanistic, and less moralistic, and I mean this in a good way. We can’t function at our best, or be our happiest, or serve others around us really effectively, unless we are healed and whole (or at least, on the way to becoming so). This is what God ultimately wants for us. God’s salvation is not about trying to be “enough” or “right” it is about being healed. Being healed of our self-centeredness, being healed of our flaws, being healed of our limited perspectives, as well as being healed of our hurts, our traumas, our wounds. Because this is what a God who actually cares about our well-being, our happiness, would do: design a process that has a chance of bringing us to wholeness and peace, and then walk that process with us. This is why salvation is not a moment, it is a journey. And the destination is not a place, the destination is the wholeness of ourselves. Some moments, moments of faith, especially ones that send us down an important road, are special, but they cannot be so special that they make the journey that follows meaningless. Our faith is the lamp, and then we must consciously take each step as it is illuminated. And thanks be to God, we don’t do it alone. Amen (1) Decolonizing Evangelicalism by Randy S. Woodley and Bo C. Sanders, p18 Readings: Psalm 27 1 The LORD is my light and my salvation— whom shall I fear? The LORD is the stronghold of my life— of whom shall I be afraid? 2 When the wicked advance against me to devour me, it is my enemies and my foes who will stumble and fall. 3 Though an army besiege me, my heart will not fear; though war break out against me, even then I will be confident. 4 One thing I ask from the LORD, this only do I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple. 5 For in the day of trouble he will keep me safe in his dwelling; he will hide me in the shelter of his sacred tent and set me high upon a rock. 6 Then my head will be exalted above the enemies who surround me; at his sacred tent I will sacrifice with shouts of joy; I will sing and make music to the LORD. 7 Hear my voice when I call, LORD; be merciful to me and answer me. 8 My heart says of you, “Seek his face!” Your face, LORD, I will seek. 9 Do not hide your face from me, do not turn your servant away in anger; you have been my helper. Do not reject me or forsake me, God my Savior. 10 Though my father and mother forsake me, the LORD will receive me. 11 Teach me your way, LORD; lead me in a straight path because of my oppressors. 12 Do not turn me over to the desire of my foes, for false witnesses rise up against me, spouting malicious accusations. 13 I remain confident of this: I will see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living. 14 Wait for the LORD; be strong and take heart and wait for the LORD. Luke 19:1-10 1 Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. 2 A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy. 3 He wanted to see who Jesus was, but because he was short he could not see over the crowd. 4 So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way. 5 When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” 6 So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly. 7 All the people saw this and began to mutter, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.” 8 But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.” 9 Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. 10 For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” Divine Providence 338:9 We can see from this that if we look deeply enough, we find that the theologies of all our churches teach how to live; and since they teach how to live, they teach that our salvation depends on how we live. Our life is not breathed into us in an instant but is formed gradually, and is reformed as we abstain from evils as sins--specifically, as we see what is a sin, recognize it, admit it, and then do not intend it, and therefore refrain from it, and also as we know the means that relate to knowing God. By these two means our life is formed and reformed, and they cannot just be poured into us in an instant. Our inherited evil, which is essentially hellish, has to be banished first, and goodness, which is essentially heavenly, planted in its stead.
0 Comments
Readings: John 20:19-22, 24-29, The Doctrine of Faith 1-3, 13 (see below)
See also on Youtube Photo by Ann H Today we hear about two post-resurrection appearances, the second of which revolves around the reaction of one of the disciples, Thomas. The name Thomas is Aramaic for twin, although we don’t ever get to hear anything about who his other half might be. He appears in the gospel of John two times before this episode, and once after. He is an engaged follower of Jesus. Now, we’ve all heard him referred to as “Doubting Thomas.” In this, I think he gets a bit of a bad rap. He certainly wasn’t the only one being unsure. Just previously in this gospel, when Mary Magdalene found the stone rolled away from the tomb and told Simon Peter about it, he immediately ran over to see it with his own eyes. He wasn’t content to just believe what Mary said, he needed to see the evidence himself. Shortly afterward, Mary herself sees Jesus and tells the disciples what he said to her. Yet, the tone of their subsequent gathering is initially fearful and tense; did they not believe her? As we continue in our reading, we learn that in his first appearance to the disciples, Jesus showed *them* his hands and his side long before he showed Thomas. We can imagine the disciples first being overwhelmed, surprised, puzzled, and then reaching forth to touch their beloved teacher. Then, as they are convinced that he is real and not a ghost, they are overjoyed. Thomas’ process is essentially the same as all of these, and falls into a pattern of stories in this gospel where a skeptical person is given what they need in order to believe. The fact is, even though some translations do use the word “doubt” here in this episode, the Greek word for doubt, as in “wavering in faith”, is not used here at all. The text says more literally, “do not be unbelieving but believing.” Jesus is not reprimanding Thomas, or shaming him. He is helping him. And he is not only helping him take the journey from unbelief to belief in terms of whether the resurrection actually happened, more importantly, he is helping Thomas recognize the meaning of the resurrection, helping him recognize what universal truths are revealed in the event of Jesus rising from the dead. Jesus knew that believing cannot be a simple piety test, and that shame can never bring us to faith. He wasn’t saying “Look how real I am, you really should have believed.” He was saying….See me, feel me, understand at a deep level what my resurrection means.” This is an important distinction, because v 29 is often seen as an implicit criticism of Thomas. In this verse, Jesus says “Because you have seen me you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” It sounds like Jesus is comparing Thomas to others who believe without seeing, and that Thomas is coming out wanting. However, in historical context, this verse can alternatively be read as encouragement for the next generation. John’s gospel was the last of the gospels to be written, some 60 years after Jesus was crucified. By this time, the first generation of apostles were passing away. The witness of those who had actually known Jesus had always held a very special place in these developing Christian communities, as one might imagine. And they were all, at first, expecting that Jesus would return very soon. But as the years went by, these communities were needing to understand what the transmission of faith looked like in a world in which no one alive actually had known or seen Jesus. And so we have teachings like this one lifted up, a teaching that blesses those who did not get to see Jesus in person but who still believe in him, a teaching saying that *their* witness, through the gospel, can be just as real and as important as Thomas’ who got to put his hand in Jesus’ side. These second generation believers, and the ones that come after, could be equally blessed. And we can see that the statement fits within the general form of the common beatitude, as in “blessed are those who mourn”, with the undesirable state of not having seen Jesus in person being, against expectation, blessed. But, there is still much more to be mined in this episode. Because, Thomas did not only acquiesce to the veracity of the resurrection, he demonstrated understanding as to what it meant. He didn’t say, wow that was really amazing, how did you pull that off? He says “My Lord and my God!” With this declaration, he recognized that Jesus’ resurrection was an indication of the presence of God in this world. He recognized that Jesus’s resurrection was an indication of the pervasiveness and expansiveness of God’s love. And he recognized that Jesus’ resurrection effected an essential connection between God and humanity. These are important universal truths, truths that tell us something indispensable about the character of God. Thomas was recognizing not just something that happened, but something that was true in a larger sense, and this led him to a declaration of his faith. Likewise, Swedenborg describes faith as an inner recognition of truth. Rather than being what he calls “blind faith” as in believing in something we don’t understand because we are told that we should, real faith is born over and over again, in that moment when the light switch turns on and we recognize something as being reflective of reality, of being real, of being true. It can be a basic principle about the world, or ourselves, or human beings, or God; it can inspire us or convict us or both, but it is something that shines the light of clarity on “what is.” And with this sense of clarity comes a trust in “what is,” a trust that we can live by. An example that comes to mind for me is the truth that it is important for us to talk about the things we are afraid of, or ashamed of. A good friend of mine once organized a conference called Finding Hope, which facilitated discussion on issues like depression, suicide, mental illness, domestic violence and addiction. The conference tagline was: “Finding hope in the face of things we don’t talk about.” After losing several acquaintances to suicide, addiction and mental illness, my friend realized that struggling with such challenges alone simply compounds them. She recognized the fundamental truth that we *need* each other, and that we cannot be present for each other if we don’t talk to each other, especially about the things that are hardest to talk about. In that moment, a sense of faith in the importance and effectiveness of connectivity and vulnerability between people was born for her. She experienced a powerful inner recognition of truth, a universal truth. But the process doesn’t end there. Swedenborg reminds us that this inner recognition of truth is itself motivated and guided by something else: our desire to do good. Goodness loves truth and searches for it because love expressed in goodness always desires a way to become real, a way to be shared. Our loving desire to do good is constantly searching for a form, searching for ideas, and constructs and truths that give it a shape to be born in the world. Imagine for example how our love for someone leads us to search for the perfect birthday present in order to adequately express our love to them. This is a simple image of how goodness searches for truth so it can become real. Our faith depends upon our love as its genesis. Our inner recognition of truth, our openness to that flash of illuminating light, comes from how much we care about being a force for good. And from that state of love and openness, the experience of faith is the switchboard lighting up within us because love has now found a way to be in the world. In the case of my friend, *her* inner recognition of truth was birthed by a desire to prevent the loss of life and to spark hope in the hearts of those who are struggling. She was open to the inner recognition of that truth because she loved and valued human life. We read earlier from Swedenborg: Since what is good loves what is true, [a] desire [to do something good] leads to a desire for truth and therefore to the recognition of what is true, which is faith. By these steps, in proper sequence, a desire to do something good takes form and turns into caring. And there we see the final step. For my friend: A love for human life, leading to a recognition of a fundamental truth about connectiveness, leading finally to a caring form: the Finding Hope conference. Now, we don’t all have to be event managers - that’s my friend’s wheelhouse but it is not everyone’s. And that’s okay. The same inner recognition might lead one person to train in counseling, another to simply reach out another human being, and a third to change the way they think about their own challenges. The point is *not* the scale of the form taken, but the fact that it is a virtuous cycle…love leading to faith leading to action. And sometimes along the way, we also get to experience joy, just as the disciples and Thomas did, because of the prospect of love being manifested. As we contemplate Thomas, we see that this process is both personal and universal. Faith is the inner recognition of universal, timeless, spiritual truths, but WE, each of us, have to be the one doing the recognizing. These truths must come alive for us personally and not just because we have heard about them from someone else. We all move from various levels of unbelief to belief by figuratively touching the body of Jesus ourselves, by recognizing the realness of certain truths in our lives. But we must resist the temptation using belief as a way to feel superior over others, or as a way to judge the love and intentions of others. Unbelief on any theological topic is a neutral state. There is nothing wrong with being unsure, nothing wrong with waiting for the flash of light. We are all waiting and hoping to some extent. Even I, your pastor, struggle with some of the ideas expressed in our chosen tradition. The struggle to understand is not a failing, it *is* the love of truth, it is love searching for a form, and there will always be many forms. It is, in its own way, a holy struggle, and God is in it with us, a non-anxious presence saying as Jesus did “Peace be with you.” God does not condemn honest unbelief and neither should we. We should never ever use belief in a set of theological principles as a way to judge someone’s commitment to God or faith or justice, for we can never know what truths are going to come alive for each person in their own context. The moment between Thomas and Jesus was intimate, just one person and their God. Jesus was not ashamed of his wounds or his embodiment, showing up in a locked room to provide the personal clarity that Thomas needed, in the most concrete of ways. Likewise, Thomas’s declaration was personal: “My Lord and My God.” Thomas needed to say “unless I see the nail…” because each of our faith journeys are personal. Faith is not about saying we believe the right things, but about the transformation of how we understand our relationship with God and our place in the world. And journeys such as these are not always straight forward, there is plenty of winding and waiting and searching. But one thing I do know, is that we will all need to put our hand deep in the wound of God to understand anything about being truly human. Amen. Readings: John 20:19-22, 24-29 19 On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Judean leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” 20 After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord. 21 Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” 22 And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 24 Now Thomas (also known as Didymus ), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. 25 So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!” But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.” 26 A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” 27 Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.” 28 Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!” 29 Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” The Doctrine of Faith #1, 2, 3, 13. 1. Faith Is an Inner Recognition of Truth Nowadays, people understand “faith” to mean nothing more than thinking that something is true because the church teaches it and because it is not obvious to the intellect. In fact, the common saying is, “Believe, and don’t doubt.” If someone replies, “I don’t understand it,” people say, “That’s why you have to believe it.” The result is that today’s faith is faith in the unknown and can be called “blind faith”… 2. Real faith is simply recognizing that something is so because it is true. This means that people who are devoted to real faith both think and say, “This is true, and that’s why I believe it.” That is, faith is dependent on truth, and what is true is the object of faith… 3. All the same, the widely shared opinion is that no one can understand things that are spiritual or theological because they are supernatural. However, spiritual truths can be grasped just as earthly ones are—perhaps not as clearly, but still, when we hear them we do get a sense as to whether they are true or not. This is especially so in the case of people who have a longing for truth. 13. Having just said what faith is, I need now to say what caring is. Caring originates in a desire to do something good. Since what is good loves what is true, this desire leads to a desire for truth and therefore to the recognition of what is true, which is faith. By these steps, in proper sequence, a desire to do something good takes form and turns into caring. This is how caring develops from its origin, which is a desire to do something good, through faith, which is a recognition of what is true, to its goal, which is caring. The goal is the doing of something. We can see from this how love, which is a desire to do something good, brings forth faith, which is the same as recognizing what is true, and by this means brings forth caring, which is the same as love acting through faith. Readings: Isaiah 55:1-3, 8-13, Mark 16:1-15, 19, True Christianity 838 (see below)
See also on Youtube Photo by Johannes Plenio on Pexels Most scholars agree that, despite its placement as the second gospel in line, the gospel of Mark was the first gospel to be written, some 30 years after Jesus died. So, let me tell you something about our text for today that blew my mind when I first heard about it. The earliest versions of the gospel of Mark that have to this day been discovered do not include the verses after verse 8, in our reading today. That’s right, the earliest versions of the easter story in Mark end with “Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.” That’s where it ends. The following verses 9-20 were added later. Wow, right? No Jesus appearing to Mary Magdalene, or to the disciples, no Jesus being taken up to heaven, just these women being told to go tell the disciples and not doing it because they were afraid. Now, I don’t blame you if you feel bit grumpy with me right now. Perhaps it seems like I have let the air out of the Easter balloon. I totally get it. So, let me be clear, I do believe that the holy spirit has worked and does work within those verses after verse 8. The bible has come together in fascinating and inspired ways, and God finds a way to speak through all of it, the parts that comfort and the parts that challenge. But in this case, with the knowledge of how the original gospel writer ended this story, we now have the opportunity to uncover a little piece of treasure that we might not have otherwise. We have the opportunity to ask the question: how does this familiar story change when it is ended this way? Well, one thing that I have noticed is that it thrusts us, the reader, headlong into the story ourselves. When the whole story is tied up with a pretty bow, it is easy for us to keep our distance. Certainly we might feel happy and joyous and grateful about the resurrection, but these events happened a long time ago. And really how often do we go to anoint a body after burial, or contemplate how we are going to access said body because of a giant boulder? It can be hard to relate. But then, with this abrupt and unexpected ending, our safe distance is exploded. Because hanging in the air, hanging in the silence after verse 8 is the question: what would we have done? In our shaky intake of breath, in our quickened heartbeat as our certain ending is taken away, we become these women. We become these women because we know we would have been trembling and bewildered too. We know we would have been afraid. And we suspect we might have done exactly the same as them. We suspect we might have been too afraid to act. How does it feel to face up to that possibility? It’s kind of awful, right, a bit squirmy. That’s okay. I assure you, God is in the squirminess. God is in the the suspended moment of uh-oh, when we really see ourselves, perhaps even more than in the certainty of a happy ending. Believe me, God is not disappointed with us in that moment, God is excited for us, because in that moment, in each of these moments that we encounter throughout our lives, we have a choice. We can choose to keep the blinders on because it is comfortable and convenient, or we can say, “Coach, put me in the game.” This is one of the reasons that I love this shortened ending. As readers, we are no sooner done learning about the engaged and courageous life of Jesus, we are no sooner confronted with the reality of the resurrection than we are asked to embody it. Because that is what the gospel is for: to be embodied in the here and now. Jesus life, death and resurrection is not just something to feel grateful for, it is something we are called to enter into. We are not simply lucky that God did something wonderful for us once, we are called to make it real in our everyday. God’s incarnation into this world, Jesus’ death and resurrection is telling us about the way that God works all the time, about how love is the engine of the universe, about how suffering and brokenness will never have the last word. And we get to choose if we are going to step into that reality, if we are going to have a part in furthering that reality. What we learn from the other gospels is that this ending in Mark was just a pause. Two thousand years later we are reading the story, so the women must have told someone eventually. Even in the text itself, this is hinted at. The angel tells the women specifically to go find Peter by name. The last time we had seen Peter in this gospel, he was weeping. Not at only at Jesus death, but at his own denial of Jesus, at his own shortcomings. Yet, in the resurrection, Jesus returns to him, as he returns to us all. Jesus’ followers were human, and failed him many times, yet Jesus still called them and loved them. As one of my commentaries pointed out, Jesus did not return and try to find a group of better disciples who would not fail him. He deliberately sent these women, these trembling and bewildered people, to minister to a weeping and despairing person, Peter. Flawed people ministering to flawed people. Broken people transforming brokenness. Because that’s what the good news is: even in the bleakest most improbable of circumstances, transformation is possible. Out of suffering can come healing, out of death, resurrection. And not as some sort of divine program to make us stronger…God is not a drill sergeant, demanding our suffering so that we might be purified, but rather, God took what is evil in the world - hostility, fear, hate, self-preservation, greed, and showed us that these things will not have the last word. This is God’s great promise to us: there is nothing, not even the world’s darkest impulses, that cannot be transformed, cannot be brought to life, through the power of love. And so, now we are given an opportunity. There was clearly more to be written, both in the same gospel and other gospels. And likewise, there is more to be written for us as well. How will each of us write our ending of this story? How will *we* be resurrected out of our fear, out of our complacency, out of our self-centeredness? Because, let me tell you, if we desire it, if we open ourselves up to it, if we work for it, we surely will be. The last words of the angel were this: “He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.” Jesus returned to them, not in the great city Jerusalem, but to Galilee, the place where he endeavored to uncover the reality of God’s kingdom time and time again with his actions and his words, to the place of their everyday life together. And so too does God return to us. As the question hovers over us, “What would we have done?” we are reminded that God returns to meet us in the place of our struggles, our details, our mundane, too-busy, distracted, falling-apart life. God is there already, waiting for us. And perhaps we are trembling and bewildered, perhaps we are weeping and disappointed; sometimes our everyday life does that. Yet, hallelujah, Jesus has risen, so that we too might rise up and head into Galilee, so that we too might rise up to each moment that stands in front of us, that we too might remain present to our lives and that we might do it in community with each other. For, the kingdom of God is not something that we aspire to, it is something we carry within us; may the power of the easter season reveal its presence to us. “There you will see him, just as he told you.” Amen. Readings: Isaiah 55: 1-3, 8-13 1 “Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost. 2 Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and you will delight in the richest of fare. 3 Give ear and come to me; listen, that you may live. I will make an everlasting covenant with you, my faithful love promised to David. 8 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the LORD. 9 “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. 10 As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, 11 so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it. 12 You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands. 13 Instead of the thornbush will grow the juniper, and instead of briers the myrtle will grow. This will be for the LORD’s renown, for an everlasting sign, that will endure forever.” Mark 16:1-15, 19 1 When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus’ body. 2 Very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, they were on their way to the tomb 3 and they asked each other, “Who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?” 4 But when they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away. 5 As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed. 6 “Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. 7 But go, tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.’ ” 8 Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid. 9 When Jesus rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had driven seven demons. 10 She went and told those who had been with him and who were mourning and weeping. 11 When they heard that Jesus was alive and that she had seen him, they did not believe it. 12 Afterward Jesus appeared in a different form to two of them while they were walking in the country. 13 These returned and reported it to the rest; but they did not believe them either. 14 Later Jesus appeared to the Eleven as they were eating; he rebuked them for their lack of faith and their stubborn refusal to believe those who had seen him after he had risen. 15 He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation. 19 After the Lord Jesus had spoken to them, he was taken up into heaven and he sat at the right hand of God. True Christianity 838 Because God at the level of his essence is burning with a love for uniting himself with us, it was necessary for him to wrap himself in a body that was adapted in such a way that we could receive it and enter into a partnership with him. Therefore God came down and took on a human manifestation according to the divine design that he himself established at the creation of the world. His conception occurred through an offshoot of his own power; he was carried in the womb, was born, grew in wisdom and love, and came closer and closer to his divine origin until he was fully united to it. In this way God became a human being and a human being became God…Reason sees that there is no other way in which God, whose love is like the purest fire, could unite himself to people and people to himself. Readings: Zechariah 9:9-12, Mark 11:1-11, Secrets of Heaven 2781:8-9 (see below)
See also on Youtube Welcome to Palm Sunday, the narrative beginning to Holy Week. As we just read, Jesus has entered Jerusalem for the final time. He rides on a donkey, telling the disciples exactly where to find it. His reputation has been growing, and the people welcome him with joy and anticipation for the way that they think he will save them from their current circumstances. In the gospel of Mark, after this entry, Jesus will immediately clear the temple of merchants. He will argue a little with the religious authorities and will do some public teaching. He will be anointed by a women at a friend’s house, and he will share a final supper with the disciples. And then he will be arrested, for a ministry that centered upon those who had been excluded, and that called out those who profited from that exclusion. What has struck me this week is the emphasis on Jesus’ “kingship.” I don’t know about you, but I sometimes have a hard time resonating with what that meant to the people in Jesus context. Like most of you, I have grown up in a democracy, not a monarchy, and even though my childhood was spent in a country that is part of the British Commonwealth, my primary experience of government was one that was elected. So the idea of a “king” (or any monarch) and what that means, feels a bit remote to me, and in case it feels that way to you too, I thought I would explore it today. Kingship throughout time, in most contexts including the Jewish one, has been rather inseparable from the divine right to rule. We recall from the Old Testament that Israel’s ability to have a king was granted by God, the first two kings, Saul and David, anointed by God’s prophet Samuel. Even today, monarchs are often ritually anointed at their coronations, and in Britain for example, the monarch is also the head of the national church. Likewise, the word Christ itself, which is simply the Greek translation of the Hebrew word for Messiah, means “anointed one” and we hear the people in our text today shouting “Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David!” The Jewish people of Jesus’ day had long looked forward to the restoration of their nation, and the coming of a great and powerful ruler who would return Israel to autonomy and prominence. And of course they did. They had suffered the indignity of being an occupied people for way too long, under a brutal and unforgiving empire. We would all feel the same way, and many in our world currently experience such conditions. So when they started to hear about Jesus and the amazing things he was doing, of course they got their hopes up. Of course their yearning and anticipatory joy caused them to gather in the streets. And of course, they wanted to welcome and praise this new king, one that would uphold their history and restore their people, and so they did what had always been done for kings: they spread garments and tree branches to make a pathway. Jesus had never asked for this though. He *had* told his disciples that he was the Messiah but coupled it with a warning of his suffering to come, attempting to reframe for them what being the Messiah really meant, to him. He was anointed, chosen, to usher in a new kingdom but it would nothing like what the people expected. He was focused on a spiritual fulfillment, not an earthly one. So, he let the crowds signal his royal identity. But here is what he didn’t do: he didn’t lean into their admiration, he didn’t manipulate their feelings, he didn’t work them up. Instead, he intentionally subverted that worshipful energy. Instead of coming in on a warhorse, as royals in the past would do, with much fanfare, he comes in on the lowliest of animals, in an allusion to our Zechariah text. To quote one of my commentaries: “…Mark wants us to view Jesus as a king, but only by helping us re-imagine the very concept of king in accordance with Jesus’ mission.”(1) This is really important for us to remember. As we re-enact this day the world over, we have an opportunity to be actively conscious of what we are celebrating. When we signal our praise of the Lord’s kingship, what are we signaling? Certainly, some good and wonderful things: Godly power, omnipotence, providence and love, and our offering of loyalty, trust and joy. But as we do this, it is also important for us to remain cognizant of the irony that Jesus was enacting. Recent history in this country and in ithe world, and indeed the length and breadth of human history, has shown us that human beings are very susceptible to the worship of power and dominion. We need to be careful not to swallow imperialism, and the worship of dominion itself, whole without moving on to the deconstruction of earthly imperialism that Jesus was doing. Because, we could very easily just substitute Jesus for Caesar and leave everything else the same. We could pray for the coming of a kingdom that elevates us and those like us and forget the tenor of Jesus’ entire ministry. But Jesus would never step into hierarchical earthly power structures as they are. He has been trying to tell us all along that we can’t happily wave the palms, craving power and influence, all the while ignoring the donkey. The truth is, Jesus was heading toward a painful and humiliating execution, which would serve to continue the subversion of what we are to consider strong, how we are to understand power. Yet, we can persist in making the Easter story about mastery over death instead of sacrifice, about the salvation of a few by grace instead of all by love, about the creation rather than the critique of religious power. But Jesus had literally just schooled the disciples on this topic before entering Jerusalem: Mark 10:42 … “You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. 43 Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, 44 and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. And this is why it is such a beautiful tradition in the many churches that the palms featured on Palm Sunday become the ashes used in the following Ash Wednesday. Our adoration must be anchored in reflection and relinquishment. We heard in our Swedenborg reading that the spiritual meaning of the Lord riding the donkey is to demonstrate the correct order of subordination of our human nature. Our earthly desires need to serve our spiritual desires and not the other way around. Even though we do live in a democracy, where the people elect their leaders rather than being ruled by a king, it is also true that there has always been a strong strain of people and movements trying to co-opt legitimacy and power through claiming or implying a divine right, that God is on their side, that they are doing God’s will. I can only imagine what an addictive feeling it is, to be so sure that we are serving a higher power that we can disregard kindness, empathy, ethics or the rule of law. The people shouted, as we do today, “Hosanna,” a word that is complicated to translate but contains a sense of giving honor to one who will save us. But that saving cannot mean that only *we* are saved, and that we are saved because someone will allow us to climb to the top of the heap, only to turn around the crucify those behind us. Jesus' entire ministry was founded on the ethos that salvation (not to mention loving concern) must include everyone. So while the structures and the trappings of kingship are not something with which I can personally resonate, all the ways that human beings interact with the power of leadership certainly *is* recognizable in myself, my fellow human beings, and in our current context. As we shout Hosanna today, let us recognize then that one of the most fundamental salvation opportunities that Jesus offers to us, is that we might be lovingly saved from ourselves. Amen. (1) Ira Brent Driggers, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/sunday-of-the-passion-palm-sunday-2/49620 Zechariah 9:9-12 9 Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion! Shout, Daughter Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. 10 I will take away the chariots from Ephraim and the warhorses from Jerusalem, and the battle bow will be broken. He will proclaim peace to the nations. His rule will extend from sea to sea and from the River to the ends of the earth. 11 As for you, because of the blood of my covenant with you, I will free your prisoners from the waterless pit. 12 Return to your fortress, you prisoners of hope; even now I announce that I will restore twice as much to you. Mark 11:1-11 1 As they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage and Bethany at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two of his disciples, 2 saying to them, “Go to the village ahead of you, and just as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. 3 If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ say, ‘The Lord needs it and will send it back here shortly.’ ” 4 They went and found a colt outside in the street, tied at a doorway. As they untied it, 5 some people standing there asked, “What are you doing, untying that colt?” 6 They answered as Jesus had told them to, and the people let them go. 7 When they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks over it, he sat on it. 8 Many people spread their cloaks on the road, while others spread branches they had cut in the fields. 9 Those who went ahead and those who followed shouted, “Hosanna! ” “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” 10 “Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David!” “Hosanna in the highest heaven!” 11 Jesus entered Jerusalem and went into the temple courts. He looked around at everything, but since it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the Twelve. Secrets of Heaven #2781:8-9 [8] Riding on a donkey was a sign that the earthly dimension would be made subordinate, while riding on a young animal, the foal of a female donkey, was a sign that the rational dimension would be…From this - the spiritual meaning of these animals - … that He might fulfill the representatives of the Church, the Lord was pleased to ride in this way. [9] From this evidence it can now be seen that everything in the church of that day represented the Lord and accordingly the heavenly and spiritual qualities of his kingdom. That includes even a female donkey and her foal, which represented the goodness and truth in a person's earthly self. The reason for this representation was that the earthly self ought to serve the rational self, which ought to serve the spiritual self, which ought to serve the heavenly self, which ought to serve the Lord. That is the proper hierarchy. Readings: Jeremiah 31:31-34, John 12:20-33, Secrets of Heaven 2657 (see below)
See also on Youtube Photo by Fayette Reynolds M.S. Here we are in the final week of Lent, and our text balances us delicately on the precipice before everything is put into motion for the crucifixion. In the previous chapter in the gospel of John, Jesus has raised Lazarus from the dead. It was his greatest, most momentous sign so far and the religious authorities were getting nervous. They imagined that Jesus would create such a movement of hope that the Roman authorities might move in and destroy the Jewish people entirely. They were afraid; can you really blame anyone under occupation feeling this way? So, they start planning to take care of the problem in-house, by arresting Jesus. So, Jesus’ days are numbered. He travels from Bethany, where Lazarus and his sisters live, to Jerusalem just before the Passover festival. We will hear about his entry into Jerusalem next week, on Palm Sunday. All I will say now is that the raucous reception that Jesus receives on arrival does nothing to calm the Pharisees nerves. Jesus’ fame is spreading far and wide, and as we hear in the beginning of our text for today, some Greeks were among the crowds. They may have been Greek-speaking Jews, or they may have been Greek proselytes, we don’t really know. What we do know, is that they wished to see Jesus. The language used, and the inclusion of Andrew and Peter recalls the original calling of the disciples in John 1. We are prompted to recognize that Jesus’ reach is expanding. A verse before, the Pharisees have just complained in desperation: “see this is getting us nowhere. Look how the whole world has gone after him!” We begin to understand that Jesus’ call will be replicated again and again and again. But then, Jesus words turn to a perennial, persistent human question. “Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.” Using the metaphor of a grain of wheat, Jesus starts to describe something important about God’s kingdom, that experiencing God’s kingdom has something to do with going from alone-ness and individuality - like a single seed - to much-ness, or plurality - like the many seeds. Human beings have indeed struggled with this balance of individuality and community, to different degrees, for as long as there has been human consciousness. On one hand, we are individuals, and ultimately our choices are our own. Our freedom, and our accountability to that freedom, is part of what makes us human. And yet, we are also social animals, communal beings. We yearn for and thrive in community, and being in community means sacrificing some measure of individuality and individual rights for the good of the whole. Different societies have come down on the scale in different places on this question, throughout time. The United States, in particular, forged its nascent identity through disagreement on this question. The war of independence was fought because the English monarch was asking for taxation without representation, was asking for submission to the overall health of the nation without allowing for individual engagement in the life of the nation. To the Founding Fathers this was unfair, not just in a political way but in a way that struck at the core of what it meant to be human. They recognized the fundamental importance of liberty and individuality to the human psyche. We wish, of course, that they had been willing to recognize that importance as it extended to all human beings, not just the white, male, land-owning ones. But even so, they were on to something, and so enshrined liberty in the structures and institutions of this country, with careful checks and balances so that as little liberty as possible was given up in order to orchestrate a safe and effective union. But even with their careful planning, what that balance between individual freedom and the common good looks like in practice remains an active question for us now and much of politics involves arguing about where to draw this line. And it is not just on scale of politics, nations, or civil society, that these questions arise. We strike bargains between individual needs and communal ones with each other on a smaller scale as well. When we enter into relationships with others: marriages, partnerships, friendships, parenting, we negotiate a balance of healthy submission and differentiation. This balance will be different in different contexts, but overall I think we can say, going too far in either direction can be problematic. And this is because we are balancing two inherently valuable things. On it’s own, a kernel of wheat - and indeed a person - has value in and of itself. Our freedom, our singular nature is important. No one else but each of us, can decide for us to accept the love of God and let it transform us. We will always be completely alone with God in this spiritual moment. But accepting the love of God and letting it transform us also means moving beyond our singular nature. We are alone only so that we can be deeply loved for our uniqueness and be given the gift of choosing our life. It is not God’s intention for us to remain in that space, for then we will be tempted into self-centeredness. Love must be shared, and so Jesus talks to us about moving from the single grain to the many….from single-pointed-ness to spaciousness, from individuality to radical kinship with others. And it is in this idea of radical kinship that I want to introduce you to Father Gregory Boyle. Father Boyle is a Jesuit priest who founded Homeboy Industries, a gang intervention, rehab and re-entry program in Los Angeles. In two of his books, Tattoos on the Heart and Barking to the Choir, he details the miraculous transformations that hundreds of formerly incarcerated, formerly active gang members have made in the program, which seeks to provide spaces of love, compassion and accountability in which new healthy relationships can be learned and formed. Father Boyle seeks to re-introduce these lost and traumatized souls to their own goodness. Yet, he insists that he has not “saved their lives” but rather they have saved him. He finds that outside volunteers to the program often ask him what to “do” at Homeboy, and he always answers “Wrong question. The right one is: What will happen to you here?” The answer to every question about the kingdom is found in our awakened connection with each other. He continues: “It is true enough that the could make the world more just, equal and peaceful, but something holds us back, in all our complicated fear and human hesitation. It’s sometimes just plain hard to locate the will to be in kinship even though, at the same time, its our deepest longing. So no matter how singularly focused we may be on our worthy goals of peace, justice and equality, they actually can’t happen without an undergirding sense that we belong to each other. Seek first the kinship of God, then watch what happens.” (Tattoos on the Heart, p202) To Boyle, the kingdom cannot come into being fully without us giving ourselves over to radical kinship. While that feels like a risk, radical kinship is actually God’s delight, God’s vision for us. Swedenborg expands upon the seed metaphor that Jesus uses, by imagining the same idea with fruit. In our reading, he talks about two levels of our development. The first is a state of mind that is about learning and growing in the context of our natural world, of preparing our minds through curiosity and engagement with true ideas. This level engages our precious individuality, and Swedenborg likens it to the fruit ripening, and seeds being formed within it. This ripening has a good purpose, because ripe fruit is nourishing! But stopping at this point does not take advantage of the potential that exists *within* the fruit. Thus a second state of mind develops from the process of regeneration, one that shifts from thinking to loving, from individuality to mutuality. This is pictured by a fully ripe fruit will dropping to the ground and interacting with its environment. Yes, it is decomposing, yes part of it is seeming to die…but actually it is coming to life in a new way. Most of us think we are coming to life when we are ripening, in the previous stage. And yes, that is a certain kind of coming to life. We are becoming sweeter and richer and fuller and wiser in ourselves. But, while that is important, it is not our ultimate potential, it is not the only kind of life to which God calls us. We can be a beautiful fruit upon God’s tree, and God will delight in us there, but within us there are seeds that are meant to grow new life. We are were meant to connect with the earth and be transformed, sending up new green shoots that will become a thousand times more fruitful than one seed alone. In this metaphor for our spiritual development, we see the spaciousness, the expansiveness that God has in mind for us. This is why I chose Psalm 118 for our responsive reading today because it speaks of that spacious place. “when hard pressed, I cried to the Lord; he brought me into a spacious place.” In Lent, we necessarily turn inward, we work on ripening ourselves with insight. This is good and necessary work. But it is not the goal of the work, in and of itself, for Swedenborg tells us that heaven consists in mutual love, and in fact, that all the individual angels in heaven are made one by mutual love. We do the work of ripening ourselves so that we can love each other more effectively and freely. Spiritual reflection might well *feel* solitary, but the outcome should not be solitary. The outcome of spiritual work is that we might no longer feel disconnected from other people, we do not make them “other.” We enlarge our tribe, we make everyone real to us, the veil of separation between us and other people falls away. As Father Boyle says, we make a decision to live in each other’s hearts. The Greeks in our text wanted to see Jesus. Hopefully, they kept their eyes open to what was to come. For when we want to see Jesus, this is what we will see…as he says “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” God is constantly drawing us closer to Godself and each other, reminding us of our kinship, reminding us that we belong to each other. And if at any time, we feel the weight of our alone-ness, feel the burden of our individual freedom, we can be brought into the spaciousness of God to recognize our birthright, our connectedness with each other.“First seek the kinship of God and then see what happens.” Amen. Readings: Jeremiah 31:31-34 31 The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. 32 It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. 33 But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34 No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, "Know the Lord," for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more. John 12:20-33 20 Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks. 21 They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, "Sir, we wish to see Jesus." 22 Philip went and told Andrew; then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. 23 Jesus answered them, "The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. 24 Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. 25 Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. 26 Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor. 27 "Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say—"Father, save me from this hour'? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. 28 Father, glorify your name." Then a voice came from heaven, "I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again." 29 The crowd standing there heard it and said that it was thunder. Others said, "An angel has spoken to him." 30 Jesus answered, "This voice has come for your sake, not for mine. 31 Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. 32 And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself." 33 He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die. Secrets of Heaven 2657 [2] Everyone who is being reborn has two kinds of rationality: one before rebirth and the other after. Our first rationality, before rebirth, we acquire from sensory experience, reflection on the issues of public and private life, secular studies, reasoning sparked and facilitated by our secular studies, and the spiritual knowledge we gain from religious doctrine–that is, from the Word. At the time, none of this reaches much higher than the images present in our bodily memory, which are quite closely tied to the material world, relatively speaking… [3] After regeneration, our rational mind is formed by the Lord through the desire for spiritual goodness and truth. The Lord has a miraculous way of grafting this desire onto the truth present in our first rationality. In this way, he takes anything present there that is harmonious and supportive and brings it to life… [4] The way it works can be illustrated by comparison with fruit on a tree. In the beginning, our first rationality resembles immature fruit, which gradually ripens, until it finally develops seeds inside itself. When it reaches the stage where it starts to separate from the tree, its state is complete…Our second rationality, though, which the Lord gives us as a gift when we have been reborn, resembles the same fruit in good soil, where the flesh surrounding the seed decays. The seed sends forth roots from inside itself, and above ground a sprout, which grows into a new tree. The new tree gradually develops until at last it produces new fruit, then gardens and whole parks, all in keeping with the urge for goodness and truth that it receives. Readings: Numbers 21:4-9, John 3:14-21, The Last Judgment 36 (see below)
See also on Youtube Photo by Elsa Gonzalez on Unsplash John 3:16 is probably the world’s most famous Bible passage. It is beautiful and it is comforting to consider the great love of God, and what that means that God will do for us. But like all passages removed from their context, they perhaps take on a greater or fuller meaning when understood in their entire surroundings. In this case, we can’t really understand verse 3:16 fully without understanding what Jesus is up to with verse 3:14, how he is using the idea of being “lifted up” and how that relates to the concept of “believing.” So, that means we must dive in to this very strange to us story of the serpents and the Children of Israel. This short anecdote occurs in a cluster to anecdotes around the time of the death of Moses. If we recall, after escaping slavery in Egypt the Children of Israel soon began to complain, and wish for a return to Egypt. So, God instructed them to wander the wilderness for 40 years, so that the complaining and petulant generation would die out and the new generation might proceed with the conquest of Canaan. Even Moses himself would not live to see the promised land. This story of the serpents occurs during the transition time between generations, between the old and the new. What we translate as poisonous serpents were really more a mythical flying serpent-like creatures called “seraphim” that had a long history in Jewish Temple iconography. Their name comes from the Hebrew word “to burn” and they were “filled with the fire of divine holiness,” the purpose of which was to purify more often than it was to kill. Thus, these creatures had a two-fold character: to both punish and to heal. And so here in this story, we see them providing both the poison and the antidote. Now of course, from a Swedenborgian perspective, we don’t subscribe the idea that God would ever purposefully send something harmful to us, even if it were to teach us an important lesson. That’s not how we understand God’s divine love to work. In ancient times, humanity’s understanding of God (or a patheon of gods) put God behind all events in the world; from macro events like politics and victory in battle to micro events like sickness and famine. But even as we acknowledge the ways this worldview was evolving, a deeper sense is clearly apparent in the text. Jesus drew out the idea that the seraphim embodied; that looking upon something that brings us death, both actually and metaphorically, can also bring life. This idea is at the heart of the cross, and at the heart of Jesus’ courageous life. And Jesus had to explain this many times to many people because it is deeply deeply counter-intuitive. One of the people that Jesus tried to explain this to was Nicodemus the Pharisee. Our John reading for today comes down right in the middle of the conversation that they were having together. Nicodemus, a member of the Jewish ruling council, has been keeping an eye on Jesus. He knows something important is happening with Jesus but he doesn’t understand the whole picture. So, under the cover of night he seeks Jesus out, wanting to know more. Jesus tries to explain to him the importance of being “born again,” that we must relinquish our own selfish ways of thinking and allow ourselves to be remade in God’s image, but Nicodemus has trouble understanding. Probably because he is talking to a Pharisee, an educated scholar of the Torah, Jesus uses the story of the serpents as a way to try to explain being born again, as a metaphor for what he is trying to explain: that which causes our selfhood pain can also heal. Jesus’ explanation hinges on the double meaning of the greek word hypsoo meaning both “lifted up” and “exalted.” Yes, the Son of Man must be lifted up high on the cross, literally nailed to it, and this will cause his physical death, a criminal’s death, in an extremely humiliating and public way, but in doing so he will also be exalted, meaning he will increase in stature and meaning and importance. That which would kill him would also lead to resurrection. Can we stop for a moment to consider how ridiculous this must have sounded? Just imagine the very worst humiliation that could ever happen to you? Do you have it in mind? Perhaps, like me, you found your heart involuntarily beating a little bit faster just contemplating it. But now imagine someone telling you that this humiliation will be the very best moment of your life? Um, no. Pass. That is definitely not going to be the case, we say, it will likely be my very worst moment. Right? We absolutely resist this idea. And yet, some of the most powerful personal experiences can be understood in this way. We’ve heard many times from addicts in recovery, for example, that the moment that they hit rock bottom was the best and most important moment of their life. It seems hard to imagine it felt that way to them at the time, but in retrospect they see how it changed them, how it allowed them to ultimately re-make their life. And isn’t this the exact purpose of the seraphim to which Jesus is referring? The divine fire might be painful whilst it is purifying us, but submitting to it ultimately brings us to healing. And thus, Jesus work in the world rests heavily on this kind of irony…that which appears to us one way is not necessarily so, and in fact, might be the opposite of what we think. The cross, which appears to kill, actually gives life, just as the seraphim which appeared to harm, also provided the healing. Jesus is preaching an upside-down world, one that has hope in it where we would never expect it, and thank goodness, for this world is often very bleak as it is. So this upside-down-ness, this counter-intuitiveness, is intimately connected to what it means to “believe.” In this context, believing does not mean so much an intellectual assent to a set of principles, or even believing strongly that what we are told in the gospels actually happened. Believing here means believing in the meaning of Jesus’ life and the cross, that the meaning put forth by these events is the meaning that is the most true, useful and productive way to understand the reality of the whole universe. And naturally, we live our lives, consciously or unconsciously according that how we understand the reality of things. So in this context, belief is really more about trust and loyalty than intellectual belief, about the meaning to which we will consistently conform our lives. So let’s try hearing the bible quotes this way…“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever trusts in that kind of giving God shall not perish but have eternal life,” or “whoever lives a life loyal to that principle of love and sacrifice may have eternal life in him.” This is a type of belief that we must give ourselves over to completely, that structures our entire life. It is not enough to just say “I assent” because that requires nothing of us. This type of belief contains within it a desire to re-make every aspect of our lives according to it because we trust and have confidence in the fact that it represents God’s truest reality. Belief in Jesus is basically a choice to live in a world in which evil, sin, death, brokenness and hate do not have the last word because we have faith that they can be vanquished and/or transformed, and then living as if that were already true. So, what does this mean for us then, in the season of Lent? Well, it actually underpins our whole purpose for the season. Lent is time for putting aside our normal ways of doing and thinking in order to see Jesus upside-down world more clearly. Any Lenten practices that we might undertake of denying ourselves or disrupting our habits is not about punishment but about giving ourselves over to the irony. One of my classmates at seminary shaved her head during Lent, to disrupt her normal sense of vanity so that she might learn something new about her essential worthiness. Another person I know once challenged herself to contact her representatives in congress everyday, disrupting her sense that she has no power, learning that her voice can matter. Others might give up sugar or fast in another way, disrupting a crutch that seems indispensible, but learning that they are stronger and more whole than they thought. These are simple ways remind ourselves of Jesus upside-down world, to say that we trust that God will show us something new in an uncomfortable experience that we would normally avoid. Because, let’s face it, when we are trusting only ourselves we would take one look the cross and say no thanks, of course we would. God certainly does not expect us to relish suffering. But perhaps instead we can take a breath and stop for a moment and realize that we are not the arbiter of righteousness, we are not the arbiter of the right-ness of experience, we are not the arbiter of what can be transformative, God is. Now Swedenborg would probably not describe this all in same terms that I have (I was trained at a Lutheran seminary after all!) He was too much of a scientist to naturally want to describe the world as needing to be upside-down, or to have much appreciation for irony in a literary sense. But especially in spiritual and psychological terms he would agree…we need to invert the order of the things that we love so that we might conform ourselves to an image of heaven. We are born, and we are taught, to love ourselves and our power, and the world and its power. And those loves, in proportion, can be good. But only as long as they are subordinated to loving God and loving other people. And the way that we get to loving God and other people, especially when we have habitually loved only our selves and the world, is to truly believe and enact the fact that all life and love is from the Lord. When we believe that, when we live that, then we will learn to question our selfishness, our priorities, and our thinking, because we will truly value God’s judgement and love above our own. And that process, regeneration, will turn our loves and our lives upside down. The cross, and the whole of Jesus life, reminds us that the world’s understanding of things, our natural understanding of things, might not be right. In the cross, in the incarnation, God begs for us to look at the world upside-down, sideways and inside out so that we don’t miss what we are supposed to be learning, so we don’t miss chances to see and experience beauty and transformation where we didn’t expect it. In Lent especially, we are invited to walk through the world a little askance so that we might see resurrection, so that we might see the image of heaven. For God loved the world, and us, so very much, that God embodied an incredible physical and spiritual reversal, so we might always be reminded to look at things sideways, to trust and believe in God’s revealing above all else. Amen. Readings: Numbers 21:4-9 4 They traveled from Mount Hor along the route to the Red Sea, to go around Edom. But the people grew impatient on the way; 5 they spoke against God and against Moses, and said, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? There is no bread! There is no water! And we detest this miserable food!” 6 Then the LORD sent venomous snakes among them; they bit the people and many Israelites died. 7 The people came to Moses and said, “We sinned when we spoke against the LORD and against you. Pray that the LORD will take the snakes away from us.” So Moses prayed for the people. 8 The LORD said to Moses, “Make a snake and put it up on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and live.” 9 So Moses made a bronze snake and put it up on a pole. Then when anyone was bitten by a snake and looked at the bronze snake, they lived. John 3:14-21 14 Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, 15 that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.” 16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. 19 This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. 20 Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. 21 But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God. The Last Judgment 36 [1]…It is assumed that faith exists so long as the church's teachings are believed, so that it is with those who believe. But believing by itself is not faith, only willing and doing what is believed is faith. When the church's teachings are merely believed, they do not enter into the way a person lives, but only into their memory and so into what the external person thinks. They only enter into their way of life when they enter into their will and thus their actions; that is when their spirit is first engaged. For a person's spirit, the life of which is what a person's life really is, is formed by their will, and only by their thinking to the extent that this arises from their will. A person's memory and the thinking which arises from this is merely the entrance through which the introduction is effected. [3] …Faith is an affection for truth arising from willing what is true because it is true, for this is the real spiritual element in a person. It is far removed from the natural, which is willing what is true not for its own sake, but to get for oneself glory, fame and gain...So willing what is true because it is true is also acknowledging and loving the Divine; these two things are so closely linked that in heaven they are looked on as one…faith is not just believing, but also willing and doing, so there can be no faith if there is no charity. Charity or love is willing and doing. Readings: Genesis 17:1-8, 15-16, Mark 8:31-38, Secrets of Heaven #1038 (see below)
See also on Youtube So here we are, dear friends, in the Second Sunday in Lent. As we are prompted by the season to pause to take a hard look at our practices, our habits, our viewpoints, as we consider renewing our commitment to change and discipleship…our texts invite us to consider several questions: what does it really mean to take up our cross? What does it mean to follow Jesus? What does this have to do with covenant? Since we already spent some time with the Mark text a couple of weeks ago, in regard to the transfiguration, lets begin with the Genesis text. Our Old Testament text puts us right in the middle of the story of Abraham. Abraham is considered the father of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Though in the Bible, God had previously been active in the lives of the first humans Adam and Eve, and Noah, and others, Abraham is special because of the covenant that God makes with him. God made a specific commitment to Abraham and all Abraham’s descendants, to be with them and to be their God. Now this is not the first time God has made promises in the book of Genesis. Creation was a kind of promise, with the Garden of Eden being an implicit commitment to human flourishing. And a little bit later, God makes a promise of non-violence to Noah after the flood. But God’s covenant with Abraham is much broader in scope. God promises to make Abraham’s descendants into a great nation. “I will make your name great” says the Lord, “and you will be a blessing…all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” (Genesis 12:2-3) Our text today is actually the third iteration of this covenant to Abraham. The first time occurs in chapter 12, when God calls on Abraham (then named Abram) to leave everything he has known and travel to a new land. The second time occurs in chapter 15, and God gets much more specific. By then, Abram and his wife Sarai are getting very old, and they are childless. There seems no way they could be parents to a nation. Yet, God promises them a son of their own blood. But, many years go by, and Sarai does not become pregnant. Eventually, though, God appears to Abram again and reiterates the covenant for a third time, as we heard today, this time making sure to include Sarai, not as an extension of Abram but in her own right. Both Abram and Sarai receive new names; they become Abraham and Sarah. And this time, Sarah does indeed becomes pregnant, much to their incredulity, and delivers a son, Isaac. There is so much to be explored in the story of Abraham and Sarah, but for the purposes of Lent, I want to focus on the spiritual meaning of covenant. A covenant is an agreement between parties to do or not do something specified. Now, this is slightly different from a promise. A promise can be delivered in one sided way, but a covenant cannot. It is an agreement between two parties, an explicit partnership. What makes this third covenant between God and Abraham special is that God declared it to be everlasting. God was always going to show up with integrity to this covenant. The quality of the agreement was then put entirely in the hands of Abraham and his descendants. They would the ones to determine if the covenant was fulfilled; God’s part was ensured. In a Swedenborgian sense, all the talk about covenant, marriage, and partnership in scripture represents at a deeper level, the impulse that God has toward conjunction with us. Abraham was the first participant in a new kind of relationship with God, and so Swedenborg connects Abraham with Jesus, in a corresponding way, because Jesus, God’s experience in human form, was another reframing of God’s relationship with us. The origination of the covenant, and the reframing of the covenant, both in service of union between God and humanity. Jesus allowed God to come even closer to us, to fulfill that original covenant even more. Because, even though we were God’s creation, and beloved entirely from the very beginning, our necessary finite nature allowed for a self-created distance, as pictured by leaving the Garden of Eden. Or, imagine for example how we might float away from a dock on a lake if we give ourselves one mighty and petulant push. The very separateness that allowed for our creation as autonomous beings, that allowed for our freedom, also allowed for an ever-increasing spiritual distance. Now, God would never take away our freedom of choice. So God decided to show up in a new way to the covenant. God decided to connect God’s infinite essence to our humanness through Jesus. So, imagine now that God has extended a pool noodle, or a life preserver on a rope; space and freedom remain for us but we, the swimmer, will no longer be forever drifting further and further away. God comes with us, in our shared humanity, wherever we go. So, in a deep sense, a covenant indicates not only partnership but union, or an impulse toward union. We already know what God was willing to do for the covenant, and we are told about that in the gospels. So what about us? This brings us to the reading from Mark. Mark Twain said once, “It ain’t those parts of the Bible that I can’t understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.” (1) Our reading in Mark doesn’t require much exegesis. It is pretty darn clear. And that is part of makes it so poignant and challenging. It seems like Jesus is asking a lot of us. Whatever happened to my yoke is easy and my burden light? Even when we interpret “the cross” metaphorically it still seems like a pretty hard word. It must have seemed even more challenging to original hearers when crucifixion was a contemporary practice. What is Jesus really asking us to do, to give up? It is our very nature in cling to our lives, our desires, our wants. It is probably our deepest human impulse. So we resist. We resist often, and we resist hard. But Jesus was not asking more than what God was asking of Godself. We know that, even on the day before the cross, Jesus was in the garden of Gethsemane praying that he should not have die, for Jesus was not human in an abstract or partial way. Jesus was human even down to those deepest survival impulses that we all share. We all wish that suffering and pain should pass us by. But Jesus knew that the covenant, God’s impulse towards conjunction, was too important. Humanity was floating away, and Jesus was throwing us the life preserver. Not forcing us into synchronized swimming if we didn’t want to, but keeping the option open. Showing up, tethering God to our human experience in order to maintain our ability to reciprocate should we wish to. Because a covenant is above all, about partnership between two parties. When there is no longer potential for partnership, the covenant must end. And God had declared the covenant to be everlasting, so God protected our potential to say yes, even when we are not ready or able to. Jesus was simply one more manifestation of God showing up to the covenant even when humanity did not, or could not, even when *we* do not or cannot. In the context of covenant then, what does taking up our cross and following Jesus mean? How is taking up our cross to be understood differently when it is part of a covenant, a sign of our agreement to partnership? Because we might be tempted to understand taking up our cross as a test…to see whether we are tough enough or loyal enough or selfless enough to be a part of the kingdom. And while cross-bearing can and does create toughness, loyalty and selflessness, I think rather it is more accurate to say that taking up our crosses leads us to connection. Pema Chodron, a buddhist monk, writes: “Only to the degree that we’ve gotten to know our personal pain, only to the degree that we’ve related with pain at all, will we be fearless enough, brave enough, and enough of a warrior to be willing to feel the pain of others. To that degree we will be able to take on the pain of others because we will have discovered that their pain and our own pain are not different.”(2) In willingly taking up our own pain, our own crosses, we can see in it that which has the potential to separate us from other people, and that which has the potential to connect us. We can see which parts of our pain are tangled up with ego and fear and trauma, which parts prevent us from saying yes to our covenants with God and with other people. We can see which parts, all parts really, are universally human experiences, and use these as an entrance to empathy, compassion, and solidarity. Abram and Sarai had plenty of baggage, plenty of trouble showing up to the covenant, just like we all do. But God was patient, and Abram and Sarai persevered and eventually their connection with God transformed their identities. Their names, Abraham and Sarah, came to reflect that. In our Lenten reflections this week, we are being invited to contemplate how our challenges might transform us, how having a practice of fiercely showing up for our life and everything in it, can be connective. We are asked to take up our cross, because trying to follow Jesus while we pretending our crosses aren’t there is untenable. We will be weighted down and we won’t know why. We are asked to take up our cross because everyone has a cross, and we are in it together. We are asked to take up our cross because it leads to connection, and connection, with God and each other, is the whole purpose of the covenant. Amen.
Readings: Genesis 17:1-8, 15-16 1 When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the LORD appeared to him and said, “I am God Almighty ; walk before me faithfully and be blameless. 2 Then I will make my covenant between me and you and will greatly increase your numbers.” 3 Abram fell facedown, and God said to him, 4 “As for me, this is my covenant with you: You will be the father of many nations. 5 No longer will you be called Abram ; your name will be Abraham, for I have made you a father of many nations. 6 I will make you very fruitful; I will make nations of you, and kings will come from you. 7 I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you. 8 The whole land of Canaan, where you now reside as a foreigner, I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you; and I will be their God.” 15 God also said to Abraham, “As for Sarai your wife, you are no longer to call her Sarai; her name will be Sarah. 16 I will bless her and will surely give you a son by her. I will bless her so that she will be the mother of nations; kings of peoples will come from her.” Mark 8:31-38 31 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. 32 He spoke plainly about this, and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. 33 But when Jesus turned and looked at his disciples, he rebuked Peter. “Get behind me, Satan!” he said. “You do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.” 34 Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 35 For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it. 36 What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? 37 Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? 38 If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels.” Secrets of Heaven 1038 …The purpose of any covenant is conjunction, that is to say, its purpose is that people may live together in friendship or in love. This also is why marriage is called a covenant. The Lord's conjunction with humankind does not exist except in love and charity, for the Lord is love itself and mercy. He wills to save everyone and by His mighty power to draw them towards heaven, that is, towards Himself. From this anyone may know and conclude that it is impossible for anybody to be joined to the Lord except by means of that which He Himself is, that is, except by acting like Him, or becoming one with Him - that is to say, by loving the Lord in return, and loving the neighbor as oneself. In this way alone is conjunction brought about; this constitutes the very essence of a covenant. When conjunction results from this, it quite plainly follows that the Lord is present. The Lord is indeed present with each individual, but that presence is closer or more remote, all depending on how near the person is to love or distant from it. 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. " 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. |
Archives
April 2024
Categories |