 Readings: I Samuel 2:18-20, 26, Luke 2:41-52, True Christianity 89 (see below)
See also on Youtube As a mother, I have to tell you, this text is really hard to read! First, there is the anxiety of losing your child. All parents, or anyone looking after a young child, have experienced their hearts in their throat at some point, when they realize that the child is not where they expected them to be. Then, can you imagine having to search for three days! I’d be an utter wreck. And then, additionally, there is the sass that Jesus delivers! The kind of sass only a pre-teen can accomplish. “Why were you searching for me?” WHY? YOU KNOW WHY? IT’S BEEN THREE DAYS! Seriously, I’m about to burst into flames right here on the pulpit. I need to take a deep breath! As much as I would rather not explore it though, this text is an extremely rich one. It is the only account in the gospels of an event in between the infancy and the adult ministry of Jesus. In biographies of famous figures of that day, stories of a precocious childhood were common. In particular, the Emperor Augustus was known to have eulogized his grandmother to great effect at the age of twelve (1). So already, the gospel writer is telegraphing Jesus’ superiority to the emperor. We also begin the story with Jesus’ whole family going to Jerusalem for Passover. All male Israelites were required to make the pilgrimage to Jerusalem for Passover, and some other religious festivals, once a year. The journey from Nazareth to Jerusalem would probably have taken four or five days by foot. Clearly, Mary and Joseph are observant and diligent Jews, and Jesus’ facility with the Torah in the temple anchors him firmly in the Jewish tradition. Such pilgrimages from country to city would have taken place in groups for the sake of safety, and we can probably surmise, in the form of extended families. We also might surmise a more communal parenting style than we are familiar with today, arising from a pastoral village setting, so it is not entirely unbelievable that Mary and Joseph might have thought Jesus was just hanging out with his cousins. Children can be extremely reluctant to come home when they are having a good time with their friends! But we can also imagine the panic felt by Mary and Joseph when they realized Jesus was missing, how quickly they must have tried to travel back, how confused and frantic they must have felt while retracing their steps. We don’t know if they spent three whole days searching in Jerusalem, or if the three days includes the travel back to the city, but clearly they didn’t go straight to the temple. The text tells us they were astonished to find Jesus there. Probably they went first to the family they had been staying with, then perhaps to friends, then probably the marketplace, or some other place where children might hang out. Why did they not think to check the temple sooner? To Jesus, it seemed obvious that they were searching the wrong places for him. But it wasn’t obvious to Mary and Joseph. Why not? Even with all they had seen and heard, even as they knew their son was special, they didn’t assume that he would be in God’s house, attentive to God’s business. In similar ways, we too might look for fulfillment, and meaning in places that do not necessarily serve us. What are the lyrics to that famous song? “Looking for love in all the wrong places”? In our day to day lives, we are driven by the human desire to feel safe, content, fulfilled, and engaged. We look toward many different things to satiate those desires. We look to various kinds of entertainment to engage our minds, sports teams or other groups to satisfy our tribal instincts, social media to feed our desire for connection, food to satisfy our desire for safety and sufficiency. We look to money for material comfort and upward mobility, to power for worthiness, to-do lists and technology for control, and many many other individual variations of these things. These are just some examples of ways that we try to inject meaning into our lives, ways to make us feel okay, ways to make us feel settled, safe, included and worthy. And what do these efforts lead to? *Do* they lead us to feel we have meaningful lives? *Do* we feel safe, settled, included and worthy on their account? Sometimes we do, in the short term. But just as often we just feel restless, empty, not quite there yet, stressed. Studies have shown that human beings are not actually very good at predicting what will make us happy and fulfilled over time(2). Martin Luther King Jr, in a speech during the Montgomery bus boycott entitled, “The Birth of a New Age(3)” spoke of the kind of leaders we need to propel our society forward, to midwife our society into a form that he called “the beloved community.” He said: “We need leaders not in love with money but in love with justice. Not in love with publicity but in love with humanity.” One thing I find interesting in this quote is that it implies a recognition that human beings must love something, must find meaning somewhere. So, the question becomes *what* are we in love with? What is driving us? What is the soul of our work? Where are we finding meaning? In money or justice? In publicity or the common good? Because, the problem is not so much looking in the wrong places, as if God can be found only in one place, in the temple or in church, as if some parts of this world are inherently good and others are not. The problem is loving our various distractions for themselves instead of how they can be infilled with God. Things like money and publicity are in actuality neutral; how we use them and why determines how present God will be in them. For example: I recently gave money to a GoFundMe campaign for a friend of a friend who was experiencing some challenges (I’m sure many of you have done similarly for other causes). This involved both money and publicity as referenced in the King quote above. However, money that contributes to the the well-being of others when they need it the most is, of course, filled with God’s love and usefulness. Likewise the publicity, the social media platform that allowed me to know about this person. For all of the flaws inherent in social media, (and there are many!) in that moment and for that purpose, it was Godly and heavenly. What an honor, a miracle really, to be able to help someone so materially and easily, with just a keystroke. We also know this: that various entertainments can have a usefulness that is as simple and rest and rejuvenation, and as complex as introducing us to new perspectives and ideas we can reflect upon. Likewise food; as much as it can be abused it is a conduit for care and love, for bringing people together, for presence and gratitude. Even power, something that the gospel teaches us to be incredibly suspicious of, when used to help others can be a good thing, when used properly it can birth us all into a better world. We know from the Christmas story that God can and does enter into this world in ways that we might not expect. That God can and does enter into this world through forms that we might dismiss or disparage. We recall from our Swedenborg reading, that this is in fact, part of the divine design. All in the universe, including us, have been created so that they can welcome the divine, can be prepared to be infilled with the Lord. When space is made, when all that is self-serving is cleared out, then God enters as if coming in to God’s own dwelling. This is what we prayed for in our Christmas Eve prayer from Sister Joyce Rupp, that *we* might all be God’s Bethlehem in the here and now. And this is our choice: We can love all those things that distract us from God as things in and of themselves, and they *will* fulfill their purpose, they *will* distract us. But when we see that God has created all things to be a vessel for partnership, then these things can be transformed. It is not about looking in the wrong places per se, because God can be, and is, in all those places that Mary and Joseph looked in first. God is in the marketplace, the playground, the library, the shopping mall, the office. Instead, it is about recognizing divine interconnectedness as the blueprint of the world. Jesus was in the temple bringing our attention to this divine interconnectedness. “Didn’t you know that I had to be in *my Father’s* house?” he said. In the Greek, there isn’t actually a noun at the end of this sentence, and translators will fill in the gaps with “my Father’s house”, or “about my Father’s business.” But really, the most literal translation “to be in that which is my Father’s.” It is more that Jesus was saying: Didn’t you know that I had to inhabit my divine inheritance? Didn’t you know that I had to be present to my relationship to Spirit? Didn’t you know that I had to be present to the divine order that calls us to partnership, that calls us to depth and connection? Jesus is calling us to see that loving God first, and loving the things God loves, infills and enlivens everything else, due to God’s living relationship with us and the world. It is when our allegiance is given to the distracting thing, then we will be lost and continually searching. When, for example, we love money for sake of having more and not for the good it can do, when we love publicity for the sake of self-gratification and not for purpose of connection and enlightenment, that is when we will have trouble finding God, because we have closed down our capacity for partnership. So, we return to the question: What are we in love with? For what we love will affect what we are able to discover. Mary and Joseph were clearly loving Jesus as their son, their boy, and so they looked for him in places where a twelve-year-old boy might be. Could we not imagine that Mary and Joseph hurried past the temple without looking inside, in a rush to retrace their steps. Jesus, however, with a burgeoning knowledge of his connection to the divine, was growing beyond their expectation, just as our Lord calls us to grow beyond our own expectation of where God should be, to see opportunities for partnership, for God’s indwelling, everywhere. Amen.
Readings: I Samuel 2:18-20, 26 18 But Samuel was ministering before the LORD—a boy wearing a linen ephod. 19 Each year his mother made him a little robe and took it to him when she went up with her husband to offer the annual sacrifice. 20 Eli would bless Elkanah and his wife, saying, “May the LORD give you children by this woman to take the place of the one she prayed for and gave to the LORD.” Then they would go home. 26 And the boy Samuel continued to grow in stature and in favor with the LORD and with people. Luke 2:41-52 41 Every year Jesus’ parents went to Jerusalem for the Festival of the Passover. 42 When he was twelve years old, they went up to the festival, according to the custom. 43 After the festival was over, while his parents were returning home, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but they were unaware of it. 44 Thinking he was in their company, they traveled on for a day. Then they began looking for him among their relatives and friends. 45 When they did not find him, they went back to Jerusalem to look for him. 46 After three days they found him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. 47 Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers. 48 When his parents saw him, they were astonished. His mother said to him, “Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you.” 49 “Why were you searching for me?” he asked. “Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?” 50 But they did not understand what he was saying to them. 51 Then he went down to Nazareth with them and was obedient to them. But his mother treasured all these things in her heart. 52 And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man. True Christianity 89 In the process of taking on a human manifestation, God followed his own divine design. …in the act of creating, God introduced his design into the universe as a whole and into each and every thing in it. Therefore in the universe and in all its parts God's omnipotence follows and works according to the laws of his own design…. Now, because God came down, and because he is the design, there was no other way for him to become an actual human being than to be conceived, to be carried in the womb, to be born, to be brought up, and to acquire more and more knowledge so as to become intelligent and wise. Therefore in his human manifestation he was an infant like any infant, a child like any child, and so on with just one difference: he completed the process more quickly, more fully, and more perfectly than the rest of us do. …The Lord's life followed this path because the divine design is for people to prepare themselves to accept God; and as they prepare themselves, God enters them as if he were coming into his own dwelling and his own home… It is a law of the divine design that the closer and closer we come to God, which is something we have to do as if we were completely on our own, the closer and closer God comes to us. When we meet, God forms a partnership with us.
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 Readings: Psalm 28, Luke 1:39-45, Secrets of Heaven #545 (see below)
See also on Youtube Photo by Sebastian Voortman from Pexels This week we will take some time to center the character of Elizabeth. Elizabeth is introduced within the first five verses of the book of Luke and is the mother of John the Baptist, who we focused on last week. We learn that she is the wife of a priest named Zechariah; they are childless and quite old. But Elizabeth will soon enter into the biblical tradition of miraculous pregnancies. An angel appears to Zechariah to tell him that Elizabeth will conceive and bear a son, and they are to call him John. “And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to make ready people for the Lord.” (v17) And soon, just as the angel said, Elizabeth falls pregnant. After a few months, Elizabeth’s relative, Mary, comes to her with her own miraculous story. Mary is pregnant too, the miracle being not her age, but that her womb will grow the earthly body of the living God. The beauty of this story is in its mystery. All Mary needed to do was say an initial greeting: “Hello, Elizabeth….!?” as we all might do at the door of a trusted friend. And the baby John, growing, developing, in his quiet and dark space, was shocked awake by the sound. Something about the call of Mary’s voice activated the Holy Spirit within John, and we are told the baby “leaped for joy.” It is hyperbole, of course. But it serves to illustrate the mystical connection between Jesus and John, one that will be so beautifully illustrated when John baptizes Jesus at the Jordan river some thirty years later. In this moment though, despite the baby’s leaping, it is Elizabeth who gives voice to the movement of the spirit with what are sometimes called her “four oracles.” First, she declares the blessedness of Mary. This blessedness, which seems so clear to us now, was patently ridiculous then. Mary was unmarried, and we can imagine what kind of tumult her pregnancy was going to cause her family, and her betrothed, Joseph. Mary was insignificant in the scheme of things; a teenager of no particular family or reputation, an oppressed minority under the thumb of a brutal empire. From an earthly perspective, her life was about to fall apart. But Elizabeth declares her blessed. Second, she affirms the identity of Mary’s child. Mary is about to sing her Magificat, her hymn about what God is going to do with her, how Jesus will affect a mighty change in the power structures of the world. But even before that, Elizabeth affirms that Mary is, that someone like Mary could be, the vessel for that kind of change. And, she affirms the identity of Jesus but though Mary, using the term Mother of my Lord, lifting up the fact that God chose to work through women in a patriarchal society. Third, she interprets the leap of her baby within her. With all that we have already said, that in earthly terms Mary’s pregnancy of not a good thing, that it is ridiculous to think that someone like Mary could be so pivotal, into circumstances under which we would all be aghast and overwhelmed and unbelieving, Elizabeth speaks of joy. And in a much more elemental way than “this good news for you makes me happy.” She speaks of what God is doing in electric terms, of life’s deep knowledge that God always reaches out to us and that this is good. She gives words to the fact that in the quantum space between sound and cell there was a communication, there was a missive of love that we call spirit. And it caused a reaction that Elizabeth called joy. The animation of still-developing life recognizing life. And fourth, she declares another beatitude upon Mary for her faith. We don’t actually know the wholeness of Mary’s mental state at this time. She utters her sacred yes in the previous verses: “I am the Lord’s servant. May your word to me be fulfilled.” And soon she will sing of the possibilities in the future, but in the in-between, we can imagine she might have felt some worry. But Elizabeth lifts up Mary’s faith in God’s promises. We can read this as the promises that the angel fortold, of Jesus birth, but also Mary will soon sing of greater promises, of a just society, of full bellies, of the ascent of the humble rather than the arrogant. Mary has a faith around God’s intention for the world, and is willing to play her part in bringing this into being. This opportunity brings her joy and so she sings: My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior…” (Luke 1:46) Elizabeth becomes the conduit through which the joy in Mary and the joy in John are connected. It is amazing to think that this is the same rough and ready John the Baptist from our text last week, the one hurling epithets about vipers and warning about the winnowing fork and the fire. Today we find that the urgency of his call was born out of joy, was born out of an electric leaping in utero at the sound of Mary’s voice, and the promise that she represented. And Mary, born into a dangerous world of empire that we can hardly fathom now (but many in this world still can), accepting a mission that might well ostracize her, or impoverish her, and that would later require her family to flee as political refugees, into this reality she speaks of joy as well. If joy is possible for Mary, it is possible anywhere, and this is a radical hope. It communicates to us that we are made for joy. That the very existence of joy is a simple declaration of God’s original intention for us, for a good God would not make beloved children for any other purpose. But of course, if we are not feeling joy, that is not an indictment of us, that we are somehow defective, or defensive, or unfeeling. There are many reasonable and understandable reasons to not feel joyful. The challenge of the spiritual journey is to acknowledge the fact that we are made for joy, without also making the experience of joy an imperative in every moment. We must hold very gently the potential unhelpfulness of the question: If joy is a natural preordained state, then what am I doing or not doing that is getting in the way of it? There are times that this question is a useful one. Sometimes our ambition, or our distraction, or our selfishness gets in the way of the simple joy that is available to us when we quiet ourselves down, or when we open our eyes to what is already present, or when we serve someone other than ourselves. Sometimes we are looking for joy in the wrong places, and once we recognize that, we are freer to seek joy where it will actually find us. But other times, joy does not feel accessible at all, and this is not our fault. There is trauma and brokenness and loss in this world, and the appropriate and unavoidable reaction is often sadness, grief and lament. We need to recall that Elizabeth said: blessed is she, not joyful is she. Just as the beatitudes declare “blessed are those who are poor, who weep or hunger” as a way of expressing love, care and concern for those who are normally forgotten and marginalized, so too does Elizabeth’s beatitudes upon Mary pronounce a blessedness that is counter to her circumstances. The beatitudes of the gospels declare a state of inherent worthiness of each of our beings that does not depend upon our emotional state or our productiveness, and so too we hear a beatitude upon Mary that is anchored in a larger trust in God’s promises, a larger trust in God’s ultimate intentions, and not in her feeling in any given moment. It can be difficult to hold lament in one hand and trust in the other. Even now we might be feeling a mounting tension and uncertainty around rising covid cases, around the state of the world, or other events in our lives. But what we do know from our Swedenborg reading today, is that heavenly joy resides in our inmost recesses, in the deepest and most secret parts of our being. This capacity for joy is always with us. It is a part of God’s order of heaven and of life, part of the web of experience to which we are always connected. We won’t always feel it, and that is okay. Lament is the price of love, the price of moral concern for those around us. But we may also know that, even when it is quiescent, the capacity for joy is our baseline, an integral part of our operating instructions. At times, perhaps this capacity will come alive with a leap that we weren’t expecting. At times, this capacity will rest within us, softly waiting for a time it can be born. And so, we learn in Advent that we can trust in God’s promises, not even so much what God will do but what God has done already. Amen. Readings: Psalm 28 1 To you, LORD, I call; you are my Rock, do not turn a deaf ear to me. For if you remain silent, I will be like those who go down to the pit. 2 Hear my cry for mercy as I call to you for help, as I lift up my hands toward your Most Holy Place. 3 Do not drag me away with the wicked, with those who do evil, who speak cordially with their neighbors but harbor malice in their hearts. 4 Repay them for their deeds and for their evil work; repay them for what their hands have done and bring back on them what they deserve. 5 Because they have no regard for the deeds of the LORD and what his hands have done, he will tear them down and never build them up again. 6 Praise be to the LORD, for he has heard my cry for mercy. 7 The LORD is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and he helps me. My heart leaps for joy, and with my song I praise him. 8 The LORD is the strength of his people, a fortress of salvation for his anointed one. 9 Save your people and bless your inheritance; be their shepherd and carry them forever. Luke 1:39-45 39 At that time Mary got ready and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judea, 40 where she entered Zechariah’s home and greeted Elizabeth. 41 When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. 42 In a loud voice she exclaimed: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear! 43 But why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? 44 As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. 45 Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill his promises to her!” Secrets of Heaven #545 In order to teach me about the existence and nature of heaven and heavenly joy, the Lord has given me the opportunity to perceive the pleasures of heavenly joy frequently and for extended periods. Because I have learned these things by actually experiencing them, I possess the knowledge but cannot possibly put it into words. To offer just an idea of it: The countless pleasures and joys there, which come together to create a single experience shared by all, carry with them a certain emotion. Within that common experience, or that common emotion, are points of harmony among a boundless number of feelings. These individual points of harmony do not come clearly but only vaguely to our awareness, because our perception is extremely generalized. Even so, I was allowed to perceive that there were countless parts, organized in a way that can never be described. Those countless parts flow from the order that exists in heaven, which determines their nature. [2] The smallest individual elements of an emotion are organized in such a way that they are presented and sensed only as a collective whole, according to the capacities of the person who feels the emotion. In a word, every whole has an unlimited number of parts, organized in the most perfect way; every one of the parts is alive; and every one of them affects us, all the way to our inmost recesses. For the inmost recesses are where heavenly joy comes from  Readings: Zephaniah 3:14-20, Luke 3:7-18, True Christianity 587 (see below)
See also on Youtube Photo by santosh verma on Unsplash So today, finally, we get our Advent dose of John the Baptist. If two weeks ago we spoke the necessity of upheaval, here is John bringing home just that point and dismantling some of the ways we might try to get out of it. In the gospel of Luke, John is placed in the company of Israel’s great prophets, and he is described thus: As it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet: “A voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him. (Luke 3:4) And as we continue in our text for today, we hear exactly what John is telling everyone, what that voice in the wilderness is saying. It doesn’t start off well. The first thing he says to the crowd is “You brood of vipers!” He sarcastically wonders who tipped them off about the coming judgment so that they might all slither to him in a panic, wanting to be baptized and therefore saved. As much as we might deny it, we are already, most of us, laid bare by this observation. Who wouldn’t want the easy way? If there are some magic words to say, let’s say them, right? Further, we might wonder: what about my name/family/reputation? Can that get me to salvation? Nope. Neither can the crowd look to their ethnicity or their linage for automatic salvation, as John anticipates the “children of Abraham” doing. Such expediency of either kind is not the way of God’s kingdom. What is the way of God’s kingdom then? John tells the crowd to “Produce fruit in keeping with repentance.” The kingdom is about generativity and integrity. We are to produce fruit, we are to use our form and life to create something nourishing for others, and to recognize and repent for whatever it is that prevents us from doing so. By this point, the crowd seems pretty convinced. This is not surprising; We already know that John’s call to action was in line with the prophets of old, his language evoking long held images of fruitfulness that the children of Israel were more than familiar with. Moreover, they had already experienced what felt to them like God’s judgment in the form of exile centuries earlier; I’m sure they were sensitive to that history. So, they quickly turn to the question “What should we do then?” meaning “what does it look like to produce fruit in keeping with repentance?” And here, John gets delightfully concrete. As wild-eyed and eccentric as he is often portrayed, the John of this text means for the kingdom of God to be birthed in the *simple* actions of those around him, in their everyday interactions with each other. The gist of what he tells them is this: be generous to your neighbor and be honest with any power you are given. So, then the people started to get excited—we are told they were “waiting in expectation”—because it seemed like what John was calling them to was actually doable, and they began to wonder, is John the coming Messiah? He assures them he is not; his baptism is symbolic, and there is one coming who will baptize them with the Holy Spirit and fire. And here John returns to his apocalyptic language, likening God’s action to a winnowing fork. The stakes are heightened once more. The wheat will be gathered but the chaff will be burned up in an “unquenchable fire.” Thus our text is ended with this verse: “And with many other words John exhorted the people and proclaimed the good news to them.” Um, good news? Which part? The unquenchable fire? The axe at the root of the tree? The part about being a viper? It is more than a little funny to hear John’s preaching and call it good news, especially since we usually associate good news as something of either emotional or material benefit to us. How can God’s judgment be considered good news? How can we rejoice or be grateful or excited when we see the axe or the winnowing fork coming? We often instead feel fear, which is understandable. There is a reason that much of progressive Christianity focuses on preaching God’s love and not God’s judgment. Judgment in the wrong hands is abusive. Many times those in authority take it upon themselves to judge, from and for themselves and their own notions of acceptability, rather than looking to God’s character and nature in doing so, using single bible verses or passages to wound and bludgeon, without grounding such judgment in either context or universal spiritual principles. The church has much to repent for in in the ways that it has judged others. And there is another reason we shy away from judgment sometimes. Judgment is uncomfortable. No one wants to be told what they are doing wrong. Especially when such judgment challenges our long-held notions of order, privilege, and power. But the issues that we humans may have with judgement cannot do not do away with the fact that God is not only infinitely loving but also infinitely just. In the words of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel: “All prophecy is one great exclamation! God is not indifferent to evil. God is always concerned. He is personally affected by what man does to man. He is a God of pathos. This is one of the meanings of the anger of God; the end of indifference.” (1) God cannot be indifferent to the things that prevent us from being in true relationship with God and each other. The being of God demands justice. The character of God strives for justice. And so, God’s lack of indifference necessitates judgment. That can make us feel uncomfortable, or even afraid. Again, this is not an inherently a bad thing. In the words of Heschel again: “a sense of comfort is no standard for Truth.” (2) If we always went by our sense of comfort, we would never learn and grow. We might think of the lobster. The lobster’s hard shell cannot grow bigger; it must be shed for the lobster itself to grow, and that means for a moment the lobster has to lose its defenses, must endure discomfort and vulnerability in order to proceed to its next stage of life. This is what God’s judgment is for; so that we might be reformed, so that we might be taken apart for the purpose of being put back together, so that we might grow beyond that which we are. God’s judgment is a gift. Now, honestly, it doesn’t always feel like a gift, not at all. It often feels like like fire burning us up. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t good for us. Judgment shakes us awake, reveals to us how our actions are affecting others and by extension ourselves. For God, judgment is for the purpose of clarity, for the purpose of truth. Divine Love wants us to be able to see clearly. So Divine Love’s judgment is a revealing, never a condemnation. *We* can choose whether or not to condemn *ourselves* based on our reaction to that revealing. When it is revealed to us that we are hurting someone else, either by our action or our inaction, we are urged to pay attention, we are urged to no longer be indifferent. This is what is communicated in our Swedenborg reading for today: that unless we make an active effort, our earthly desires will just naturally dictate the way we think about things. For the love of self and the world, We will justify our actions in whatever way we can, we will distance ourselves from thinking about consequences for the sake of our comfort. This is not even mustache-twirling evil, this is run of the mill, everyday thoughtless evil. We all do it. So, we are given the gift of God’s judgment, we are given the gift of God’s complete inability to not care about us being willfully blind. This is the symbolism of John’s baptism of water. Water corresponds to divine truth, and it cleanses us of our evils by making them clear to us. But clarity on its own is not sufficient. We are also urged to act. We know that we are no longer being indifferent when our actions change. This is the baptism to come, the baptism of the holy spirit and fire. The baptism of illumination from the holy spirit, and of fire from divine love, working in concert to regenerate us, to birth us into loving action. God’s judgment is not meant to debilitate us but rather to rattle us into seeing possibility, to open us up into being a vessel for love. And so, in between bouts of apocalyptic hyperbole, we get John the Baptist telling us delightfully ordinary ways to love. And this is of course, why we are asked to consider these texts during Advent, why we are asked to sit here all awkward and uncertain with John the Baptist rather than cozy in the stable with the manger. We sit here in this in-between space of expectation because we must not forget how disruptive the Lord’s birth really is. God is not and cannot be indifferent to our flaws and our walls and our temper tantrums and our fears, and so the birthing of God into our lives will involve the sweeping away of these things. When we welcome the baby, we welcome that disruption, that holy beautiful disruption. But it is not a disruption for the sake of chaos, it is a disruption of the sake of transformation. It is not a disruption that will send us flailing and twirling unmoored into an empty universe, it is a disruption held firmly within the arms of God, the womb of God. We need not fear. We just need to breathe and let ourselves be born. Through most of his book, the prophet Zephaniah preaches a mighty destruction, a mighty upheaval. But then all of sudden, he also preaches a mighty song of hope, restoration and love. “At that time”, says the Lord, “I will gather you; at that time I will bring you home.” God’s judgment is for the purpose of bringing us home to ourselves, a vision and a home that God believes in. Amen.
Readings: Zephaniah 3:14-20 14 Sing, Daughter Zion; shout aloud, Israel! Be glad and rejoice with all your heart, Daughter Jerusalem! 15 The LORD has taken away your punishment, he has turned back your enemy. The LORD, the King of Israel, is with you; never again will you fear any harm. 16 On that day they will say to Jerusalem, “Do not fear, Zion; do not let your hands hang limp. 17 The LORD your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.” 18 “I will remove from you all who mourn over the loss of your appointed festivals, which is a burden and reproach for you. 19 At that time I will deal with all who oppressed you. I will rescue the lame; I will gather the exiles. I will give them praise and honor in every land where they have suffered shame. 20 At that time I will gather you; at that time I will bring you home. I will give you honor and praise among all the peoples of the earth when I restore your fortunes before your very eyes,” says the LORD. Luke 3:7-18 7 John said to the crowds coming out to be baptized by him, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? 8 Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. 9 The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.” 10 “What should we do then?” the crowd asked. 11 John answered, “Anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none, and anyone who has food should do the same.” 12 Even tax collectors came to be baptized. “Teacher,” they asked, “what should we do?” 13 “Don’t collect any more than you are required to,” he told them. 14 Then some soldiers asked him, “And what should we do?” He replied, “Don’t extort money and don’t accuse people falsely—be content with your pay.” 15 The people were waiting expectantly and were all wondering in their hearts if John might possibly be the Messiah. 16 John answered them all, “I baptize you with water. But one who is more powerful than I will come, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 17 His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” 18 And with many other words John exhorted the people and proclaimed the good news to them. True Christianity 587 The First Phase in Our Being Generated Anew Is Called "Reformation"; It Has to Do with Our Intellect. The Second Phase Is Called "Regeneration"; It Has to Do with Our Will and Then Our Intellect The evils we are born with are in the will that is part of our earthly self; this earthly will pressures the intellect to agree with it and to have thoughts that harmonize with its desires. Therefore if we are to be regenerated, this has to happen by means of our intellect as an intermediate cause. This process draws on pieces of information that our intellect receives, first from our parents and teachers, and later from our reading the Word, listening to preaching, reading books, and having conversations. The things that our intellect receives as a result are called truths…Truths teach us who to believe in, what to believe, and also what to do and what to will… …During the phase called our reformation, we come to mentally see and admit that evil is evil and goodness is good, and make the decision to choose what is good. When we actually try to abstain from evil and do what is good, the phase called our regeneration begins.  Readings: 1 Samuel 2:1-10, Luke 1:46-53, True Christianity 394, 395(3) (see below)
See also on Youtube Photo by Mikhail Nilov from Pexels We’ve been jumping around in the Bible a little lately. We spent some time in the book of Ruth, then fast forwarded to the end of King David’s reign. Now we jump back to the days closer to the time of Ruth again, to hear a song of praise from a woman named Hannah. To set the context: Hannah was to become the mother of the great prophet Samuel. But as we begin 1 Samuel, we find that she is the beloved wife of a man named Elkanah and she is also barren. She yearns for a son, especially since Elkanah’s other wife had many children, and was very nasty to Hannah on that account. So, Hannah went to pray at a holy place named Shiloh. She prayed so intensely but silently that the priest Eli thought she was drunk. But once she unburdened herself to him, he added his prayer to hers, and soon she found herself with child. In gratitude, when her son was weaned, she returned him to Shiloh and to Eli, so that his life might be given in service to the Lord. It is at this point, that she sends another prayer up to God, the one we hear in our text today. She speaks of rejoicing and of praise, but most significantly she speaks of reversal. She speaks of those with power and strength being humbled, and of those who are empty and vulnerable being lifted up. She speaks of the fact that God is in the business of resurrection, of being present to those who suffer and enacting a change in their circumstances. She sings a song of God’s providence and care for human beings. Like many instances in the Hebrew Scriptures, the story and words of her as an individual character also speaks to the trajectory of the Israelite people as a whole. Hannah’s words are echoed many books later in Mary’s song, often called The Magnificat. The similarities are obvious. Both are praising God after a miraculous pregnancy, both are drawing attention to the transformation of their lowly state into a triumphant one. Their vulnerabilities are slightly different: Hannah was older and married and despairing due to her barrenness, suffering due to the expectation that women would bear children, and the fact that their worthiness was often tied to their fertility. Mary was younger, inconsequential, as yet unmarried with no real status, a Jew under Roman rule, a nobody. But both received an invitation into a different reality, and both recognized what God was doing. That when God acts, there is always a necessary upheaval. Swedenborg writes that our love is our life; it is what drives and motivates us.(1) So of course, the quality of that love, *what* we love, determines the direction we are going. And as we heard in our reading today, he organizes the kinds of human love into four main categories: Loving the Lord, loving others, loving the self, and loving the world. What is key, is that none of these loves, even the last two, are inherently bad, rather, it is the order that they are in that counts. Of course we should love ourselves; God wants us to feel self-confidence and self-worth, because we are beloved in God’s eyes. We should all see ourselves as God sees us. And of course we should love the world, not only the magnificence of creation but the ingenuity and the goodness of the societies that humans have built together. God blesses human striving and learning and making. But problems come when love of self and the world are constantly and unreasonably put first all the time. These loves then become shadow versions of themselves. A habitual centering of our selfhood and our benefit above others, a habitual coveting of worldly possessions and wealth and reputation; this is an inversion of God’s wise and loving divine order. That order of things, as Hannah and Mary both knew, will lead to a barrenness of the spirit. Yet, how easy it is for the order to get out of whack! How easy for us personally, and collectively! How easy it is to be courted and seduced by ideologies of superiority and accumulation! To believe it is a good thing to put our own interest ahead of others because we have come to believe the other is deficient or dangerous in some way. To believe it is a good thing to accumulate as much as possible just because we can, or because we think it demonstrates our cleverness. To believe it is a good thing to win at any cost because our cause is so righteous. To believe it is a good thing to never change our minds, or be open to learning, because certainty is strength and openness is weakness. But none of those ways of thinking are the gospel. None of those things are what is communicated by the story of Advent. A sweet and cooing baby in the manger is only part of the story. The rejoicing and the angels and the gift-giving are only part of the story. The main part of the story is that God’s providence for us always involves a necessary upheaval, the work of uprooting love of self and the world when they have settled in the wrong order and planting them back where they belong, as a support for mutual love. Even a welcome pregnancy is still an upheaval, it is just one we are expecting and waiting for. And this is why the Advent lectionary usually includes a healthy amount of John the Baptist. His whole deal is “get ready, prepare the way.” He doesn’t mean settle in with a cup of cocoa. He means get ready for a necessary upheaval. He means prepare yourself for the work of changing what needs to be changed. Both women’s songs come during a time when Israel was struggling. In Hannah’s time, Israel was still a nation of tribes, suffering under corruption and disunity. In Mary’s time, Israel was captive under Roman rule, no longer captain of its own fate. Yet, into these troubling circumstances, these women spoke of a God who saw those struggles and cared about them, who stepped in to support a change of circumstances. Hannah would give birth to Samuel, a great prophet, who would preside over the establishment of Israel as a kingdom. Mary would give birth to Jesus, who would transform our ideas about God and jumpstart a new religious movement. But we must notice though, that God doesn’t just change the circumstances themselves, wave a magic wand that suddenly makes everything perfect. God supports change by uplifting the process of new life, of birth. In each of these stories a child is born, who would go on to make choices that would have an amazing impact. So too is the picture of our inner lives. God doesn’t just change the order of our loves like moving chess pieces on a board. Let’s be honest, we would just move them right back to where they were. God steps in by helping us to take advantage of situations where we can grow. God steps in by saying to us, “Would you like to grow this new life inside of you? Here is a way that you can do it. Do you accept?” And the choice is ours. We can choose whether or not to give birth to something new that will change the way we see the world, and the way that we act within it. And the way that we act within the world, collectively, makes a difference to all of us. What is so moving about Hannah and Mary’s songs is that they are not just talking about their own journey, they are not just talking about individual people, but systems of power. He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap. Those who were full hire themselves out for food, but those who were hungry are hungry no more (1 Samuel 2:5, 8). This speaks to physical, social and spiritual realities all at the same time. The necessary upheavals in our own spirit play out in the choices that we make, and the choices that we make act together to create the world we live in. This is what makes scripture so powerful, that we can see the levels of connection. We can see that Hannah and Mary are speaking of themselves *and* Israel, as well as speaking of us and our own time. We can see that the workings of our own spirit, our own strivings and stumblings and triumphs, they are connected to the same things in our world of now, and the so the mighty question of Advent is not “how will be celebrate the birth of our Lord?” but “how will I be changed by it?” What necessary upheaval will we say yes to this year? But those who stumbled are armed with strength (I Samuel 2:2:4). This is the promise of Advent, a promise that we all need, this year more than ever. The life of the spirit, the discipline of the life intentionally lived in relationship with spirit, is the acceptance of the necessity of upheaval. There are times, like Hannah, when we are praying fervently for it, knowing it needs to come, making ourselves ready. And there are time we are more like Mary, surprised and puzzled to find it on our doorstep. But either way, the Advent call is to take a deep breath and say “Yes Lord: Reinvent me according to your will.” My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior (Luke 1:46-47). Amen. (1) Emanuel Swedenborg, Divine Providence #78 Readings: 1 Samuel 2:1-10 1 Then Hannah prayed and said: “My heart rejoices in the LORD; in the LORD my horn is lifted high. My mouth boasts over my enemies, for I delight in your deliverance. 2 “There is no one holy like the LORD; there is no one besides you; there is no Rock like our God. 3 “Do not keep talking so proudly or let your mouth speak such arrogance, for the LORD is a God who knows, and by him deeds are weighed. 4 “The bows of the warriors are broken, but those who stumbled are armed with strength. 5 Those who were full hire themselves out for food, but those who were hungry are hungry no more. She who was barren has borne seven children, but she who has had many sons pines away. 6 “The LORD brings death and makes alive; he brings down to the grave and raises up. 7 The LORD sends poverty and wealth; he humbles and he exalts. 8 He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap; he seats them with princes and has them inherit a throne of honor. “For the foundations of the earth are the LORD’s; on them he has set the world. 9 He will guard the feet of his faithful servants, but the wicked will be silenced in the place of darkness. “It is not by strength that one prevails; 10 those who oppose the LORD will be broken. The Most High will thunder from heaven; the LORD will judge the ends of the earth. “He will give strength to his king and exalt the horn of his anointed.” Luke 1:46-53 46 And Mary said: “My soul glorifies the Lord 47 and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, 48 for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant. From now on all generations will call me blessed, 49 for the Mighty One has done great things for me— holy is his name. 50 His mercy extends to those who fear him, from generation to generation. 51 He has performed mighty deeds with his arm; he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts. 52 He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble. 53 He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty. 54 He has helped his servant Israel, remembering to be merciful 55 to Abraham and his descendants forever, just as he promised our ancestors.” True Christianity #394 and #395(3) There Are Three Universal Categories of Love: Love for Heaven; Love for the World; and Love for Ourselves We are starting with these three categories of love because they are universal and fundamental to all types of love and because goodwill has something in common with each of the three. Love for heaven means love for the Lord and also love for our neighbor. Love for heaven could be called love for usefulness, because both love for the Lord and love for our neighbor have usefulness as their goal. 395[3] When these three categories of love are properly prioritized in us, they are also coordinated in such a way that the highest love, our love for heaven, is present in the second love, our love for the world, and through that in the third or lowest love, our love for ourselves. In fact, the love that is inside steers the love that is outside wherever it wants. Therefore if a love for heaven is present in our love for the world and through that in our love for ourselves, with each type of love we accomplish useful things that are inspired by the God of heaven. …if these three loves are prioritized in the right way, they improve us, but if they are not prioritized in the right way, they damage us and turn us upside down.  Readings: 2 Samuel 23:1-7, True Christianity #490 and #440 (see below)
See also on Youtube Photo by Johannes Plenio from Pexels So today we hear a text centered in the final period of King David’s life. We spent the last few weeks in the book of Ruth, the story of a loyal Moabite woman who followed her mother-in-law to Israel, and became David’s great-grandmother, establishing kindness as central to the linage of a great king, rather than purity. Now we fast forward past a couple of generations, past the great prophet Samuel and the tragic King Saul, to the end of King David’s reign. And we hear in our text what are called his “Last Words.” Now, if you keep reading in 2 Samuel, and I Kings, you’ll see that David doesn’t actually die quite yet. He continues long enough to establish his son, Solomon on the throne, and in truth, his actual final words are to Solomon, giving him advice for his future reign. The text in 2 Samuel is David’s final public words, his final prophetic utterance as God’s anointed, and as author of many psalms, his final work of art and praise. For we remember, David was once a young boy who played the harp so beautifully that it calmed the troubled King Saul. However, as we read the text, we certainly might pause in puzzlement. We might wonder, how can David say that the spirit of Lord spoke through him, how can David speak of ruling over people in righteousness and in the fear of God, and having a house right with God, when David himself undertook gross abuses of his power, the consequences of which played out in the bloody disarray of his family in the final years of his reign? There is a real tension that exists in the Hebrew scriptures around the exultation of King David, who was a terribly imperfect person and ruler. In fact, throughout the bible as a whole, there are many more imperfect characters than there are model ones, and as we learned through our study of the book of Ruth, even the stories of the model characters are more complicated than they might first seem. David said: “If my house were not right with God, surely he would not have with me an everlasting covenant, arranged and secured in every part; surely he would not bring to fruition my salvation…” It might chafe to hear David speak so, the first part being such an obvious glossing over of the disarray we will only need to turn the page to find. This is a truth filtered through the ego of a king, through the fuzzy lens of nostalgia and through royal deference. But what is it trying to communicate at its core? That the existence of God’s covenant with us really doesn’t have anything to do with how good we are. Now, the efficacy of the covenant certainly does, but not its existence. Can you imagine what would happen if the covenant depended on our perfection? It quite simply would not exist at all. The everlasting covenant is not centered in human power or will in any way, it is centered in God’s. And God is steadfast, period. The covenant will remain, and God promised that way back with Noah and the rainbow. Thank goodness, for we will all continue to screw up in ways both new and exciting as well as habitual and everyday. Is our house right with God? I’m sure there are many ways I’m we can all convict ourselves, large and small. David’s house was certainly not right with God, in the sense that nothing needed to be improved. But it was right enough in spirit, even if there was much to be desired in execution. David was not unrepentant on the whole; he had learned many things along the way. And what he had learned was this: The God of Israel spoke, the Rock of Israel said to me: When one rules over people in righteousness, when he rules in the fear of God, he is like the light of morning at sunrise on a cloudless morning, like the brightness after rain that brings grass from the earth. What does this communicate? That while the existence of the covenant is never in question, that the chance to live into the covenant is never in question, the efficacy of the covenant, what it produces, is not guaranteed. When we consciously align ourselves with God’s purposes and intention, clarity and generativity are brought forth. David uses nature metaphors to express what the quality of ideal Godly rule looks like, and by extension, what it looks like when we all live into the covenant. That dawn light filled with color that seems to hold infinite possibility within it; it’s like that. The way the earth glistens and smells alive after a rain, the way green shoots respond and push upward; it’s like that. Who wouldn’t want to live their life within that kind of moment? But a couple of notes: first, the *fear* of God. I think we can safely read that as a reverence or an awe of God, rather than actual fear. God doesn’t not wish to evoke fear from us, even if that were to mean we stayed in line. A reverence though, a holy awe, that kind of stance puts us in our place but in a good way, one that keeps us open rather than closed and cramped, one that naturally invites gratitude rather than grievance. And second, notice that we are not promised that we will get what we want. Living into the covenant, aligning ourselves with God - the text tells us what that is like, not what it will get us. It is like the quality of being in the dawn of a day, it is like being able to see clearly, it is like feeling nourished and ready to burst into growth. Those are all qualities of life that are very different to the sense of “life going well” or success in earthly terms or getting what we desire, even if we what we desire is good and reasonable. David misunderstood many things, but he understood the most important thing. He needed to keep returning to God, he needed to keep God at the center of his rule and his life. David was trying. Not always succeeding, but trying. Many of the kings that would come after him would not have even that barest quality. They would nakedly, plainly, chase after their own self-interest time and again. The key, the only key, to living into the covenant, is the quality of openness that de-centers our selfhood and centers God instead. This is not so much an act of submission as it is an act of inoculation. There is such a thing as a healthy selfhood; God has given us that gift. But, it only comes if are willing to give it up, if we refuse to cling to it. Habitual self-centering, instead, little by little builds a precarious and desperate type of success; it will never be enough, it can never countenance it’s own limit, and so it turns into something that David likens to thorns, something that in the words of one of my commentaries, “chokes life and causes pain.” We heard similar language in our Swedenborg reading: that a focus on self leads to “a stifling and an extinction of love for the Lord and love for our neighbor.” These are our options, in essence. Do we want to be the ground that lets life arise, or the thorn that chokes it? And so we find ourselves in the week of Thanksgiving, where we intentionally practice gratitude in community with each other. What I like about where this text is placed in the lectionary calendar is that it identifies not only what we can be grateful for, but how gratitude naturally arises. For it is one thing to make a list and say thank you; this act of gratitude de-centers the self for a moment, and that is good. But the ongoing spiritual work of Thanksgiving is to the de-center the self first and proactively so that gratitude can flow in every moment, so that our natural inclination is to look away from our ego and give thanks. And so we say thank you to our steadfast God, who has covenanted with us to always be present and open and ready. We are about to enter into Advent which makes much of “Do not be afraid.” We need not fear that our God is capricious, we need not fear that our shortcomings, or our history of shortcomings, will chase God away. They never can and never will, for God keeps God’s promises. And also, we receive an invitation, for the shape and form and quality of the covenant, like any agreement between parties, depends upon our partnership. What do we want it to be like? Perhaps like a Thanksgiving bounty brought in by people who work the earth with love, like a feast born from cooperation between guests, like a table with one more chair squeezed in, like a quiet and contemplative sufficiency. Perhaps like a clear sunrise, like morning, like the brightness after rain, like the grass that rises from the earth. That sounds good to me. Amen. Readings: 2 Samuel 23:1-7 1 These are the last words of David: “The inspired utterance of David son of Jesse, the utterance of the man exalted by the Most High, the man anointed by the God of Jacob, the hero of Israel’s songs: 2 “The Spirit of the LORD spoke through me; his word was on my tongue. 3 The God of Israel spoke, the Rock of Israel said to me: ‘When one rules over people in righteousness, when he rules in the fear of God, 4 he is like the light of morning at sunrise on a cloudless morning, like the brightness after rain that brings grass from the earth.’ 5 “If my house were not right with God, surely he would not have made with me an everlasting covenant, arranged and secured in every part; surely he would not bring to fruition my salvation and grant me my every desire. 6 But evil men are all to be cast aside like thorns, which are not gathered with the hand. 7 Whoever touches thorns uses a tool of iron or the shaft of a spear; they are burned up where they lie.” True Christianity 439 As Long as We Believe That Everything Good Comes from the Lord, We Do Not Take Credit for the Things We Do As We Practice Goodwill It is damaging for us to take credit for things we do for the sake of our salvation. Hidden within our credit-taking there are evil attitudes of which we are unaware at the time: denial that God flows in and works in us; confidence in our own power in regard to salvation; faith in ourselves and not in God; [the delusion that] we justify and save ourselves by our own strength; contempt for divine grace and mercy; rejection of reformation and regeneration by divine means; and especially disregard for the merit and justice of the Lord God our Savior, which we then claim as our own. In our taking credit there is also a continual focus on our own reward and perception of it as our first and last goal, a stifling and an extinction of love for the Lord and love for our neighbor, and total ignorance and unawareness of the pleasure involved in heavenly love (which takes no credit), while all we feel is our love for ourselves. True Christianity 440 The pleasure of doing good to their neighbor is their reward. The angels in heaven feel this pleasure. It is a spiritual pleasure that is eternal. It immeasurably surpasses every earthly pleasure. People who have this pleasure do not want to hear about getting credit - they love doing good and feel joy in it.  Readings: Ruth 3:1-11, 4:13-17, True Christianity 599 (see below)
Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash See also on Youtube Here we are in the third installment of our series on the book of Ruth. Let’s recap where we have been. Naomi is an Israelite women who goes to live in Moab due to famine. Her sons marry local Moabite women, one of whom was named Ruth. After a time, Naomi’s husband and sons die, and she has no choice but to return to Israel. She is bitter and feels forsaken by God. But, even though it means leaving her homeland, Ruth will not abandon Naomi, and so she travels to Israel with her. Once they arrive, they must contend with how they will survive. Ruth attempts to glean the leftovers from the harvest in the fields of a local wealthy landowner named Boaz. Boaz had heard of Ruth’s act of loyalty to Naomi and orders extra grain to be left behind for Ruth to collect. Naomi is glad to hear of this development, and points out that Boaz is related to her husband’s family and thus has a responsibly for their welfare. She calls him their guardian-redeemer, a specific term with both social and legal meanings. Today we hear the climax and the resolution of the story in chapters 3 and 4. Naomi has a plan for securing their future, and so she gives Ruth some very specific instructions. These instructions probably sound pretty strange to us now - uncovering feet? - and we might not really feel clear about what is happening. But what might confuse us a little in English is very plain in the Hebrew. The original text contains a lot of suggestive wordplay and euphemistic terms. Given Ruth’s model behavior in the previous chapters, our first instinct might be to resist what is suggested in the Hebrew text, to make her completely chaste, non-transgressive, uncalculating, and demure. But the fact is, Ruth takes a risk here, and acts outside of what might have been considered acceptable behavior in Israelite society. We might wonder: was it right for her to do so? Was it “right” for Naomi to ask Ruth to act in such a way? And what does “right” in this context even mean? Boaz must have been aware of his relationship to their family, and of his responsibility as their guardian-redeemer. Yet, as of Chapter 3, he had not done anything more than allow Ruth to glean a little extra grain. We might also ask: was he intending to act? Why was he taking so long? What would have happened if Ruth had done nothing? Was it not “right” for Ruth to call him to account, to remind him of his responsibility? Like many stories in the Bible, these characters are all very human, feeling real human emotions, acting with mixed human motives, trying their best within the context they are given, sometimes falling short, and sometimes bringing about miracles. As one of my commentaries notes: “We have to acknowledge that what Ruth did was scandalous in the eyes of the world, *and* that it was an act of loving kindness.”(1) It was an act that sought to take care of her mother-in-law, to alleviate her emptiness; it was an act that gently called a “pillar of Israelite society to responsibility”(2) as well as relationship, it was an act that would heal a family and begin a line that would culminate in one of Israel’s greatest leaders. And so the text prompts us to ask ourselves, in what ways might *we* be called to risk, might we be called to push against social norms in order to practice connective and covenantal love, what in the Hebrew is called hesed, love that enfolds people into community. Is there a place in our lives that is calling out for accountability, for relationship, for encouragement, for change, but we are constrained by what feels to us like social respectability, social expectations, and the embarrassment and fear associated with with pushing against those norms? Because, the next most important question to ask is: What occurs as a result of Ruth’s risk-taking? One thing, among many, is that Naomi experiences a reversal of her emptiness. Her overall and understandable bitterness drives the narrative of the first chapter. But by the end of the story, we find her heart is filled again. The narrative is signaling that her personal trajectory mirrors the trajectory of her people as a whole, that her grandchild, so precious to her in a personal way, will also play his part in leading a whole people towards redemption, as a link in King David’s familial line. An act of risk, courage and hope, grounded in hesed, that first *uncovers* and lays bare human vulnerability and need, and then culminates in the *recovery* of hope and meaning. The text aims to drive this home in its use of language. The Hebrew scriptures often like to juxtapose similar sounding words in order to contrast their meaning. In chapter 3, we notice the juxtaposition of the word gala, meaning uncover, reveal or remove, and gaal, meaning recover, redeem, or restore. In the words of my commentary again: the “narrator encourages the audience to consider the ways in which uncovering can lead to recovering - the redemption of what was lost.” (3) Ruth acts to uncover the feet of Boaz - and in the Hebrew this has a suggestive association. And yet, this uncovering leads to a recovering. Her vulnerability and his responsibility are uncovered, and into that place of need a relationship is formed, and dignity is recovered. Swedenborg writes about how the act of “uncovering” in the bible represents a removing of external things so that internal ones may be apparent(4). Often, external things (learned perspectives, attachments, anxieties, habits) get in the way of spiritual progress. But, as suggested in our Swedenborg reading, this is just part of the process, a process of redemption that has been built into the divine design. We are called to uncover the truth about ourselves, to quiet the ego long enough for truth to be revealed to us, and then to remove that which cannot serve love, cannot serve hesed. This act of faithful gala — uncovering— makes space for, makes a path for, gaal — restoration. And so as we consider divine design, and God’s intention for us, we might ask, where is God in the book of Ruth? Even though the narrative is dealing with very human problems and very human interactions, God’s presence is very much woven into the story as well. There are no prophets speaking God’s word directly, the settings are fields and roads and threshing floors rather than tabernacles or a burning bush, and yet God feels very close to this story, we see God within this story. The way God is known in the book of Ruth is through people. There is loss, and there is death and God responds with loyalty and hesed from a daughter-in-law. There is poverty and uncertainty and God responds with mutual relationship and kindness from one who can help. There is bitterness and perceived abandonment, and God responds with new birth and new life. In chapter 3, verse 9, Ruth asks Boaz to spread his garment, or his cloak over her. The word for cloak, kanap, is also the word for wing, and Boaz had previously used that word in chapter 2, when he praised Ruth for her loyalty “May you be richly rewarded by the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge.” We might wonder though, how much at the time he said this, was this some vague blessing, or did he consider the reality that many times the love of God becomes real and palpable through human decision. Ruth makes that connection clear to him, that if God’s wings are to give her refuge, that refuge in a physical sense must come through him. One of the ways that God’s love finds its way to us, is by the care and concern we show each other. And so we find ourselves back to asking the question: what is our part? We are all sometimes Naomi, sometimes Ruth, sometimes Boaz. Naomi’s bitterness was not where she began, or where she was destined to end up. She was taking a detour, a necessary and understandable one, one that we all take from time to time. But God’s wings were over her the entire time. May we all find the courage to step into our place in the divine process, the uncovering and the recovering, one that brings all people into redemption. Amen.
Readings: Ruth 3:1-11, 4:13-17 1 One day Ruth’s mother-in-law Naomi said to her, “My daughter, I must find a home for you, where you will be well provided for. 2 Now Boaz, with whose women you have worked, is a relative of ours. Tonight he will be winnowing barley on the threshing floor. 3 Wash, put on perfume, and get dressed in your best clothes. Then go down to the threshing floor, but don’t let him know you are there until he has finished eating and drinking. 4 When he lies down, note the place where he is lying. Then go and uncover his feet and lie down. He will tell you what to do.” 5 “I will do whatever you say,” Ruth answered. 6 So she went down to the threshing floor and did everything her mother-in-law told her to do. 7 When Boaz had finished eating and drinking and was in good spirits, he went over to lie down at the far end of the grain pile. Ruth approached quietly, uncovered his feet and lay down. 8 In the middle of the night something startled the man; he turned—and there was a woman lying at his feet! 9 “Who are you?” he asked. “I am your servant Ruth,” she said. “Spread the corner of your garment over me, since you are a guardian-redeemer of our family.” 10 “The LORD bless you, my daughter,” he replied. “This kindness is greater than that which you showed earlier: You have not run after the younger men, whether rich or poor. 11 And now, my daughter, don’t be afraid. I will do for you all you ask. All the people of my town know that you are a woman of noble character. 13 So Boaz took Ruth and she became his wife. When he made love to her, the LORD enabled her to conceive, and she gave birth to a son. 14 The women said to Naomi: “Praise be to the LORD, who this day has not left you without a guardian-redeemer. May he become famous throughout Israel! 15 He will renew your life and sustain you in your old age. For your daughter-in-law, who loves you and who is better to you than seven sons, has given him birth.” 16 Then Naomi took the child in her arms and cared for him. 17 The women living there said, “Naomi has a son!” And they named him Obed. He was the father of Jesse, the father of David. True Christianity 599 During the battles or conflicts within us, the Lord carries out an individual act of redemption, much like the all-encompassing redemption he brought about while he was in the world. While he was in the world, the Lord glorified his human manifestation, that is, made it divine, through battles and inner conflict. In a similar way within us individually, the Lord fights for us while we are undergoing inner conflict and conquers the hellish spirits who are assaulting us. Afterward he "glorifies" us, that is, makes us spiritual. After his universal redemption, the Lord restructured all things in heaven and in hell in accordance with the divine design. He does much the same thing in us after crises of the spirit - that is, he restructures all the things in us that relate to heaven and the world in accordance with the divine design.  Readings: Ruth 2:1-12, 15-20, True Christianity 126
See also on Youtube Photo by Henry & Co. from Pexels Today we hear about what happened to Naomi and Ruth as they settled into life in Bethlehem. Without husbands, and more specifically, without ancestral land, they had no way to support themselves other than gleaning from the fields of others, essentially collecting leftovers from the harvest. This is how Ruth meets Boaz, a wealthy landowner. Now, as we had heard a few weeks ago, the book of Leviticus stated that provision should be made for widows and foreigners, people exactly like Naomi and Ruth. And it seems that this is what Boaz had been doing and we can imagine that Ruth probably wasn’t the only one gleaning leftovers from the harvest. However, we hear in the text a particular kindness from Boaz: he instructs his workers to leave extra gleanings behind for Ruth to gather. When Naomi hears about the connection that Ruth made with Boaz, she is happy for more than one reason. Boaz is not some random benevolent landowner. He has a connection to their family, a connection that puts him in a position of responsibility for their welfare. She calls him their “guardian-redeemer.” This introduces another important theme in the book of Ruth: redemption. It is a theme that is explored at many levels. On one level, the term “guardian-redeemer” has specific meaning in Israelite law, one that has more to do with property and linage than with spirit or emotion. But we can also see that the book is exploring redemption in a deeper sense: how was Naomi going to be rescued from her bitterness? How might Ruth be rescued from a life of uncertainty and poverty and otherness? How might God be working for the benefit, the redemption, of the Israelite people? Scholars believe that the book of Ruth, while placed narratively in the time between the judges and the kings, was probably written in the days following the Israelites exile in Babylon, as commentary on how, and with what values, the Israelites might rebuild their nation. It was a book that spoke into the embodied redemption of beginning a society again. So I thought today might be a good time to explore the idea of redemption in a theological sense. We are just a few weeks away from entering the liturgical season of Advent, where we will hear plenty of “redeemer” language, as we tell the story of how God reached out into the world to be incarnated as a person like you and me. In the gospel of Luke, after meeting the baby Jesus, Zechariah sings “Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, because he has come to his people and redeemed them.” (Luke 1:68) A question we might have is: What does it mean to be redeemed? And how does a little baby born millennia ago redeem me now? To redeem something, in basic everyday terms, means to buy, recover or exchange something (like redeeming a coupon). The word redemption starts to bring in more existential shades of meaning, defined as deliverance, rescue or atonement. Both of these definitions start to give shape to our discussion: they reflect a situation of being or having one thing, and wanting or needing to have another. The word redemption describes the journey from the first state to the second. The term redeemer describes someone to enables that journey to occur. In the book of Ruth, we have our two main characters mired in a state of bitterness and poverty, and the story is tracing their journey from this first state into another different state, as we will see, an objectively better one. Boaz helps them on that journey, and is called their guardian-redeemer. Likewise, in Advent, we tell a similar story in terms of the whole of humanity. The gospel of John begins with themes of light and darkness. The world was a dark place, as were the hearts of people, and something needed to be done. Jesus, the light of the world, comes to help people on that journey of redemption. But often times, the theology of redemption is presented in very transactional terms. A lot of traditional Christian theology pictures a God who is angry because the people of the world are so sinful, with hearts so dark that they are not listening to all the ways that God has offered redemption before. And when people transgress, according to ancient religion, there must be a consequence, there must be a price paid to God. So, some Christian theologies say, that Jesus stepped in to pay that price for us, to pay the price due to God for our sins, then and forever more. The ultimate sacrifice, the ultimate act of redeeming that will last forever. So this is like if perhaps we decide we want to do a dine and dash. We eat a meal at a restaurant but leave without paying. So Jesus steps in to pay the bill, stopping the police from coming after us. However, Swedenborg has a different understanding of redemption. For, as kind and selfless an act as Jesus’ atonement our sins might have been, it is undergirded by untenable assumptions. For Swedenborg, it was impossible that God should be angry and vengeful. God can only be divinely loving and wise, mourning our evil choices but never despising us, and never demanding restitution for God’s own sake, only desiring a holistic accountability anchored in our transformation. And if God is not angry and vengeful, demanding a price for our transgressions, then the whole substitutionary atonement thing fall apart. And if it does, then was Jesus’ sacrifice all about? How was Jesus redeeming us if not paying our bill? Because what Swedenborg was seeing in his own religious circles, was people praising Jesus paying the bill, but continuing to dine and dash, because, you know, Jesus is paying the bill. And Swedenborg wondered how this could ever be what the divine wanted or intended. Where was the room, where was the imperative, for human emotional and spiritual development? Not surprisingly, Swedenborg, scientist that he was, was interested in the systemic questions. Why were people turning away from God? And what might God do to help us not sin in the future? Swedenborg’s spiritual experiences allowed him to see a broader view of the trajectory of humanity, within the context of our constant connection to the spirit. Heaven and hell are made up of people from this world, and they remain connected us who are still living. Which unfortunately means that the more people choose selfishness and domination as the anchor of their life, the stronger hell will be over time. Swedenborg explains that, in Jesus’ day, God needed to subdue hell for the sake of us all, and could have vanquished it by the power of the divine in seconds. But God continues to love all creatures forever, and so needed to put things in order in a way that still respected human autonomy and human life, even those who choose evil. So God, instead of solving things from outside of the process, entered into the process that has been ordained for us, became human, became a form that could actually be tempted by hell and used our common humanity as both a model for living and a way to overcome evil and the love of power. And so, this like instead of using explosives to clear a blocked drain by blowing the whole drain up, God became a plumber, clearing away the blockage with the appropriate tools, so allowing for the free flow of water once again, while preserving the structure of the drain. The way the God accomplished that clearing away, also had ongoing implications for each of our spiritual journeys. By entering into the process with us, God created a connection and a closeness that continues to serve us. Think about how much harder it would be to deal with a blocked drain if we: didn’t know that plumbers were a thing, didn’t know how to reach one, didn’t think they could make it to our house because they live too far away, didn’t have access to a phone. And think about how much more secure we feel when we know we have a good and competent plumber on speed dial who will always always respond. God saved us, redeemed us, as in moved humanity from one state to another, cleared the drain for us, by entering into a deeper relationship with us, by creating a new opportunity for connection and responsiveness. In this view, redemption is not just about transaction. Not just about our bill being paid. We human beings can suffer in a multitude of ways, both of our own creation, and completely not our own fault. And how we make the journey out of that suffering can be complicated. Our need is not always just forgiveness, sometimes our need is one of letting go, reframing, patience, evolution. And so redemption is a journey, and if God is to effect our redemption, to be our redeemer, God has to be on the journey with us, has to be responsive to what we need in the moment. Paying our bill is indeed be a good and kind thing in many a case, but is not sufficient for the totality of human spiritual development. The end goal, as we heard in our reading, is partnership with God. For that, we need more, and thankfully, God gave more. What kind of redemption will we be be seeing in the book of Ruth? We will see Boaz taking a sustained interest, waiting to hear about what Ruth needs, dealing with that particular specificity in their culture and situation, and doing so with kindness and respect. The story understands that redemption is indeed a journey, with many moving parts, actors and beneficiaries. Redemption built on relationship, built on partnership. It’s the more complicated way, but it bears so much fruit. Thanks be to God. Amen Readings: Ruth 2:1-12, 15-20 1 Now Naomi had a relative on her husband’s side, a man of standing from the clan of Elimelek, whose name was Boaz. 2 And Ruth the Moabite said to Naomi, “Let me go to the fields and pick up the leftover grain behind anyone in whose eyes I find favor.” Naomi said to her, “Go ahead, my daughter.” 3 So she went out, entered a field and began to glean behind the harvesters. As it turned out, she was working in a field belonging to Boaz, who was from the clan of Elimelek. 4 Just then Boaz arrived from Bethlehem and greeted the harvesters, “The LORD be with you!” “The LORD bless you!” they answered. 5 Boaz asked the overseer of his harvesters, “Who does that young woman belong to?” 6 The overseer replied, “She is the Moabite who came back from Moab with Naomi. 7 She said, ‘Please let me glean and gather among the sheaves behind the harvesters.’ She came into the field and has remained here from morning till now, except for a short rest in the shelter.” 8 So Boaz said to Ruth, “My daughter, listen to me. Don’t go and glean in another field and don’t go away from here. Stay here with the women who work for me. 9 Watch the field where the men are harvesting, and follow along after the women. I have told the men not to lay a hand on you. And whenever you are thirsty, go and get a drink from the water jars the men have filled.” 10 At this, she bowed down with her face to the ground. She asked him, “Why have I found such favor in your eyes that you notice me—a foreigner?” 11 Boaz replied, “I’ve been told all about what you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband—how you left your father and mother and your homeland and came to live with a people you did not know before. 12 May the LORD repay you for what you have done. May you be richly rewarded by the LORD, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge.” 15 As she got up to glean, Boaz gave orders to his men, “Let her gather among the sheaves and don’t reprimand her. 16 Even pull out some stalks for her from the bundles and leave them for her to pick up, and don’t rebuke her.” 17 So Ruth gleaned in the field until evening. Then she threshed the barley she had gathered, and it amounted to about an ephah. 18 She carried it back to town, and her mother-in-law saw how much she had gathered. Ruth also brought out and gave her what she had left over after she had eaten enough. 19 Her mother-in-law asked her, “Where did you glean today? Where did you work? Blessed be the man who took notice of you!” Then Ruth told her mother-in-law about the one at whose place she had been working. “The name of the man I worked with today is Boaz,” she said. 20 “The LORD bless him!” Naomi said to her daughter-in-law. “He has not stopped showing his kindness to the living and the dead.” She added, “That man is our close relative; he is one of our guardian-redeemers. ” True Christianity 126 Suffering on the cross was the final trial the Lord underwent as the greatest prophet. It was a means of glorifying his human nature, that is, of uniting that nature to his Father's divine nature. It was not redemption. There are two things for which the Lord came into the world and through which he saved people and angels: redemption, and the glorification of his human aspect. These two things are distinct from each other, but they become one in contributing to salvation. In the preceding points we have shown what redemption was: battling the hells, gaining control over them, and then restructuring the heavens. Glorification, however, was the uniting of the Lord's human nature with the divine nature of his Father. This process occurred in successive stages and was completed by the suffering on the cross. All of us have to do our part and move closer to God. The closer we come to God, the more God enters us, which is his part… The union itself [between the Lord's divine and human natures] was completed by the suffering on the cross, because this suffering was the final spiritual test that the Lord went through in the world. Spiritual tests lead to a partnership [with God]. During our spiritual tests, we are apparently left completely alone, although in fact we are not alone - at those times God is most intimately present at our deepest level giving us support. Because of that inner presence, when any of us have success in a spiritual test we form a partnership with God at the deepest level. In the Lord's case, he was then united to God, his Father, at the deepest level.  Readings: Ruth 1:1-22, Secrets of Heaven 1038 (see below)
See also on Youtube Photo by Austin Neill on Unsplash The book of Ruth is a powerful and emotional story. Even though it is told with relative economy, the text is filled with wordplay and callbacks that are often lost in English translations. It explores themes of lovingkindness, community, immigration, loyalty, responsibility and redemption. And it is by no means straightforward; interpreters continue to argue about what the book is trying to say, even today. It is a story grounded in an ancient context, many details of which are lost to us now, but it also functions as an extended parable, one in which we can see even our modern selves reflected. We will be spending three weeks looking at the book of Ruth together, and today we start at the beginning of the story. We are introduced to the main characters: Naomi, and her daughter in law for whom the book is named - Ruth. We are told that the story takes place during the times of the judges, the period that followed the leadership of Moses and Joshua, but before Saul is established as the King of Israel. The narrative for Naomi starts out with difficulty: she and her family need to travel to Moab due to a famine in the land of Israel, but, even in this time of famine, Naomi’s personal life is full. She has a husband and two fine sons. And while her husband dies, in short order, her sons find wives in Moab and it seems that all is good. But then suddenly, Naomi is beset by further tragedy. Both her sons die, without heirs. This is a very challenging situation for a women in ancient times, particularly for a widow. Naomi would have depended on her husband and sons for survival. So, she plays the only card she has left, to return home to Israel, her homeland, where thankfully, the famine was now over. These are the first few instances of a running theme of the book: reversals and returns. Naomi’s life went from full in a time of emptiness to empty in a time of fullness; an enormous upheaval. And in times of such upheaval, we search for solid ground, we think about what we can and should return to, in order to make sense of our lives. And so this first chapter is full of the notion of returning. Naomi makes plans to return to her homeland, and she urges her daughters in law to return to their mother’s houses. The implication is, of course, that they are still young enough to marry again. If Naomi had more sons, Israelite law would have required them to marry their brother’s widows, but as Naomi colorfully explains, she has no more sons and certainly will not bare any more. Orpah and Ruth should go home and begin their lives again. Neither want to. It is a testament to the life they all must have had as a family together that they resist. Eventually though, Orpah is persuaded. But not Ruth. Ruth makes a stand for her relationship with Naomi and refuses to leave her. This speaks to another theme in the story: hesed. Hesed is an extremely important spiritual principle in the Hebrew scriptures. It is often translated as lovingkindness, but that word really only gets to about half of the meaning. Yes, it is about lovingkingness, but specifically the kind of lovingkindness that draws people into relationship with each other, that binds them together as kin and community, that speaks to their responsibility to each other. It is sometimes described as covenantal love, in that it is not pure sentiment, but rather a love that understands that it is enacted again and again over time. For this reason, it is sometimes translated as steadfast love, and is often used in describing God’s steadfast love to us. The idea being that as we experience God’s steadfast love, we are called to model and embody that love in our relationships with others. Naomi had already spoken of hesed in verse 8, that the Lord might treat Orpah and Ruth as kindly as they had treated her and her sons. She was invoking this notion of lovingkindness and connectedness within relationship as something that should happen to them over there, back in their mother’s houses, where in her mind they would clearly be back in the proper care of God. Naomi, it seems had exempted herself from hesed. And of course, why wouldn’t she? She had lost so very much, and she was bitter and empty. She felt like the Lord had forsaken her. She states: “the Lord’s hand has turned against me!” And so she drew herself outside of the reach of hesed, outside of the reach of God’s lovingkindness, outside of the reach of anyone’s lovingkindness. But Ruth disagreed. She was under no obligation stay, not by her society’s expectations, but still she re-drew the circle of hesed around Naomi. We hear Ruth not only say “Where you go I will go….” but also “Your people will be my people, and your God my God.” She is speaking not only of physical presence but also of identity. She weaves the two of them into relationship at a deep level, and in that moment, creates a community of two. She speaks into being an ongoing covenant between them. She speaks the language of our Swedenborg reading, whereby we are told that union with God comes from our willing reciprocation of love, the return of love to the Lord and the expansion of love towards others. Naomi won’t really be able to hear or feel the fullness of that gift of hesed for a while. At first, Naomi is so fully within her own bitterness that she basically ignores Ruth when they arrive back in Israel. But we cannot be too harsh with her, for that is just the way grief works sometimes. “The Almighty has made my life very bitter,” she laments. Our reversals of fortune, our losses in this life, are sometimes so very hard to take. They hollow us out, and it is hard to believe that we might ever experience fullness and meaning again. But as you might have already guessed, the story of Ruth will have something to say about that, and we will hear more as go. But for now, there is one more theme that is being introduced in this first chapter. As beautiful as Ruth’s sentiments are, this is not just simple story of kindness between two people. The context of the story speaks powerfully about insiders and outsiders and the purposes of God. This is a thread that runs throughout the entire Hebrew scriptures. Again and again, outsiders to the people of Israel are woven into the fabric of Israel’s story in important ways. Ruth was a Moabite, a people despised by Israel for generations. Perhaps this is a part of the kindness that Naomi offered in advocating for their separation. Surely, they both knew the difficulty that Ruth would have being a Moabite in Israel. We can now even more fully appreciate the act of courage that Ruth offers; in drawing the circle of hesed around Naomi, she placed herself in an uncertain position. As I preached two weeks ago, Israel’s God and Israel’s laws consistently advocated for the ethical treatment of foreigners, but as we all know even now, the distance between the ideal and the practice; that is where the hard work is. As the story progresses, this sense of Ruth being an outsider to Israel hovers over everything. I hope this doesn’t spoil things too much, but by the end of the book we will come to understand that this is not just a story about two random women. This is the story of King David’s ancestors, about how “King David’s family tree [is] rooted in the loyal behavior of a foreigner…”(1) and about how the purity of bloodline is much less important than loving, ethical and courageous behavior. And so the story begins with a reversal of the readers expectations: that someone designated an “outsider” would model hesed so touchingly. Now, at the end of the first chapter, with the characters and the stakes setup as they are, it might be fruitful to to ask: where do we see ourselves reflected? This need not be prescription, only observation. Which parts of ourselves are Naomi right now, emptied out? Which parts of ourselves believe we have somehow been placed outside the circle of hesed, or that we don’t deserve to be included? Which parts of ourselves feel like an outsider, or conversely wish to despise an outsider? Which parts of ourselves are willing to fight for relationship and community? This is the power of ancient story; that we might see ourselves looking back at us through the millennia, and we might know that God journeys with us both then and now. Amen. (1) The New Interpreter’s Bible, pg263 Readings: Ruth 1:1-22 1 In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land. So a man from Bethlehem in Judah, together with his wife and two sons, went to live for a while in the country of Moab. 2 The man’s name was Elimelek, his wife’s name was Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Kilion. They were Ephrathites from Bethlehem, Judah. And they went to Moab and lived there. 3 Now Elimelek, Naomi’s husband, died, and she was left with her two sons. 4 They married Moabite women, one named Orpah and the other Ruth. After they had lived there about ten years, 5 both Mahlon and Kilion also died, and Naomi was left without her two sons and her husband. 6 When Naomi heard in Moab that the LORD had come to the aid of his people by providing food for them, she and her daughters-in-law prepared to return home from there. 7 With her two daughters-in-law she left the place where she had been living and set out on the road that would take them back to the land of Judah. 8 Then Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, “Go back, each of you, to your mother’s home. May the LORD show you kindness, as you have shown kindness to your dead husbands and to me. 9 May the LORD grant that each of you will find rest in the home of another husband.” Then she kissed them goodbye and they wept aloud 10 and said to her, “We will go back with you to your people.” 11 But Naomi said, “Return home, my daughters. Why would you come with me? Am I going to have any more sons, who could become your husbands? 12 Return home, my daughters; I am too old to have another husband. Even if I thought there was still hope for me—even if I had a husband tonight and then gave birth to sons— 13 would you wait until they grew up? Would you remain unmarried for them? No, my daughters. It is more bitter for me than for you, because the LORD’s hand has turned against me!” 14 At this they wept aloud again. Then Orpah kissed her mother-in-law goodbye, but Ruth clung to her. 15 “Look,” said Naomi, “your sister-in-law is going back to her people and her gods. Go back with her.” 16 But Ruth replied, “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. 17 Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the LORD deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me.” 18 When Naomi realized that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped urging her. 19 So the two women went on until they came to Bethlehem. When they arrived in Bethlehem, the whole town was stirred because of them, and the women exclaimed, “Can this be Naomi?” 20 “Don’t call me Naomi,” she told them. “Call me Mara, because the Almighty has made my life very bitter. 21 I went away full, but the LORD has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi? The LORD has afflicted me; the Almighty has brought misfortune upon me.” 22 So Naomi returned from Moab accompanied by Ruth the Moabite, her daughter-in-law, arriving in Bethlehem as the barley harvest was beginning. Secrets of Heaven 1038 The fact that a pact [or a covenant] is the presence of the Lord in love and charity is evident from the nature of a pact. Every covenant exists to tie people together; that is, the goal is for people to live in mutual friendship, or in a state of love. This is why marriage too is called a compact or covenant. The Lord cannot unite with us except in love and charity, because the Lord is love itself and mercy; he wants to save us all and draw us to heaven — that is, to himself — with a powerful force. So we can all see and conclude that no one could ever be united to the Lord except through that which is the Lord, or in other words, without doing as he does, or making common cause with him. To do this is to love the Lord in return and to love our neighbor as ourselves. This is the only means of union. This is the most essential element of a compact. When union does grow out of it, then the Lord, of course, is present.  Readings: Leviticus 19:1-6, 9-20, 32-37, Apocalypse Revealed 586:3 (see below)
See also on Youtube Photo credit: Maria Orlova from Pexels Something that may have been on our minds lately is the topic of immigration. The withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan has meant that a large number of Afghani evacuees have entered the United States for their own protection. Many agencies, churches and communities (ours included), have and are stepping up to welcome them and to support their transition. This is fantastic and wonderful and gives me hope for humanity. And, we can contrast that with images made public last month of ICE officers rounding up and intimidating Haitian refugees on horseback, evoking terrible images of slave patrols in days past. The current administration has vigorously repudiated these actions by ICE but still, also, is sending most of these Haitian refugees back to Haiti. And even further, we have all observed how some politicians use the specter of immigration, illegal or otherwise, to rile up their base, to center their followers in fear and anxiety and the notion of white centrality and white supremacy. The question of immigration is complicated one, for many countries the world over. The reality is that climate change, the pandemic, and active conflicts are creating large numbers of refugees world wide, and many countries are grappling with the logistics of accepting and integrating these refugees effectively and humanely. It takes a lot of resources and positive intention to do so, as well as foresight. I read recently that in the U.S. we are using asylum laws were written in the Cold War era to deal with our current refugee challenges, and I think we are finding that these laws are really not up to the task. And so, as the world and our country grapples with the question of how to manage the flow of immigration thoughtfully and charitably, I think it is worth taking a moment to see what our system of faith offers the conversation, to ask how it grounds our guiding ethos and intention. When one is wondering how the bible talks about immigration, one often turns to a famous passage in Leviticus: ‘When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. (Lev 19:33-34) We don’t often refer to Leviticus in church. It represents part of our history as a tradition, but the tradition has evolved over the millennia and parts of this book might feel irrelevant to our modern context. This is understandable. Leviticus represents the faith and practice of a specific group of people in a specific time period; we no longer share their context and so we no longer share many of those practices. But, it remains one of our sacred texts. Why? Because we recognize and worship the God from which it came, we recognize that as specificity may fall away, principle and ethos remains. A good part of the book of Leviticus, which specifically includes Chapter 19, is often called The Holiness Code. We can see this reflected in how Chapter 19 begins: Be holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy. Throughout the book of Leviticus, this statement or one similar occurs 152 times(1). But what is holiness exactly and how does it relate to all the very specific laws the book contains? Holiness is one of those words that seems easily definable on its face, because we use it all the time, but more slippery when we interrogate it. Essentially, something that is holy is set apart, or different, or other, than what we experience in our everyday life. Think about how we understand our holy spaces, like this church. We treat them differently, reverently, because we want them to be something else, other than our everyday spaces. Or, when we want part of our everyday spaces to be holy, what do we do? We might arrange them differently, act in them differently, or speak a blessing (like grace at the dinner table) over them so that, even momentarily, the space is differentiated for us. Or perhaps you have had a holy experience? Maybe on a mountain top, or in meditation, or relationship with another. What was it about that experience that caused you to call it holy? I think it is likely because it felt different, it felt like the veil had been lifted back for a moment, you felt and saw and knew things differently, even though you were right here in the world as you always are. This is why God is called holy. Not necessarily because God is good (although God is) or because God is powerful (although God is) but because holy is the word that we use to explain that God is “other” than us, or “beyond” us in some way. God is the source of whatever it is that is “different” to us in our experience of holiness. But, God doesn’t want that essential otherness to equal remoteness or distance or inaccessibility. And so God is always inviting us into ways of thinking, appreciating, loving, seeing, and acting that bring us closer to God, that bring us closer to what we call holiness. You might recall that I preached on this two weeks ago, about having the kind of eyes that can see the holiness that is all around us. And this is what the book of Leviticus is really about. It is a long list of rituals and laws the purpose which would be to help the people of Israel live the kind of life that would let them feel and be close to God, a holy life. But it is so important to recognize that the point of God inviting us into holiness is not for the purpose of rescue or escape, that we might become better than others, or so holy and pure that we can be drawn away from our world to get closer to God. As you might have noticed from our reading, so many of the laws were ones that would bring us into healthy relationship with the people around us. While the Hebrew word for holy means set apart, the english root for the word holy means whole, and both are getting at something important. Recall how many times, just in our reading let alone in the whole book, we heard the phrase “I am the Lord.” I will paraphrase: Leave the gleanings of your harvest for the poor, I am the Lord. Do not defraud, do pervert justice, do not anything that endangers your neighbors life, I am the Lord. Do not hate a fellow, do not seek revenge, I am the Lord. Over and over and over. The character of God, the holiness of the Lord, was to be embodied, grounded, was to be found and excavated in the care that the Israelites showed one another. This is an ethos that we can draw from Leviticus that transcends time and context. It is as important to us now as it was to the Israelites then. And, then as now, loving our neighbor as ourselves is not just a rule to followed so that we can be called good, it is a reality to be evoked and created, it is completing a sacred circle. We are told: Do this, align with the character of the Lord, and bring it back around to become a holy connection with the people around us. Which finally brings us back around to immigration. The Lord entreats the Israelites to be kind to the foreigner among them, directly confronting tribalism by telling them to treat a foreigner as if they native-born, with no distinction. And how were they to be in touch with their own best motivations in this practice? Through empathy: Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. God understands who we are. God understands how hard it is to love others sometimes, how easily we get possessive and protective, how easily we retreat or get distracted. God understands how seductive group-based dominance and hierarchy can be, how it can provide us with a surge of powerful but shallow personal significance. God understands who we are. So God tells us to be guided by empathy, to remember our commonalities as human beings, as images of God. For the Israelites, they had a literal experience of being mistreated foreigners. These stories filled their narrative imagination, their escape to freedom defined their identity. So God called upon that memory as a guide, paraphrased by Jesus’ contemporary Rabbi Hillel as: what is hateful to yourself, do not do to another. The Israelites had a visceral experience of trauma at the hands of a despotic ruler, and God said: remember that and do not perpetuate that trauma upon others. And the same spiritual principle works for us now. We thankfully, may not have personal stories of political persecution or trauma or displacement to guide our empathy, but we might not have to go very far in either our family histories or relationship networks to find someone who has. My grandmother was a Latvian refugee in the second world war. I’m quite sure it changed her, as it did her whole family. And at minimum, at a basic level, we all know what it feels like to be afraid, to be despairing, to not know who we can count on, to not know where we belong, to be afraid that we don’t in fact belong anywhere. But we do, we all do, belong that is. This is the ethos of the holiness code. God stands apart, but only because *we* choose to be petty and small and blind. Of course God stands apart from that. But God, and God’s holiness, is deeply deeply present in the love that we show to one another, not as sanction or reward, but because when we love one other, enfold one another into community, especially when it is hard, we are living into the true reality that is the character of God, we are living into whatever it is that is behind the veil, that we can sometimes glimpse when we are quiet and open and ready. With the eyes of our spiritual tradition, we can look upon the earthy challenge of immigration and see that it is an opportunity to practice holiness, that it is an opportunity to embody the character and ethos of God in our everyday. Of course, that is going to take a lot of work, political will, give and take, and probably some mistakes. And it also doesn’t mean that God doesn’t support healthy boundaries (and that is a topic for another day.). But what *is* clear, is that if we are looking to the bible to justify in-group and out-group thinking, it doesn’t. Our text today takes that completely off the table. That kind of thinking does not express the character of God; it is the opposite of holy. Our Swedenborg readings makes the distinction, that a spiritual life is not about being holy per se, but about being a vessel, a dwelling place, for truths and goods, for ways of thinking and acting, that are holy. The Lord alone is holy; may we reflect as many precious points of light as we can. Amen. (1) The New Interpreters Bible, pg 520 Readings: Leviticus 19:1-6, 9-20, 32-37 1 The LORD said to Moses, 2 “Speak to the entire assembly of Israel and say to them: ‘Be holy because I, the LORD your God, am holy. 3 “ ‘Each of you must respect your mother and father, and you must observe my Sabbaths. I am the LORD your God. 4 “ ‘Do not turn to idols or make metal gods for yourselves. I am the LORD your God. 5 “ ‘When you sacrifice a fellowship offering to the LORD, sacrifice it in such a way that it will be accepted on your behalf. 6 It shall be eaten on the day you sacrifice it or on the next day; anything left over until the third day must be burned up. 9 “ ‘When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. 10 Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the foreigner. I am the LORD your God. 11 “ ‘Do not steal. “ ‘Do not lie. “ ‘Do not deceive one another. 12 “ ‘Do not swear falsely by my name and so profane the name of your God. I am the LORD. 13 “ ‘Do not defraud or rob your neighbor. “ ‘Do not hold back the wages of a hired worker overnight. 14 “ ‘Do not curse the deaf or put a stumbling block in front of the blind, but fear your God. I am the LORD. 15 “ ‘Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly. 16 “ ‘Do not go about spreading slander among your people. “ ‘Do not do anything that endangers your neighbor’s life. I am the LORD. 17 “ ‘Do not hate a fellow Israelite in your heart. Rebuke your neighbor frankly so you will not share in their guilt. 18 “ ‘Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD. 19 “ ‘Keep my decrees. “ ‘Do not mate different kinds of animals. “ ‘Do not plant your field with two kinds of seed. “ ‘Do not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material. 32 “ ‘Stand up in the presence of the aged, show respect for the elderly and revere your God. I am the LORD. 33 “ ‘When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. 34 The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the LORD your God. 35 “ ‘Do not use dishonest standards when measuring length, weight or quantity. 36 Use honest scales and honest weights, an honest ephah and an honest hin. I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt. 37 “ ‘Keep all my decrees and all my laws and follow them. I am the LORD.’ ” Apocalypse Revealed 586:3 Those people who live according to the Word's truths are called saints, not because they are holy, but because the truths in them are holy; and truths are holy when they come from the Lord in them, and they have the Lord in them when they have His truths in them  Readings: Mark 9:30-37, James 3:13-18, Secrets of Heaven 10225,3,6,7 and 3183 (see below)
See also on Youtube In our text for today, Jesus predicts his death a second time. He’ll soon make a third prediction, and this cycle of threes is an important narrative feature of Mark’s gospel. The predictions follow a typical pattern: Jesus says what will happen to him; the disciples misunderstand somehow, and Jesus corrects them. This misunderstanding of those who are supposed to be “getting it” is a larger theme in the gospel as well. The disciples are constantly not comprehending what Jesus is trying to communicate and from our position as invisible audience, they appear quite dense. So, though I have confessed more than once that the gospel of Mark is my favorite gospel, I do so hope it is because of its brevity, clarity and earthiness, and not because I enjoy these bumbling disciples constantly getting it wrong. What is different about this second prediction story, is that it mentions how the disciples were afraid to reveal their lack of comprehension, afraid to ask Jesus what he meant. Perhaps this is understandable; Peter had been severely rebuked just a little while before, as we heard about last week. But their continued misunderstanding was having actual consequences in their behavior. They were arguing amongst themselves about who was the greatest. Which is just kind of laughable. Have they been listening to Jesus *at all*? But Jesus patiently explains it to them once again. “Anyone who wants to be first must be the very last, and the servant of all.” As an illustration, Jesus brings their attention to a child. He doesn’t just point, he tenderly takes the child into his arms and says: “Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me does not welcome me but the one who sent me.” There is the clear implication that how we understand our relationship to children will have direct consequences to our relationship to God. We don’t know who this child was. They could have been a child of the house owner, they could have been a child of that house owner’s slave. Either way, today we cannot appreciate the shock and surprise it would have caused disciples to hear Jesus say this. Childhood was not valued or romanticized then as it is now. Roman society was sharply ordered and motivated by the honor/shame dynamic. Those who had social capital were constantly trying to protect it and increase it by only associating with those who had equal or greater status. Children had no status and thus no particular value to that general scheme. Jesus wasn’t making a point about maternal or paternal love towards genetic children; of course then, as now, human beings were predisposed towards loving their own. Rather, he uses a child as a symbol of those left out of the value structure, pointing out that entrance into relationship with God’s kingdom depends on welcoming those who are marginalized. The kingdom of God is for all. Later, in chapter ten, Jesus gets even more pointed. “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.” Jesus preaches this idea in many different ways, with different examples of marginalized people, gentiles, the mentally ill, the disabled. Each time, I think we can learn a different but connected lesson about what welcoming means, about why we might instinctively close ranks in such a human way, about why some people get left behind. In this particular case, we might ponder what Jesus is trying to tell us about the nature of childhood and how that relates to welcoming. Because Jesus is not only or just saying “remember the children”, or even “value the children.” He is saying that *we* must receive the kingdom of God like a little child. Is there something about being childlike that means we are less likely to *allow* people to be left behind, less vulnerable to the distractions and concerns that blind us to the beauty of the whole of God’s creation, and the value of all of God’s people? In our reading for today, we are introduced to Swedenborg’s explanation of the concepts of the innocence of ignorance and innocence of wisdom. As Swedenborg explains it, there is a certain kind of innocence experienced in very young childhood, an external kind of innocence called the “innocence of ignorance.” I wouldn’t, though, interpret this in any way as a negative state, even though words like “ignorance” and “external” have a somewhat negative connotation at times. Rather, young children are just very present to the world, very open to guidance. They experience things moment to moment, what they feel is what they express. During this time, Swedenborg tells us that young children are surrounded by the very highest angels(1). It is a blessed and beautiful stage of life. Swedenborg contrasts this stage with another stage called innocence of wisdom. As we emerge from young childhood, we begin to move into a time of intellectual learning. As we know from science, babies and young children have already been learning enormously, their brains are literally being formed, they are like sponges. But at a certain point, we enter into a different kind of learning; we all develop a certain self-consciousness, an ability to self-reflect, a separation of the lower self and higher self. This is a good and appropriate thing and we spend a lot of time in this stage. During this stage learn who we are, what we value, what attracts us, what interests us, what we need to work on, what inspires us, and how we can move toward being a more integral, connected and compassionate person. Over time, the more we learn and grow and change over the years, the more we appreciate how little we know. This appreciation is the true essence of wisdom. It is not a devaluing of knowledge, or a repudiation of knowledge but a change in the way knowledge is held. Think perhaps of the light and gentle grasp we might have upon an egg in our hand, as opposed to the tight grasp required to claim something as our own, hold it tightly to our chest and say “this is mine.” Wisdom values the knowledge it has, and recognizes there is always more to be learned. This essential openness, this habitually real and holy space for the Lord to flow into, this is innocence. More specifically, it is the innocence of wisdom. It is our final destination as angels, and because of this return to innocence, Swedenborg reports that in heaven Highest angels appear at a distance as young children (2). But how do we get there? How do we find our way into the innocence of wisdom? How do we become more childlike as Jesus suggests? Because certainly, obviously, we cannot go back to our young childhood lives. A world full of toddlers; that’s not a world that anyone wants to live in. But, a more angelic world, a world that is open to newness and wonder the way young children are, a world that values curiosity and sees how God is flowing and makes space for that flow—that sounds like a pretty good world. How do we get there? Well, I am reminded of one of my favorite movies… …a lovely movie called About Time. It is very sweet, and I highly recommend it. It is a story about a family in which all of the men are time travelers. They can only travel back and forth along their own timeline, so they cannot do grand things like prevent disasters or wars, unless they had actually been there, and since they were simple ordinary folk, they never actually involved in big events. And they also couldn’t travel too far back in their timeline or they risked deleting things that they valued, like their children. So, their skills were most often used for small things, like reading more books, re-living favorite moments, remedying faux pas; once they helped a friend remember lines in a play, once they redid a marriage proposal that they had rather slightly messed up. And one day, the father tells the son his secret to happiness. He lives each day twice. The first time he just goes about his life in an ordinary way, subject to the same tensions and dissatisfactions that we all are. In one day, his colleague is reprimanded by an unfair boss, and that starts things off badly, then he mechanically buys his lunch; he is late to a meeting and runs frantically; a good outcome from that meeting is overshadowed by his low mood; he comes home exhausted and unable to connect with his family; it seems like it was a bad day. But then he lives that day again, without changing anything except that he actively looks for the beauty, the gift, the opportunity. So that same day, he pulls faces behind the boss’s back to make his colleague smile, he looks the lunch clerk in the eye and thanks her, sees her smile; he runs, still late, to his meeting but pauses to appreciate the gorgeous building into which he is entering; he relishes his success and takes a moment to really feel it and help others feel it; and so he is energized and alive with his family; instead it was a good day. The same day actually, just with different eyes. And over time, as his son practices living each day twice, he finds that the way he lives his life is changed. At some point, he doesn’t have to live the day the second time anymore, he automatically sees the beauty while living it the first time. I think this tells us something important about living life with innocence, about how that way of living opens our eyes to the kingdom. Young children see things that we have forgotten how to see. For some children, every person is a friend and they treat them so, with openness and candor; every person is good and worthy and interesting, before they have been taught about status, tribalism or meritocracy. For some children, the world is a wonder. They cherish every earth-worm and roly-poly and funny-shaped stick, before they have been taught to value what is shiny and popular and disparage that which is dirty and earthy and free. We are trained into seeing the world through a lens of accomplishment, transaction, and acceptability, and trained out of seeing the world through a lens of possibility, connectedness, and redemption. So, Jesus is constantly imploring us to see the least, last, lost and the left behind, really see them and recognize their worthiness and humanity. Why do the disciples continue to not understand? Why do we? Because they are living in the first day. Living in the structures that tell us not to see, not to believe, not to cherish. Living in that headspace of not enough, we become protective, grasping, distracted. But when we welcome the child, we welcome the second-day kind of living. We welcome seeing in a different way. More importantly, then we will no longer be afraid to relinquish that which feels so necessary; our sense of self-importance and self-consciousness. Fear puts ourselves first because it has to, that’s what fear is for. It will always push for us to ignore or disparage that which disrupts our ways of thinking, threatens our closed safe circles. The disciples chose not to ask Jesus what his death meant for them because they suspected it would up-end what they thought they knew about the world, what they valued about the world. So it would. And they continued to deny and run away, as do we, within our own hearts. But glory be, there was redemption for them as well, there always is, there always will be. Swedenborg writes: I was allowed to see how much of young childhood was preserved in adult life, and that it was this that gave adult life its essentially human quality. For innocence - the external form of it - is present in a young child, and innocence constitutes that essentially human quality; indeed innocence is so to speak the basic attribute into which love and charity from the Lord can enter (3). May we all find that innocence that makes us human and humane, may we all journey through our days, the one day we get, with wild fascination and gratitude. Amen.
Readings: Mark 9:30-37 30 They left that place and passed through Galilee. Jesus did not want anyone to know where they were, 31 because he was teaching his disciples. He said to them, “The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men. They will kill him, and after three days he will rise.” 32 But they did not understand what he meant and were afraid to ask him about it. 33 They came to Capernaum. When he was in the house, he asked them, “What were you arguing about on the road?” 34 But they kept quiet because on the way they had argued about who was the greatest. 35 Sitting down, Jesus called the Twelve and said, “Anyone who wants to be first must be the very last, and the servant of all.” 36 He took a little child whom he placed among them. Taking the child in his arms, he said to them, 37 “Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me does not welcome me but the one who sent me.” James 3:13-18 13 Who is wise and understanding among you? Let them show it by their good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom. 14 But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. 15 Such “wisdom” does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. 16 For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice. 17 But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. 18 Peacemakers who sow in peace reap a harvest of righteousness. Secrets of Heaven 10225 [3] The fact that the first state [of childhood] is a state of ignorance and also of innocence within ignorance is self-evident. While this state exists the inner levels of the mind are being put into shape for the use they will serve, and consequently are not yet opened up. Only the most external levels, those of the senses, are open; and when these alone are open ignorance exists. For a person's understanding and perception of anything at all springs from those inner levels. From this it also becomes clear that the innocence which exists at this time and is called the innocence of young childhood is of a most external nature. [6] The last state however is one of wisdom and of innocence within wisdom, which exists when a person is no longer concerned just to gain an understanding of truths and forms of good, but is concerned to make them part of their will and life; for then the person has wisdom. And how far that person is able to make them part of their will and life depends on how much innocence they have, that is, on how far they believe that left to themselves they have no wisdom at all, but that whatever wisdom they have is derived from the Lord, and also on how far they love this to be so. [7] From the way in which these states follow one another the person possessing wisdom can also see the marvels of Divine Providence, namely these: An earlier state serves as the basis for those following on continuously; and, the opening up or unclosing of inner levels advances…till at length they have been so opened up that what existed initially on outermost levels - that is to say, ignorance and innocence - also exists finally on inmost levels. Secrets of Heaven 3183 This final state…is a state of wisdom which has the innocence of earliest childhood within it, and so the first state and the last are united. And when [a person] is old, being so to speak a small child again yet one who is now wise, that person is led into the Lord's kingdom. |
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