What is Regeneration?

Readings: Exekiel 36:23-28, John 3:1-7, True Christianity 586 (see below)
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Today we will be considering the question: What is Regeneration? This is a particular term used in our tradition to indicate the process of spiritual growth that leads us toward having a heavenly character. It is ongoing, it is constantly evolving, it is always challenging and sometimes delightful. It is the stuff of our life. As the author Annie Dillard says: How we spend our days… is how we spend our lives.(1) If we are committed to a tracjectory that is leading us to become more loving, more generous, more responsive to otheres, then we are engaging with the process of regeneration, no matter what we might call it.

The term regenerate means to re-create or revive something somehow. In nature, a salamander can re-grow an entire limb after it has been lost. In human beings, our bodies naturally regenerate themselves gradually by replacing our cells over time. This biological contruct can serve as a powerful metaphor for our emotional lives, as note the times a meaningful experience has re-shaped our habits or our identities. In theology, the specific metaphor of being born again is often used, as in our reading. In Jesus’ words, entrance into the kingdom of God requires that we be re-generated, re-made, re-born. 

This is indeed a very potent metaphor. How moving it is, the sense of being held in the womb of God as our heavenly character is being slowly formed, built cell by cell, moment by moment, decision by decision, all the while being nourished by a loving parent who would give literally everything of itself, its own lifesblood, to this re-creation. 

So, why does the process of regeneration matter?  Because like all things, God wants us to be happy. But crucially, God wants *all* of us to be happy. And so God made our happiness part and parcel of everyone else’s happiness. Mutual love is the key to God’s kingdom.

But, we are not a collective, like bees, or other insects. We don’t naturally just act for the good of the hive. We are born with an actual sense of selfhood. And thus lies the central temptation, the central quest, of the human life. Can we balance that sense of selfhood with our relationship to others? Can that selfhood learn to exist in mutuality, to give over part of itself to others, in order to find a greater sense of wholeness?

We are born into a world that requires us to work and strive for survival. As comfortable as our society might seem, we only need to look to the news to see that we are a hairs breadth away from any number of threats to that stability. Our selfhood knows this. And so it strives for domination and accumulation, to gain from these things what feels like psychological safety at every opportunity. And herein lies the space for evil to enter the picture. And not just mustache twirling evil of substantial size, but everyday cruelty and thoughtlessness, anything that serves the centering of one particular selfhood, ours, to the exclusion of others. This is the condition we are all born into. This is what needs to change so that we can enter into the happiness and peace that God has planned for us.

Perhaps we can use the illustration of a board game. Does anyone remember the Game of Life (if that is not too much on the nose!)? The game pieces were little cars and you would put people inside them as you traveled a game board that represented the different milestones in a typical life: education, family, employment etc. It’s cute and fun, but as with most board games, the goal is to win, to beat the other players. If someone rolls an unadvantagous number on the dice, we might cheer because it will put us ahead. If we can knock then off the board entirely, even better. 

But there are some board games that are designed to be collaborative, where it is only possible to win together. And this is why the process of regeneration matters. We don’t always know exactly how to do that, how to advance our common good together, whether in relationships, communities, societies, nations. Our selfhood will have its fears and doubts about such a path, and will have plenty of learning to do. And so we do the work of spiritual and personal growth.

And like being born, this process is not always comfortable. Part of the process is tension, conflict, and crisis. Not necessarily overtly with other people, or though that *can* be part of it. But rather, an essential tension between what our selfhood wants and the practices of mutual love: listening, relinquishing, sharing, including, caring.

Swedenborg writes that we have been given a special ability that allows for our spiritual progress: the fact that our will and our intellect are separate. Our will is the driving force of our life, the engine, what we want. But it is technically possible to both want something, and also to know that this thing is not good for us, or for others. A very silly example: we might want some chocolate cake. But we also might know that in this particular case, we shouldn’t have it. Maybe we are gluten-intolerant, maybe we have already had enough sweets for the day. In young children, this separation of will and intellect is not yet complete, and so we note that if a young child wants the cake they will take the cake - there is no daylight between what they want, what they think, and what they do. But as we grow and mature, there can be a pause beween those three things. In those pauses, this is where God can act, and this where we can cooperate with God’s action. We might recall the famous quote from Victor Frankel’s book, Man’s Search for Meaning:  Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

And this is why we do things like spiritual practices, like coming to church, engaging in contemplation and reflection, meditation, journaling, or whatever works for us. We want to make those spaces between what we want, think and do to be spacious, fertile, and useful spaces, designed to help us be as loving as we can be. We do the work of re-generating our selfhood, away from instinctive and incessant self-centering, and towards the practice of mutual love. 

How does this occur? Swedenborg writes that the process begins with self-awareness. We notice, we listen, we ask: want kind of presence am I being in the world? How do my actions affect others? What am I creating with my energy? And as we gather this information, we might receive answers that indicate we are hurting ourselves or others. In a religous context, these things are what have historically been called sins. Whatever we call them though, the knowledge of them give us an opportunity to move forward. If we admit their reality without defensiveness, and feel pain on their account, this is what is called repentance.

But the process continues: from this space of accountability, we ask for help. Certainly from God, potentially from others according to context, and we take a step into a new life in which we don’t do that hurtful thing anymore. And we certainly may fail a little or a lot in living that new life, but over time, with intention and practice, we succeed. A habit that our selfhood thought was necessary to its own supremacy or survival is put aside, and we learn that we can be whole and safe without it, and in fact, that we are more whole and safe without it, within God’s plan for our happiness. 

And sharpen this point, Swedenborg writes, if we don’t follow this path, we are *unable* to love our neighbor.(2) We might be able to exist alongside them. But *love* is impossible without a willingness to enter into this process. And this is indeed what God has called us to: to LOVE one another. This is not a call about sentimental feeling. It is call into the process of regeneration, into the process of helping each other become reborn for the sake of us all. 

If we wish to wrastle this whole idea back into traditional Christian frameworks, then we see that the process of regeneration is what “saves” us. If you recall from our sermon on salvation a few weeks back, we reframed the notion of salvation as healing, as the experience of becoming whole. So when we say that regeneration is what confers salvation, it is not at all as if we try very hard to be good girls and boys, and if we reach a certain threshold, then God plucks us out of the mire and gives us a heavenly life. It’s rather that the process of regeneration saves us because it heals us. Heals us of the state of being born into self-centeredness, and the habits and learnings that our selfhood has deemed necessary, and trains us instead in mutual love, so that we can all be each other’s salvation. 

Of course, what I have outlined above is simplifed. There layers upon layers of work to do if we are willing, and we may return to central tensions at different points in our lives as our capacity to do the work has evolved and changed. Each person’s unique selfhood and context is different, so the work will look different for everyone. This is as it should be. Yet we are joined by the central and corportate quest - to become spiritual beings, become beings who have God’s spirit at our center, a center that grounds us and holds us in love and heavenly connection. Amen.
(1) Annie Dillard, The Writing Life
(2) Emanuel Swedenborg, True Christianity #530


Readings:

Ezekiel 36:23-28

23 I will show the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, the name you have profaned among them. Then the nations will know that I am the LORD, declares the Sovereign LORD, when I am proved holy through you before their eyes.
24 “ ‘For I will take you out of the nations; I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land.
25 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols.
26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.
27 And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.
28 Then you will live in the land I gave your ancestors; you will be my people, and I will be your God.


John 3:1-7 

1 Now there was a Pharisee, a man named Nicodemus who was a member of the Jewish ruling council.
2 He came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.”
3 Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again. ”
4 “How can someone be born when they are old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!”
5 Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit.
6 Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.
7 You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’

True Christianity 586
We can be regenerated only gradually. Each and every thing that exists in the physical world serves as an illustration of this fact. A seedling does not grow up into a mature tree in a single day. First there is a seed, then a root, then a shoot, which develops into a trunk; then branches come out of that and develop leaves and finally flowers and fruit. Wheat and barley do not spring up ready for harvest in a single day. A home is not built in a single day. We do not become full grown in a single day; reaching wisdom takes us even longer. The church is not established - let alone perfected - in a single day. We will make no progress toward a goal unless we first make a start.
People who have a different conception than this of regeneration know nothing about goodwill or faith, or how each of these qualities grows as we cooperate with the Lord. All this makes clear that regeneration progresses analogously to the way we are conceived, carried in the womb, born, and brought up.