Readings: I Kings 3:5-12, Secrets of Heaven #1555 (see below)
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Today we have listened to a foundational story from the narrative of King Solomon in ancient Israel. Solomon was the son and the successor of King David. He was known particularly for his wisdom, and because he is the one who finally built the temple in Jerusalem. We hear him in this story ask for the wisdom that will make him famous as a ruler.

This story is one example of the way that differences in translation can really effect the direction of our discourse and comprehension. The translation I read today is the New International Version, the one I usually default to because of its straightforwardness. It says that Solomon asked God for a “discerning” heart. But the King James Version says that Solomon asked God for an “understanding” heart. 

Those words are actually quite different in English. When we think of being “discerning” we think of deciding between things with a certain level of judgment. It can be good judgment, certainly, but there is definitely a sense of figuring something out intellectually, of judging between things.

And it just so happens that in our bible study last Sunday, quite apart from this reading, we had a discussion of what it means to be “judgmental” (in a bad way), as opposed to “discerning” in a good way.

We came to recognize that being “judgmental” involved several qualities. First, there is an element of harmful speed in judgmental decision-making. We might call these “snap judgments”, and in such cases, it is often our various biases that are guiding our judgment. Now, we all have biases, it is an unavoidable element of being human, but the problem is when we pretend that we don’t have them. The problem is when we lean into snap judgments and refuse to do the work of learning about the fullness of someone’s humanity or the fullness of a certain situation. 

Second, there is often a certain level of hypocrisy involved with being judgmental. We are all human and we all have flaws. Maybe not exactly the same flaws at exactly the same time, but knowledge of our own flaws should certainly encourage humility and empathy when we encounter flaws in others and guide our judgement accordingly. If it doesn’t, it is difficult to trust a discernment that is so obviously blind to one half of the picture.

Third, we decided that the most central element of being judgmental was that it comes from ego rather than love and concern. Let’s be honest; being judgmental can be an incredible high. There is nothing quite like feeling superior to another person to make us feel better about ourselves. Feeling superior is incredibly addictive. It can make us feel safe and certain, it can pre-empt uncomfortable reflection, it can guard against shame. But it doesn’t actually make us any better at being truly discerning, or at being truly wise. 

To comprehend the real gift of what Solomon was asking for, and what God gave him, the translation of an “understanding heart” can give us a deeper insight into wisdom.

When we consider the meaning of understanding, it introduces some different elements. Understanding is used to mean comprehending knowledge, yes. In a math class we might be asked: Do you understand this concept? and we can answer Yes I do. But understanding as a word also can contain something deeper than simple comprehension. It can contain a sense of empathy, a larger sense of trying to see the whole picture, of recognizing dignity and shared humanity. We might say in relationship: I felt like this person understood me and what I was going though.

This communicates an essential sense of understanding as involving the heart in a different way than intellectual discernment. That, crucially, in order to really understand rather than just discern, we must be coming from love and respect rather than ego.

And this is exactly how Swedenborg describes the process of becoming wise. He distinguishes between knowledge, intelligence, and wisdom, recognizing that they are different capacities that have different purposes on our journey of spiritual growth. Knowledge is simply about assimilating facts. What has happened in my life? What does the bible or my tradition suggest? What do I feel about it? Knowlege is an important stage or capacity because it gathers foundational information that is helpful to be aware of. But it is still only awareness, nothing more.

Intelligence is more about making connections between concepts and figuring out how they should be applied. How does spirituality relate to life? Is charity more important than faith, or are they both important, and how? What does this or that bible story or teaching suggest about my current situation? Intelligence is an important stage or capacity because it allows us to start taking abstract concepts and apply them to our particular lives and situations. It starts making connections between ideas about God and spiritual things and our own development. But, intelligence can still be practiced fairly intellectually or abstractedly.

Wisdom, though, is when knowlege and intelligence engage the heart, and become integrated with it and our experience. We start to ask: what kind of love and insight is needed in a particular situation? What action will serve connection and thriving? How is God’s Providence moving in this situation, and what is it hoping I will learn? These are questions that are not so much about getting answers as they are about performing service, and they are questions that our ego shies away from asking. They are questions that come from love, and they look to the goodness that love wants to achieve. In wisdom, knowledge and intelligence learn to serve love.

Now, you might have noticed that we haven’t yet said anything about the second half of Solomon’s request to God.

So give your servant a discerning (or understanding) heart to govern your people and to distinguish between right and wrong.

In a state of wisdom, it is still important to distinguish between right and wrong. Wisdom isn’t some magical woowoo oneness that transcends any need to make distinctions. Wisdom doesn’t take us away from the question of right and wrong, but rather, takes us deeper into it. 

Because then right and wrong become, not judgmental terms to be co-opted by ego for its own purposes but a way into love. Wisdom asks of the distinction between right and wrong: how and for what purpose? Not just because God said it, not because being right can make us feel safe or good or superior, not even because it makes the most sense. Right because it furthers human dignity and freedom, right because it connects people one with another, right because it gives us a chance to become who God wants us to be, right because it is good, respectful and loving. And wrong because it takes us further away from any of those things. We must love goodness (and not ourselves) in order to know what is right and wrong; we must love goodness to be wise, and have in Swedenborgian language “a heart so established in what is good that it has a perception of truth."(1)

And the thing that is so tricky about this story is that, like most characters in the bible, Solomon had his flaws. He was wise in many ways, but also imprudent in others. We are once again challenged to recognize that God doesn’t require perfection to engage with us. God doesn’t require wisdom in every part of us in order to work towards wisdom in others. Our journeys are sometimes lurching and incomplete. Wisdom does not ask us to be perfect. It simply asks us to keep listening, and to keep striving for the heart that understands. Amen.

(1) Anita Dole, The Dole Study Notes: The Wisdom of Solomon

Readings:

I Kings 3:5-12

5 At Gibeon the LORD appeared to Solomon during the night in a dream, and God said, “Ask for whatever you want me to give you.”
6 Solomon answered, “You have shown great kindness to your servant, my father David, because he was faithful to you and righteous and upright in heart. You have continued this great kindness to him and have given him a son to sit on his throne this very day.
7 “Now, LORD my God, you have made your servant king in place of my father David. But I am only a little child and do not know how to carry out my duties.
8 Your servant is here among the people you have chosen, a great people, too numerous to count or number.
9 So give your servant a discerning heart to govern your people and to distinguish between right and wrong. For who is able to govern this great people of yours?”
10 The Lord was pleased that Solomon had asked for this.
11 So God said to him, “Since you have asked for this and not for long life or wealth for yourself, nor have asked for the death of your enemies but for discernment in administering justice,
12 I will do what you have asked. I will give you a wise and discerning heart, so that there will never have been anyone like you, nor will there ever be.


Secrets of Heaven #1555

The light we gain through knowledge of faith's true concepts and good actions is called the light of [intelligence], whereas the light of wisdom is part and parcel of life and is gained from life. The light of [intelligence] relates to our intellectual side, or our intellect, while wisdom's light relates to our volitional side, or our life.

[2] Few if any know how we are led to true wisdom. [Intelligence] is not wisdom but leads to wisdom, since to understand what is true and good is not to be true or good. To be wise is to be so. Wisdom is exclusively a question of the way we live, of actually being wise. Wisdom, or in other words, life, is what secular and religious knowledge introduces us into.

Readings: Matthew 10:24-31, Secrets of Heaven #4796 (see below)
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Photo by Daniel Gomez on Unsplash

We humans are fascinating creatures. We have an interior life, with a certain quality, certain thoughts and feelings, and we can choose whether or not that interior life is manifest in our exterior life. Animals cannot do this in the same way. Young children do not do it instinctively; it is an ability that we grow into. Our thoughts can be our own, our feelings can be our own, and ultimately it is up to us how much of those things we share, and in what ways we act upon them.

This is a complex gift. We are each individuals, beloved of God in our own way, and our journey belongs to us, no one else. And also, we exist within, and were born for, community and connection, and the quality of this community and connection will often turn on how much, and in what way, we choose to share our interior life.

The balance of this itself is also complex. We withhold too much our our interior experience and it is hard to connect with others. We share too much of our interior experience and this can destabilize valuable boundaries or center ourselves in harmful ways. Enter also, the possibility of hypocrisy: the pretense of speaking or acting in some way when we secretly believe another; the interior and the exterior becoming misaligned for self-serving purposes. We have an instictive distaste for hypocrisy, I think, because of the way it introduces doubt and mistrust into our relationships. Which leads us further to the notion of “authenticity.” A person is perceived to be authentic, or genuine, when we sense that their interior experience is aligning with their external actions and way of life. And I think perhaps we all yearn for a certain level of authenticity in our lives and relationships. It can feel like a burden, it can feel like work, to maintain an essential level of disconnection between our interior selves and our exterior life. The complexity of this is heightened for marginalized groups as well, who often need to conform to the white centrality, the heteronormativity, or the maleness of cultural and public spaces.

Swedenborg, however, speaks of heaven being a place where any dissonance between our interior and exterior selves is completely reduced. He writes:

…in the other life no one is allowed to pretend to affections they do not really have, so we cannot put on a face that is contrary to the love we are engaged in. We are all refined down to a state in which we say what we think and manifest in expression and act what we intend.(1)

While in many ways this idea might feel terrifying, like being exposed in a way that we might not desire, we can also appreciate the freedom inherent in this state of being. It is the epitome of authentic living. We are not maintaining masks, we are not doing the work of mediating the acceptability of our interior life to others, we are in the flow of life that God made us for. 

Now, of course though, this kind of flow only works in the context of heavenly mutual love. And we cannot get to a state of ongoing mutual love without the practice of courageous confession. The reason that angels can get to that level of authenticity is that they have courageously and faithfully confronted all the things within them that might desire to hide. The shame, the selfishness, the fear, the anger, the resentment, the history of harm toward the self and others that we all harbor in some way. This kind of reflection is the path of regeneration, as we call it in our tradition, and it begins with courageous confession. This confession can be primarily to ourselves and our God. There is value in a private reflective process; we can go deep, we can feel the safety of God’s personal presence with us, we can take the time and the pace we need. 

And, there is value in a public reflective process as well. The success and effectiveness of 12-Step programs speak to how public and crucially, communal, confession and reflection can be integral to living an authentic life. Sometimes we may not feel like we have the ability to do it on our own, and so the acceptance, compassion, and accountabilty of a group can be key. One-on-one therapy is another semi-public way into couragous confession. Speaking our truth to another can be powerful, as can be receiving an outside perpsective that we hadn’t considered.

There is no one right way to do courageous confession. But if we are serious about discipleship - which is the earthly context for the Matthew text - and more broadly, if we are serious about an evolving spiritual life, then we have to learn how to get comfortable with courageous confession. It is the starting point for all growth.

This principle is true for groups as much as it is for individuals, for it is not so much a Christian principle as it is a human one. As we consider the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, it is a principle that we would do well to consider for the overall health of our nation. The United States has never been very good at courageously confessing its flaws. The very declaration we celebrate only granted true independence and rights to white men, and many of the founding fathers that we venerate now owned slaves in their day. When we let the full truth of that sink in, we can only see it as a heartbreaking and demoralizing level of hypocrisy.

Yet, within that messiness, there was a kernel of vision, a baby bud of equality, that started to give birth to something important. It wasn’t born perfectly. And yet, we all have a responsibility to help it become better, more inclusive, more expansive, more effective. This can only happen through courageous confession, through being thoroughly honest about who has been left out and why,  about who has been primarily served and why, and about what harmful forces still exist that threaten the vision of true equality and enfranchisement for all.

We might think of the effort to take down the National Park signs in our sister city, Philadelphia, that uplifted the story of George Washington’s slaves. For some, it feels more comfortable, more patriotic, to remain in an uncomplicated and simple veneration of the founding fathers. But I don’t believe that patriotism is supposed to be comfortable, just as our spiritual journeys are not supposed to be comfortable. If either are primarily or only comfortable, then we are not growing, we are not learning, we are not evolving. When we refuse to practice courageous confession in either realm, we stay stuck in a facsimile of patriotism or of faith that actually doesn’t ask anything real of us.

So, why talk politics? Not for any partisan purpose, but because we recognize that it is all connected. When we develop a robust personal practice of courageous confession, through a spiritual or other framework, then we are more likely to be able to continue to practice it in our communities, our organizations, our countries, and our world. And our world —the survival and thriving of our world— needs people who are actively building this ability within themselves.

When we look at it this way, when we look at how our own journeys intersect and undergird the trajectory of the whole world, the stakes rise and it can feel overwhelming. My own knees get a little wobbly just thinking about it. So, thank goodness Jesus ends our text today with some encouragement.

Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.

We are reminded that God’s care extends to all - the whole world and everything in it. We are reminded of God’s intimate knowledge and love for us - enough to number the very smallest things within us. We are reminded not to be afraid - that our unique reflective abilities were given to us for a purpose, and we should step into them knowing that God is with us, and is guiding us. We can be honest here; the path of growth is so very uncomfortable at times. Our impulse is to conceal, even to ourselves, that which causes us to question and to doubt, that which causes us to feel guilt, that which needs us to re-imagine or reframe. …for there is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known. From God, this is a blessed promise, so let us not be afraid. Amen.

(1) Emmanuel Swedenborg, Heaven & Hell #457


Readings:

Matthew 10:24-31

24 “The student is not above the teacher, nor a servant above his master.
25 It is enough for students to be like their teachers, and servants like their masters. If the head of the house has been called Beelzebul, how much more the members of his household!
26 “So do not be afraid of them, for there is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known.
27 What I tell you in the dark, speak in the daylight; what is whispered in your ear, proclaim from the roofs.
28 Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.
29 Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care.
30 And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered.
31 So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.


Secrets of Heaven 4796
When angels show themselves, all their inner feelings appear clearly in their face and beam from it. Their face, then, is the outward form of their feelings and an image representing those feelings. To present a face at odds with one’s feelings does not happen in heaven.

Readings: Genesis 8:1-5, 13-19, Matthew 11:25-30, Heaven and Hell #533 (see below)
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There is a story about Swedenborg that is beloved by his followers. It goes like this: A young girl who grew up in Swedenborg’s neighborhood kept asking him to show her an angel. So one day, he agreed, and took her inside his summer-house and placed her in front of a curtain. He said, “Now you shall see an angel,” and drew the curtain aside, revealing a mirror in which the girl could see her own reflection.(1)

This charming anecdote gets at the heart of Swedenborg’s optimistic and humane theology. He says many times during his works, all human beings are born for heaven. Yes, we have to make the conscious choice to follow that path, but it is nonetheless God’s intention for all of us. Contrast this with the vision of Jonathan Edwards, an American preacher of the same period, who preached a famous sermon called “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” whereby he described each of us being as spiders held by a slender thread over the pit of hell by a wrathful God who abhors us, and that it is God’s hand alone that prevents our burning forever.

Certainly, Edwards must have imagined that the specter of such a fate would provoke a necessary anxiety in his listeners, so that they might surrender to God’s grace. Fear persuades. We know this not only from religion but from politics, advertising, and from our own lives. But fear can only take us so far. It can motivate external action, but it cannot create a heavenly internal, a heart built on the stuff of heaven: mutual love. Mutual love can only be embraced through the relinquishment of fear, of self-preservation, of resentment. We can only love when we make ourselves vulnerable, make ourselves empty of our presumptions, and trust in a God who desires our eternal happiness above all.

Swedenborg’s positive vision includes such a God, one that begins with the assumption of our belovedness, not our sinfulness. Of course, we must willingly step into this vision, put our skin in the game, but it is not so much a matter of doing particular things in a particular way, or believing in particular religious notions. But rather, it is about being committed to loving the truth, even when that truth indicates we need to change. It is about being devoted to learning how to love others, even if that means hearing what we don’t want to hear. It is about trusting that the faithful practice of self-relinquishment means that the vision of our true selfhood in that mirror will become ever clearer.

And so, we heard in our Swedenborg reading today about the ultimate simplicity and accessibility of the path to heaven. He writes similarly elsewhere:

…we can see that it is not as hard to follow the path to heaven as many people believe. The only difficulty is finding the power to resist love for ourselves and love of the world and preventing those loves from taking control, since they are the source of all our evils.

Oh really Swedenborg, is that the *only* difficulty? Finding the power to resist love for ourselves and love of the world and preventing those loves from taking control? Is that all we have to do? I am sarcastic in jest, of course, for he is right: the path is not complicated in principle. We do not have to belong to a specific religion, or a specific ethnicity, we do not have to perform specific rituals or believe counter-intuitive things. We just have to try our best to leave the world a better place for us being here. We just have to try our best to love each other as much as we can. We are born for this path, and God and all the angels in heaven are behind us as we make our way. We hear this reflected in Jesus’ words, “For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matt 11:30)

But just because the way to heaven is simple in principle doesn’t mean that the living of it is easy. It can sometimes feel pretty hard. There are many layers to this work of being a good person. There are depths to be plumbed. For example, we might find it easy to not be overtly racist, but it is much harder to face and eradicate learned unconscious racism, to accept our white privilege, or other privileges. We might find it easy to respect women in our family, but it much harder to publicly stand against misogyny in the workplace. We might find it easy to protect the earth by recycling, but much harder to divest from companies taking advantage of the earth and any convenience they might provide. We might find it easy to give our heart to someone, but much harder to authentically apologize when we are wrong, and to do the work of repair. There is always work that we can do to open our hearts, be more courageous, more loving, and more truthful.

Finding the power to resist love for ourselves and love of the world and preventing those loves from taking control. It is simple but its not small. It is straightforward but it is not easy. The work continues throughout our lives because the way to heaven is not a test, but a journey. The question is not so much “What do I need to do to become an angel?” The question is: “How free do I want to be?”

We heard in our reading about the moment that Noah and his family and all the animals were finally able to leave the ark. They had been set afloat and tossed around by the floodwaters for almost a year, and finally the waters had receded. 

Swedenborg writes: 

Going out of the ark' means freedom….The time that Noah spent in the ark, surrounded by flood water, symbolized being in captivity — that is, being tossed about by evil and falsity…

The Lord's presence involves freedom; the one is a consequence of the other. The more present the Lord is, the freer we are. In other words, the more we love goodness and truth, the more freely we act. That is the nature of the Lord's influence…

The world, our egos, have plenty to say about who we are and who we should be. The influences of hell piggyback on these messages we receive, intent on subjugating and dominating us, decreasing our sense of hope and possibility. We hear: you are not enough, you are too much, you need to look this way, own this thing, choose this product. We hear: you shouldn’t help them, it’s not your responsibility, it’s a hoax, it’s fake news, you should be very scared. We hear: you must control this, we must control them, own them, destroy them, get your way, get all the power, never apologize. We hear: your anxiety will prevent it, your disowning them will teach them, be small, be quiet, close your eyes, scroll your phone. And so we remain surrounded by the flood water, gulping for breath, splashed and sprayed and shivering, in an ark only three hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide and thirty cubits high, when instead we could be living in the whole wide world.

The more we buy into what hell is selling us, the smaller and more cramped our world will be. But, the more we love goodness and truth, the more freely we act. The more we love goodness and truth, the more we are brought into the influence of the Lord and the angels. We read further:

But once a person has been set free, that is, been regenerated, they are led by the Lord through angels so gently that no yoke or dominion exists at all, for they are being led by what is joyful and pleasing, they are being loved, and they are being shown respect.

The influence of hell means only to make us nothing, and out of that nothing to have us strike out, and plunder, and scream, so to fill a void that can never be filled, to make ever more minuscule a selfhood that knows it was made for love, and to make ever larger a selfhood that is captive to avarice and superiority and fear. This is a desperate search for freedom that has instead settled on a lack of restraint.

The influence of heaven, however, is not undergirded by domination but by love and respect. The irony is that hell would have us be nothing as an insult, to break us down, but heaven would have us be nothing so that there is room for us to learn how beloved we are. The more present the Lord is the freer we are.

Now it might not always feel that way. As we grapple with the complexities of our lives, as the good choice, the right choice, becomes less and less obvious in an inter-connected and inter-dependent world, we might well feel less free, more confused, increasingly ambivalent. This is of course, normal and reasonable. Freedom is not the same thing as decisiveness or clarity. Freedom is not the same thing as ease or flow. Freedom is simply about having the ability to choose who we will serve. Freedom is about letting God pull back the curtain from the mirror and seeing our reflection there, and then really believing that it is us, that it is our future, and our present. When we believe that this true, when we know that it is so, the stakes change. We are no longer trying to be good enough, but to live into what is already true about us, into what God has already ordained for us. And on this road, even our flaws and our mistakes become a pathway for learning, a way to embrace a blessed emptiness into which God pours a love that rebuilds us.

So, as we consider our own spiritual journeys, we might also consider this quote attributed to novelist Paulo Coelho:

Maybe the journey isn’t so much about becoming anything. Maybe it’s about unbecoming everything that isn’t really you, so you can be who you were meant to be in the first place.

We are all meant to be angels. And, unbecoming everything that isn’t really us, is really hard work. A lot of the things that aren’t really us, well, they really feel like they are. It will be difficult to let go. But who you were meant to be…you were meant to be an angel. In God’s past-present-future eyes, you are one. In each moment, now and forever, God is inviting us to come out of the ark, and into the sunshine.

Amen.

(1)http://newchurchhistory.org/funfacts/indexbbbb.html?p=111
(2)Emmanuel Swedenborg, Heaven and Hell #359
(3)Emmanuel Swedenborg, Secrets of Heaven #905

Readings:

Genesis 8:1-5, 13-19
1 But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and the livestock that were with him in the ark, and he sent a wind over the earth, and the waters receded. 2 Now the springs of the deep and the floodgates of the heavens had been closed, and the rain had stopped falling from the sky. 3 The water receded steadily from the earth. At the end of the hundred and fifty days the water had gone down, 4 and on the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. 5 The waters continued to recede until the tenth month, and on the first day of the tenth month the tops of the mountains became visible. 

13 By the first day of the first month of Noah’s six hundred and first year, the water had dried up from the earth. Noah then removed the covering from the ark and saw that the surface of the ground was dry. 14 By the twenty-seventh day of the second month the earth was completely dry. 
15 Then God said to Noah, 16 “Come out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and their wives. 17 Bring out every kind of living creature that is with you—the birds, the animals, and all the creatures that move along the ground—so they can multiply on the earth and be fruitful and increase in number on it.” 18 So Noah came out, together with his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives. 19 All the animals and all the creatures that move along the ground and all the birds—everything that moves on land—came out of the ark, one kind after another. 

Matthew 11:25-30
25 At that time Jesus said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. 26 Yes, Father, for this is what you were pleased to do. 27 “All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. 28 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

Heaven and Hell #533
We can now see that it is not so hard to lead the life of heaven as people think, because it is simply a matter of recognizing, when something attractive comes up that we know is dishonest or unfair, that this is not to be done because it is against the divine commandments. If we get used to thinking like this, and from this familiarity form a habit, then we are gradually united to heaven. To the extent that we are united to heaven, the higher levels of our minds are opened, and to the extent that they are opened, we see what is dishonest and unfair; and to the extent that we see this, these qualities can be dispelled. For no evil can be banished until it has been seen. This is a state we can enter because of our freedom, since everyone is free to think in this way. However, once the process has started, the Lord works his wonders within us, and causes us not only to see evils but to refuse them and eventually to turn away from them. This is the meaning of the Lord's words, "My yoke is easy and my burden light" (Matthew 11:30). 

It is important to realize, though, that the difficulty of thinking like this and also of resisting evils increases to the extent that we deliberately do evil things - in fact, to that extent we become used to doing them until ultimately we no longer see them. Then we come to love them and to excuse them to gratify our love and to rationalize them with all kinds of self-deceptions and call them permissible and good.

Readings: Amos 5:18-27, Revelation 21:1-2, 22:1-5, Secrets of Heaven 63 (see below)
See also on Youtube

Our two readings today differ greatly in tone. One is full of lament, the other is bright with hope. During the last few years, we have seen much to fill us with both lament and hope. We are seeing corruption and incompetence at the highest levels of our government. We are seeing those in power deliberately prey on the vulnerable among us, no longer even bothering to try to hide their cruelty. We have seen initiatives supporting diversity deliberately dismantled. We have seen crucial international aid withheld. Yet, we have also seen resistance to cruelty and avarice. We have seen communities showing up for each other. We see people courageously speaking truth to power. We still see unjustifiable war, unexpected disaster, personal loss, division, greed and callousness all around us, but when we have eyes to see it, we can also see unity, competence, sacrifice, and accountability too. Now, as it probably is with any time in history, it is reasonable to find both lament and hope in our hearts. 

Let’s first spend some time with the Amos text. Most of us are probably only familiar with verse 24, made particularly famous by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. But I highly recommend reading the whole of chapter five at some point because it communicates so viscerally, as did our shorter reading, the depth of God’s lament. The whole chapter is a litany of complaints against the people of Israel, that they have turned away from God, that they have levied unfair taxes upon the poor, that they have oppressed the innocent, taken bribes, and denied the poor justice in the courts, that they enriched themselves without any thought of others.

And in Amos God says, I can’t save you from this. If you insist on making these kinds of choices again and again and again, I can’t make it better. If you insist on replacing me with idols of your own making, if you insist on ignoring my words and replacing our covenant with your own selfishness….there will be no religious festival, no sacrifice, no special words that will be able to magically transform the world you have made.

And let’s be clear: God is heartbroken over the way things are going in the book of Amos. God is pleading with the Israelites to open their eyes and see what their selfishness and blindness has wrought. Those who have fashioned God in their own image, those who have twisted God’s word to serve their own purposes, those who have turned away from the suffering of God’s beloved, will not find likeness, will not find light or peace or safety, when they come to understand what God is really about. It will be a terrifying surprise, like running from a lion only to meet a bear, like pitch darkness without a flashlight. And this, not as a punishment, just as the soul-disorienting realization that God doesn’t exist to serve our self-aggrandizement, our worldview, our privilege. 

And so God is pleading with them to wake up. To recognize that they cannot participate in festivals, or enact sacrifices in a purely external way. They can’t act selfishly and then act performatively, and expect God to be okay with it.  “I will not accept [that]” says the Lord, “But let justice roll on like a river, and righteousness like a never-ending stream.”

Swedenborg writes of this verse:

'Justice' means truth, and 'righteousness' good. Both stem from charity (kindness) and are the burnt offerings and sacrifices of the internal self (1).

A river evokes something old and deep and unstoppable. If the hypocritical sacrifices that God is rejecting in Amos are paper-thin and surface-deep, a river is something timeless, reflecting the heart of God…a never-ending stream of justice and righteousness coming up from the deep well of God’s divine love.

God is asking us to connect with that depth, to offer up sacrifices that come from deep inside us, that reflect the depth and the power of that river. That reflect the divine love that gives it being. To give metaphorical burnt offerings that represent ways in which we have recognized our wrongness, and our willingness to use that burnt ash to fertilize new growth. There are so many ways that this applies to each of our own contexts, our own spiritual work, our own particular sacrifices of things we are holding on to. Whether it is the sacrifice of our complicity towards white supremacy, sexism, or materialism for example, of personal reputation and ego, of ideology, of ambition, of avarice, of complacency. Today, just two days after Juneteenth, a celebration of freedom from oppression, is a particularly good day to consider what God is calling for us to sacrifice, so that the river of justice can truly flow.

Now let us take a look at the Revelation text. This begins with the descent of the Holy City New Jerusalem, from which our church is named. And we are told that the river of the water of life flows down the middle of this city, and the tree of life bearing different fruits every month grows on either side, and that the leaves of this tree will be for the healing of the nations.

If in Amos, God spoke that justice and righteousness should flow like a river, here in the holy city we see that river, flowing right through the center. Swedenborg writes that a river indicates divine truths in abundance, and in addition, so do the leaves of the tree. And I quote:

The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. This symbolizes the resulting rational truths by which people caught up in evils and… falsities are brought to think sanely and to live decently(2).

We are invited into a vision in which justice, righteousness, and healing are paramount. A vision in which Divine truth flows in abundance and it leads to people thinking with clarity and living with kindness.

The holy city is thus built by truth being heard and then people changing the way that they live. The holy city is built by the kind of sacrifice that God desires, internal sacrifice, whereby people relinquish ways of thinking that serve themselves and take on ways of thinking that promote healing and service and equality.

And as peaceful as the image of the New Jerusalem appears, we know that doing this is hard work, and will often involve internal conflict. This might feel uncomfortable to us because we have been taught to avoid conflict, to feel like conflict means that we are doing something wrong. But as we heard in our reading:

The hour of conflict is the hour when the Lord is at work…Nor does [the Lord] rest until love is playing the leading part, at which point conflict ceases.

The Lord is at work in our hearts and in our world! I cannot think of anything more worthy of celebration and praise on this Holy City Sunday. When we look around and see conflict and denial and disagreement and anxiety in ourselves and in the world around us, it might not feel like the New Jerusalem is coming. When we see our world looking more like the book of Amos than the holy city, a vision where the leaves of the tree heal us all feels pretty far away, and maybe even a little naive. 

But if the Lord is at work, so must we be. We know that the New Jerusalem is not something that we must passively wait for, something in our future that we will have no connection to. It is brought into being through each human heart. It is brought into being with each act of living courageously and decently. It is brought into being via our true and willing sacrifice, made in community together.

God will not rest until love is playing the leading part, And if the Lord does not rest, neither shall we rest until the holy city is embodied as fully as it can be in our world. Now of course, I don’t literally mean we shouldn’t rest. We are of course limited human creatures, we have a biological and emotional need to rest. But what I mean is that we cannot become complacent, content to rest in our privilege, however that privilege has become manifest. This complacency leads to an Amos world, full of blindness and selfishness, full of idols of our own making and myths of our own creating.

These days the invitation has never been more clear….The Lord is at work. Will we join Him? Amen.

(1) Emanuel Swedenborg, Secrets of Heaven #922:3
(1) Emanuel Swedenborg, Apocalypse Revealed #936


Readings:

Amos 5:18-27
18 Woe to you who long for the day of the LORD! Why do you long for the day of the LORD? That day will be darkness, not light. 19 It will be as though a man fled from a lion only to meet a bear, as though he entered his house and rested his hand on the wall only to have a snake bite him. 20 Will not the day of the LORD be darkness, not light— pitch-dark, without a ray of brightness? 21 “I hate, I despise your religious festivals; your assemblies are a stench to me. 22 Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them. Though you bring choice fellowship offerings, I will have no regard for them. 23 Away with the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps. 24 But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream! 25 “Did you bring me sacrifices and offerings forty years in the wilderness, people of Israel? 26 You have lifted up the shrine of your king, the pedestal of your idols, the star of your god — which you made for yourselves. 27 Therefore I will send you into exile beyond Damascus,” says the LORD, whose name is God Almighty.

Revelation 21:1-2, 22:1-5

1 Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. 2 I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.

1 Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb 2 down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. 3 No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him. 4 They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. 5 There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign for ever and ever.

Secrets of Heaven #63

…the Lord is constantly fighting on our behalf against evils and falsities and by these conflicts is confirming us in truth and good. The hour of conflict is the hour when the Lord is at work, which is why in the Prophets a regenerate person is called 'the work of God's fingers'. Nor does the Lord rest until love is playing the leading part, at which point conflict ceases. When that work has reached the point where faith has been joined to love, it is then called 'very good', for the Lord then moves us to be a likeness of [God]self…

Readings: Matthew 9:35-10:8, Secrets of Heaven 3941 (see below)
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Jesus employs another interesting metaphor in our text today, to give shape and meaning to the practice of spiritual life: the harvest. Agricultural metaphors abound in the bible. Jesus, and the people who wrote the bible, used images that the people reading or listening to it knew and could instinctively relate to.
So, what does the metaphor of “harvest” communicate to us then? Harvest is the culmination of a season of growing. It it the end result of ongoing labor. It is usually one event in time, recurring yes, but something that is only done at a specific time, when the crop is ready. Therefore, a lot of work is necessary in a short amount of time in order to take advantage of the readiness of the crop, to cash in on all the work that has gone into the season. For people who rely on the work of their own hands for their sustenance and livelihood, harvest is a time of urgency.
We can hear the urgency in Jesus’ use of the image. He has just experienced a deep sense of compassion for the people surrounding him. Looking more deeply at the Greek here provides nuance. First, the word used for compassion indicates a something felt deep in the gut. It is visceral, it is collapses distance, it is empathy felt deep in our insides. We might recognize this same word from the famous parable of the Good Samaritan. Second, the two Greek words used to describe the people that Jesus saw are often translated as harassed and helpless, which is a little passive. The actual meaning of the words imply both violent harassment and a state of being actively thrown aside. Jesus was noticing not only their emotional state but their political and social one. These people were not helpless and harassed because of their own personal issues, they were oppressed systemically by an oppressive regime. The further description of them being sheep without a shepherd is not just pretty pastoral language. It is directly referencing the Jewish prophetic tradition, specifically Exekiel, which calls the bad leaders who take advantage of the poor “bad shepherds.”
It is into this reality, this reality of people being harmed by systems, by ignorance, by malice, that Jesus speaks with the urgency of the harvest metaphor.
So, how are we to hold this urgency? For we must be careful; like all things urgency can be used for good and for harm. The are many harmful uses of urgency, many that have to do with manipulation and control. Traditional Christianity is not exempt; it has often stoked an urgent fear in people that they are destined for hell. How convenient then, that they also can offer the remedy: belief in Jesus. We see the harmful use of urgency in politics, where misinformation is used to stoke fear, outrage and division. I know I can personally relate to the fact that under the influence of anxiety it is harder to think rationally. It is a sad reality that power-hungry people know this and will actively use it to control others. 
But there are also positive aspects to urgency. Sometimes urgency can help us clarify what is important to us. In situations such as an illness, all the dross can fall away and we appreciate the beauty of small ordinary things. Urgency can help us get things done; sometimes just the right amount of urgency can focus us differently than at other times. Urgency can inspire us to be brave, giving us the gumption to do things we might otherwise not be inclined to do. Urgency can inspire people to work together; we see this any time there is a natural disaster of some kind, and people pull together to do what needs to be done. 
It is in this positive sense that Jesus is employing the urgency of the harvest metaphor. He was responding to the state of his people under political and economic hardship and the true emotional overwhelm and exhaustion that occurs when having to live that way long-term. He was responding to the reality that they had been abandoned and dismissed by the powers-that-be and the deep existential disorientation that occurs when this happens. His response: to send his disciples to minister to them with an urgent seriousness and focus. This is how we should read his command to, for that moment, ignore the Gentiles and the Samaritans. We know from many other stories that Jesus had compassion for them too. In this moment though, Jesus had a specific and urgent mission for the people right in front of him.
He sends his disciples to preach hope and to let the people know that God cared about them. But their work was not just about words. It was about making a concrete difference in people’s lives. In the words of Jesus’ time, he said to “cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons.” In some sense, this was hyperbole, but it also wasn’t; he was directing them to bring people back into health, back into relationship, back into community - basic things that were being destroyed by the constant oppression they were experiencing. Jesus wanted his disciples to do some good, some real good for real people.
This is another way to read the harvest metaphor, for it communicates urgency but also culmination. Swedenborg interpreted the harvest in the context of spiritual journey. As we heard in our reading, “the field” represents the church, or more generally, our whole spiritual life. The seeds that are planted in the field represent good intentions and true ideas that we have chosen to cultivate. These grow within us, with new seeds being planted whenever we learn something new or expand our experience of compassion. The culmination, the end goal, of these good intentions and true ideas is each of us being able to do some good for our neighbor, in large ways and in small. To quote Swedenborg:
In that sense the seeds which are sown in the field are truths of faith which are planted in good. Harvest means their growing ripe when forms of good develop from them (1)
The harvest is what we are trying to get to: forms of good that make a difference in others’ lives. Our good intentions and true ideas are important, but they are not growing fully ripe by simply staying in our hearts and minds and never being acted upon. The seeds that we have planted within ourselves are ultimately to serve the harvest, they are to serve taking care of each other, to serve the hapless and harassed around us, however that might be showing up in our context. All things lead to loving our neighbor, and if Jesus never said anything else other than this, it would be enough.
The reality is though, we cannot exist in a state of urgency all the time. It is too exhausting for our nervous system. We are not machines, we cannot work at urgent high levels indefinitely. God knows this, and this is why we have the Sabbath written into our earliest myths about how we were created. God invites us into the urgency of the call to minister to our neighbors, into the urgency of keeping our eyes open to the reality of suffering, into the urgency of knowing that we are God’s hands in the world. This urgency is a gift, for we know the harvest is the culmination of the seeds that are being planted in us all the time. And, we are invited to balance that urgency with the Sabbath, for all good soil needs to rest and be fed with the nutrients it needs for the next growing season. 
Jesus said: therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. Our Lord of the harvest feels the urgency of the suffering of all God’s children. Our Lord of the harvest equally knows that the harvest is where we have always been heading, if we wish to conform ourselves to the mutual love of heaven. So, in asking for the Lord to send out laborers, we can only humbly say, Lord, send me. Amen.

1. Emmanuel Swedenborg, Secrets of Heaven 9295

​
Readings:

Matthew 9:35-10:8

35 Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness.
36 When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.
37 Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few.
38 Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.”


1 Jesus called his twelve disciples to him and gave them authority to drive out impure spirits and to heal every disease and sickness.
2 These are the names of the twelve apostles: first, Simon (who is called Peter) and his brother Andrew; James son of Zebedee, and his brother John;
3 Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus;
4 Simon the Zealot and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him.
5 These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: “Do not go among the Gentiles or enter any town of the Samaritans.
6 Go rather to the lost sheep of Israel.
7 As you go, proclaim this message: ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’
8 Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received; freely give.


Secrets of Heaven 3941
The reason why 'wheat harvest' means a developing state of love and charity is that 'the field' means the Church and so the things that constitute the Church, while the seeds sown in it mean the germs of good and truth. And what springs up from those seeds, such as wheat, barley, and many other crops, are the fruits of love and charity, and also of faith.

Readings: Exodus 15:22-27, Matthew 9:9-13, Secrets of Heaven #8356 (see below)
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Photo by Lina Trochez on Unsplash


Today’s texts introduce a powerful metaphor for the way God works in our lives, and how we can grow and evolve emotionally and spiritually. Now one of the frameworks that we often use to talk about spiritual progress is sin and repentance. Sins are actions or attitudes that harm others or ourselves. A loving and caring God guides us to see those sins for what they are, guides us to experience appropriate regret and accountability for them, guides us in repairing harm and choosing to avoid those harms in the future. As we engage with this process, we become more heavenly from the inside out, because we are learning how to practice mutual love, and heaven is a realm of mutual love. This is an excellent and useful framework, one that particularly appealed to Swedenborg. (I’m imagining this is because it is very process-oriented and that this appealed to his scientific nature).
But, there are also other helpful ways to imagine our spiritual journeys, other metaphors that might guide us towards growth. Today we see one of them in God as our Healer.

In our first text, Moses is leading the newly liberated Children of Israel away from the Red Sea, where the Egyptians had perished in pursuit of them. They had traveled three days without water but when they finally found some, it was bitter. I’m sad to say that I certainly would have grumbled as they did in that situation. Yet, Moses appeals to the Lord and is told to throw some wood into the water so it can become safe to drink. After this miracle, God characterizes himself as the “God who heals you.”

In the Matthew text, Jesus is being very provocative as he often does. He begins by calling Matthew, a tax collector, to follow him. We can’t quite appreciate today how transgressive that would have been. Tax collectors in those days were collaborating with the oppressive machinery of Rome. Matthew would have been extracting payments from his neighbors in ways that would have harmed them and certainly have made them resentful. Yet, he responds to Jesus, and allows himself to be called out and away from that oppressive system. Given Matthew’s record of behavior, the Pharisees understandably question what Jesus is doing. He responds by trying to widen their lens. They have existed in a highly-regulated religious structure based on ritual and respectability, which ends up offering fairly narrow accessability for those who found themselves on the margins, for whatever reason. So Jesus uses the metaphor of sickness and healing to try explain what he is doing, to explain that God doesn’t demand perfection and respectability first, before God will engage with us. God is not a gate-keeper. God will try to heal anyone who needs it, because God’s ultimate goal is a healthy, honest, thriving person, not necessarily one who is “respectable” by whatever human standards we might be judging at the time.

The thing that is so interesting about the physician and healing metaphor is that it pre-supposes the existance of our wounds. Every person has been emotionally wounded in their life, in some way, large or small. Many times, depending on the depth or the severity of the wound, we might build our personalities around protecting that wound. Perhaps we have learned a robust self-sufficiency, perhaps we have learned to be extremely and co-dependently aware of the feelings of those around us, perhaps we just never ever look in the direction of the wound or anything that would remind us of it. We need not feel ashamed for having done any of this. Our former child selves, or our inner child now, is just doing the best they can to survive and not be hurt again. Many of these protections look and feel a lot like strength or success. But just as often they hide an inability or an unwillingness to be vulnerable in ways that connect us to others. At worst, they might cause us to lash out at others, or engage in other kinds of harmful behavior. We all find ways to protect, soothe, or cover over our wounds. But that is not the same as healing them. That is not the same as learning who we could be without them.

The framework of sin and repentance doesn’t really acknowledge where our sinning might come from. And often, our attempts to change our behaviors can only go so far without understanding the wounds that drive us. The trick is that most wounds are caused within relationship, and so they can only be healed in relationship. This can certainly be a relationship between us and God. But just as often, it is our relationship with people; friends, partners, therapists, colleagues, church, affinity groups and more, that help heal us. This is what Jesus was getting at with his practice of eating with people who others called “sinners.” When healing is the goal, rather than ritual or respectability, then community is essential to that healing process. And in fact, this is the motivation of the incarnation as a whole. God decided to come closer, decided the embody human community with us, so that we all might have more pathways towards healing.

The point of of the incarnation is often discussed in terms of “salvation” for us, but when we think about it in terms of healing and community, it allows us to redefine or even reclaim the word, allows it to sing a different song.

Because, unfortunately, salvation as a concept is vulnerable to the exercise of illegitimate power. In the words of Rev. Dr. Randy Woodley, an indigenous Episcopal priest:

“the word itself speaks of the illegitimate power claimed by the church, which, whether through force or influence, has held the world hostage to its demands concerning its ability to grant salvation or, if you will, paradise. If you hold the “keys to the kingdom,” you get to decide not only who gets in but what they have to do to get there. I don’t think Jesus ever intended the concept of salvation to be associated with that kind of illegitimate power.”  (1)

In Rev. Dr. Woodley’s opinion, healing conveys a more accurate meaning as to what Jesus was trying to do than salvation. Healing requires our cooperation, and cooperation is a word that belongs to community, and in fact only has meaning in community, even if it is just a community of two. Healing is a process, one that takes time and intention, and we must bring to it our honesty and accountability, our patience and determination. And like all relationship, healing requires vulnerability, a recognition of what we have been powerless over, a willingness to receive the gift of care.

Now, when Swedenborg interprets our Exodus text, he does so using the sin and repentance framework. Yet, there are pieces of the interpretation that can speak to a healing framework as well. Water represents truth, and there are times when certain realities feel bitter to us, so we shy away from them. In the sin and repentance framework, Swedenborg posits that this is because we are not yet ready for the accountability acknowledgment would require. I’m sure we can recognize how this has played out in our lives. But in the healing framework, the bitterness can also represent our woundedness, places that feel too confusing, painful or overwhelming to explore. And into this truth is thrown a piece of wood to make the water sweet, representing the way that goodness received can not only transform us, but also transform how we understand the truth of our wounds. Swedenborg writes here that the goodness represented by the wood revives our “affection for truth,” our basic sense that it is good to know the truth about ourselves. We need to know the truth about ourselves and our experience if we are to grow as people. Yet, knowing the truth about ourselves and our experience can be very scary, especially as we consider the trauma of our woundedness. So, we can understand how the goodness, the presence, compassion, patience, or trust, received from another can be such an important part of the process, can be an incredible gift that human beings can give to each other.

Now the caveat of course, is that for extreme trauma and woundedness, trained professionals are an integral part of the picture. I’m not asking us to dig deeper than any of us have the expertise to explore. But for our everyday woundedness, the regular difficulities of being human, our various communities are essential. Even though, to make a point, Jesus separates the sick and the healthy, the righteous and sinners, in his conversation with the Pharisees, in reality, we are all both, and we can’t really avoid that. What we can do is choose to engage in the process of healing, whatever that looks like for us. For we have a God who heals us, and thank goodness for that. Amen.

(1) Decolonizing Evangelicalism: An 11:59pm Conversation, Randy S. Woodley and Bo C. Sanders, p18

Readings:

Exodus 15:22-27

22 Then Moses led Israel from the Red Sea and they went into the Desert of Shur. For three days they traveled in the desert without finding water.
23 When they came to Marah, they could not drink its water because it was bitter. (That is why the place is called Marah. )
24 So the people grumbled against Moses, saying, “What are we to drink?”
25 Then Moses cried out to the LORD, and the LORD showed him a piece of wood. He threw it into the water, and the water became fit to drink. There the LORD issued a ruling and instruction for them and put them to the test.
26 He said, “If you listen carefully to the LORD your God and do what is right in his eyes, if you pay attention to his commands and keep all his decrees, I will not bring on you any of the diseases I brought on the Egyptians, for I am the LORD, who heals you.”
27 Then they came to Elim, where there were twelve springs and seventy palm trees, and they camped there near the water.

Matthew 9:9-13

9 As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him.
10 While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples.
11 When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”
12 On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.
13 But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
Secrets of Heaven #8356
'And the waters became sweet' means that as a result the truths were made pleasant. This is clear from the meaning of 'sweet' as pleasant, for 'sweet' in the spiritual sense means sweetness of life, which is the same thing as pleasantness; and from the meaning of 'the waters' as truths… The situation here is that a person's feeling of affection for truth comes from good. For goodness and truth have been joined together as if in marriage…

Readings: Luke 6:44-49, True Christianity 245 (see below)
See also on Youtube
Photo by Adem Percem on Unsplash
Today we explore a section of Jesus’ teaching in the gospel of Luke which concludes what is known as the Sermon on the Plain. In this Sermon, he teaches his disciples the Beatitudes, saying Blessed are the poor and those who mourn, he teaches them to love their enemies, to judge not lest they be judged, to be merciful and not hypocritical. Jesus has provided his followers with a lot of learning, both in that Sermon, and through other experiences. Now, he ends on the point that while a lot of learning can be a foundation, it is most important to live according to it. Which can often be trickier that we might first think.

Jesus uses two everyday metaphors to make his point. The first metaphor speaks to the goodness and usefulness of what we are able to accomplish. The second speaks to its resilience or longevity.

The first metaphor is one Jesus uses often: the fruit tree. While we are more likely now to pluck our fruit from a bin in the produce aisle, the experience of growing and picking fruit directly would have been very familiar to people in an agrarian society. They would understand what it is that makes a “good” tree able to bear good fruit: the compost, the pruning, the condusive environment. Jesus is drawing an implicit parallel between all the teachings that he has just delivered and the compost, good soil and water that is necessary to create a fruiting tree. But he is also implying that part of the picture is our willingness. We can give as much compost and water as we want to a thornbush or a briar but it will never produce figs or grapes. Likewise, if we have the heart of a thornbush or briar, we won’t be able to produce truly good actions. But the combination of good teaching, what we might in a religious context call Truth with a capital T, and a good heart filled as best it can be with love and good intention, this will produce good fruit in action.

The second metaphor is about building a house. This would also be very familiar, especially to Jesus, who was a carpenter himself, or who was at the very least a carpenter’s son. The durability of a structure depends on the quality of its foundation. Deep foundations are particularly important when building on a flood plain. Such foundations must not only be able to withstand water but also the soil erosion caused by a flood. So, Jesus calls upon the durability of rock. Again, he is comparing good and true teaching to the rock itself, something that we can build upon. Build what? The structure and purpose of our life. Life sometimes will throw a torrent of water at us, a flood of hardship that can take many shapes. And Jesus is saying via this metaphor, that when we can reach down to rely on our most cherished values, then these hardships don’t have to take us apart. These hardships don’t have to lead to us taking others down with us as we struggle. A life without a strong foundation of values is vulnerable to the uncertainty of hardship, just as a house built on sand might be.

So, an unshakable foundation leads to an unshakable structure. An unstable foundation leads to a unstable structure. I do want to push in on one aspect though. Because I can see how this metaphor might lead us mistakenly to a sense that we are shooting for imperviousness in the face of hardship. We imagine the steadfast little house withstanding the rushing waters, nothing getting in, nothing causing rupture or damage, and standing just the same as the waters fall away. There is indeed something about that idea that might help us to be brave. But it also might convince us that the goal is to always remain completely unchanged, that it is always better to be stoic, defended, utterly rational, immovable and unquestioning. 

For there is another way to imagine the metaphor, another way to picture hardship in our life that shakes us up, that has the potential to topple our life, and that is an earthquake.

Earthquake-resistant building requires a completely different style of design. Flexibility of structure is intentionally sought in order to absorb seismic energy. The building rests on flexible bearings instead of being fixed to the foundation. Diagonal bracing helps absorb lateral forces to prevent the twisting of the structure. Materials are used that allow the structure to bend, and designs generally seek a low center of gravity. And yet still, a foundation of bedrock rather than soil is essential, for soil can essentially liquify during an earthquake. The key is the combination of a solid anchor and a flexible structure, where the building is kept in place but the design intentionally dissipates the destructive seismic energy.

As we bring this understanding to Jesus’ original metaphor, we see the continued importance of the bedrock as foundation. We see the essential benefit of cherished values, of true teaching, of compassionate insight. This is the bedrock of our lives. 

But the structure of our lives, the selfhood that we build, the good works that we try to achieve, the habits we rely on, the opinions that we hold; these must be designed for flexibility. Hardship will change us, and this is a good thing. With a strong foundation based on truths that teach us to love God and to love others, this change will hopefully lead us in hopeful and expansive directions. Hardship will always be terrifying and disorienting. Whether we are surviving the equivalent of the torrent of water or the earthquake, the goal is to withstand the hardship not to conquer it. The goal is to make it through intact without surrendering our humanity.

Now, there are times when we need a certain amount of imperviousness. We want to be able to keep out certain things that show up in hardship: perhaps negative self-talk, the expections of others, pessimism, avoidance, temptations towards cynicism, self-centeredness, and lashing out. We want those things to just flow on by, while we hang on tight to our bedrock of trust, the value of dignity for ourselves and others, the importance of rest and kindness, humility and curiousity, honesty and accountability.

And then there are other times when we will need to be flexible to make it through hardship. We will need to remember that God built us for resilience, to withstand metaphorical earthquakes, but only if we are willing to let go of our iron grip on “how things are supposed to be” or “what we imagined life would be like” or “what we think it looks like to be right, or to be strong, or to be holy, or to be worthy.” We still need that bedrock. We still need that belief and trust in dignity, integrity, compassion, caring, honesty, humility and love. But as hardship teaches us, as hardship changes us, we also need our selfhood, and the structure of our life - the building of our life - to be able to shift enough in place so that we can see how those things can come to us in new ways. To see how we might have misunderstood them. To see how we may have misapplied them. To see how we might have thought that maybe we didn’t need them. 

And this reminds me of one of my favorite passages from Swedenborg:

But those motivated by good are so to speak flexible; and when they humble themselves before the Divine they bow right down to the ground. For truth without good is utterly rigid; but when it regards good as the end in view that rigidity starts to change into flexibility. (1)

The rigidity of truth is important but it can only take us so far. When we try to apply truth to life, when we try to do good and be good, when we look to what good and worthy goals for any situation might be, rigidity must change into flexibility. Not all the way. An earthquake-resistant building doesn’t just float off like a balloon when the earthquake starts. It is the combination of steadfastness and flexibility that is the magic, that is the way to being truly resilient, that is the way to keep our house standing.

The text uses the phrase well-built. There are many ways to understand what well-built might mean in our particular lives. Only we can know the times when we need to hunker down and be  impervious, and the times that might call for more flexibility and learning. The key is looking towards the ultimate good. The key is thinking about what will produce the good fruit from the first metaphor Jesus uses. The answer will always be some portion of relying on our bedrock and building with wisdom and adaptability. How much of each? Well, that’s the trick isn’t it? That’s what we get to live into. Amen.

(1) Emanuel Swedenborg, Secrets of Heaven #7068


Readings:

Luke 6:43-49

A Tree and Its Fruit
43 “No good tree bears bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit.
44 Each tree is recognized by its own fruit. People do not pick figs from thornbushes, or grapes from briers.
45 A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.

The Wise and Foolish Builders
46 “Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say?
47 As for everyone who comes to me and hears my words and puts them into practice, I will show you what they are like.
48 They are like a man building a house, who dug down deep and laid the foundation on rock. When a flood came, the torrent struck that house but could not shake it, because it was well built.
49 But the one who hears my words and does not put them into practice is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. The moment the torrent struck that house, it collapsed and its destruction was complete.”

True Christianity #245

As everyone knows, the church depends on its body of teaching and its body of teaching is based on the Word. Nevertheless, it is not the body of teaching itself but its integrity and purity, and therefore an understanding of the Word, that forms the church. The church in miniature that is in us as individuals is also formed and established not by a body of teaching but by our faith and by our living our faith. Likewise, what forms and establishes the church in miniature in any of us is not the Word; it is the faith based on true perceptions and the life based on good actions that we individually draw from the Word and apply to ourselves.

Readings: John 14:1-14, Apocalypse Revealed 613 (see below)
See also on Youtube
Photo by Karsten Würth on Unsplash

Today’s text begins a section in John’s gospel that is called the Farewell Discourse. Jesus and the disciples have just finished a meal together, what we now call the Last Supper, and Jesus has just predicted that Peter will deny him three times. It is a heavy moment, after which Jesus begins his final teachings to his disciples.

He begins by trying to comfort them, they who had always, very understandably, resisted Jesus telling them he was going to die. He talks to them about the ways that he will continue to be with them, to lead them and to work for them. And he utters some of the most important words in the Christian faith: I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

Now, the Christian tradition has often used these words to say that the only way to salvation is to believe in Jesus. These words have been used to justify hatred or dismissal of other faiths, used to justify colonialism and the cruelty that has been the hallmark of colonialism. These words have been interpreted to say that millions of people are going to hell for eternity for the crime of simply not being Christian (or even, not being the right kind of Christian).

But of course, what kind of God would set things up in this way? Not the God I believe in. So, what is another way to interpret Jesus’ words?

In our tradition, we see Jesus describing a process not a particular religion; a path of spiritiual development, not belief in a particular set of doctrines. The way, the truth, and the life is a three-fold process by which we can evolve and grow as human beings, and we can do it in any religious context, and even (the horrors!) a secular one. Because, if a God of love was going to provide us with a path towards heaven, then a God of love would provide a path that is applicable and effective in as many contexts as possible.

First, “the way.” The story of Jesus is a powerful one, because of the way that he walked through his life. But where did the story of his public ministry begin? With John the Baptist and his baptism of repentance. The way into spiritual life always has to begin with humility. An essential openness to learning. If we approach our faith with arrogance, certainty, a hunger for dominance and power, or a need to be right, this will always lead to harm for ourselves and others, and particularly, a kind of harm that impacts the vulnerable and the marginalized most acutely. This is exactly the kind of harm that Jesus was working against. So a stance of essential humility is the first step on the way. The following steps involve building on humility with repentance, an openness to seeing what in our life needs to change. What we need to question or give up. What we need to apologize for. This is a difficult phase, not only because getting started with anything can often be difficult, but because this is the phase where we need to willingly and actively put down our defensiveness. We cannot move on to the next stage until we do.

But if we do, then we are ready for the second stage: “the truth.” Humility has started us on “the way” and so the next step is to seek clarity and enlightenment. We have opened ourselves to seeing patterns, perspectives, habits, that we need to let go of, and harm that we need to repair and heal. So we explore “the truths” that guide us in doing so. We might ask ourselves: where did this pattern come from? What is it protecting? We might ask ourselves: where did this perspective come from? Do I truly believe it? We might ask ourselves: Why do I act in this certain way? What story about myself is it perpetuating? We might ask ourselves: what harm have I caused and why? What can I do to make it right?

In our tradition, we call this part of the process “reformation.” We see the pieces of ourselves that may have assembled in maladaptive ways, usually protecting something painful or sad or vulnerable inside of us, and we try to re-form ourselves, and our thinking and our acting, in healthier ways. This will often involve re-framing of certain ideas and perspectives that will then filter down into how we feel, allowing for shifts that we might describe as healing or relief or finally coming home to ourselves. This stage takes courage and patience, as we untangle our defenses, as we let go of inherited narratives, as we face the reality of our failures. But it also brings liberation, and a chance to create something new.

And so finally, Jesus says he is “the life.” After we have reflected on our patterns, after we have re-framed our thinking, then it is time to make different choices. It is time to live differently. We won’t always do so perfectly. But every tiny decision builds the foundation of our new selfhood. Every small act grounds us in the reality of new growth. In our tradition, we call this stage “regeneration,” a metaphor anchored in nature. We picture seeds sprouting in nourishing soul, new buds appearing in the spring-time, the miracle of a salamander growing a new tail, or a caterpillar embracing the full dissolution that is the cocoon, in order the emerge as a butterfly. With God, we are making ourselves anew. We are being reborn though the way, the truth, and the life. 

But why does Jesus then say: No one comes to the Father except through me? This does sound rather exclusive, it does sound ripe for a kind misinterpretation that is interested saying certain people are “in” and certain people are “out.” 

We know, of course, from many many other stories about Jesus that this was not his viewpoint.  He was particularly focused on the people that human systems of domination put on the margins. Jesus would never wish to create yet another system of exclusion based upon himself. So, this is how our tradition interprets this saying: that the only way to try to fully embody the Divine Love that created us, is to engage with the process just described, the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to Divine Love without walking the process of spiritual growth.

You see, we don’t understand Jesus and the Father to be separate, as indeed, Jesus makes clear in this very text. We see the Father as metaphorical language describing the Divine Love that is the essence of God’s being. We see Jesus as that Divine Love reaching for us, reaching so far as to take on a human body, just like our own. This reaching took on the shape of a person and a life, teaching us what it looks like to care for others, to speak truth to power, to sacrifice the self for a greater cause. 

There is such universal and foundational truth to be found in Jesus’ life, and so Christians hold the gospels with reverence, we turn them this way and that like a precious stone in the light, trying to perceive each new sparkle that might enliven our mind and comfort our heart. We read them to each other in community so that our individual interpretations might bless each other, and might expand our perspective. For us, Jesus is a source of Divine Truth, Jesus is a companion on the journey, guiding us in the way, the truth, and the life, in humility, reflection and application. Jesus embodies this process, because he walked it himself. And there is no way to Divine Love that doesn’t engage this process in some way and in some form.

But it is the process that is the key, not the words that we use to name it, not the religion we have formed to practice it, not the beliefs we have created around it. Humility, reflection, and application, are found in many traditions and in many contexts. Jesus was one embodiment of it. But a God who “so loved the world” would give us many ways, many truths, and many means of living a good and loving life. God welcomes every beloved child who walks the process, regardless of how they came to it, regardless of how far along the path they are. 

It is truly heart-breaking that we human beings have used Jesus words as tools of domination rather than a means of connection. As a way to pretend we have co-opted God’s favor, as a permission structure to indulge our worst tendencies. We should see this clearly, we should mourn it, we should repudiate it. And then, lend our hands and our hearts to the project of healing, and living a different way. What a gift it is to have God’s guidance on this path. Amen.


Readings:

John 14:1-14
1 “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me.
2 My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you?
3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.
4 You know the way to the place where I am going.”
5 Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?”
6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
7 If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.”
8 Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.”
9 Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?
10 Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work.
11 Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves.
12 Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.
13 And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.
14 You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.


Apocalypse Revealed 613

The name of the Father means the Lord in respect to the Divine called the Father from which springs all else, and at the same time in respect to His Divine humanity called the Son, since the two are one and the same person, united like a soul and body…the Father also means the Divine goodness of the Lord's Divine love, which in the Gospels is everywhere meant by the Father when referred to by the Lord, while the Divine truth of His Divine wisdom is meant by the Son. When the Lord glorified His humanity, these two were united like a soul with its body and a body with its soul.

Readings: Luke 24:13-35, Secrets of Heaven #7082 (see below)
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Photo by Johannes Plenio on Unsplash

This story of Jesus and his followers on the Road to Emmaus is a story that is full of feeling. It is one that we can easily imagine ourselves in. Perhaps we recognize the disappointment of Cleopas and his friend from our own experience. Perhaps we are comforted and amused by the casual back and forth between them and Jesus. Perhaps we remember times when our own hearts burned with a sense of call, of meaning, or of purpose.

There is something very powerful in the way that this story connects the experiences of disappointment and love, something that echoes the resurrection itself, but specifically at the level of the human heart. 

First, in the disappointment, we can resonate with these two Jesus followers, so deeply shaken and turned-around by the events of the crucifixion. They had invested so much of themselves into Jesus and his teaching. They had expectations of a long-awaited fulfilment, one that would bring their people freedom and renewal. They walked along the road together, processing all that had happened, a support group of two. Perhaps we can remember times when we have done the same, going over events in our mind, trying to figure out what went wrong, or what we could have done differently. Trying to understand the reality of loss, trying to make sense of something that feels unfair or unjust, trying to reconcile why people didn’t see what we could see, trying to discern how to keep on going within circumstances we didn’t anticipate.

They must have felt so lost. It is acutely painful to hope and to be disappointed. For the pain of such a loss is mixed with confusion and shame and disillusionment. Thank goodness Cleopas and his friend had each other. 

Then, into this experience of disappointment comes Jesus. The metaphor of Jesus walking along the road with them, and with us, in this experience is a truly comforting one. Jesus asked them about their experience, even though he surely knew it. He let them tell him of their hopes, fears, disappointment, and he listened, he companioned them in it. This alone is powerful. 

Yet, he also challenged them. They might have had expectations about what Jesus would do politically for the nation of Israel but Jesus had always been clear that his purposes were larger than that. He had always been clear that he would have to die in order to show humanity the depth of God’s solidarity with us, and the power life over death, good over evil, love over hate. Jesus challenged the way they were seeing the story, helped them to let go of the pieces that were holding them back and started them on a new way of thinking, one that would ultimately bring them healing.

Which brings me to the second powerful feeling highlighted in the text today: love. Now of course, the bible speaks of love all the time. But this particular text gets inside the experience of it in a particular way. After they had eventually recognized Jesus, they recalled how their hearts were burning within them as he spoke. I suspect this language is one of the reasons this is a beloved and oft-quoted story: because it describes a deeply human experience of emotion. The language of burning is intense and we often use hyperbole when words are just not quite enough. Cleopas and his friend really felt something that day, something powerful and growing and mysterious. Yet, this story is not only the experience of emotion itself. It is about emotion, specifically love, as a gateway to spiritual growth.

Our tradition is often considered somewhat intellectual. Our guiding theologian wrote a lot of books, just so many words upon words. And we have always understood faith to be something that has to make sense to our intellectual mind. Swedenborg always railed against the notion of people being told that they just “have to believe” things that don’t make sense to them. He thought that to be a dangerously manipulative tool wielded by powerful people and systems, and so he always uplifted each person’s freedom to decide what to believe according to what makes sense to them personally. So we have a strong tradition of trying to understand, of asking questions, and of on-going reflection. You can join us for our Journey of Faith discussion group after coffee hour to experience that side of the tradition.

But despite his many thousands of written words, despite his scientific training and turn of mind, Swedenborg also recognized that love is always at the center of everything. It is the center and essence of the Divine; it is what flows into us human beings to give us life, it is the root of our willing action, it is the motivator of the mind, it is the shaper of our lives.

And therefore, so much of our spiritual work is to open ourselves to love. Yes, we reflect and we discern about the best ways to do that, we untangle our traumas and our beliefs, we settle on values and perspectives that give us meaning, and we determine useful action and structure that reflects it all. And then we need to make space.

For, our doing lives can only take us so far. And the “doing” of useful action is our job in this life to a certain extent because what we do really matters to ourselves and to others. And yet, “doing” that comes from ourselves, even with the best of intentions, leaves us open to disappointment, resentment, anxiety, overwhelm, and burn-out. The next step, the next evolution in all our doing, even all our most wonderful doing that takes care of the world and others and ourselves, the next step is to make space for the inflow of God within it. To let God start the fire in our hearts and keep it burning, to let God’s love flow in with a worthiness, purpose and meaning that supports doing but is not created by doing. To cultivate the experience of the Road to Emmaus in our everyday. To let God walk with us, and in that companionship be open to the inflow of God’s love and the way it sets our hearts aglow.

It’s hard to remember that this next step is possible when we are in the midst of disappointment, resentment, anxiety, overwhelm, disillusionment or whatever challenges show up for us. And so we have stories like this one, stories that remind us that we are not alone on the road of life, stories that encourage us to listen to each other, to reframe our perspectives, to  be open to learning what our hearts can teach us, to remind us to keep walking because God is walking with us.

This week I was encouraged by these words from the writer Sarah Bessey:

I’m going to live as if everything will actually be made right someday and justice will prevail, tears will be wiped away and every exile will lead the dancing. Oh, I’m going to live my life like God is trustworthy. I’ll act like the underdog of love always comes from behind to win by total upset. I’m going to say yes to the possibilities of participating in the renewal of all things even when they wear very small, ordinary disguises….I’ll keep loving this world until it breaks my heart and then I’ll sit in the pieces, holding onto love.(1)

Cleopas and his friend were walking along with broken hearts that day. They loved their small piece of their world in the way they understood it and it broke their heart. And Jesus came along to resurrect their hearts the way that he had resurrected his body. In wonder they said, were not our hearts burning within us when he walked with us on the road? Those hearts that were broken only moments ago? Yes, the very same.

I’ll keep loving this world until it breaks my heart and then I’ll sit in the pieces, holding onto love. Bessey (as borrowed from Wendell Berry) calls this “practicing resurrection.” Friends, wherever we are on the road, let us practice resurrection by anticipating its reality, let us make space within our hearts for the rising of our God. Amen.

(1) Sarah Bessey's Field Notes, April 13th, 2026

​Readings:

Luke 24:13-35
On the Road to Emmaus
13 Now that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem.
14 They were talking with each other about everything that had happened.
15 As they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus himself came up and walked along with them;
16 but they were kept from recognizing him.
17 He asked them, “What are you discussing together as you walk along?”They stood still, their faces downcast.
18 One of them, named Cleopas, asked him, “Are you the only one visiting Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?”
19 “What things?” he asked. “About Jesus of Nazareth,” they replied. “He was a prophet, powerful in word and deed before God and all the people.
20 The chief priests and our rulers handed him over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified him;
21 but we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel. And what is more, it is the third day since all this took place.
22 In addition, some of our women amazed us. They went to the tomb early this morning
23 but didn’t find his body. They came and told us that they had seen a vision of angels, who said he was alive.
24 Then some of our companions went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but they did not see Jesus.”
25 He said to them, “How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken!
26 Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?”
27 And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.
28 As they approached the village to which they were going, Jesus continued on as if he were going farther.
29 But they urged him strongly, “Stay with us, for it is nearly evening; the day is almost over.” So he went in to stay with them.
30 When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them.
31 Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight.
32 They asked each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?”
33 They got up and returned at once to Jerusalem. There they found the Eleven and those with them, assembled together
34 and saying, “It is true! The Lord has risen and has appeared to Simon.”
35 Then the two told what had happened on the way, and how Jesus was recognized by them when he broke the bread.

Secrets of Heaven 7082

There are two elements in the physical world that create life there, and they are warmth and light. There are also two elements in the spiritual world that create life there, and they are love and faith. The physical phenomenon of warmth corresponds to the spiritual phenomenon of love, and the physical phenomenon of light corresponds to the spiritual phenomenon of faith. That is why “spiritual warmth” or “spiritual fire” means love, and “spiritual light” means faith. What is more, love actually is the vital heat in us, and people recognize that love makes us warm. Faith actually is the light we see by, and people can recognize that faith enlightens us.

Readings: Luke 10:25-37, Secrets of Heaven #133 & #9874[3] (see below)
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Photo by Tony Stoddard on Unsplash

Today I want to introduce you to one of my favorite Easter children’s stories: The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes. I cannot tell you how many times I read this book as a child. It is a sweet, whimsical, and moving story, that is surprisingly feminist for being written in 1939.

It begins with a little country bunny who is wishing she could grow up to be one of the Easter Bunnies. One of - yes - in this story, there are five special bunnies to deliver all the easter eggs to all the children of the world, and they are the wisest, kindest, and swiftest of all the bunnies. 

Most of the fancy bunnies made fun of the country bunny’s aspirations, and while she didn’t lose hope, over time she did grow up and have a family. Suddenly one day though, it is announced that it is time for one of the Easter bunnies to retire. All the hopeful bunnies assembled at the house of old, wise, kind Grandfather Bunny to audition, and Mother Cottontail showed up with her 21 children to see the festivities. The fancy bunnies did their best to convince Grandfather bunny they were right for the job, but while they were able to prove they were pretty and fast, they had not proven they were wise and kind. 

At last, Grandfather bunny’s gaze landed on Mother Cottontail, and he invited her to come forward. As she spoke of her family, and they way all the children helped her and each other, Grandfather bunny was convinced that she was wise and kind, and when she ordered her children to scatter, and she chased after them and returned them quickly, she also proved she was swift. Grandfather Bunny appointed her to be the newest Easter bunny.

Mother Cottontail spent the next night delivering Easter eggs all over the world, with her fellow Easter Bunnies. Towards the end of the night, Grandfather Bunny gave her a very special task: to deliver an Easter egg to a sick child who lived on top of a high mountain. Mother Cottontail was surprised and a little intimidated but couldn’t bear for a such brave child to be forgotten, so she set out. She made it almost to the top of the mountain but at the last minute lost her footing, and fell all the way to the bottom. When she tried to stand, she found that she had sprained her ankle. To her dismay, the sun was starting to rise, and she would not be able to make it. 

Suddenly, Grandfather Bunny appeared and told her that in addition to being wise, kind and swift, that she was also very brave. He gave her a pair of little golden shoes, and once she put them on, she could bound up the mountain in just two jumps. She slipped inside the house to deliver the egg to the child, and then bounded home to her own children. They were safe and sound; all of them had taken care of the house and each other. And from that day forward, the little gold shoes would hang on a hook in Mother Cottontail’s house, to be used again each Easter to bring joy to the children of the world.

Now, apart from the obvious Easter theme, why would I choose to preach on this story today? Certainly because I love this story and always will, but also because of the way it grounds us in the same kinds of virtues that we see time and time again in the Bible, and in particular, from Jesus. 

Grandfather Bunny was looking for bunnies who were wise, kind, and swift, and for the most important tasks, bunnies who were brave. What else are *we* doing here at church, other than trying to learn how to be wise, kind, brave, and swift to help? For Swedenborgians, this trio of being wise, kind and swift, immediately echoes the trinity of aspects that we see in God, and that we try to cultivate within ourselves - Wisdom, Love, and Usefulness, and of course, the courage that it takes to steadfastedly live them out in life.

I chose the story of the Good Samaritan today because it is one where we can see someone being wise, kind, swift and brave in service to others. We heard in our reading that a traveler was beset by bandits and left for dead in the road. A priest and a Levite both went by without helping him. But finally, a Samaritan (meaning someone of a tribe of people to the north of Judea and the south of Galilee) stopped and rendered aid.

This Samaritan was wise in that he saw what was needed and he did that. He took care of the most urgent things first - disinfected and bandaged the man’s wounds. Then he placed the man on his donkey and took him to the nearest inn, in order to keep them both out of further danger and continue his immediate care throughout the night. Then, when he needed to leave, he provided provision for the man’s further care. Wisdom assessed the situation, and continued assessing it as needed, showing flexibility according to context. 

How was the Samaritan kind? It seems obvious of course, in that he stopped where others had not. As we dig a little deeper though, we have to recognize the context that might have prevented him from acting. Jews and Samaritans shared a deep mutual contempt going back many hundreds of years. They were in fact, the same people, and worshiped the same God, but had diverged on what where they should worship, and some other disagreements. Over time, these differences grew into an intractable hatred. Perhaps this sounds familiar - for it is a very human occurance. This was at the heart of the question to Jesus: And who is my neighbor? We get the sense that it was asked with the hidden question: who am I allowed to ignore? who am I allowed to say is NOT my neighbor? Jesus’ answer was essentially: no one. 

And the Greek word used in v.33 illuminates things even further. It is splanchnizomai (v.33), which means means a compassion felt viscerally, in the gut. It invokes the deep empathy that can drive us to care for our fellow human beings, and acknowledgment of how in herently connected, regardless of context. Jesus is making clear that this intuitive connective empathy should guide our actions. Kindness to people to look like us, sound like us, believe like us, is not sufficient. We don’t actually get to decide who is an isn’t our neighbor.

Did the Samaritan move swiftly? Was he swift to act? Yes, indeed he was. The Samaritan was swift in his initial response. He was moved, and then he acted with wisdom. Yet, he wasn’t swift to depart, and when he did, he made provision. We see a swiftness in the beginning, when it was warranted, and a steadiness that continued the injured man’s care. Sometimes quickness, being first, being fast, can be lauded in our culture in a way that makes no space for accountability. Move fast and break things has been considered a desirable business strategy by prominent CEOs. But it is an immature one. We see in the story a deft demonstration of the power of both being swift and being steadfast, according to need.

And was the Samaritan brave? I think so. The road from Jerusalem to Jericho was notoriously dangerous, which was why Jesus used it as an illustration. Stopping to help put the Samaritan in danger as well, for there was no guarantee the robbers were no longer nearby. This took physical courage. Yet, even futher, there was the social danger that comes from crossing lines in the sand that everyone seemingly agrees with. What would the Samaritan’s family and peers have thought of this actions? What would the inn keeper have thought? Would he experience repercussions? Would he need to explain himself? This is a quieter kind of courage but no less important. For who knows what benefit his example might bring, as it quietly loosens one small strand of habitual prejudice. 

So in this familiar Bible story, we see the virtues of being wise, kind, swift, and brave, just as in the story of the Country Bunny. And after the week we have had, a week in which the President of our own United States threatened another civilization with destruction, perhaps this all talk of these virtues seems too much like a fairytale? Why focus on a children’s story today? Because I believe that the stories we tell shape us deeply. Whether they are bible stories, or other stories, our stories have the power to create meaning, communicate values, and suggest action. When we are being told stories about how we, or our country, or our religion, must dominate, must “win”, must control, must care only about ourselves, when we are told that this what we deserve, this is what we are owed, this is the only way, then we will become we will become people embody those ideas.

But if our stories tell of people caring for one other, tell of people being wise, kind, swift and brave, tell of one person taking a rish to help another, then we have a chance of embodying those virtues instead. We’ll still do it imperfectly. But it matters what we aspire to.

In our tradition, when encountered in the Bible, gold always represents the goodness of love, the inherent way that love creates goodness, simply the essence, the purpose of love. How appropriate then, that the County Bunny was given shoes of gold, and these shoes gave her the power to do her work of bringing joy to others. They provided her with the power to literally jump towards others, to cross the distance between people. With whatever constitues our own golden shoes in this world, Jesus tells us “Go and do likewise.”

Amen.

Readings:

Luke 10:25-37
25 On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
26 “What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”
27 He answered, “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’ ; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ ”
28 “You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”
29 But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”
30 In reply Jesus said: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead.
31 A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side.
32 So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.
33 But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him.
34 He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him.
35 The next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’
36 “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”
37 The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.” Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”

Secrets of Heaven #133
Nothing is more common in the Word than for the good that belongs to wisdom or else to love to be meant and represented by 'gold'. All the gold of the Ark, the Temple, the golden table, the lampstands, the vessels, and on Aaron's vestments, meant and represented good that belongs to wisdom or else to love.

Secrets of Heaven 9874[3]
The truth that this good is the good of love that is received from the Lord and shown to the Lord may be recognized from the consideration that all good belongs to love, for what a person loves they call good and also feel to be such. From this it is evident that heavenly good is the good of love to the Lord, for this love is what joins angel and people to the Lord; through this love they are brought to God and enjoy all the good of heaven.