Readings: Isaiah 51:1-2, 4-5, 9-11, Luke 5:1-11, True Christianity 58 (see below)
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This is the first call story in the gospel of Luke. The Jesus that we have just celebrated being born will grow up to perform a ministry of teaching and healing. At the start of today’s text, we see that he is beginning to gain a reputation and is drawing large crowds, so large that he resorts to preaching from a boat. 
Now, Jesus and Simon Peter, who will become one of the most prominent disciples, have already met by this point. In fact, one of the healings Jesus had just performed in the gospel of Luke was for Simon Peter’s mother-in-law. Jesus knew whose boat he was using, and the gospel makes it sound a little more casual and random than it probably was. Yet, there was purpose in what Jesus was doing, because when he was done teaching, he was not yet done with Simon. “Put out into the deep water, and let down your nets for a catch,” he told him. Simon does not seem sure about Jesus entirely. He has seen him heal his mother-in-law but still thinks he knows better, at least regarding fishing. After all, fishing is his trade. So, he is doubtful but respectful, still calling Jesus “Master,” and he does what Jesus says, though we imagine probably half-heartedly and without expectation.

The catch, however, is super-abundant; it is a miracle of plenty where there previously had been none. Simon is astonished and falls on his knees before Jesus, this time calling him “Lord.” And along with James and John, Simon subsequently leaves everything and follows Jesus.

There is some interesting language used in this gospel, compared the the other versions. Jesus tells Simon “don’t be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.” Perhaps some of us are more familiar with the wording from Matthew or Mark: “Follow me and I will make you fishers of men.” This is not just a disagreement in translation; the actual words in greek are different between the gospels. Perhaps Luke was trying to be clever, playing on the sense that Simon Peter, the fisherman, was he himself the first to be “caught.”

However, in modernity, we cannot help but squirm at this wording. From this side of history, catching people sounds very problematic. Through the lens of colonialism and slavery, the word catch sounds a discordant note. Whatever Luke intended at the time, “to catch” a person, to us now, infers an abrogation of freedom on the part of the one who is caught. Is this what Jesus meant?

We know that it cannot be so. There is not a single instance of Jesus forcing someone to follow him. Indeed, he even allowed one of his own the freedom to betray him. What is meant here then? What shall we gather from this story, as we enter into it as people who both support the growth of spiritual community and experience our personal faith? As people who hope to “catch” and also who are caught? As both fisherman and fish?

From the fisherman point of view, we are being asked to believe in an abundance of spirit and connection in the midst of the everyday. Fish was a staple food and there was a thriving fishing industry on the sea of Galilee. Simon was equivalent to a middle class small business owner today (1). He was wonderfully ordinary, not particularly distinguished or qualified. After Jesus had done his thing for while, he issued a specific challenge to Simon. Go out onto the deep water, put down your nets.

Much like the English word “deep,” the greek word “bathos” has both a literal meaning (“deep sea”) and also a metaphorical meaning (“the deep things of God.”) It speaks of depth as a physical measurement, but also as the depth of things, as mystery. As we heard in our Isaiah reading, the primordial sea was an ancient Jewish symbol of chaos (2). And that is often how we perceive things that are beyond our understanding in any given moment; as chaos, as a deep and foreboding darkness. Yet, Jesus invites us to go out into this depth, this mystery, to go out beyond what we think we know, to go out beyond into the place where our limited understanding is no longer dominant. How many of us want to do that? How many of us really want to go deep, when we could just exist on the surface? But Jesus directly commanded Simon to go there, to put down his net, to reach into the mystery and see what he might find.

When God invites us to go deep, it is not chaos that God means for us find but God’s presence. From our Swedenborg reading we heard:  

[God’s] omnipotence fills, and works within, the sphere of the extension of goodness, a sphere that is infinite. At a deep level, this sphere pervades the universe and everything in it.

God’s love pervades everything. Even at the deepest darkest depths, God’s love and God’s presence can be found. The purpose of Jesus’ request to Simon Peter was to uncover that reality. In our everyday lives, we remain safe on the boat, living our surface life, seeing how we want to see, thinking we know what fish are out there. God is inviting us to go deeper into the water. What did Simon find there? He found an abundance of fish that he could not have predicted. And Simon also found that he was the fish. He was the one who was caught. The heart of the miracle is not so much the abundant haul of fish, though knowledge of God’s abundance is always a miracle. This was also a call story. The real miracle is that Simon became the fish. The real miracle was that for a moment, separation and distance were abolished, and Simon found himself viewing God’s love from the inside, breathing water when we has was used to breathing air.

The real miracle is the knowledge that everything is connected. We imagine a separation between the spiritual life and our everyday concerns, between Sunday and Monday. We imagine a separation between God and the world, or between groups of people.  Perhaps it is easier to get on with being a fisherman that way. Our default mode is separation, our default mode is to stay on the surface. Yet God invites us into the deep. And when we accept this invitation, connection, empathy, and love are our reward.

But even so, what is our reaction to this new sense of connectedness? When we look to the text, do we see wonder and astonishment? Yes. But we also see shame. Simon was convinced of God’s transformative power but believed that he was not pure enough to engage with it. That his sinfulness must somehow disqualify him from relationship with God.  Even as he proclaimed Jesus “Lord,” he also told him to go away. Connection feels painful, feels impossible, if we truly believe that we don’t deserve it, or that we don’t belong in the circle. Even as Simon recognized the abundant power that he saw before him, even as Simon recognized the gift of being scooped up in God’s net, it felt like too much.

Simon received an invitation to explore depth, connection, and transformation. Sometimes the possibility of these things feel like chaos and so we demur. We burrow back into our own smallness, we toss out our shame behind us as reasons why God should not want us. But God does want us. There is nothing we can do that will ever persuade God to no longer want us.
So what does this mean for the mission of the church, for the so-called “catching” of people? How are we to understand that? For the disciples were to become leaders in the Jesus movement, spreading Jesus’ teachings far and wide. What does it mean for us, as we step away from the boat as Simon did, leaving behind what we think we know, to follow Jesus? I believe that it means we issue the invitation as Jesus did, for people to explore depth in safety. I believe it means that we let the spirit do the work of transformation in others and stand together in love and community as we each struggle with what that brings up for us, including shame. And I believe it means we go forth with a vision in which people are no longer marked and defined by separation, but in which the fisherman sees with the eyes of the fish and vice versa.

As we are liberated from our own sense of separation, our presence automatically brings others into community. And perhaps this is what it means “to catch” others: to help facilitate a transformative moment… to catch our breath, to catch a glimpse of something beautiful….a moment when we realize that something is deeper and fuller than we thought, a moment when we realize our potential, a moment when we realize God’s love, a moment when we shift from Master to Lord, a moment when we transform from fisherman to fish. These are deeply precious moments of personal call, and so we praise a God who, in the words of Isaiah, makes a road in the depths of the sea for us.

Amen

(1) Ronald J. Allen, https://www.workingpreacher.org/?lect_date=02/10/2019&lectionary=rcl
(2) Ibid


Readings:


Isaiah 51:1-2, 4-5, 9-11
1 “Listen to me, you who pursue righteousness and who seek the LORD: Look to the rock from which you were cut and to the quarry from which you were hewn; 2 look to Abraham, your father, and to Sarah, who gave you birth. When I called him he was only one man, and I blessed him and made him many. 4 “Listen to me, my people; hear me, my nation: Instruction will go out from me; my justice will become a light to the nations. 5 My righteousness draws near speedily, my salvation is on the way, and my arm will bring justice to the nations.

9 Awake, awake, arm of the LORD, clothe yourself with strength! Awake, as in days gone by, as in generations of old. Was it not you who cut Rahab to pieces, who pierced that sea monster through? 10 Was it not you who dried up the sea, the waters of the great deep, who made a road in the depths of the sea so that the redeemed might cross over? 11 Those the LORD has rescued will return. They will enter Zion with singing; everlasting joy will crown their heads. Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away.

Luke 5:1-11

1 Once while Jesus was standing beside the lake of Gennesaret, and the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God, 2 he saw two boats there at the shore of the lake; the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. 3 He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little way from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat. 4 When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, "Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch." 5 Simon answered, "Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets." 6 When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break. 7 So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both boats, so that they began to sink. 8 But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus' knees, saying, "Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!" 9 For he and all who were with him were amazed at the catch of fish that they had taken; 10 and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. Then Jesus said to Simon, "Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people." 11 When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him.

True Christianity #56

In the universe and everything in it, God's omnipotence follows and works through the laws of its design. God is omnipotent, because he has all power from himself. All others have power from him. God's power and his will are one. Because he wills nothing but what is good, he cannot do anything but what is good… God is in fact goodness itself. When he does something good, he is in himself. He cannot walk away from himself. 

Clearly then, his omnipotence fills, and works within, the sphere of the extension of goodness, a sphere that is infinite. At a deep level, this sphere pervades the universe and everything in it. At a deep level, this sphere also governs things outside of itself to the extent that they become part of it through their own design. If things do not become part of that sphere, it still sustains them. It tries in every way to bring them back to a design in harmony with the universal design that God inhabits with his omnipotence and follows in his actions. If things against the design are not brought back into the design, they are cast out of God; but there he still sustains them from deep within. 

Readings: Psalm 28, Luke 1:39-35, Secrets of Heaven #545 (see below)
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This week we will take some time to center the character of Elizabeth. Elizabeth is introduced within the first five verses of the book of Luke and is the mother of John the Baptist, who we focused on last week. 

We learn that she is the wife of a priest named Zechariah; they are childless and quite old. But Elizabeth will soon enter into the biblical tradition of miraculous pregnancies. An angel appears to Zechariah to tell him that Elizabeth will conceive and bear a son, and they are to call him John.  “And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to make ready people for the Lord.” (v17)

And soon, just as the angel said, Elizabeth falls pregnant. After a few months, Elizabeth’s relative, Mary, comes to her with her own miraculous story. Mary is pregnant too, the miracle being not her age, but that her womb will grow the earthly body of the living God. The beauty of this story is in its mystery. All Mary needed to do was say an initial greeting: “Hello, Elizabeth….!?” as we all might do at the door of a trusted friend. And the baby John, growing, developing, in his quiet and dark space, was shocked awake by the sound. Something about the call of Mary’s voice activated the Holy Spirit within John, and we are told the baby “leaped for joy.” It is hyperbole, of course. But it serves to illustrate the mystical connection between Jesus and John, one that will be so beautifully illustrated when John baptizes Jesus at the Jordan river some thirty years later.

In this moment though, despite the baby’s leaping, it is Elizabeth who gives voice to the movement of the spirit with what are sometimes called her “four oracles.”

First, she declares the blessedness of Mary. This blessedness, which seems so clear to us now, was patently ridiculous then. Mary was unmarried, and we can imagine what kind of tumult her pregnancy was going to cause her family, and her betrothed, Joseph. Mary was insignificant in the scheme of things; a teenager of no particular family or reputation, an oppressed minority under the thumb of a brutal empire. From an earthly perspective, her life was about to fall apart. But Elizabeth declares her blessed.

Second, she affirms the identity of Mary’s child. Mary is about to sing her Magificat, her hymn about what God is going to do with her, how Jesus will affect a mighty change in the power structures of the world. But even before that, Elizabeth affirms that Mary is, that someone like Mary could be, the vessel for that kind of change. And, she affirms the identity of Jesus but  though Mary, using the term Mother of my Lord, lifting up the fact that God chose to work through women in a patriarchal society.

Third, she interprets the leap of her baby within her. With all that we have already said, that in earthly terms Mary’s pregnancy wa snot a good thing, that it is ridiculous to think that someone like Mary could be so pivotal, into circumstances under which we would all be aghast and overwhelmed and unbelieving, Elizabeth speaks of joy. And in a much more elemental way than “this good news for you makes me happy.” She speaks of what God is doing in electric terms, of life’s deep knowledge that God always reaches out to us and that this is good. She gives words to the fact that in the quantum space between sound and cell there was a communication, there was a missive of love that we call spirit. And it caused a reaction that Elizabeth called joy. The animation of still-developing life recognizing life.

And fourth, she declares another beatitude upon Mary for her faith. We don’t actually know the wholeness of Mary’s mental state at this time. She utters her sacred yes in the previous verses: “I am the Lord’s servant. May your word to me be fulfilled.” And soon she will sing of the possibilities in the future, but in the in-between, we can imagine she might have felt some worry. But Elizabeth lifts up Mary’s faith in God’s promises. We can read this as the promises that the angel fortold, of Jesus birth, but also Mary will soon sing of greater promises, of a just society, of full bellies, of the ascent of the humble rather than the arrogant. Mary has a faith around God’s intention for the world, and is willing to play her part in bringing this into being. This opportunity brings her joy and so she sings: My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior…” (Luke 1:46)

Elizabeth becomes the conduit through which the joy in Mary and the joy in John are connected. It is amazing to think that this is the same rough and ready John the Baptist from our text last week, the one hurling epithets about vipers and warning about the winnowing fork and the fire. Today we find that the urgency of his call was born out of joy, was born out of an electric leaping in utero at the sound of Mary’s voice, and the promise that she represented. And Mary, born into a dangerous world of empire that many of us can hardly fathom now (but that many in this world still can), accepting a mission that might well ostracize her, or impoverish her, and that would later require her family to flee as political refugees, into this reality she speaks of joy as well. If joy is possible for Mary, it is possible anywhere, and this is a radical hope.

It communicates to us that we are made for joy. That the very existence of joy is a simple declaration of God’s original intention for us, for a good God would not make beloved children for any other purpose.

But of course, if we are not feeling joy, that is not an indictment of us, that we are somehow defective, or defensive, or unfeeling. There are many reasonable and understandable reasons to not feel joyful. The challenge of the spiritual journey is to acknowledge the fact that we are made for joy, without also making the experience of joy an imperative in every moment. We must hold very gently the potential unhelpfulness of the question: If joy is a natural preordained state, then what am I doing or not doing that is getting in the way of it? There are times that this question is a useful one. Sometimes our ambition, or our distraction, or our selfishness gets in the way of the simple joy that is available to us when we quiet ourselves down, or when we open our eyes to what is already present, or when we serve someone other than ourselves. Sometimes we are looking for joy in the wrong places, and once we recognize that, we are freer to seek joy where it will actually find us.

But other times, joy does not feel accessible at all, and this is not our fault. There is trauma and brokenness and loss in this world, and the appropriate and unavoidable reaction is often sadness, grief and lament. We need to recall that Elizabeth said: blessed is she, not joyful is she. Just as the beatitudes declare “blessed are those who are poor, who weep or hunger” as a way of expressing love, care and concern for those who are normally forgotten and marginalized, so too does Elizabeth’s beatitudes upon Mary pronounce a blessedness that is counter to her circumstances. The beatitudes of the gospels declare a state of inherent worthiness of each of our beings that does not depend upon our emotional state or our productiveness, and so too we hear a beatitude upon Mary that is anchored in a larger trust in God’s promises, a larger trust in God’s ultimate intentions, and not in her feeling in any given moment.

It can be difficult to hold lament in one hand and trust in the other. Even now we might be feeling a mounting tension and uncertainty around the state of the world, or other events in our lives. But what we do know from our Swedenborg reading today, is that heavenly joy resides in our inmost recesses, in the deepest and most secret parts of our being. This capacity for joy is always with us. It is a part of God’s order of heaven and of life, part of the web of experience to which we are always connected. We won’t always feel it, and that is okay. Lament is the price of love, the price of moral concern for those around us. But we may also know that, even when it is quiescent, the capacity for joy is our baseline, an integral part of our operating instructions. At times, perhaps this capacity will come alive with a leap that we weren’t expecting. At times, this capacity will rest within us, softly waiting for a time it can be born. And so, we learn in Advent that we can trust in God’s promises, not even so much what God will do but what God has done already.

Amen.

Readings:

Psalm 28

1 To you, LORD, I call; you are my Rock, do not turn a deaf ear to me. For if you remain silent, I will be like those who go down to the pit. 2 Hear my cry for mercy as I call to you for help, as I lift up my hands toward your Most Holy Place. 3 Do not drag me away with the wicked, with those who do evil, who speak cordially with their neighbors but harbor malice in their hearts. 4 Repay them for their deeds and for their evil work; repay them for what their hands have done and bring back on them what they deserve. 5 Because they have no regard for the deeds of the LORD and what his hands have done, he will tear them down and never build them up again. 6 Praise be to the LORD, for he has heard my cry for mercy. 7 The LORD is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and he helps me. My heart leaps for joy, and with my song I praise him. 8 The LORD is the strength of his people, a fortress of salvation for his anointed one. 9 Save your people and bless your inheritance; be their shepherd and carry them forever.

Luke 1:39-45

39 At that time Mary got ready and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judea, 40 where she entered Zechariah’s home and greeted Elizabeth. 41 When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. 42 In a loud voice she exclaimed: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear! 43 But why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? 44 As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. 45 Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill his promises to her!”

Secrets of Heaven #545

In order to teach me about the existence and nature of heaven and heavenly joy, the Lord has given me the opportunity to perceive the pleasures of heavenly joy frequently and for extended periods. Because I have learned these things by actually experiencing them, I possess the knowledge but cannot possibly put it into words.

To offer just an idea of it: The countless pleasures and joys there, which come together to create a single experience shared by all, carry with them a certain emotion. Within that common experience, or that common emotion, are points of harmony among a boundless number of feelings. These individual points of harmony do not come clearly but only vaguely to our awareness, because our perception is extremely generalized. Even so, I was allowed to perceive that there were countless parts, organized in a way that can never be described. Those countless parts flow from the order that exists in heaven, which determines their nature.

[2] The smallest individual elements of an emotion are organized in such a way that they are presented and sensed only as a collective whole, according to the capacities of the person who feels the emotion. In a word, every whole has an unlimited number of parts, organized in the most perfect way; every one of the parts is alive; and every one of them affects us, all the way to our inmost recesses. For the inmost recesses are where heavenly joy comes from.

Readings: Zephaniah 3:14-20, Luke 3:7-18, True Christianity #587 (see below)
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Photo by Valentina Locatelli on Unsplash

So finally, here we are with John the Baptist in Advent, who I mention a couple of weeks ago, knowing he would be along in due time. We have stepped outside of the Christmas story timeline, and fast forwarded to a time when the adult Jesus and and the adult John’s ministries are about to converge. N ext week, we will go back in time again to focus on John’s mother, Elizabeth, while John is still in her womb. For the moment though, we get to experience some of John’s prophetic preaching, and hear what he has to say to the people.
It doesn’t start off well. The first thing he says to the crowd is “You brood of vipers!” He sarcastically wonders who tipped them off about the coming judgment so that they might all slither to him in a panic, wanting to be baptized and therefore saved. As much as we might deny it, we are already, most of us, laid bare by this observation. Who wouldn’t want the easy way? There are some parts of us that definitly prefer this: If there are some magic words to say, let’s say them, right? Further, we might wonder: what about my name/family/reputation? Can that get me to salvation? Nope. Neither can the crowd look to their ethnicity or their linage for automatic salvation, as John anticipates the “children of Abraham” doing. Such expediency of either kind is not the way of God’s kingdom.

What is the way of God’s kingdom then? John tells the crowd to “Produce fruit in keeping with repentance.” The kingdom is about generativity and integrity. We are to produce fruit, we are to use our form and life to create something nourishing for others, and to recognize and repent for whatever it is that prevents us from doing so. 
By this point, the crowd seems pretty convinced. This is not surprising; We already know that John’s call to action was in line with the prophets of old, his language evoking long held images of fruitfulness that the children of Israel were more than familiar with. Moreover, they had already experienced what felt to them like God’s judgment in the form of exile centuries earlier; I’m sure they were sensitive to that history.

So, they quickly turn to the question “What should we do then?” meaning “what does it look like to produce fruit in keeping with repentance?” And here, John gets delightfully concrete. As wild-eyed and eccentric as he is often portrayed, the John of this text means for the kingdom of God to be birthed in the *simple* actions of those around him, in their everyday interactions with each other. He tells them: be generous to your neighbor and be honest with any power you are given.

Then people started to get excited—we are told they were “waiting in expectation”—because it seemed like what John was calling them to was actually doable, and they began to wonder, is John the coming Messiah? He assures them he is not; his baptism is symbolic, and there is one coming who will baptize them with the Holy Spirit and fire.  And here John returns to his apocalyptic language, likening God’s action to a winnowing fork. The stakes are heightened once more. The wheat will be gathered but the chaff will be burned up in an “unquenchable fire.” Thus our text is ended with this verse: “And with many other words John exhorted the people and proclaimed the good news to them.”  Here we might be tempted to shake our head. Good news? Which part? The unquenchable fire? The axe at the root of the tree? The part about being a viper?  It is more than a little funny to hear John’s preaching and call it good news, especially since we usually associate good news as something of either emotional or material benefit to us.

How can God’s judgment be considered good news? How can we rejoice or be grateful or excited when we see the axe or the winnowing fork coming? We often instead feel fear, which is understandable. There is a reason that much of progressive Christianity focuses on preaching God’s love and not God’s judgment. Judgment in the wrong hands is abusive. Many times those in authority take it upon themselves to judge, from and for themselves and their own notions of acceptability, rather than looking to God’s character and nature in doing so, using single bible verses or passages to wound and bludgeon, without grounding such judgment in either context or universal spiritual principles. The Christian church has much to repent for in in the ways that it has judged others.

And there is another reason we shy away from judgment sometimes. Judgment is uncomfortable. No one wants to be told what they are doing wrong. Especially when such judgment challenges our long-held notions of order, privilege, and power. But the the issues that we humans may have with judgment cannot do not do away with the fact that God is not only infinitely loving but also infinitely just. In the words of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel: “All prophecy is one great exclamation! God is not indifferent to evil. God is always concerned. He is personally affected by what man does to man. He is a God of pathos. This is one of the meanings of the anger of God; the end of indifference.” (1)

God cannot be indifferent to the things that prevent us from being in true relationship with God and each other. The being of God demands justice. The character of God strives for justice. And so, God’s lack of indifference necessitates judgment. That can make us feel uncomfortable, or even afraid. Again, this is not an inherently a bad thing. In the words of Heschel again: “a sense of comfort is no standard for Truth.” (2) If we always went by our sense of comfort, we would never learn and grow. Sometimes we need to endure discomfort and vulnerabaility in order to grow in emotional maturity or process with spirtual progress.

This is what God’s judgement is for; so that we might be reformed, so that we might be taken apart for the purpose of being put back together, so that we might grow beyond that which we are. God’s judgment is a gift. Now, honestly, it doesn’t feel like a gift, not at all. It can sometimes feel like fire burning us up. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t good for us.

This is the good news: Judgment shakes us awake, reveals to us how our actions are affecting others and by extension ourselves. For God, judgment is for the purpose of clarity, for the purpose of truth. Divine Love wants us to be able to see. So Divine Love’s judgment is a revealing, never a condemnation. When it is revealed to us that we are hurting someone else, either by our action or our inaction, we are urged to pay attention, we are urged to no longer be indifferent. This is what is communicated in our Swedenborg reading for today: that unless we make an active effort, our earthly desires will just naturally dictate the way we think about things. For the love of self and the world, we will justify our actions in whatever way we can, we will distance ourselves from thinking about consequences for the sake of our comfort. This is not even mustache-twirling evil, this is run of the mill, everyday thoughtless evil. We all do it. So, we are given the gift of God’s judgment, we are given the gift of God’s complete inability to *not* care about us being willfully blind.  From Swedenborg again:

Judgments symbolize the Divine truths in accordance with which a person is to live, truths which reveal [a person’s] character…(3) This is the symbolism of John’s baptism of water. Water corresponds to divine truth, and it cleanses us of our evils and falsities by making them clear to us. But clarity on its own is not sufficient. 

We are also urged to act. We know that we are no longer being indifferent when our actions change. This is the baptism to come, the baptism of the holy spirit and fire. The baptism of illumination from the holy spirit, and the baptism of fire from divine love, working in concert to regenerate us, to birth us into loving action. God’s judgment is not meant to debilitate us but rather to rattle us into seeing possibility, to open us up into being a vessel for love. Through the clarity and illumination of God’s truth we are moved to have faith in God’s loving universe, to have faith in our ability to align ourselves with those ways of love, and so the baptism of fire is alighted within us.

Why, we might wonder, are we asked to consider these texts during advent? We sit here awkward and uncertain with John the Baptist rather than all cozy in the stable with the manger, and perhaps it feels out of step with the season, out of step with hot cocoa and twinkle lights and the most wonderful time of the year. We sit here in this in-between space of expectation because we must not forget how disruptive the Lord’s birth really is. God is not and cannot be indifferent to our flaws and our walls and our temper tantrums and our fears, and so the birthing of God into our lives will involve the sweeping away of these things. The quietness of that sweet baby breath in the manger contains within it a love so deep and wide that it cannot be contained within a hallmark card or a pretty song. When we welcome the baby, we welcome that disruption, that holy beautiful disruption.  But it is not a disruption for the sake of chaos, it is a disruption of the sake of transformation. It is not a disruption that will send us flailing and twirling unmoored into an empty universe, it is a disruption held firmly within the arms of God, the womb of God. We need not fear. We just need to breathe and let ourselves be born.

Through most of his book, the prophet Zephaniah preaches a mighty destruction, a mighty upheaval. But then all of sudden, he also preaches a mighty song of hope, restoration and love.  “At that time”, says the Lord, “I will gather you; at that time I will bring you home.” God’s judgment is for the purpose of bringing us home to ourselves, a vision and a home that God truly believes in.

Amen.​

(1) Abraham Joshua Heschel: Essential Writings, page 86
(2) Ibid, pg 175
(3) Emmanuel Swedenborg, Apocalypse Revealed 668


Readings:


Zephaniah 3:14-20
14 Sing, Daughter Zion; shout aloud, Israel! Be glad and rejoice with all your heart, Daughter Jerusalem! 15 The LORD has taken away your punishment, he has turned back your enemy. The LORD, the King of Israel, is with you; never again will you fear any harm. 16 On that day they will say to Jerusalem, “Do not fear, Zion; do not let your hands hang limp. 17 The LORD your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.” 18 “I will remove from you all who mourn over the loss of your appointed festivals, which is a burden and reproach for you. 19 At that time I will deal with all who oppressed you. I will rescue the lame; I will gather the exiles. I will give them praise and honor in every land where they have suffered shame. 20 At that time I will gather you; at that time I will bring you home. I will give you honor and praise among all the peoples of the earth when I restore your fortunes before your very eyes,” says the LORD.

Luke 3:7-18

7 John said to the crowds coming out to be baptized by him, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? 8 Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. 9 The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.” 10 “What should we do then?” the crowd asked. 11 John answered, “Anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none, and anyone who has food should do the same.” 12 Even tax collectors came to be baptized. “Teacher,” they asked, “what should we do?” 13 “Don’t collect any more than you are required to,” he told them. 14 Then some soldiers asked him, “And what should we do?” He replied, “Don’t extort money and don’t accuse people falsely—be content with your pay.” 15 The people were waiting expectantly and were all wondering in their hearts if John might possibly be the Messiah. 16 John answered them all, “I baptize you with water. But one who is more powerful than I will come, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 17 His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” 18 And with many other words John exhorted the people and proclaimed the good news to them.

True Christianity 587 

The First Phase in Our Being Generated Anew Is Called "Reformation"; It Has to Do with Our Intellect. The Second Phase Is Called "Regeneration"; It Has to Do with Our Will and Then Our Intellect 

The evils we are born with are in the will that is part of our earthly self; this earthly will pressures the intellect to agree with it and to have thoughts that harmonize with its desires. Therefore if we are to be regenerated, this has to happen by means of our intellect as an intermediate cause. 

This process draws on pieces of information that our intellect receives, first from our parents and teachers, and later from our reading the Word, listening to preaching, reading books, and having conversations. The things that our intellect receives as a result are called truths. Therefore to say that we are reformed by means of our intellect is the same as saying that we are reformed by means of truths that our intellect receives. Truths teach us who to believe in, what to believe, and also what to do and what to will. After all, whatever we do, we do from our will and in accordance with our understanding. 

Since our will is evil from the day we are born, and since our intellect teaches us what is evil and what is good and that it is possible for us to will one and not the other, it follows that our intellect is the means by which we have to be reformed. During the phase called our reformation, we come to mentally see and admit that evil is evil and goodness is good, and make the decision to choose what is good. When we actually try to abstain from evil and do what is good, the phase called our regeneration begins.

Readings: I Samuel 2:1-10, Luke 1: 46-53, True Christianity 394 & 395:3 (see below)
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We’ve been jumping around in the Bible this fall. Early on, we spent some time in the book of Ruth, then hung out with Jesus for a while, then fast forwarded to the end of King David’s reign. Now we jump back to the days closer to the time of Ruth again, to hear a song of praise from a woman named Hannah.

To set the context: Hannah was to become the mother of the great prophet Samuel. But as we begin 1 Samuel, we find that she is the beloved wife of a man named Elkanah and she is also barren. She yearns for a son, especially since Elkanah’s other wife had many children, and was very nasty to Hannah on that account. So, Hannah went to pray at a holy place named Shiloh. She prayed so intensely but silently that the priest Eli thought she was drunk. But once she unburdened herself to him, he added his prayer to hers, and soon she found herself with child. In gratitude, when her son was weaned, she returned him to Shiloh and to Eli, so that his life might be given in service to the Lord.

It is at this point, that she sends another prayer up to God, the one we hear in our text today. She speaks of rejoicing and of praise, but most significantly she speaks of reversal. She speaks of those with power and strength being humbled, and of those who are empty and vulnerable being lifted up. She speaks of the fact that God is in the business of resurrection, of being present to those who suffer and enacting a change in their circumstances. She sings a song of God’s providence and care for human beings. Like many instances in the Hebrew Scriptures, the story and words of her as an individual character speak to the trajectory of the Israelite people as a whole.

Hannah’s words are echoed many books later in Mary’s song, often called The Magnificat. The similarities are obvious. Both are praising God after a miraculous pregnancy, both are drawing attention to the transformation of their lowly state into a triumphant one. Their vulnerabilities are slightly different: Hannah was older and married and despairing due to her barrenness, suffering due to the expectation that women would bear children, and the fact that their worthiness was often tied to their fertility. Mary was younger, inconsequential, as yet unmarried with no real status, a Jew under Roman rule, a nobody. But both received an invitation into a different reality, and both recognized what God was doing. That when God acts, there is always a necessary upheaval. 

Swedenborg writes that our love is our life; it is what drives and motivates us.(1) So of course, the quality of that love, *what* we love, determines the direction we are going. And as we heard in our reading today, Swedenborg organizes the kinds of human love into four main categories: Loving the Lord, loving others, loving the self, and loving the world. What is key, is that none of these loves, even the last two, are inherently bad, rather, it is the order that they are in that counts. Of course we should love ourselves; God wants us to feel self-confidence and self-worth, because we are beloved in God’s eyes. We should all see ourselves as God sees us. And of course we should love the world, not only the magnificence of creation but the ingenuity and the goodness of the societies that humans have built together. God blesses human striving and learning and making. But problems come when love of self and the world are constantly and unreasonably put first all the time. These loves then become shadow versions of themselves. A habitual centering of our selfhood and our benefit above others, a habitual coveting of worldly possessions and wealth and reputation; this is an inversion of God’s wise and loving divine order. That order of things, as Hannah and Mary both knew, will lead to a barrenness of the spirit.

Yet, how easy it is for the order to get out of whack! How easy for us personally, and collectively! How easy it is to be courted and seduced by ideologies of superiority and accumulation! To believe it is a good thing to put our own interest ahead of others because we have come to believe the other is deficient or dangerous in some way. To believe it is a good thing to accumulate as much as possible just because we can, or because we think it demonstrates our cleverness. To believe it is a good thing to win at any cost because our cause is so righteous. To believe it is a good thing to never change our minds, or be open to learning, because certainty is strength and openness is weakness.

But none of those ways of thinking are the gospel. None of those things are what is communicated by the story of Advent. A sweet and cooing baby in the manger is only part of the story. The rejoicing and the angels and the gift-giving are only part of the story. The main part of the story is that God’s providence for us always involves a necessary upheaval, the work of uprooting love of self and the world when they have settled in the wrong order and planting them back where they belong, as a support for mutual love. Even a welcome pregnancy is still an upheaval, it is just one we are expecting and waiting for. And this is why the Advent lectionary usually includes a healthy amount of John the Baptist. His whole deal is “get ready, prepare the way.” He doesn’t mean settle in with a cup of cocoa. He means get ready for a necessary upheaval. He means prepare yourself for the work of changing what needs to be changed.

Both women’s songs come during a time when Israel was struggling. In Hannah’s time, Israel was still a nation of tribes, suffering under corruption and disunity. In Mary’s time, Israel was captive under Roman rule, no longer captain of its own fate. Yet, into these troubling circumstances, these women spoke of a God who saw those struggles and cared about them, who stepped in to support a change of circumstances.

Hannah would give birth to Samuel, a great prophet, who would preside over the establishment of Israel as a kingdom. Mary would give birth to Jesus, who would transform our ideas about God and jumpstart a new religious movement. But we must notice though, that God doesn’t just change the circumstances themselves, wave a magic wand that suddenly makes everything perfect. God supports change by uplifting the process of new life, of birth. In each of these stories a child is born, who would go on to make choices that would have an amazing impact.

So too is the picture of our inner lives. God doesn’t just change the order of our loves like moving chess pieces on a board. Let’s be honest, we would just move them right back to where they were. God steps in by helping us to take advantage of situations where we can grow. God steps in by saying to us, “Would you like to grow this new life, this new way of doing things, inside of you? Here is a way that you can do it. Do you accept?” And the choice is ours. We can choose whether or not to give birth to something new that will change the way we see the world, and the way that we act within it.

And the way that we act within the world, collectively, makes a difference to all of us. What is so moving about Hannah and Mary’s songs is that they are not just talking about their own journey, they are not just talking about individual people, but systems of power. He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap. Those who were full hire themselves out for food, but those who were hungry are hungry no more (1 Samuel 2:5, 8). This speaks to physical, social and spiritual realities all at the same time. The necessary upheavals in our own spirit play out in the choices that we make, and the choices that we make act together to create the world we live in.

This is what makes scripture so powerful, that we can see the levels of connection. We can see that Hannah and Mary are speaking of themselves *and* Israel, as well as speaking of us and our own time. We can see that the workings of their spirits are connected to our own, our own strivings and stumblings and triumphs. We can see the world they spoke of, in essence, still resembles the world we live in. And so the mighty question of Advent is not “how will be celebrate the birth of our Lord?” but “how will we be changed by it?” What necessary upheaval will we say yes to this year?

As we consider this question, we remember from Hannah’s song: But those who stumbled are armed with strength (I Samuel 2:2:4). This is the promise of Advent, a promise that we all need. The life of the spirit, the discipline of the life intentionally lived in relationship with spirit, means the acceptance of the necessity of upheaval. There are times, like Hannah, when we are praying fervently for it, knowing it needs to come, making ourselves ready. And there are times we are more like Mary, surprised and puzzled to find it on our doorstep. But either way, the Advent call is to take a deep breath and say “Yes Lord: Reinvent me according to your will.” So then we might also sing: My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior (Luke 1:46-47).

Amen.

(1) Emanuel Swedenborg, Divine Providence #78


Readings:

1 Samuel 2:1-10

1 Then Hannah prayed and said: “My heart rejoices in the LORD; in the LORD my horn is lifted high. My mouth boasts over my enemies, for I delight in your deliverance. 2 “There is no one holy like the LORD; there is no one besides you; there is no Rock like our God. 3 “Do not keep talking so proudly or let your mouth speak such arrogance, for the LORD is a God who knows, and by him deeds are weighed. 4 “The bows of the warriors are broken, but those who stumbled are armed with strength. 5 Those who were full hire themselves out for food, but those who were hungry are hungry no more. She who was barren has borne seven children, but she who has had many sons pines away. 6 “The LORD brings death and makes alive; he brings down to the grave and raises up. 7 The LORD sends poverty and wealth; he humbles and he exalts. 8 He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap; he seats them with princes and has them inherit a throne of honor. “For the foundations of the earth are the LORD’s; on them he has set the world. 9 He will guard the feet of his faithful servants, but the wicked will be silenced in the place of darkness. “It is not by strength that one prevails; 10 those who oppose the LORD will be broken. The Most High will thunder from heaven; the LORD will judge the ends of the earth. “He will give strength to his king and exalt the horn of his anointed.”

Luke 1:46-53

46 And Mary said: “My soul glorifies the Lord 47 and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, 48 for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant. From now on all generations will call me blessed, 49 for the Mighty One has done great things for me— holy is his name. 50 His mercy extends to those who fear him, from generation to generation. 51 He has performed mighty deeds with his arm; he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts. 52 He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble. 53 He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty. 54 He has helped his servant Israel, remembering to be merciful 55 to Abraham and his descendants forever, just as he promised our ancestors.” 

True Christianity #394 and #395(3)

There Are Three Universal Categories of Love: Love for Heaven; Love for the World; and Love for Ourselves 

…these three categories of love are universal and fundamental to all types of love because goodwill has something in common with each of the three. 

Love for heaven means love for the Lord and also love for our neighbor. Love for heaven could be called love for usefulness, because both love for the Lord and love for our neighbor have usefulness as their goal. 

395[3] When these three categories of love are properly prioritized in us, they are also coordinated in such a way that the highest love, our love for heaven, is present in the second love, our love for the world, and through that in the third or lowest love, our love for ourselves. In fact, the love that is inside steers the love that is outside wherever it wants. Therefore if a love for heaven is present in our love for the world and through that in our love for ourselves, with each type of love we accomplish useful things that are inspired by the God of heaven. 

…if these three loves are prioritized in the right way, they improve us, but if they are not prioritized in the right way, they damage us and turn us upside down.

Readings: 2 Samuel 23:1-7, True Christianity #439, #440 (see below)
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Photo credit: Johannes Plenio

So today we hear a text centered in the final period of King David’s life. Several weeks back we spent time with the book of Ruth, the story of a loyal Moabite woman who followed her mother-in-law to Israel, and became David’s great-grandmother, establishing kindness rather than purity as central to the linage of a great king.

Now we fast forward past a couple of generations, past the great prophet Samuel and the tragic King Saul, to the end of King David’s reign. And we hear in our text what are called his “Last Words.” Now, if you keep reading in 2 Samuel, and I Kings, you’ll see that David doesn’t actually die quite yet. He continues long enough to establish his son, Solomon on the throne, and in truth, his actual final words are to Solomon, giving him advice for his future reign.

The text in 2 Samuel is David’s final public words, his final prophetic utterance as God’s anointed, and as author of many psalms, his final work of art and praise. For we remember, David was once a young boy who played the harp so beautifully that it calmed the troubled King Saul.

However, as we read the text, we certainly might pause in puzzlement. We might wonder, how can David say that the spirit of Lord spoke through him, how can David speak of ruling over people in righteousness and in the fear of God, and having a house right with God, when David himself undertook gross abuses of his power, the consequences of which played out in the bloody disarray of his family in the final years of his reign? There is a real tension that exists in the Hebrew scriptures around the exultation of King David, who was a terribly imperfect person and ruler. In fact, throughout the bible as a whole, there are many more imperfect characters than there are model ones, and as we learned through our study of the book of Ruth, even the stories of the model characters are more complicated than they might first seem.

David said: “If my house were not right with God, surely he would not have with me an everlasting covenant, arranged and secured in every part; surely he would not bring to fruition my salvation…”  It might chafe to hear David speak so, the first part being such an obvious glossing over of the disarray we will only need to turn the page to find. This is a truth filtered through the ego of a king, through the fuzzy lens of nostalgia and royal deference.

But what is it trying to communicate at its core? That the existence of God’s covenant with us, God’s promise of continued presence with us, really doesn’t have anything to do with how good we are. Now, the efficacy of the covenant certainly does, but not its existence. Can you imagine what would happen if the covenant depended on our perfection? It quite simply would not exist at all. The everlasting covenant is not centered in human power or will in any way, it is centered in God’s. And God is steadfast, period. The covenant will remain, and God promised that way back with Noah and the rainbow. Thank goodness, for we will all continue to screw up in ways both new and exciting as well as habitual and everyday.  Is our house right with God? I’m sure there are many ways we can all convict ourselves, large and small.

David’s house was certainly not right with God, in the sense that nothing needed to be improved. But it was right enough in spirit, even if there was much to be desired in execution. David was not unrepentant on the whole; he had learned many things along the way. And what he had learned was this:

The God of Israel spoke, the Rock of Israel said to me: *When* one rules over people in righteousness, when he rules in the fear of God, he is like the light of morning at sunrise on a cloudless morning, like the brightness after rain that brings grass from the earth.

What does this communicate? That while the existence of the covenant is never in question, that the chance to live into the covenant is never in question, the efficacy of the covenant, what it produces, is not guaranteed. *When* we consciously align ourselves with God’s purposes and intention, clarity and generativity are brought forth. David uses nature metaphors to express what the quality of ideal Godly rule looks like, and by extension, what it looks like when we *all* live into the covenant. He is trying to say: That dawn light filled with color that seems to hold infinite possibility within it; it’s like that. The way the earth glistens and smells alive after a rain, the way green shoots respond and push upward; it’s like that. Who wouldn’t want to live their life within that kind of moment?

But a couple of notes: first, the *fear* of God. I think we can safely read that as a reverence or an awe of God, rather than actual fear. God doesn’t not wish to evoke fear from us, even if that were to mean we stayed in line. A reverence though, a holy awe, that kind of stance puts us in our place but in a good way, it keeps us open rather than closed and cramped, and naturally invites gratitude rather than grievance. 

And second, notice that we are not promised that we will get what we want. Living into the covenant, aligning ourselves with God - the text tells us what that is like, not what it will get us. It is like the quality of being in the dawn of a day, it is like being able to see clearly, it is like feeling nourished and ready to burst into growth. Those are all qualities of life that are very different to the sense of “life going well” or having success in earthly terms or getting what we desire, even if we what we desire is good and reasonable.

David misunderstood many things, but he understood the most important thing. He needed to keep returning to God, he needed to keep God at the center of his rule and his life. David was trying. Not always succeeding, but trying. Many of the kings that would come after him would not even have that barest quality. They would nakedly, plainly, chase after their own self-interest time and again.

The key, the only key, to living into the covenant, is the quality of openness that de-centers our selfhood and centers God instead. This is not so much an act of submission as it is an act of inoculation. There is such a thing as a healthy selfhood; God has given us that gift. But, it only comes if are willing to give it up, if we refuse to cling to it. Habitual self-centering, instead, little by little builds a precarious and desperate type of success; it will never be enough, it can never countenance it’s own limit, and so it turns into something that David likens to thorns, something that in the words of one of my commentaries, “chokes life and causes pain.”(1) We heard similar language in our Swedenborg reading: that a focus on self leads to “a stifling and an extinction of love for the Lord and love for our neighbor.” These are our options, in essence. Do we want to be the ground that lets life arise, or the thorn that chokes it?

We find ourselves now in the week before Thanksgiving, where we intentionally practice gratitude in community with each other. What I like about where this text is placed in the lectionary calendar is that it identifies not only what we can be grateful for, but how gratitude naturally arises. For it is one thing to make a list and say thank you; this act of gratitude de-centers the self for a moment, and that is good. But the ongoing spiritual work of Thanksgiving is to the de-center the self first and proactively so that gratitude can flow in every moment, so that our natural inclination is always to look away from our ego and give thanks.

So we say thank you to our steadfast God, who has covenanted with us to always be present and open and ready. We are about to enter into Advent which makes much of the phrase “Do not be afraid.” We need not fear that our God is capricious, we need not fear that our shortcomings, or our history of shortcomings, will chase God away. They never can and never will, for God keeps God’s promises.

And also, we receive a personal invitation, for the shape and form and quality of the covenant, like any agreement between parties, depends upon our partnership. What do we want it to be like? Perhaps in the spirit of Thanksgiving, it can be like a bounty brought in by people who work the earth with love, like a feast born from cooperation between guests, like a table with one more chair squeezed in, like a quiet and contemplative sufficiency. Or, perhaps, as David suggests, like a clear sunrise, like morning, like the brightness after rain, like the grass that rises from the earth. All of that sounds pretty good to me.
Amen.

(1) New Interpreters' Bible, Volume II, p620


Readings:

2 Samuel 23:1-7
1 These are the last words of David: “The inspired utterance of David son of Jesse, the utterance of the man exalted by the Most High, the man anointed by the God of Jacob, the hero of Israel’s songs: 2 “The Spirit of the LORD spoke through me; his word was on my tongue. 3 The God of Israel spoke, the Rock of Israel said to me: ‘When one rules over people in righteousness, when he rules in the fear of God, 4 he is like the light of morning at sunrise on a cloudless morning, like the brightness after rain that brings grass from the earth.’ 5 “If my house were not right with God, surely he would not have made with me an everlasting covenant, arranged and secured in every part; surely he would not bring to fruition my salvation and grant me my every desire. 6 But evil men are all to be cast aside like thorns, which are not gathered with the hand. 7 Whoever touches thorns uses a tool of iron or the shaft of a spear; they are burned up where they lie.”

True Christianity 439

As Long as We Believe That Everything Good Comes from the Lord, We Do Not Take Credit for the Things We Do As We Practice Goodwill 

It is damaging for us to take credit for things we do for the sake of our salvation. Hidden within our credit-taking there are evil attitudes of which we are unaware at the time: denial that God flows in and works in us; confidence in our own power in regard to salvation; faith in ourselves and not in God; [the delusion that] we justify and save ourselves by our own strength; contempt for divine grace and mercy; rejection of reformation and regeneration by divine means; and especially disregard for the merit and justice of the Lord God our Savior, which we then claim as our own. In our taking credit there is also a continual focus on our own reward and perception of it as our first and last goal, a stifling and an extinction of love for the Lord and love for our neighbor, and total ignorance and unawareness of the pleasure involved in heavenly love (which takes no credit), while all we feel is our love for ourselves. 

True Christianity 440 
The pleasure of doing good to their neighbor is their reward. The angels in heaven feel this pleasure. It is a spiritual pleasure that is eternal. It immeasurably surpasses every earthly pleasure. People who have this pleasure do not want to hear about getting credit - they love doing good and feel joy in it.

Readings: Daniel 12:1-3, Mark 13:1-8, Divine Providence 27:1-2 (see below)
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Photo by Aaron Burden: www.pexels.com/photo/white-daisy-flower-bloom-2449543/

Today’s text is often called Mark’s little apocalypse. The way Jesus is talking in it seems foreboding, even as we understand it to be metaphorical in our own time. But while he doesn’t use the actual word, what I think Jesus is actually talking about in this text is hope. And so that’s what we are going to talk about today: what hope is and why it is important. 

In the aftermath of a national election with very high stakes, some of us might be struggling to hang on to hope. For those who welcomed the outcome, perhaps you can apply these teachings to another time in your life. For many others, this is a very hard time. I want to emphasize that I’m not trying to rush anyone into having hope. It is important to take time to grieve as well, to take whatever time is needed. And, here are some thoughts on hope for whenever we might be ready.

If we recall from the gospel narrative, Jesus had been teaching in the temple. This is where, last week, we received both his warning about the abuses of those in power, and the lifting up of those outside of such power, like the widow who gave her last two coins.  It seems though, that the lesson has not really settled in for some of the disciples yet.  As they leave the temple, one disciple comments on the magnificence of the temple building.  An innocent enough comment it might seem, but in the context of their recent conversation, somewhat tone deaf. So, Jesus doubles down on his point: these massive buildings, insofar as they prop up illegitimate and abusive power structures, must be thrown down so that God’s kingdom can rise up, and be re-built in a way that supports the thriving of all people. From a Swedenborgian point of view, we would make a parallel point about our own ways of thinking. For Swedenborg, stones correspond to truths or ideas, and hewn stones to truths or ideas that arise from our own self-intelligence, which naturally attempts to serve the self. So likewise, these massive stones, these massive and far-reaching ideologies of self that we carry around inside us, these must be torn down so that we can be receptive to genuine spiritual truth, the kind of truth that serves God and neighbor. (1)

The historical context of this gospel however, is that it was most likely written around the same time as the first Jewish-Roman War. Also known as The Great Revolt, it was the first of three major rebellions of the Jews against the Romans, and it culminated in the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem in 70AD. While we can’t be sure if Mark’s gospel was written before or after the temple destruction, it *was* written during a time when such destruction was certainly foreseeable or imminent. These early Jewish Christian communities were grappling with the prospect of figuring out what it meant to live faithfully in uncertain and dangerous times, times when what little safety and consistency they had was falling down around them. While immediately after Jesus death and resurrection, his followers seemed sure he would return very quickly, by 70AD it was clear the wait would be significantly longer. They were hungry for instruction about how to live in the in-between space, live in the world in which the kingdom of God was near but not yet fully realized. 

So the disciples ask Jesus, what will be the sign that all is about to be fulfilled?  At the heart, this question asks: how will be know that everything will really be okay? And Jesus tells them, uncertainty is just part of it. Turmoil is just part of it. The human drive toward control and domination will always be with us, inside of us and outside of us. Perhaps this is something we can relate to right now. In our country, the existence of dark sentiments might feel like they are being revealed over these last several years, though to many they have been clear all along: racism, xenophobia, anti-semitism, misogyny, to name just a few. Some of these forces have been creeping out from their hiding places because they are being given permission and encouragement by our leaders, some have been dragged into the light by investigative journalism. Either way, it burdens the heart to see such hatred, callousness and self-interest. So too, in Marks time, chaos seemed to reign, the reach of empire seemed ascendent and absolute. These new Jewish Christians were discouraged. Who wouldn’t be? So, the Jesus of Mark’s gospel puts it all in context: “These are the beginnings of birth pains.” This is a pain that is going somewhere. The end goal is the birthing of something new.
Our Swedenborg reading for today tells us about God’s end goal for creation; which is not obedience or veneration but a heaven from the human race, our heavenly happiness. God’s divine providence looks towards this goal in every single thing it does. I quote: “God cannot help doing this, because God’s image and likeness is in us from creation.” God’s ultimate goal, the vision of creation, is embedded in our very being, and the operative question of our spiritual life is: are we open to it? We will all find ourselves, to varying degrees, in times when the world around us appears unstable, when relationships, institutions, rituals that we relied upon seem to quiver and maybe even fall. And so we ask the most important and difficult question of the Christian life, now as then: how do people of faith live with integrity in troubled times, social, political and personal?

The answer that I have today is: we practice hope. But first I have to be clear: as written by author Brene Brown(2), based on work by C.R. Snyder, hope is not an emotion, it is a cognitive-behavioral process. The answer is not to just be hopeful. The answer is to practice hope. Hope is a positive cognitive state that is created by having goals and planning to meet them. It is a state anchored in action. Swedenborg perhaps was intuiting this when he spoke of hope being a function of our understanding and trust being a function of our heart. (3)

And let me tell you, I hate this answer. I hate everything about it. Because, what I really want hope to be is a function of the heart, something that flows into me and holds me up, that makes me feel better when I feel bad, something that lets me know everything will be okay. Something that is a gift that I don’t have to work for. But what I’m actually describing there is comfort or trust. And though comfort or trust might have some relationship to hope, they are not the same thing. Hope is something that we create, hope is something that we grow through our choices of how to interact with the world.

This is exactly why Jesus uses the metaphor of birth pains, of contractions, because hope is something that we have to actively birth into being. It can be large hope or small hope, that doesn’t matter, it is about daring to envision a worthy goal, creating a pathway that we can use to walk toward it, and then walking it. That goal can be about the person right beside us, or about humanity as a whole, it can realistic in focus, or more utopian and far-reaching. They key is that it is grounded in doing, rather than being. Like in pregnancy and labor, we grow a vision and we grow a pathway inside of us by the choices we make and the actions we take. That process is precious but it is also painful, it is also labor. It won’t always feel clear that everything will work out. Birthing is a natural human process but also deeply unpredictable. And just like the children that we might birth into being, hope is a complicated blessing.

Just like our children or other loved ones we nurture, we cherish our hope, it makes us smile, even laugh. We look forward on its behalf. We make plans. We put our shoulder to the wheel and we work, we try to make the world better.
But hope done right will also challenge us. It will make us question what we thought we knew. It will make us cry. It will make us re-evaluate and pivot and begin again. It will exhaust us. It will definitely spit out that dinner that we slaved over. It might well grow up to be something we never could have dreamed of. And as we labor, there will always be that moment when we feel like we can’t go on. 
Because, when the things we have hoped for do not come to pass, it can be tempting to think that it is naive to hope. The disappointment can fool us into thinking that we have done something wrong by hoping. But the moral weight of hope is not measured by the effectiveness of its calculations or strategies. Effectiveness is a different type of work, important but different. Hope is a product of empathy and imagination, where we see what needs to change and we envision that change happening, where we see something that is missing and we envision it coming into being. Whether the change actually happens or not is no judgment upon the impulse itself, upon the audacity, to hope. Hope is a holy impulse, sacred exactly because it is not bounded or limited by human outcomes.

So here’s the good news: that baby is getting born, one way or another. God will not and cannot do anything else other than work for heavenly outcomes for all of us. And so we have been made for this work. We have been created in the image and likeness of God, for the purpose of sharing love. For the days that we cannot bear the labor, we share the load; some days we will work, some days we will midwife, some days we will rest. There have always been in this world those who have cared for each other, who have cared enough to create systems that support dignity and humanity and equality, who worked to birth justice and restoration into this world. And guess what? It’s me and you.

So, how do we live in divided, uncertain times? We speak the truth, we act with love, and we practice hope. We speak the truth, not out of self-interest, but because truth connects us to God’s vision for the whole of humanity. We enact love, not out of self-aggrandizement, but because a fierce commitment to compassion will bring God’s vision to pass. We practice hope, we practice the discipline of hoping, the discipline of imagining goals, seeing pathways towards them, and walking those paths. No matter how small. No matter how inconsequential. No matter how unreasonable or unattainable. We practice hope because that is what we have been made for, to imagine love being birthed into the world, and to pursue that goal as wisely and as determinedly as we can. 

I still hate this answer, by the way. It’s not what I wanted to hear. I still want to wake up in the morning and just feel hopeful. But, how just like God, to make hope be something we are given an invitation to choose, something we are invited to be in relationship with. I don’t like it, but I believe it. And I believe it's the only way. So, I’ll try my best to practice hope everyday, and I hope you will too.

Amen.

1. Emanuel Swedenborg, Secrets of Heaven #8941
2. Brene Brown, Facebook Post, November 8th, 2024
3. Emanuel Swedenborg, Secrets of Heaven #6578

Readings: 

Daniel 12:1-3
1 “At that time Michael, the great prince who protects your people, will arise. There will be a time of distress such as has not happened from the beginning of nations until then. But at that time your people—everyone whose name is found written in the book—will be delivered. 2 Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt. 3 Those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever.
Mark 13:1-8
1 As Jesus was leaving the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher! What massive stones! What magnificent buildings!” 2 “Do you see all these great buildings?” replied Jesus. “Not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.” 3 As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John and Andrew asked him privately, 4 “Tell us, when will these things happen? And what will be the sign that they are all about to be fulfilled?” 5 Jesus said to them: “Watch out that no one deceives you. 6 Many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am he,’ and will deceive many. 7 When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. 8 Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be earthquakes in various places, and famines. These are the beginning of birth pains.
Divine Providence 27:1-2
I have explained elsewhere that heaven did not originate in angels who were created angels at the beginning, and that hell did not originate in a devil who was created an angel of light and was cast down from heaven. Rather, both heaven and hell are from the human race. Heaven is made up of people who are involved in a love for what is good and a consequent discernment of what is true, and hell of people who are involved in a love for what is evil and a discernment of what is false…
[2] Since heaven comes from the human race, then, and since heaven is living with the Lord forever, it follows that this was the Lord's goal for creation. Further, since this was the goal of creation, it is the goal of the Lord's divine providence. 
The Lord did not create the universe for his own sake but for the sake of people he would be with in heaven. By its very nature, spiritual love wants to share what it has with others, and to the extent that it can do so, it is totally present, experiencing its peace and bliss. Spiritual love gets this quality from the Lord's divine love, which is like this in infinite measure. 
It then follows that divine love (and therefore divine providence) has the goal of a heaven made up of people who have become angels and are becoming angels, people with whom it can share all the bliss and joy of love and wisdom, giving them these blessings from the Lord's own presence within them. He cannot help doing this, because his image and likeness is in us from creation.

Readings: I Kings 17:8-16, Mark 12:38-44, Secrets of Heaven #10122:2 (see below)
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You’ve probably noticed that I often preach about God’s presence with us. One of religion’s most powerful constructs is that of a loving deity who honors and values each individual, and who is present with everyone of us, who stands for the radical inclusion and worthiness of all. But of course, the comfort of steadfast companionship is not the only thing God does for us. While present, God is not a divine wingman, working to validate our every self-conception, or bring to pass our every whim. God is intimately present with us, yes, but God is also, importantly, apart from us and beyond us. Thankfully and blessedly, God transcends us, and our salvation and growth depend upon this fact.

Our two texts today are linked because they both mention widows, widows giving much when they had little to give. Because of their generosity, these texts are often preached around the topic of stewardship, and these widows lifted up as examples of selfless giving. While I believe that can be, and is, a worthwhile interpretation, I also feel uncomfortable focusing on the generosity of the widows and not the oppressive circumstances which fueled their destitution in the first place. When they are placed within context, I believe that we find something even more extraordinary than a simple model for generosity. We find a clue about where God is to be found and who God wants us to see.  As I just hinted, God is not only reliably found close to us, but is also found consistently outside of our assumptions and perspectives. 

So, in our Old Testament reading, we encounter the widow of Zarephath and Elijah.  First, some background.  This episode occurs during the 9th century, when Israel and Judah are divided kingdoms.  Ahab is the king of Israel and he has married Jezebel, a Sidonian princess from a kingdom to the north. The Sidonians worship a god called Baal, and Jezebel has brought this worship of Baal with her to Israel. Ahab is all over it, and builds a whole temple to Baal and other monuments to Sidonian gods besides. Then he and Jezebel start killing off the Lord’s prophets who object. The Bible tells us that Ahab “…did more to arouse the anger of the Lord, the God is Israel, than did all the kings of Israel before him.” (I Kings 16:33)

So of course, Elijah the great prophet shows up to speak the word of the Lord and to turn the hearts of Israel back to the one and only God. He begins by announcing a great drought, establishing God’s power.

As the drought ravages the land, Elijah hides in a ravine and is fed by ravens sent by the Lord. But later, when the nearby brook dries up, he is then sent by the Lord to a widow at Zarephath, as we hear in our text for today. It is important to note is that Zarephath is in Sidon. This widow is Sidonian, as is Jezebel. Now, the whole context of Elijah’s prophetic struggle here is to reestablish the power and efficacy of Israel’s (real) God over and against the Sidonian’s (not-real) God, Baal. In such a struggle, the temptation is always toward classic us-vs-them thinking. History tells us that, “my God is better than your God” quickly devolves into bloodshed. So, what does God do here? Elijah needs help, and God sends him to the other side. God sends him to a generous and trusting widow who restores him to life though the giving of her last morsel of food. We recognize that as an individual, this widow is caught in the cross hairs of forces beyond her control. As noted, she is Sidonian, so not necessarily subject the Israelite commandment to care for widows—perhaps no one is caring for her. And this drought, not her personal battle, has exacerbated her already dire circumstances. No one sees her. But God sees her. God wishes to bring Israel back into the fold, but not at her expense. God wishes for Israel to return to their covenantal identity but not in a way that causes them to despise their neighbors.

So then, this brings us to the widow in the gospel. Jesus was at the temple, and he was teaching and observing. He saw those who commanded attention and respect, the scribes, those who attached themselves to power, and who trampled upon the vulnerable to do so. The accumulation and abuse of power is a universally human tendency. We see this kind of jockeying for power abounding today as much as then, in all countries and societies, particularly in celebrity, business, and political realms. But as caught up as some people might be in the trappings of power and privilege, Jesus instead sees and lifts up one on the outside, one not seen and valued in the ordinary course of things. The widow, giving all she had, the very smallest of Roman coins, a pittance compared to what was given by the rich. This widow too, was vulnerable by forces outside of her control. Jesus had just warned of those seeking religious and political dominance by “devouring widow’s houses.” The religious leaders likely encouraged, even demanded such temple piety from the poor, even when they could barely afford it. That scribe from the text certainly didn’t see this widow, or think of her, except for his own gain. But Jesus saw her.

One widow outside of our expectations of tribe and nation, another widow outside of our expectations of power and privilege. Both seen and lifted up by God, over and above what might normally command our attention. Whenever we are tempted to turn our gaze inward, toward self-justification and control, God attempts to turn our gaze outward, always.

Our Swedenborg reading today talks about the new self and the old self. We are all born earthly with a natural focus on self-preservation, both physical and psychological. From the inside of this worldview, where everything serves self-preservation, that which is good and true for the self is called good and true in general and what is bad for the self called evil and false in general. The self is the center of the universe and the standard by which all is judged.  But this is small and cramped way to live. God wants more for us. God wants us to take the burden of ego away from us. There is a common saying: “God loves you just as you are, but loves you too much to let you stay that way.” God wants to give us the gift of self-forgetfulness, the gift of relinquishing preservation of the ego. We don’t need to take on the job of preserving our selfhood. When we open ourselves up, God will give and give and give. So God stretches us, nudges us, away from self-preoccupation, and in that stretching, creates a space in which the Lord’s own goodness and truth can flow into us. This space is called the new will and the new intellect, a space that entertains ideas about the good of all people not just ourselves, a space that practices love for all people not just ourselves. And the larger this new space is, the more we allow for the expanding, the more we are transformed, and the more we know heavenly peace. This is, as we Swedenborgians call it, the process of regeneration.

And if God is the “Grand Nudger,” what do these nudges look like? In the Word, they look like the camera panning away from the action, away from the shiny thing, away from the excitement, and showing the reality of who we are not seeing. In these texts for today, the camera pans away from the main action and reveals the collateral damage, reveals the real danger and pain of oppressive systems, reveals the dignity and the generosity of the vulnerable. 

In widening our gaze, God stretches us, pulls our attention towards something or someone outside of our expectations and assumptions. Jezebel, the Sidonian princess was such a reviled figure, so much so that her very name evokes betrayal and corruption in even secular contexts; yet God lifts up a Sidonian widow, and demonstrates how valued, redeemable, and generous she was. If we were tempted to cast all Sidonians in Jezebel’s light, we are shown how wrong that is, how opposed to God’s intention.

Likewise, when we are drawn into playing the game of power, accumulation and domination, venerating the scribes among us, simply because they have managed to attach themselves to those in influence, God lifts up the vulnerable, finding value in small, generous, authentic works, and showing us the real effects that the obsessive accumulation of power has on the world around us.

We probably would not have seen or noticed these widows otherwise. Our eyes would have been glued to the great standoff between The Lord and Baal, or the fancy scribe waltzing by leaving a trail of mystery behind him. And this is because our old will likes to be safe, right and superior. Our old will is tribal, our old will is avaricious, our old will is fearful. We see this writ large and small all around us; in politics around fears about changing demographics and immigration, in business in a reverence for the so-called “moral selfishness” that wants to call greed good, in our personal lives as we try to exercise domination or enact superiority in our relationships. God is indeed present with us as we grapple with our old will.  God has empathy for our childlike need to feel comfortable, certain, special. But God wants us to be able to have those things in ways that do not disadvantage and oppress other people.

The seeming benefits of the old will can never measure up to the gifts of the heavenly will, of the comfort, certainty and individual worthiness that is derived from the love of God. The benefits of the world and the ego are necessarily finite, self-consuming. The blessings of the divine are infinite, in an ever-increasing variety. And so our God, out of great love, draws us toward that infinite giftedness and abundance. God draws us ever out of ourselves, not because God regards us as essentially sinful or evil, but because God has dared to dream a future for us that we could never imagine for ourselves. Amen.


Readings:

I Kings 17:8-16

8 Then the word of the LORD came to him: 9 “Go at once to Zarephath in the region of Sidon and stay there. I have directed a widow there to supply you with food.” 10 So he went to Zarephath. When he came to the town gate, a widow was there gathering sticks. He called to her and asked, “Would you bring me a little water in a jar so I may have a drink?” 11 As she was going to get it, he called, “And bring me, please, a piece of bread.” 12 “As surely as the LORD your God lives,” she replied, “I don’t have any bread—only a handful of flour in a jar and a little olive oil in a jug. I am gathering a few sticks to take home and make a meal for myself and my son, that we may eat it—and die.” 13 Elijah said to her, “Don’t be afraid. Go home and do as you have said. But first make a small loaf of bread for me from what you have and bring it to me, and then make something for yourself and your son. 14 For this is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: ‘The jar of flour will not be used up and the jug of oil will not run dry until the day the LORD sends rain on the land.’ ” 15 She went away and did as Elijah had told her. So there was food every day for Elijah and for the woman and her family. 16 For the jar of flour was not used up and the jug of oil did not run dry, in keeping with the word of the LORD spoken by Elijah.

Mark 12:38-44

38 As he taught, Jesus said, “Watch out for the teachers of the law. They like to walk around in flowing robes and be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, 39 and have the most important seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at banquets. 40 They devour widows’ houses and for a show make lengthy prayers. These men will be punished most severely.”

41 Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put and watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury. Many rich people threw in large amounts. 42 But a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins, worth only a few cents. 43 Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. 44 They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything—all she had to live on.”

Secrets of Heaven 10122:2

…All the things with a person that come from heaven have connection with good and truth, and all those that come from hell have connection with evil and falsity. Or what amounts to the same thing, all things with a person which originate in the Lord have connection with good and truth, but all that originate in the person themselves has connection with evil and falsity. Since good and truth or falsity and evil are what everything throughout creation has connection with, and the human being is the place where they are received, a person has two mental powers to receive them. One is called the will and the other the understanding, the will being what receives good or evil, and the understanding what receives truth or falsity. The will formed by the Lord, also called the new will, receives good, while the understanding formed by the Lord, also called the new understanding, receives truth. But the will properly a person's own, also called the old will, receives evil, and the understanding properly a person's own, also called the old understanding, receives falsity. A person possesses the old will and understanding through being born from their parents, but they come to have the new will and understanding through being born from the Lord, which happens when they are being regenerated. For when being regenerated a person is conceived anew and is born anew. 

Readings: Mark 10:46-52, Secrets of Heaven 4063:2-3 (see below)
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We talk alot about spiritual growth in our tradition, about the spiritual work we do to regenerate ourselves, which involves looking at ourselves with honesty and courage. We are called to note all the ways in which we might act from selfishness, when we are tempted to put what *we* want above all other things. Our selfish desires can lead us astray, away from connection, community, and the common good. And so, it is important to be able to view our desires with clarity and healthy distance, so that they don’t control us. 

But that doesn’t mean that our desires—what we want—should always be viewed with suspicion. In our text for today, Bartimaeus desired something very strongly. He wanted to speak to Jesus so very much that he raised a ruckus. As he approached, Jesus asked him a question. “What do you want me to do for you?” Clearly, Jesus would have been able to see that Bartimaeus was blind. He needn’t have asked and he could have healed him without a word. But it seemed important for Jesus to know something of the man’s desire, to know what was driving him. He asked him, what do you want? Bartimaeus said “I want to see.” 

Now, contrast this with the previous episode, one we didn’t hear in our reading today but was the lectionary reading last week: a request to Jesus from the disciples James and John. These were brothers who came to Jesus and said “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask.” Such an arrogant demand, it seems hardly believable. Jesus, with admirable restraint, simply asks them, the same as he will soon ask Bartimaeus, “What do you want me to do for you?” He knew these boys; he loved and chose them, and we imagine he knew much of their misguided enthusiasm and their stubborn misunderstanding. So, in an attempt to guide them, he tries to zero in on their desire, which they willingly laid bare. “Let one of us sit at your right and the other at your left in your glory.”  One wouldn’t be surprised if they followed up that request with a “Bro” or a fist bump. The gospel doesn’t capture Jesus’ exasperated sigh. But he would have been entitled to at least one, after a solid four biblical pages of teaching them about the relinquishment of power, the necessity of sacrifice, the value and belovedness of the least among them. They still didn’t get it. But Bartimaeus did. He didn’t want power, he didn’t want glory, he just wanted to see, and casting aside his cloak, his only possession, he used that sight to follow Jesus on the way.

Jesus knew that what we want matters. He ultimately tells Bartimaeus that his faith healed him, but Jesus understood that faith is empty, impossible in fact, without desire. It was one of Swedenborg’s main criticisms of the Christianity of his time; that faith had become nothing but saying the right words, a confession of the right precepts, utterly empty without the desire to serve and grow, and utterly perverse filled *with* the desire for the self and for power. James and John *said* they had faith in Jesus but they were still driven by a desire for glory and eminence. And that wasn't the kind of faith that Jesus was working to inspire in them. Bartimaeus’ request for sight was a personal and perhaps selfish one. But what did he do with sight once he had it? Even when given the freedom to “go” he follows Jesus instead. What we desire affects *how* we see and ultimately *what* we do.

Swedenborg writes in his book Divine Providence: our whole spirit is desire and its consequent thought, and our thinking flows from the desires of our love.(1) Spiritual, heavenly desires, driven by a love for what is true and what is good, these are what animate our life and open us up to inflow from God. God cannot flow into anything else. So, it is not surprising that Jesus would ask Bartimaeus about something so important. He didn’t want to impose something, even a healing, upon him without knowing that it resonated with Bartimaeus’ deepest self. God’s action with us is always in partnership, always with the utmost respect for our autonomy and our freedom. We are made in an image and likeness of God, and our very wanting of more, more insight, more love and more resonant action our part, is that which brings us more fully into that image and likeness. Our desires remake us, our desires regenerate us.

But, there is of course a reason that desire is often thought of in negative terms and that’s because desire can indeed be destructive, unthinking, and consuming. The craving for power in James and John was preventing them from absorbing Jesus’ clear message to them. Without interrogating that desire within themselves they weren’t going to be able to follow Jesus where he was going, to the cross and to the resurrection.

And yet, as mixed-up as they were, they *were* following him. None of us can have perfect heavenly desire. We are all works in progress, we are all bundles of mixed motivations.  And this is entirely appropriate for angels-in-training. In our Swedenborg reading for today, we are introduced to the idea of intermediate good. These are desires, motivations, and goals that are not *entirely* heavenly but can lead us on the way, that can power our process. The message of Israel’s redemption, for example, and the message of the existence of a kingdom of God attracted James and John. Even if they muddled it up with their personal ideas of glory, they were still there listening to Jesus, and there was a chance for them to evolve.

We can think of examples from the personal and social realm: we might have a desire to take care of those who we love. This is absolutely a good thing; it builds us in the practice of service and hard work, and it builds in us the practice of emotional connection. But, it only serves as an intermediate good if we stop there, if we choose *only* to take care of those we love and not anyone else. The love of taking care of those around us is a stepping stone to the love of taking care of all people. We learn the value and beauty of humanity by seeing it first in the eyes of our loved ones from our tender ages; the trick is then to transfer that value and beauty to people that we don’t know and love personally. This is the more heavenly desire; to wish for, and work for, the dignity, safety, and thriving of all people, not just our own people.

This is why our wanting is important to God. All desire communicates something. Some desires tell us about what we hope for, about ways to connect and serve, and God will infill and grow these heavenly desires for us. Some desires tell us about our fears and our doubts, and God holds those gently, attempting to draw us away from fear and into the knowledge that greater love will always prevail. We remember: what we ultimately love will affect how we see and what we see. The desire for clarity and sight led Bartimaeus to see Jesus as someone he should urgently follow. Conversely, the desire for power led James and John to see Jesus as someone who could and would grant them a preeminent position. For us right now, the fear about whether there is enough to go around, the desire for self-preservation, might lead us to see immigrants at the border as dangerous rather than desperate people fleeing political persecution and poverty. Our desire to be greater than others might lead us to see nationalism and white supremacy as mere patriotism. In our relationships, our fear of conflict might convince us it is better to dissemble and avoid, our fear of rejection might lead us to see vulnerability and authenticity as humiliating. When we find ourselves trapped inside fearful desires, God will ask us: what do we want? What do we want ultimately? Do we want true clarity, courage, honesty, compassion, connection, love, meaning, or peace? Then God *will* lead us there. But it will take time, and it will take our willingness to see our desires for what they really are. To see the selfish, fearful desires and be willing to let them go, to see the mixed up intermediate desires and be willing to let them evolve.

Bartimaeus is often lifted up as ideal vision of discipleship, specifically in contrast to James and John. But our teaching from Swedenborg, while underscoring the importance of heavenly desire, also gives us hope for these brothers. We know that their story didn’t end there.  They were learning and growing, not just through teaching but through hardship as well. God brought them through intermediate states into a higher heavenly state, one that truly understood the nature of the kingdom of God, eventually.  And so there is hope for all of us. We are all Bartimaeus and we are all James and John, still on the journey.
Amen.

(1) Divine Providence 61.

Readings:

Mark 10:46-52

46 Then they came to Jericho. As Jesus and his disciples, together with a large crowd, were leaving the city, a blind man, Bartimaeus (which means “son of Timaeus”), was sitting by the roadside begging. 47 When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” 48 Many rebuked him and told him to be quiet, but he shouted all the more, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” 49 Jesus stopped and said, “Call him.”So they called to the blind man, “Cheer up! On your feet! He’s calling you.” 50 Throwing his cloak aside, he jumped to his feet and came to Jesus. 51 “What do you want me to do for you?” Jesus asked him. The blind man said, “Rabbi, I want to see.” 52 “Go,” said Jesus, “your faith has healed you.” Immediately he received his sight and followed Jesus along the road.

Secrets of Heaven 4063:2-3
…When someone is being regenerated the Lord maintains them in an intermediate kind of good, a good which serves to introduce genuine goods and truths. But once those goods and truths have been introduced, that intermediate good is separated from them. Anyone who knows anything at all about regeneration and about the new self can appreciate that the new self is entirely different from the old, for the new self has an affection for spiritual and celestial matters since these constitute their feelings of delight and blessedness, whereas the old self's affections are for worldly and earthly things…The new self's ends in view therefore lie in heaven, whereas the old self's lie in the world…

[3] So that a person may be led from the state of the old self into that of the new, worldly passions have to be cast aside and heavenly affections assumed. This is effected by countless means known to the Lord alone…When therefore a person is converted from an old self into a new one, that is, when they are regenerated, it does not take place in an instant as some people believe, but over many years. Indeed the process is taking place throughout the person's whole life right to its end…Since therefore their state of life has to be changed so drastically they are inevitably maintained for a long time in an intermediate kind of good which partakes both of worldly affections and of heavenly ones. And unless they are maintained in that intermediate good they in no way allow heavenly goods and truths into themselves.

Readings: Psalm 111:1-10, Luke 17:11-19, Heaven & Hell #404 (see below)
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Well, it is only just halfway through October, but let’s get a jump on Thanksgiving shall we? Because, the story that we have heard from the bible today is all about gratitude. Jesus is traveling along the border between Samaria and Galilee. He meets ten lepers and heals them. It is interesting how it happens. They are not healed in Jesus’ presence; he sends them to see the priest and it says “as they went, they were cleansed.” They suddenly found themselves healed when they didn’t quite expect it. Yet, nine of them continued on their way, only one turned around and returned to Jesus to thank him. Jesus feigns surprise, and makes sure to point out that the one practicing gratitude is a Samaritan, an enemy of his fellow Judeans. Jesus has already told the story of the Good Samaritan a few chapters earlier, and this story drives home his point: we should be wary of the walls we erect between ourselves and others, for if we pay attention it is the Samaritan, the one the Judeans call “enemy” who is actually loving God and loving the neighbor as Jesus is teaching. This Samaritan’s gratitude is lifted up as a model.

Now, I did not grow up with a Thanksgiving holiday, and I’ve very much come to appreciate the tradition of setting a day aside to give thanks for our blessings in community. Perhaps the practice is as simple as saying grace at a feast, perhaps it is the practice of going around a table to say one thing we are grateful for, perhaps it is a yearly inventory of our blessings. Gratefulness is an important practice.

I do want to dive a little deeper and ask: Why though? Why is Thanksgiving so many people’s favorite holiday? Why is the practice of gratitude often so restorative? Why do we teach our children to say “thank you” when someone does something for them?

Certainly, it is a nice thing to do, it seems the right thing to do—but why is that? I believe it is because it is an acknowledgment that we exist in community, that we rely upon each other. It is the acknowledgement of the existence of someone else, whose action made an impact upon us in some way, It is an acknowledgment that we are not islands but strands of a grand and beautiful web. Gratitude connects us to each other and to reverence.

Reverence, in the words of philosopher Paul Woodruff, is the recognition of something greater than the self.(1) Gratitude is one of the easiest and most important ways we enter into the experience of reverence. When we say thank you, we bring ourselves into the recognition of someone apart from the self, recognition of a need that we could not fulfill on our own, and therefore, a recognition that the self is not all-important or all-capable. 

Or in the words of Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor “reverence stands in awe of something—something that dwarfs the self, that allows human beings to sense the full extent of our limits—so that we can begin to see one another more reverently as well.” (2)

This is essentially what we are doing here in church. God does not need our praise. God does not desire it. We heard that in our Swedenborg reading. We are here however, to be reverent, meaning to willingly let go of the primacy of self, and to consciously look outside of ourselves to see what else there might be, whether that be God, or community, or beauty, or insight, or countless other things.

And when we notice and/or receive these things, these gifts, church gives us an opportunity to fall on our knees in thankfulness that we are not alone in an empty world. Into this intentional space of gratitude, we speak aloud an acknowledgement of our limits, our indebtedness, and our wonder. This is the push and pull of worship: to open our eyes to what God would have us see in ourselves and others, to take our awareness outside of our selfhood, to lay down our anxieties in front of someone who cares, to sing and pray and listen and speak ourselves into community with each other and God.

In Taylor’s words, “reverence [is] the proper attitude of a small and curious human being in a vast and fascinating world of experience.”(3) Humility and curiosity are key parts of a reverent attitude, for Jesus warned us in the text for today that our preconceptions about who we should be in community with, who we should be open to and grateful for, can get in the way of true reverence.

But our preconceptions of people are not the only things that get in the way. We often erect many obstacles to gratitude and reverence in our daily lives. As Taylor points out:

“The practice of paying attention really does take time. Most of us move so quickly that our surroundings become no more than the blurred scenery we fly past on our way to somewhere else. We pay attention to the speedometer, the wristwatch, the cell phone, the list of things to do, all of which feed our illusion that life is manageable. Meanwhile, none of them meets the first criterion for reverence, which is to remind us that we are not gods. If anything these devices sustain the illusion that we might yet be gods—if only we could find some way to do more faster.”(4)

I stand here convicted of this illusion just as much as anyone else. It is so easy to fall into. And what prevents this falling? It’s too simple really, but it’s simple awareness, it’s what we choose to give our attention to. We often remain so caught up in our own competence, our own opinions, our own delusions, but a simple autumn leaf and the awareness that we had nothing to do with its beauty and process and life, this can bring us around to our place in the order of things. 

So I’m going to invite us now to hear the words of the Christian mystic from the Middle Ages, Julian of Norwich, as she recounts a vision she had one day. If you would like, take a moment to find a small nature token, like an acorn or a stone, or a shell, and hold it in the palm of your hand as we focus on these words: 

And in this [God] showed me something small, no bigger than a hazelnut, lying the palm of my hand, as it seemed to me, and it was as round as a ball. I look at it with the eye of my understanding and thought: what can this be? I was amazed that it could last, for I thought that because of its littleness it would suddenly have fallen into nothing. And I was answered in my understanding: It lasts and always will, because God loves it; and thus everything has being through the love of God. (5) 

The ten lepers from our text today were healed “as they went.” And so we also go about our lives, to and fro. As we go, will we notice our various healings, small and large alike, and will they remind us to praise, to be grateful, to see that everything has being through the love of God? In Taylor’s words, can we trust “that something as small as a hazelnut [or an acorn or a stone or a shell] can become an altar in this world.”(6)

We are given oppotunities to make altars in our world every moment, with everything that we encounter. We won’t always remember to, and that’s okay. But hopefully we wil remember sometimes, and that will be enough. 

Amen.

1. Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith, p21
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid, p19
4. Ibid, p24
5. Julien of Norwich, as quoted in An Altar in the World, p17
6. Taylor, An Altar in the World, p34

Readings:

Psalm 111:1-10

1 Praise the LORD.I will extol the LORD with all my heart in the council of the upright and in the assembly. 2 Great are the works of the LORD; they are pondered by all who delight in them. 3 Glorious and majestic are his deeds, and his righteousness endures forever. 4 He has caused his wonders to be remembered; the LORD is gracious and compassionate. 5 He provides food for those who fear him; he remembers his covenant forever. 6 He has shown his people the power of his works, giving them the lands of other nations. 7 The works of his hands are faithful and just; all his precepts are trustworthy. 8 They are established for ever and ever, enacted in faithfulness and uprightness. 9 He provided redemption for his people; he ordained his covenant forever— holy and awesome is his name. 10 The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom; all who follow his precepts have good understanding. To him belongs eternal praise.

Luke 17:11-19

11 Now on his way to Jerusalem, Jesus traveled along the border between Samaria and Galilee. 12 As he was going into a village, ten men who had leprosy met him. They stood at a distance 13 and called out in a loud voice, “Jesus, Master, have pity on us!” 14 When he saw them, he said, “Go, show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were cleansed. 15 One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. 16 He threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him—and he was a Samaritan. 17 Jesus asked, “Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? 18 Has no one returned to give praise to God except this foreigner?” 19 Then he said to him, “Rise and go; your faith has made you well.”
Heaven and Hell #404
Some spirits who thought themselves better informed than others claimed that in the world they had held to the belief that heavenly joy consisted solely in praising and glorifying God, and that this was an active life. They have been told, though, that praising and glorifying God is not an appropriate kind of active life, since God has no need of praise and glorification. Rather, God wants us to be useful to each other, to do the worthwhile things that are called works of charity. However, they could not connect any notion of heavenly joy with thoughtful good deeds, only a notion of servitude. The angels, though, bore witness that it was the freest life of all because it stemmed from a deep affection and was invariably accompanied by an indescribable pleasure.

Readings: Ruth 3:1-11, 4:13-17, True Christianity 599 (see below)
See also on Youtubeyoutu.be/9S5MDPLIt_A


Here we are in the third installment of our series on the book of Ruth. Let’s recap where we have been. Naomi is an Israelite women who goes to live in Moab due to famine. Her sons marry local Moabite women, one of whom was named Ruth. After a time, Naomi’s husband and sons die, and she has no choice but to return to Israel. She is bitter and feels forsaken by God. But, even though it means leaving her homeland, Ruth will not abandon Naomi, and so she travels to Israel with her. 

Once they arrive, they must contend with how they will survive. Ruth attempts to glean the leftovers from the harvest in the fields of a local wealthy landowner named Boaz. Boaz had heard of Ruth’s act of loyalty to Naomi and orders extra grain to be left behind for Ruth to collect. Naomi is glad to hear of this development, and points out that Boaz is related to her husband’s family and thus has a responsibly for their welfare. She calls him their guardian-redeemer, a specific term with both social and legal meanings.

Today we hear the climax and the resolution of the story in chapters 3 and 4. Naomi has a plan for securing their future, and so she gives Ruth some very specific instructions. These instructions probably sound pretty strange to us now - uncovering feet? - and we might not really feel clear about what is happening.

But what might confuse us a little in English is very plain in the Hebrew. The original text contains a lot of suggestive wordplay and euphemistic terms. Given Ruth’s model behavior in the previous chapters, our first instinct might be to resist what is suggested in the Hebrew text, to make her completely chaste, non-transgressive, uncalculating, and demure. But the fact is, Ruth takes a risk here, and acts outside of what might have been considered acceptable behavior in Israelite society. We might wonder: was it right for her to do so? Was it “right” for Naomi to ask Ruth to act in such a way? And what does “right” in this context even mean?

Boaz must have been aware of his relationship to their family, and of his responsibility as their guardian-redeemer. Yet, as of Chapter 3, he had not done anything more than allow Ruth to glean a little extra grain. We might also ask: was he intending to act? Why was he taking so long? What would have happened if Ruth had done nothing? Was it not “right” for Ruth to call him to account, to remind him of his responsibility?

Like many stories in the Bible, these characters are all very human, feeling real human emotions, acting with mixed human motives, trying their best within the context they are given, sometimes falling short, and sometimes bringing about miracles.

As one of my commentaries notes: 
“We have to acknowledge that what Ruth did was scandalous in the eyes of the world, *and* that it was an act of loving kindness.”(1) It was an act that sought to take care of her mother-in-law, to alleviate her emptiness; it was an act that gently called a “pillar of Israelite society to responsibility”(2) as well as relationship, it was an act that would heal a family and begin a line that would culminate in one of Israel’s greatest leaders.

And so the text prompts us to ask ourselves, in what ways might *we* be called to risk, might we be called to push against social norms in order to practice connective and covenantal love, what in the Hebrew is called hesed, love that enfolds people into community. Is there a place in our lives that is calling out for accountability, for relationship, for encouragement, for change, but we are constrained by what feels to us like social respectability, social expectations, and the embarrassment and fear associated with with pushing against those norms? 

Because, the next most important question to ask is: What occurs as a result of Ruth’s risk-taking? One thing, among many, is that Naomi experiences a reversal of her emptiness. Her overall and understandable bitterness drives the narrative of the first chapter. But by the end of the story, we find her heart is filled again. The narrative is signaling that her personal trajectory mirrors the trajectory of her people as a whole, that her grandchild, so precious to her in a personal way, will also play his part in leading a whole people towards redemption, as a link in King David’s familial line. An act of risk, courage and hope, grounded in hesed, that first *uncovers* and lays bare human vulnerability and need, and then culminates in the *recovery* of hope and meaning.

The text aims to drive this home in its use of language. The Hebrew scriptures often like to juxtapose similar sounding words in order to contrast their meaning. In chapter 3, we notice the juxtaposition of the word gala, meaning uncover, reveal or remove, and gaal, meaning recover, redeem, or restore. In the words of my commentary again: the “narrator encourages the audience to consider the ways in which uncovering can lead to recovering - the redemption of what was lost.” (3)

Ruth acts to uncover the feet of Boaz - and in the Hebrew this has a suggestive association. And yet, this uncovering leads to a recovering. Her vulnerability and his responsibility are uncovered, and into that place of need a relationship is formed, and dignity is recovered. 

As we go even deeper, Swedenborg writes about how the act of “uncovering” in the bible represents a removing of external things so that internal ones may be apparent(4). Often, external things (learned perspectives, attachments, anxieties, habits) get in the way of spiritual progress. But, as suggested in our Swedenborg reading, this is just part of the process, a process of redemption that has been built into the divine design. We are called to uncover the truth about ourselves, to quiet the ego long enough for truth to be revealed to us, and then to remove that which cannot serve love, cannot serve hesed. This act of faithful gala — uncovering— makes space for, makes a path for, gaal — restoration.

And so as we consider divine design, and God’s intention for us, we might ask, where is God in the book of Ruth? Even though the narrative is dealing with very human problems and very human interactions, God’s presence is very much woven into the story as well. There are no prophets speaking God’s word directly, the settings are fields and roads and threshing floors rather than tabernacles or a burning bush, and yet God feels very close to this story, we see God within this story. The way God is known in the book of Ruth is through people. There is loss, and there is death and God responds with loyalty and hesed from a daughter-in-law. There is poverty and uncertainty and God responds with mutual relationship and kindness from one who can help. There is bitterness and perceived abandonment, and God responds with new birth and new life.

In chapter 3, verse 9, Ruth asks Boaz to spread his garment, or his cloak over her. The word for cloak, kanap,  is also the word for wing, and Boaz had previously used that word in chapter 2, when he praised Ruth for her loyalty “May you be richly rewarded by the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge.” We might wonder though, how much at the time he said this, was this some vague blessing, or did he consider the reality that many times the love of God becomes real and palpable through human decision. Ruth makes that connection clear to him, that if God’s wings are to give her refuge, that refuge in a physical sense must come through him. One of the ways that God’s love finds its way to us, is by the care and concern we show each other.

And so we find ourselves back to asking the question: what is our part? We are all sometimes Naomi, sometimes Ruth, sometimes Boaz. Naomi’s bitterness was not where she began, or where she was destined to end up. She was taking a detour, a necessary and understandable one, one that we all take from time to time. But God’s wings were over her the entire time. May we all find the courage to step into our place in the divine process, the uncovering and the recovering, one that brings all people into redemption. Amen.

1. The New Interpreter’s Bible, p295
2. Ibid, p303
3. Ibid, p290
4. Emanuel Swedenborg, Secrets of Heaven #9917 and #9960

Readings:

Ruth 3:1-11, 4:13-17

1 One day Ruth’s mother-in-law Naomi said to her, “My daughter, I must find a home for you, where you will be well provided for. 2 Now Boaz, with whose women you have worked, is a relative of ours. Tonight he will be winnowing barley on the threshing floor. 3 Wash, put on perfume, and get dressed in your best clothes. Then go down to the threshing floor, but don’t let him know you are there until he has finished eating and drinking. 4 When he lies down, note the place where he is lying. Then go and uncover his feet and lie down. He will tell you what to do.” 5 “I will do whatever you say,” Ruth answered. 6 So she went down to the threshing floor and did everything her mother-in-law told her to do. 7 When Boaz had finished eating and drinking and was in good spirits, he went over to lie down at the far end of the grain pile. Ruth approached quietly, uncovered his feet and lay down. 8 In the middle of the night something startled the man; he turned—and there was a woman lying at his feet! 9 “Who are you?” he asked. “I am your servant Ruth,” she said. “Spread the corner of your garment over me, since you are a guardian-redeemer of our family.” 10 “The LORD bless you, my daughter,” he replied. “This kindness is greater than that which you showed earlier: You have not run after the younger men, whether rich or poor. 11 And now, my daughter, don’t be afraid. I will do for you all you ask. All the people of my town know that you are a woman of noble character. 

4:13 So Boaz took Ruth and she became his wife. The LORD enabled her to conceive, and she gave birth to a son. 14 The women said to Naomi: “Praise be to the LORD, who this day has not left you without a guardian-redeemer. May he become famous throughout Israel! 15 He will renew your life and sustain you in your old age. For your daughter-in-law, who loves you and who is better to you than seven sons, has given him birth.” 16 Then Naomi took the child in her arms and cared for him. 17 The women living there said, “Naomi has a son!” And they named him Obed. He was the father of Jesse, the father of David.

True Christianity 599

During the battles or conflicts within us, the Lord carries out an individual act of redemption, much like the all-encompassing redemption he brought about while he was in the world. 

While he was in the world, the Lord glorified his human manifestation, that is, made it divine, through battles and inner conflict. In a similar way within us individually, the Lord fights for us while we are undergoing inner conflict and conquers the hellish spirits who are assaulting us. Afterward he "glorifies" us, that is, makes us spiritual. 

After his universal redemption, the Lord restructured all things in heaven and in hell in accordance with the divine design. He does much the same thing in us after crises of the spirit - that is, he restructures all the things in us that relate to heaven and the world in accordance with the divine design.