Readings: Genesis 17:1-8, 15-16, Mark 8:31-38, Secrets of Heaven #1038 (see below)
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So here we are, dear friends, in the Second Sunday in Lent. As we are prompted by the season to pause to take a hard look at our practices, our habits, our viewpoints, as we consider renewing our commitment to change and discipleship…our texts invite us to consider several questions: what does it really mean to take up our cross?  What does it mean to follow Jesus?  What does this have to do with covenant?

Since we already spent some time with the Mark text a couple of weeks ago, in regard to the transfiguration, lets begin with the Genesis text.

Our Old Testament text puts us right in the middle of the story of Abraham.  Abraham is considered the father of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.  Though in the Bible, God had previously been active in the lives of the first humans Adam and Eve, and Noah, and others, Abraham is special because of the covenant that God makes with him.  God made a specific commitment to Abraham and all Abraham’s descendants, to be with them and to be their God. Now this is not the first time God has made promises in the book of Genesis. Creation was a kind of promise, with the Garden of Eden being an implicit commitment to human flourishing. And a little bit later, God makes a promise of non-violence to Noah after the flood.  But God’s covenant with Abraham is much broader in scope.  God promises to make Abraham’s descendants into a great nation.  “I will make your name great” says the Lord, “and you will be a blessing…all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” (Genesis 12:2-3)

Our text today is actually the third iteration of this covenant to Abraham.  The first time occurs in chapter 12, when God calls on Abraham (then named Abram) to leave everything he has known and travel to a new land.  The second time occurs in chapter 15, and God gets much more specific. By then, Abram and his wife Sarai are getting very old, and they are childless. There seems no way they could be parents to a nation. Yet, God promises them a son of their own blood.

But, many years go by, and Sarai does not become pregnant. Eventually, though, God appears to Abram again and reiterates the covenant for a third time, as we heard today, this time making sure to include Sarai, not as an extension of Abram but in her own right.  Both Abram and Sarai receive new names; they become Abraham and Sarah.  And this time, Sarah does indeed becomes pregnant, much to their incredulity, and delivers a son, Isaac.

There is so much to be explored in the story of Abraham and Sarah, but for the purposes of Lent, I want to focus on the spiritual meaning of covenant.  A covenant is an agreement between parties to do or not do something specified.  Now, this is slightly different from a promise.  A promise can be delivered in one sided way, but a covenant cannot.  It is an agreement between two parties, an explicit partnership. What makes this third covenant between God and Abraham special is that God declared it to be everlasting.  God was always going to show up with integrity to this covenant.  The quality of the agreement was then put entirely in the hands of Abraham and his descendants.  They would the ones to determine if the covenant was fulfilled; God’s part was ensured.

In a Swedenborgian sense, all the talk about covenant, marriage, and partnership in scripture represents at a deeper level, the impulse that God has toward conjunction with us.  Abraham was the first participant in a new kind of relationship with God, and so Swedenborg connects Abraham with Jesus, in a corresponding way, because Jesus, God’s experience in human form, was another reframing of God’s relationship with us. The origination of the covenant, and the reframing of the covenant, both in service of union between God and humanity. Jesus allowed God to come even closer to us, to fulfill that original covenant even more. 

Because, even though we were God’s creation, and beloved entirely from the very beginning, our necessary finite nature allowed for a self-created distance, as pictured by leaving the Garden of Eden. Or, imagine for example how we might float away from a dock on a lake if we give ourselves one mighty and petulant push.  The very separateness that allowed for our creation as autonomous beings, that allowed for our freedom, also allowed for an ever-increasing spiritual distance.  Now, God would never take away our freedom of choice.  So God decided to show up in a new way to the covenant.  God decided to connect God’s infinite essence to our humanness through Jesus. So, imagine now that God has extended a pool noodle, or a life preserver on a rope; space and freedom remain for us but we, the swimmer, will no longer be forever drifting further and further away.  God comes with us, in our shared humanity, wherever we go.

So, in a deep sense, a covenant indicates not only partnership but union, or an impulse toward union. We already know what God was willing to do for the covenant, and we are told about that in the gospels.  So what about us?

This brings us to the reading from Mark. Mark Twain said once, “It ain’t those parts of the Bible that I can’t understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.”  (1) Our reading in Mark doesn’t require much exegesis. It is pretty darn clear.  And that is part of makes it so poignant and challenging.  It seems like Jesus is asking a lot of us.  Whatever happened to my yoke is easy and my burden light? Even when we interpret “the cross” metaphorically it still seems like a pretty hard word.  It must have seemed even more challenging to original hearers when crucifixion was a contemporary practice.  What is Jesus really asking us to do, to give up?  It is our very nature in cling to our lives, our desires, our wants.  It is probably our deepest human impulse.  So we resist. We resist often, and we resist hard.

But Jesus was not asking more than what God was asking of Godself.  We know that, even on the day before the cross, Jesus was in the garden of Gethsemane praying that he should not have die, for Jesus was not human in an abstract or partial way.  Jesus was human even down to those deepest survival impulses that we all share. We all wish that suffering and pain should pass us by.  But Jesus knew that the covenant, God’s impulse towards conjunction, was too important. Humanity was floating away, and Jesus was throwing us the life preserver. Not forcing us into synchronized swimming if we didn’t want to, but keeping the option open. Showing up, tethering God to our human experience in order to maintain our ability to reciprocate should we wish to. Because a covenant is above all, about partnership between two parties. When there is no longer potential for partnership, the covenant must end. And God had declared the covenant to be everlasting, so God protected our potential to say yes, even when we are not ready or able to.  Jesus was simply one more manifestation of God showing up to the covenant even when humanity did not, or could not, even when *we* do not or cannot.

In the context of covenant then, what does taking up our cross and following Jesus mean?  How is taking up our cross to be understood differently when it is part of a covenant, a sign of our agreement to partnership? Because we might be tempted to understand taking up our cross as a test…to see whether we are tough enough or loyal enough or selfless enough to be a part of the kingdom.  And while cross-bearing can and does create toughness, loyalty and selflessness, I think rather it is more accurate to say that taking up our crosses leads us to connection.  Pema Chodron, a buddhist monk, writes:

“Only to the degree that we’ve gotten to know our personal pain, only to the degree that we’ve related with pain at all, will we be fearless enough, brave enough, and enough of a warrior to be willing to feel the pain of others.  To that degree we will be able to take on the pain of others because we will have discovered that their pain and our own pain are not different.”(2)

In willingly taking up our own pain, our own crosses, we can see in it that which has the potential to separate us from other people, and that which has the potential to connect us. We can see which parts of our pain are tangled up with ego and fear and trauma, which parts prevent us from saying yes to our covenants with God and with other people. We can see which parts, all parts really, are universally human experiences, and use these as an entrance to empathy, compassion, and solidarity.

Abram and Sarai had plenty of baggage, plenty of trouble showing up to the covenant, just like we all do.  But God was patient, and Abram and Sarai persevered and eventually their connection with God transformed their identities. Their names, Abraham and Sarah, came to reflect that.  In our Lenten reflections this week, we are being invited to contemplate how our challenges might transform us, how having a practice of fiercely showing up for our life and everything in it, can be connective.  

We are asked to take up our cross, because trying to follow Jesus while we pretending our crosses aren’t there is untenable.  We will be weighted down and we won’t know why. We are asked to take up our cross because everyone has a cross, and we are in it together.  We are asked to take up our cross because it leads to connection, and connection, with God and each other, is the whole purpose of the covenant.

Amen.

1. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/second-sunday-in-lent-2/commentary-on-mark-831-38-4
2. Start Where You Are, by Pema Chodron

Readings:

Genesis 17:1-8, 15-16

1 When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the LORD appeared to him and said, “I am God Almighty ; walk before me faithfully and be blameless. 2 Then I will make my covenant between me and you and will greatly increase your numbers.” 3 Abram fell facedown, and God said to him, 4 “As for me, this is my covenant with you: You will be the father of many nations. 5 No longer will you be called Abram ; your name will be Abraham, for I have made you a father of many nations. 6 I will make you very fruitful; I will make nations of you, and kings will come from you. 7 I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you. 8 The whole land of Canaan, where you now reside as a foreigner, I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you; and I will be their God.” 
15 God also said to Abraham, “As for Sarai your wife, you are no longer to call her Sarai; her name will be Sarah. 16 I will bless her and will surely give you a son by her. I will bless her so that she will be the mother of nations; kings of peoples will come from her.”


Mark 8:31-38

31 He then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again. 32 He spoke plainly about this, and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. 33 But when Jesus turned and looked at his disciples, he rebuked Peter. “Get behind me, Satan!” he said. “You do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.” 34 Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 35 For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it. 36 What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? 37 Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? 38 If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels.”


Secrets of Heaven 1038

…The purpose of any covenant is conjunction, that is to say, its purpose is that people may live together in friendship or in love. This also is why marriage is called a covenant. The Lord's conjunction with humankind does not exist except in love and charity, for the Lord is love itself and mercy. He wills to save everyone and by His mighty power to draw them towards heaven, that is, towards Himself. From this anyone may know and conclude that it is impossible for anybody to be joined to the Lord except by means of that which He Himself is, that is, except by acting like Him, or becoming one with Him - that is to say, by loving the Lord in return, and loving the neighbor as oneself. In this way alone is conjunction brought about; this constitutes the very essence of a covenant. When conjunction results from this, it quite plainly follows that the Lord is present. The Lord is indeed present with each individual, but that presence is closer or more remote, all depending on how near the person is to love or distant from it.

Readings: Genesis 1:1-5, Psalm 51:1-17, Secrets of Heaven 20, True Christianity 773 (see below)See also on Youtube
Photo by Merlin Lightpainting: https://www.pexels.com/photo/woman-with-blue-hair-and-blue-eyes-11138000/
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Okay, here we are in Lent. The part of the liturgical year when we are asked to take the blinders from our eyes and really sit with our failings, to not shy away or make excuses, but to face them head on. With the emphasis on spiritual growth and regeneration in the New Church, I used to joke to my Lutheran classmates that it is Lent all the year round with Swedenborgians, but of course, that is not necessarily sustainable.  Like a breath in and a breath out, we need times to focus and times to rest, times to mourn and times to celebrate.  And today, we enter into the practice of seeing and feeling what we have done wrong, and what we can do better going forward. Soon enough, we will be celebrating Easter, we will be bathed in the joy of the resurrection. But for now, with courage and seriousness, we recognize our limitations, we recognize our shortcomings, we recognize our capitulations and our complicity.  We confess.  We convict.  

But it is important that we do so in the context of God’s essential character.  This is how Psalm 51 begins, by establishing the qualities of God that make reconciliation and relationship possible.  It begins with asking that God “have mercy” or “be gracious,” the language reflecting the famous benediction from Numbers 6:25  “The Lord bless you and keep you. the Lord make his face to shine upon and be gracious unto you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.”  These are things that the Lord is known to be, thus they are called forth in blessing. The psalmist asks for mercy because God has shown mercy so many times before.   

Bur really, how can the psalmist be so sure?  We are further told that God shows mercy “according to your unfailing love.”  The word here translated as unfailing or steadfast love is hesed.  This word is used frequently in the psalms and is central to God’s character.  It is a little more complicated than the phrase “steadfast love” though….it is inherently relational and covenantal.  It is about acting appropriately in a relationship, about knowing how to *maintain* community and relationship.  When God is showing mercy according to hesed, this is not just about sentiment, or even loyal sentiment, it is about the wisdom that knows how to love well, how to maintain connection.

And God also shows mercy according to God’s “great compassion” which is also sometimes translated as “tender mercies”. This Hebrew word is related to the word for “womb.”  So it might well be better translated as “motherly compassion.”  This is how we are to be held as we make known our sin, as we look unflinchingly at our own failings. We are held in God’s womb, safe and surrounded with God’s motherly compassion. So, we learn from the psalm that God will give mercy because God will always be there, God knows how to be in relationship, God sticks around when things get messy, God has abundant compassion.

And so we can enter into the rest of the psalm, we can enter into the practice of repentance because, as bad as it feels, as scary as it feels, it is remarkably, impossibly, NOT existentially dangerous to us. It *feels* existentially dangerous to admit we are wrong.  Our survival instincts kick in because we don’t want to endanger our relationships as they stand, our dynamics of power, our structures of privilege. For example, it might be really hard for a parent to admit they are wrong to their child, because it seems like their child may not respect their authority anymore. Or, I ask myself, Why so hard to admit to my husband when I am wrong?  Maybe I think I will be less lovable, less worthy of love, maybe I don’t want to concede some kind of power that I think I have? Even with small things, small admissions, let alone the big ones, our fight or flight systems kick in, and we are ready to encounter abandonment, to encounter loss of respect and power. In a survival world, power and respect are everything. And using *that* framework, admitting wrong-doing to God, the most powerful being of all, should be suicide. But God turns that whole deal on its head.  “The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart you will not despise.”  The world often *does* despise brokenness…just see how we talk about poverty, about mental illness, about addiction. The world sees weakness and cannot bear to encounter what it means, that it could easily be each of us, for the one thing we all share is humanness. For God though, our brokenness, our wrongness, our failing is held in the context of our belovedness. God expects much from us, because we are loved so completely.

And so, We can be sure of our safety in repentance because, in the words of one of my commentaries: “The reality of God’s steadfast love is more fundamental than the reality of sinfulness.  While sin is inevitable and pervasive in the human situation, it is not ultimately the determining reality.” (1)

The determining reality is the Divine Love of God.  Evil and sin do not have existence in and of themselves, rather they are situations that involve a lack of, or denial of, or perversion of, the love of God.  An Example from science: “cold” is not actually a thing. I feel ridiculous preaching this in the middle of February, but it’s true; In and of itself, coldness does not exist.  Coldness is the absence of heat.  Cold comes about by the removal of thermal energy from a system. Likewise, evil is the turning away from divine love, the removal of divine love from a system; it has no true existance of its own. And of course, this removal of Divine Love is never enacted by God, but rather when we remove ourselves from God’s presence, like a teenager who retreats to their room and shuts the door. Lent is about taking a look these times, and these tendencies.  Taking a look at the times we have not trusted in the presence of God, taking a look at the times when we surrender to false idols and false suppositions, taking a look at the times we have not trusted the determining reality of love, not trusted that God will not despise a broken and contrite heart. 

As we will learn with the Easter story in several weeks, God demonstrated as clearly as possible that God does not despise brokenness. Jesus’ broken body on the cross was a “sacrifice acceptable to God”, not because God was angry and demanded the death of something innocent as an appeasement. Jesus broken body on the cross was God’s broken body, God’s broken heart, God’s ultimate statement of steadfast, motherly compassion. The cross is communicaing: “Here, look, there is nothing you can do that I haven’t seen, that I haven’t felt.”  There is simply no state of brokenness that is too broken to be held within God’s love, no state of brokenness that cannot experience resurrection, that cannot experience vivification, that cannot feel the renewal of life.

But we must open the door.  We must believe in the solidarity that God is communicating.  We must dismantle the walls around our hearts.  We must crush the defensiveness, cast away the pride, stare down the fear.  And if we do, God has promised life.  God has promised mercy….and not the world’s mercy, which is often a reluctant bestowal of appeasement, a half-hearted condescension, a distracted forgetting.  God’s mercy entails entrance into a cycle whereby resurrection is the answer to loss, every time.

As characterized by St. Bonaventure: God’s creation, God’s perfection, is a circle.  In a circle, there is nothing left behind, nothing left outside. Verse 10 of our psalm harkens back to this primordial creation when it says “Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.”  This hebrew word for create, bara, is used to indicate an exclusively divine activity, the kind of creating that only God can do.  And thus the Message Bible translates verse 10 as: “shape a Genesis week from the chaos of my life.”  We heard in our Swedenborg reading that this work of creation is on-going. Our mothering God is always hovering over the waters of our crazy life, our chaos, our brokenness, looking to speak a word that will separate the light from the darkness.  We might cling to the darkness for our various reasons.  But, the creation of a pure heart, a new heart, can only be done when we bear open our chests and let God get to work in us. 

Another way of looking at this is from the author Glennon Doyle. She coined a new word to describe her experience of transformation: “brutiful”, an amalgamation of beautiful and brutal. An addict who rebuilt her life, Melton recognizes that showing up to the parts of her life that were hurting and broken, embracing her humanness, is what helped her become, in her words, “better, kinder, softer, stronger.” This is not the idea that suffering itself is beautiful, this is not about martyrdom, but rather, the idea that beauty and love can never be contained. Beauty and love and truth will find their way to us, like water flowing on a circuitous path, looking for the way that is open to flow. Beauty and love and truth will flower from even the smallest encouragement; we’ve all seen plants growing and flowering in between the cracks in concrete.  Beauty and love and truth will reach deep into loss and pain and bring out resurrection, if we let them. Because that’s the way that God works, a divine circle of loss and renewal.

So, Help us, Lord, to find balance in this Lenten season, let us step into the divine circle. Let us see, that if our Lent experience is all beauty, then perhaps we are not being honest with ourselves. If our Lent experience is entirely brutal, then perhaps we are forgetting the love of God.  Let our path be “brutiful,” let our path be one of abundant creation. Let God shape a Genesis week out of the chaos of our lives.

Amen.

(1) The New Interpreter’s Bible p447


Readings:

Genesis 1:1-5

1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. 3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day. 


Psalm 51:1-17
1 Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions. 2 Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. 3 For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me. 4 Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight; so you are right in your verdict and justified when you judge. 5 Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me. 6 Yet you desired faithfulness even in the womb; you taught me wisdom in that secret place. 7 Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow. 8 Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones you have crushed rejoice. 9 Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquity. 10 Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. 11 Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. 12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me. 13 Then I will teach transgressors your ways, so that sinners will turn back to you. 14 Deliver me from the guilt of bloodshed, O God, you who are God my Savior, and my tongue will sing of your righteousness. 15 Open my lips, Lord, and my mouth will declare your praise. 16 You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings. 17 My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise. 


Secrets of Heaven 20

And God said, Let there be light; and there was light. This is at the outset when a person starts to realize that good and truth are something superior. Thoroughly external people do not even know what good is and what truth is, for they imagine that everything which comprises self-love and love of the world is good, and that everything that panders to those loves is truth. Thus they do not know that the things which they imagine to be good are in fact evil, and that those which they imagine to be true are in fact false. But when a person is conceived anew, first they start to recognize that the good in them is not really good, and then, when they enters more into light, to recognize the existence of the Lord and that the Lord is good and truth themselves.


True Christianity 773

…These are the two goals of [the Lord’s] Coming. His ultimate purpose in creating the universe was exactly this: to form an angelic heaven made up of people…The divine love that God has, and that is his essence, cannot intend anything other than this, and the divine wisdom that God has, and that is God, cannot produce any other outcome than this. 

The universe was created for the purpose of having an angelic heaven made up of members of the human race, and also for the purpose of having a church in the world, since the church gives the human race access to heaven. In addition, saving people, which requires that they be born in the world, is itself an ongoing act of creation. For this reason the Word sometimes uses the word "create," and means by it "forming people for heaven. " 

Readings: 2 Kings 2:1, 6-12, Mark 9:2-9, True Christianity 222 (see below)
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If you listened carefully this past week, you might have heard a collective groan go up among preachers as they contemplated this week’s text. The transfiguration is notoriously hard to preach, for a number of reasons.  It is often taken out of its place in the narrative, as we see it is this week, having made the jump quickly from chapter one last week to chapter nine this week.  It is filled with references and allusions to the Old Testament and so can easily become a laundry list of explanation.  And, it is also just a little weird to modern sensibilities; a shining Jesus, voices from heaven, babbling disciples.  Just how are we supposed to hold and understand this startling, magical, otherworldly story?
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Let’s begin by placing the episode in its narrative context.  What has just happened in the story that would precipitate the transfiguration?  We find that Jesus has just predicted his death to the disciples for the first time, and schooled them in the way of the cross. We read from verse 31 in chapter 8:

He then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again. He spoke plainly about this, and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.

Crazy right? Peter began to rebuke Jesus. Now look, we can understand. He didn’t want to lose Jesus, his beloved teacher. We all share this instinctual “No,” this rising up of protest to the idea of loss and of suffering. This can be a good thing. In addition to being a valuable survival instinct for ourselves, when directed towards others, it can guide our sense of empathy and justice.  But not in this case. Jesus says, famously:

Get behind me, Satan!  You do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.  Or in the words on the Message Bible: You have no idea how God works.  He continues: For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it.  What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?

It is with these powerful words still ringing in the air, that we are told that six days later, Jesus takes Peter, James and John up to the mountain and is transfigured before them.  Jesus receives a divine blessing (This is my Son, whom I love) and the disciples receive a divine instruction (Listen to him).  Just two weeks ago, we spent some time with Deuteronomy, learning about how God would raise up a prophet like Moses…and the divine voice at the transfiguration echoes Moses’ prophecy “You must listen to him.”
Listen to what? Listen to what Jesus says he must do, listen to what he says the kingdom will look like, listen to what it means to take up their cross. In the transfiguration there are a number of revealings: a revealing of divine reality, a revealing of Jesus identity, but also a revealing of Jesus’ purposes.

To understand Jesus’ purpose, let’s pause for a moment and consider the presence of Moses and Elijah.  They are often understood to represent the law and the prophets and to demonstrate that Jesus is a fulfillment of the law, and is in solidarity with the prophets.  In one sense, this is true, Jesus *is* a continuation and fulfillment of these things. But in another interesting sense, Jesus is a contrast to Moses and Elijah. This is because the Jewish tradition had long believed that neither Moses nor Elijah had actually died, but had been taken up to be with God.  For Moses, this was believed because his burial place was never actually found or acknowledged in scripture.  For Elijah, it is because of the transition story that we heard in our reading today, of Elijah being carried up to heaven in a whirlwind and chariots of fire.  So, to the original hearers of the gospel, it would make perfect sense to see both Moses and Elijah there talking with the transfigured Jesus, and in the presence of the divine voice.  That’s where they understood them to be, alive with God.  The fascinating contrast is that Jesus, clearly elevated above both Moses and Elijah, designated the Beloved Son, had just been telling the disciples that he was going to have to die.

Elijah had served well, Moses had served well, Jesus had served well…but their fates would be very different because their mission was different.  Moses and Elijah were messengers.  Moses had delivered the law and Elijah had delivered the prophetic word.  They had done so in good faith, and at great peril. But, Jesus intended not only to be a conduit of God’s word but to usher in the kingdom of God in a new and powerful way.  In a Swedenborgian sense, Jesus represents the Word in this story, God’s Divine truth for us, God speaking to us and the whole world, communicating and reaching out.  And as static as the Word might appear on the page, we know that internally it is living, it is truth accommodated to level upon level so that it may speak to us wherever we might find ourselves. That it might always be doing its work of revealing and uncovering the truth of ourselves to ourselves, so that we might be free enough and clear enough to love other people well and fully.

The Word is God’s stake in the ground, this is God continuing to show up for us day after day as Divine Love in the form of Divine Truth, illuminating reality, clearing our path. The Transfiguration shows us there is glory and holiness at the heart of it all, that this source of all things, God’s Divine Love is benevolent and beautiful, and shines brightly and continuously.

But as Peter’s reaction shows us, we humans are alternately dazzled and frightened by the brightness. We are easily captivated and distracted by ideals, and beauty, and shiny things. It is not a bad thing to love beauty and to strive for ideals.  But if our eyes are always on the bright light, then our world around us becomes like nothing, the people behind us forgotten and unworthy.  And God means to save everyone. So, God’s brightness became veiled in humanity, so that it might become present to suffering and pain, that the brightness might be embodied in sacrifice so that no one will be left behind, no matter how oppressed, broken, tired, mistaken, or forgotten.  God’s humanity through Jesus will effect the divine reach into every experience, God’s divine love found within and through humanness.

And this is the reason for what is called the “Messianic secret.”  We might remember examples of Jesus warning those healed not to say anything about it.  Here, Jesus orders that the disciples not tell anyone about the transfiguration until after he had risen from the dead.  You see, Jesus wasn’t a magic trick. God is not only revealed in the glory of the transfiguration but in the suffering of the cross; God’s character is manifested in both the brightness *and* the sacrifice. In the first, the divine love shines in delight with Jesus, a representation of how divine love delights in being manifested through divine truth.  In the second, divine love is revealed in sacrifice, reaching in and through suffering and death in order to transform them, a picture of how divine love works for our salvation. The disciples were having a lot of trouble understanding this.  And Jesus is fierce about correcting them.  He calls Peter Satan!  He tells them: You have no idea how God works.

Jesus understands that he must be killed and then be raised to life, must be brought down and then lifted up, must suffer and then be exalted, because this is, incredibly, the actual good news: that a dying can lead to a living. This is the principle that makes the universe just, makes the universe loving. This is a big deal because if we can’t countenance the death, we can’t get to the resurrection. If we can’t countenance dying to our own selfish desires, we can’t experience life in the kingdom.  “For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life to me will find it.”  Peter, in his objections, is voicing all of our common, understandable survival instincts.  There is nothing in the culture of the world, on the face of things, that tells us when we lose our life we will find it. What we see, is that when we lose our life we lose it.  What we feel, when we are asked to lose some very integral parts of our self-identification, is that we will die without these things.  How many of our cherished habits and ways of thinking feel impossible to sacrifice?  Who here like me, might cling tightly to control in their life, for example?  Who else might feel like they always have to be completely on top of things?  What about the temptation to control other people, boy, what a relief it is, how gratifying when other people do things as we wish. And then, how does it feel when we are forced to let go of control in these situations?  To me, not good, like things might completely collapse, that my conception of myself might actually fall apart.  Who am I, I might wonder, if I am not able to control my world, see my will come to pass? But is that really living into the kingdom?  Might these parts of us, and many other parts of us, actually have to die, so that the rest of ourselves, our souls, can live?

Today, Transfiguration Sunday, is the last Sunday before Lent begins.  On one side of Lent, Jesus is up on a mountaintop, transfigured in glory, and on the other side of Lent we find him on another high place, crucified (1). The whole point though, is that God is found in both, and in between.

For, Lent is not a time of the absence of God.  Lent is not a time in which we get it all together so that we can approach the Lord at the resurrection.  Jesus prevented the disciples to speak of the transfiguration because we can’t understand God’s love fully without also understanding God’s sacrifice.  He prevented them from characterizing the story as “this is where God really is,” and not allowing God to enter into the rest of it.  So, even as the placement of transfiguration takes us out of the narrative, its placement is also very intentional.  A bestowal of love and an exhortation to listen are exactly the tools we need as we enter into Lent.  Because this means that God is going with us, to whisper love and encouragement along the way.  In the transfiguration, God shares with us the possibility of delight blooming in us, in God’s beloved children, the possibility that love will shine brightly through truth, and though insight.  And that insight may cause suffering for a time, we may learn about how we have persecuted Divine Love, or perverted Divine truth.  We may learn about parts of us that need to die.  But we also know that Jesus is walking this path with us. So we’ll be brave, and just maybe, a little hopeful too.
Amen.

(1) https://www.workingpreacher.org/podcasts/sb585-transfiguration-sunday


Readings:

2 Kings 2:1, 6-12

1 Now when the Lord was about to take Elijah up to heaven by a whirlwind, Elijah and Elisha were on their way from Gilgal. 

6 Then Elijah said to him, "Stay here; for the Lord has sent me to the Jordan." But he said, "As the Lord lives, and as you yourself live, I will not leave you." So the two of them went on. 7 Fifty men of the company of prophets also went, and stood at some distance from them, as they both were standing by the Jordan. 8 Then Elijah took his mantle and rolled it up, and struck the water; the water was parted to the one side and to the other, until the two of them crossed on dry ground. 9 When they had crossed, Elijah said to Elisha, "Tell me what I may do for you, before I am taken from you." Elisha said, "Please let me inherit a double share of your spirit." 10 He responded, "You have asked a hard thing; yet, if you see me as I am being taken from you, it will be granted you; if not, it will not." 11 As they continued walking and talking, a chariot of fire and horses of fire separated the two of them, and Elijah ascended in a whirlwind into heaven. 12 Elisha kept watching and crying out, "Father, father! The chariots of Israel and its horsemen!" But when he could no longer see him, he grasped his own clothes and tore them in two pieces.

Mark 9:2-9

2 Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, 3 and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. 4 And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus. 5 Then Peter said to Jesus, "Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah." 6 He did not know what to say, for they were terrified. 7 Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, "This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!" 8 Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus. 9 As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.

True Christianity 222

When the Lord was transfigured, he represented the Word in its glory. Of the Lord's transfiguration before Peter, James, and John…I have been taught that in this instance the Lord represented the Word. His face shining like the sun represented the divine goodness of his divine love. The clothes that became like the light represented the divine truth of his divine wisdom… The shining cloud that covered the disciples represented the Word in its literal meaning. That is why a voice was heard coming from the cloud saying, "This is my beloved Son. Hear him. " 

All communications and answers from heaven come solely through outermost things like those in the Word's literal meaning. The Lord communicates in a complete way.

Readings: Isaiah 40:28-31, Mark 1:29-39, True Christianity 438 (see below)See also on Youtube
Photo by Flo Maderebner



As we continue in the first chapter of Mark, we hear about Jesus’ first healing.  After preaching in the synagogue, Jesus goes to Simon’s home to find his mother-in-law sick with a fever. Post-pandemic, we can appreciate even more now, how in a world without antibiotics, a fever could be very serious. We are treated to a short but tender scene; Jesus goes to her, and takes her hand. Immediately the fever leaves her, and she resumes her duties. 

This healing episode follows the typical features of a biblical healing story: there is a description of the malady or challenge, a request for healing, the act of healing, and then the evidence that the healing has taken place. Most healing stories follow this intuitive formula. But of course, in doing this, the gospel is not only giving us a version of what happened and what Jesus’ did. It is also providing us with a picture of how God is with us now, how God heals us and regenerates us, and how God challenges us to respond.

In the Swedenborgian worldview, sicknesses in scripture represent spiritual challenges. (1)  Just as sicknesses can harm our earthly bodies, in a parallel way there are selfish feelings, desires, and perspectives that can harm our spirit. In recognizing that resonance, we can see that the outline for a typical healing story in scripture, might also be able to guide our own spiritual progression. 

First, the challenge must be identified. We can’t work on a problem that we don’t recognize that we have. This fundamental recognition is the starting point of all spiritual progress.

The second part is the request to be healed. The implication in the story is that Simon’s mother-in-law was not getting better on her own. We heard in our Swedenborg reading that we cannot navigate our spiritual challenges all on our own.
The third step is the act of healing itself, and of this we can do nothing but stand in awe and gratitude for the way God works within us for change. Swedenborg writes elsewhere that God fights for us and works for our salvation constantly (2). Isaiah reveals to us a beautiful promise: those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength.

The fourth part is the evidence of the healing, our response. Our conscious participation is crucial throughout the entire process, but how we respond to the miracle of transformation is the part that draws us into true partnership with God, that grounds any transformation within our character and within our spirit.

Simon’s mother-in-law immediately responded with service. Now, I’ll concede on the face of it, this is a tricky anecdote. Her response is clearly gendered, clearly according to the expectations of the time. There are no similar episodes of a man being healed and beginning to serve others in the specific way that she does.  In our day and time, when the cultural expectations of women’s work and men’s work are being rightfully deconstructed, it can be unclear how to interpret this story. There are all kinds of interpretations that try to explain away the gendered and historical nature of her response. But still, one can reasonably ask, wouldn’t true healing have freed her from cultural expectations as well? Her son in law dropped his net and abandoned his life of fishing in response to his experience of Jesus. Could not she do the same? 

And so we find that this is a story with an inseparable historical context. Perhaps in the end, it does not matter so much whether or not we now can impose some resolution upon it for the sake of our own peace of mind, but rather whether we pay attention to the question that it prompts us to ask. Which is:

What is our response to the movement of God in our lives? In the gospels, there are various responses to healings: we see people spreading the news, walking around if they could not before, showing public gratitude, following Jesus and joining his movement.  And we see here that one of the options is also service.  We can’t know how Simon’s mother-in-law experienced her return to her duties. The problem is, we are not even told her name, much less her details of her inner experience. Did she serve with honor, with relief, with reluctance, with gratitude? Inside her own context, could she even have thought to ask for anything more or different?  What we do know is that the kingdom of God would never ultimately call anyone into servitude, a structure that inherently places one person in power over another.  The whole kingdom mindset is the reversal of earthly power structures…the last will the first.  But just because servitude is rejected, doesn’t mean that the idea of service, serving one another, is likewise jettisoned.  Servanthood, freely chosen, is exactly what Jesus exemplified; mutual love a hallmark of God’s heavenly realm.

And so, even within the ancient context, we receive clues to this reality.  The verb used to indicate Simon’s mother-in-law waiting upon Jesus and the disciples, diakoneo, is used earlier in the same chapter, when Jesus was tested in the wilderness and we are told that the angels attended to him. Later it is used by Jesus himself, when he is characterizing his entire mission: “I come not to be served but to serve.”  And finally, it is echoed in Mark 15:41, at the crucifixion.  After all the disciples have deserted Jesus, we are told some women remained.  

“Some women were watching from a distance.  Among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joseph, and Salome.  In Galilee, these women had followed him and cared for his needs.  Many other women who had come up with him to Jerusalem were also there.”
What is translated as “cared for his needs” is the same verb, diakoneo, and it is not hard to imagine that Simon’s mother-in-law might have been among these “many” women as well, just as was the mother of James, another disciple. This small moment in scripture lifts up another story not told.  A story about women who followed Jesus and cared for him.  Who followed him and served him, not out of expectation but out of love. Women whose story gets so little play because of the cultural repressions of the era, women who were never designated disciples but who dared to be present at the cross, who did not flinch or turn away.  When we remember that Simon’s mother-in-law served, we can also remember that she and others persisted in presence when others ran away. But still, the tension remains. Our culture has certainly been tempted to take such stories and make them prescriptive, to make them about how women ARE, what they do BEST, and therefore what they *should* do.

To resist this impulse against prescription, we remember that the framework for healing is the same for all us. We are all called to reflect, to compassionately but courageously convict ourselves, to ask for healing. And we are all called to respond as our heart calls us to respond, in some form of sacrificial servanthood in the mould of Jesus himself, the beating heart of the kingdom of God. This kingdom mindset that we are all called to is one of the reasons that Jesus would not let the demons he was exorcising speak. They knew who he was, but they did not have faith in him, or the kingdom of God. They might speak, but they would never act for the kingdom. In the broad scheme, to Jesus, the miracle was never the thing, the response was always the thing. To Jesus, his fame was nothing. Rather, Jesus knew that the most important part was still to come. He knew we might mistake the whole point if we did not wait until everything was played out. 

But we will be in Easter soon enough. Let us today honor the miracle of the way God always moves us toward healing, and that this healing can transform us.

Amen.

(1) Secrets of Heaven 5711
(2) Secrets of Heaven 1642, True Christianity 142

Readings:

Isaiah 40:28-31

28 Do you not know? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom. 29 He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. 30 Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; 31 but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.

Mark 1:29-39

29 As soon as they left the synagogue, they went with James and John to the home of Simon and Andrew. 30 Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they immediately told Jesus about her. 31 So he went to her, took her hand and helped her up. The fever left her and she began to wait on them. 32 That evening after sunset the people brought to Jesus all the sick and demon-possessed. 33 The whole town gathered at the door, 34 and Jesus healed many who had various diseases. He also drove out many demons, but he would not let the demons speak because they knew who he was.

35 Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed. 36 Simon and his companions went to look for him, 37 and when they found him, they exclaimed: “Everyone is looking for you!” 38 Jesus replied, “Let us go somewhere else—to the nearby villages—so I can preach there also. That is why I have come.” 39 So he traveled throughout Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and driving out demons.

True Christianity 438

Still, none of us can purify ourselves from evils by our own power and our own force. On the other hand, neither can we purify ourselves without having power and force as if they were our own. If we did not have apparent power, none of us could fight against the flesh and its cravings, although we have all been ordered to do so. In fact, we could not even think about battling them….

Clearly then, because we are rational in a way that animals are not, we have to resist evils using the powers and abilities the Lord gives us, although as far as we can tell, those powers and abilities appear to be our own. The Lord gives us all this illusion in order to regenerate us, attribute goodness to us, forge a partnership with us, and save us.