 Readings: Isaiah 43:1-7, Luke 3:15-17, 21-22, True Christianity 684 (see below)
See also on Youtube Photo by Max van den Oetelaar on Unsplash Let’s talk about baptism. How many of us remember our baptisms? Any of us baptized as babies very likely do not. Any of us baptized as adults probably do. Perhaps some of us participated in rituals that “confirmed” our infant baptisms. For those have not been baptized at all, from a Swedenborgian point of view there is no need to panic! Baptism is simply a sign, a representation, that the ongoing work of regeneration is being attempted in partnership with the Lord. Such spiritual work absolutely can and does occur without baptism happening. However, for many people, there is a lot of power in the experience of baptism, and in any spiritual experience that demarcates a new space in time, a new day, a new way of thinking or living. We ourselves right now, by simply by living in January, are baptizing for ourselves a new year. Our calendar is somewhat arbitrary, after all. Time flows pretty uniformly, at least at the Newtonian level at which we exist in our day to day. But on January 1st, we declare the year is new. We declare that the previous year is over. We draw a line in the sand and step out into possibility. We may have many feelings about such threshold times. We might be glad to let go of a difficult year. We might be sad to leave a year that once held something or someone we have lost. We might be excited and curious to see what a new year holds for us. Or we might feel overwhelmed at all the open space and uncertainty ahead. To me, that jumble of feelings is captured in part by this poem by Rabindranath Tagore, a Bengali poet and philosopher. He wrote: Faith is the bird that feels the light And sings when the dawn is still dark. All of our futures are uncertain, we are all in the dark on that point. Yet, faith, that beautiful bird, “feels” the light, anticipates that the light is coming, and sings anyway. Our text today pictures Jesus in one of those threshold moments. The people, responding to John the Baptist’s preaching, were filled with that bird-faith singing, filled with expectation for a bright and liberated future. And they wondered what that future looked like? Did it have within it a Messiah? Was John that Messiah? No, I’m not, says John, as he points them even further forward towards Jesus. John’s particular gift was shaking people awake, revealing the truth to them, opening them up. This is represented by his baptism of water, the water providing a metphor for the process of spiritual washing, of purifying ourselves from evil and falsity. While the language of religious purification, and words like “evil” and “falsity” can sound kind of austere or fantastical, all that really means is identifying and removing self-serving desires and ways of thinking that prevent us from loving others. Hence John’s baptism is also called the baptism of repentance. Repentance as a process involves a revealing of truth which causes us to change our minds, to turn around in our perspective. And this ability, this willingness to really entertain personal accountability, is a cornerstone of our spiritual growth. But even so, there is one step more. There was one coming, said John, who would give them baptism of the Holy Spirit and fire. After the turning around, we actually need to embark on a new way of living. As we heard in our reading, Swedenborg writes of this baptism of holy spirit and fire: The Holy Spirit here means divine truth that is related to faith; the fire means divine goodness that is related to love and goodwill. Both emanate from the Lord. It is through these two things that the Lord carries out the entire process of regeneration. The Holy Spirit unfolds its wings of truth within our minds, and the divine fire of love burns within our hearts, and these two things *together* propel us forward again and again into our new life, singing for the dawn even when it is dark. And this baptism of spirit and fire requires engagement, it requires work, and thus is pictured by the winnowing fork. Our old ideas, our old identities and habits of being are winnowed; the lies and the half-truths and the justifications fall away down to the threshing floor, and hopefullly only that which is nourishing to our spiritual lives remains. Thus, through the work of the winnowing fork, we are left with the grain, ready to grow a new plant, or ready to be transformed into bread that will nourish our body, and our souls. So in church, at whatever time of life it comes to us, we might share a baptism of water with our family and friends, and they witness the newness and the holy possibility. It is a ritual that signifies the beginning of a process. The baptism of the Holy Spirit and fire that is still to come is the rest of our life. Our baptism of water is like a spiritual January 1st, full of bright opportunity and invention. The baptism of the Holy Spirit and fire is like the rest of the year, full of ups and downs and winnowing and learning and working. Jesus also receives a baptism. We heard from our reading: The Lord himself was baptized by John, not only so as to institute baptism for the future and set the example, but also because he glorified his human nature and made it divine in the same way that he regenerates us and makes us spiritual. Jesus’ experience was to be analogous to ours; a partnership with God, which in his case was a partnership with his own divine soul. This partnership initiated a spiritual blossoming and necessitated spiritual trial, but also culminated in a union of humanity and the divine. At Christmastime, we just celebrated the fact of God being born into the world. What is just as miraculous is that throughout his life, Jesus was reborn again and again into truth and love, just as we are. Thus, we read in Swedenborg’s Secrets of Heaven(2) that a “dove” represents the truth and goodness of faith in one who is being reborn. Jesus didn’t know exactly what his future would be but that dove was a representation of feeling that faith-light and singing in the dark before the dawn, a representation of the divinely ordained work to come. There was much that was dark in Jesus’ time, as in ours. But he believed in the dawn that was coming because he knew who God was, and what God was doing. So here we are in the bright open space of the beginning of the year. We don’t know what will happen with this year. It certainly doesn’t feel like it is starting off well, and I know I am holding, as you may be, a foreboding sense that things might get worse, in our country and in our world. But to enter into uncertainty is also to enter into possibility, and to enter into new possiblity with faith is one of the holiest acts of worship. For me, I can only conjure up that faith because of how God speaks to Jesus in that baptism moment: This is my beloved child, in whom I am well pleased. When uncertainty and overwhelm and fear makes us feel small and powerless, we can remember that God’s possibility for us is held within an unceasing love. From Isaiah we read: …you are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you, says the Lord. The future might be uncertain, but we are always enfolded and cherished within God’s arms. All our all striving and trying will always be held within the context of God’s love, purposes, and promises. The baptism of the Holy Spirit and fire asks much of us, it asks that we give up our precious ego and our precious pride, it asks us to transform ourselves, and to have faith in newness and love when it is so much easier to have faith in self-regard, material things, and being right. We might be afraid to step out into what God calls us toward, but we can try and fail and begin again, we can stretch and reach and leap, because we *always* have those divine arms to come back to. So today, I have filled the baptismal font with water. If you like, during the reflection time, or after the service during the postlude, you are welcome to come forward to anoint yourself with the water in remembrance of all the moments we are called to newness, in remembrance of your baptism or some other occasion. We feel the water and we remember; we remember our Lord, praying under the wings of the Holy Spirit, we remember the faith-bird that sings, sings when the dawn is still dark. Amen.
Readings: Isaiah 43:1-7 1 But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. 2 When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. 3 For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior. I give Egypt as your ransom, Ethiopia and Seba in exchange for you. 4 Because you are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you, I give people in return for you, nations in exchange for your life. 5 Do not fear, for I am with you; I will bring your offspring from the east, and from the west I will gather you; 6 I will say to the north, "Give them up," and to the south, "Do not withhold; bring my sons from far away and my daughters from the end of the earth— 7 everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.” Luke 3:15-17, 21-22 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.” 21 When all the people were being baptized, Jesus was baptized too. And as he was praying, heaven was opened 22 and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.” True Christianity 684 The Third Function of Baptism, and Its Ultimate Purpose, Is to Lead Us to Be Regenerated… This is the same as the point made about the Lord that "He baptizes with the Holy Spirit and with fire.” The Holy Spirit here means divine truth that is related to faith; the fire means divine goodness that is related to love and goodwill. Both emanate from the Lord. It is through these two things that the Lord carries out the entire process of regenerating us. The Lord himself was baptized by John, not only so as to institute baptism for the future and set the example, but also because he glorified his human nature and made it divine in the same way that he regenerates us and makes us spiritual.
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 Readings: Luke 2:41-52, True Christianity 89 (see below)
See also on Youtube Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash As a mother, I have to tell you, this text is really hard to read! First, there is the anxiety of losing your child. All parents, or anyone looking after a young child, have experienced their hearts in their throat at some point, when they realize that the child is not where they expected them to be. Then, can you imagine having to search for three days! I’d be an utter wreck. And then, additionally, there is the sass that Jesus delivers when he is found! The kind of sass only a pre-teen can accomplish. “Why were you searching for me?” WHY? YOU KNOW WHY? IT’S BEEN THREE DAYS! Breathe, just breathe, Mother Mary. As much as I would rather not explore it though, this text is an extremely rich one. It is the only account in the gospels of an event in between the infancy and the adult ministry of Jesus. In biographies of famous figures of that day, stories of a precocious childhood were common. In particular, the Emperor Augustus was known to have eulogized his grandmother to great effect at the age of twelve (1). So already, the gospel writer is telegraphing Jesus’ superiority to the emperor. We also begin the story with Jesus’ whole family going to Jerusalem for Passover. All male Israelites were required to make the pilgrimage to Jerusalem for Passover, and some other religious festivals, once a year. The journey from Nazareth to Jerusalem would probably have taken four or five days by foot. Clearly, Mary and Joseph are observant and diligent Jews, and Jesus’ facility with the Torah in the temple anchors him firmly in the Jewish tradition. Such pilgrimages from country to city would have taken place in groups for the sake of safety, and we can probably surmise, in the form of extended families. We also might surmise a more communal parenting style than we are familiar with today, arising from a pastoral village setting, so it is not entirely unbelievable that Mary and Joseph might have thought Jesus was just hanging out with his cousins. Children can be extremely reluctant to come home when they are having a good time with their friends! But we can also imagine the panic felt by Mary and Joseph when they realized Jesus was missing, how quickly they must have tried to travel back, how confused and frantic they must have felt while retracing their steps. We don’t know if they spent three whole days searching in Jerusalem, or if the three days included the travel back to the city, but clearly they didn’t go straight to the temple. The text tells us they were astonished to find Jesus there. Probably they went first to the family they had been staying with, then perhaps to friends, then probably the marketplace, or some other place where children might hang out. So let me ask: Why did they not think to check the temple sooner? To Jesus, it seemed obvious that they were searching the wrong places for him. But it wasn’t obvious to Mary and Joseph. Why not? Even with all they had seen and heard, even as they knew their son was special, they didn’t assume that he would be in God’s house, attentive to God’s business. In similar ways, we too might look for fulfillment, and meaning in places that do not necessarily serve us. What are the lyrics to that famous song? “Looking for love in all the wrong places”? In our day to day lives, we are driven by the human desire to feel safe, content, fulfilled, and engaged. We look toward many different things to satiate those desires. We look to various kinds of entertainment to engage our minds, sports teams or politics to satisfy our tribal instincts, social media to feed our desire for connection, food to satisfy our desire for safety and sufficiency. We look to money for material comfort and upward mobility, to power for worthiness, to-do lists and technology for control, and many many other individual variations of these things. These are just some examples of ways that we try to inject meaning into our lives, ways to make us feel okay, ways to make us feel settled, safe, included and worthy. And what do these efforts lead to? *Do* they lead us to feel we have meaningful lives? *Do* we feel safe, settled, included and worthy on their account? Sometimes we do, in the short term. But just as often we feel restless, empty, stressed, like something is still missing. Studies have shown that human beings are not actually very good at predicting what will make us happy and fulfilled over time(2). Martin Luther King Jr, in a speech during the Montgomery bus boycott entitled, “The Birth of a New Age(3)” spoke of the kind of leaders we need to propel our society forward, to midwife our society into a form that he called “the beloved community.” He said: “We need leaders not in love with money but in love with justice. Not in love with publicity but in love with humanity.” One thing I find interesting in this quote is that it implies a recognition that human beings must love something, must find meaning somewhere. So, the question becomes *what* are we in love with? What is driving us? What is the soul of our work? Where are we finding meaning? In money or justice? In publicity or the common good? Because, the problem is not so much looking in the wrong places, as if God can be found only in one place, in the temple or in church, as if some parts of this world are inherently good and others are not. The problem is loving our various distractions and delusions for themselves instead of how they can be infilled with God. Things like money and publicity are in actuality neutral in and of themselves; how we use them and why determines how present God will be in them. For example: I recently gave money to a GoFundMe campaign for a friend of a friend who was experiencing some challenges (I’m sure many of you have done similarly for other causes). This involved both money and publicity as referenced in the King quote. However, money that contributes to the the well-being of others when they need it the most is, of course, filled with God’s love and usefulness. Likewise the publicity, the social media platform that allowed me to know about this person at all. For all of the flaws inherent in social media, (and there are many!) in that moment and for that purpose, it was Godly and heavenly. What an honor, a miracle really, to be able to help someone I don’t even know so materially and easily, with just a keystroke. There are many other examples: we know that various entertainments can have a usefulness that is as simple as rest, rejuvenation or community, and as complex as introducing us to new perspectives and ideas we can reflect upon. Even power, something that the gospel teaches us to be incredibly suspicious of, when used to help others can be a good thing, when used properly it can birth us all into a better world. We know from the Christmas story that God can and does enter into this world in ways that we might not expect. That God can and does enter into this world through forms that we might dismiss or disparage. We recall from our Swedenborg reading, that this is in fact, part of the divine design. All in the universe, including us, have been created so that they can welcome the divine, can be prepared to be infilled with the Lord. When space is made, when all that is self-serving is cleared out, then God enters as if coming in to God’s own dwelling. This is what we prayed for in our Christmas Eve prayer from Sister Joyce Rupp, that *we* might all be God’s Bethlehem in the here and now. And this is our choice: We can love all those things that distract us from God as things in and of themselves, and they *will* fulfill their purpose, they *will* distract us. But when we see that God has created all things to be a vessel for partnership, then these things can be transformed. It is not about looking in the wrong places per se, because God can be, and is, in all those places that Mary and Joseph looked in first. God is in the marketplace, the playground, the library, the shopping mall, the office. Instead, it is about recognizing divine interconnectedness as the blueprint of the world. Jesus was in the temple bringing our attention to this divine interconnectedness. “Didn’t you know that I had to be in *my Father’s* house?” he said. In the Greek, there isn’t actually a noun at the end of this sentence, and translators will fill in the gaps with “my Father’s house”, or “about my Father’s business.” But really, the most literal translation is “didn’t you know I had to be in that which is my Father’s?” It is more that Jesus was saying: Didn’t you know that I had to inhabit my divine inheritance? Didn’t you know that I had to be present to my relationship to Spirit? Didn’t you know that I had to be present to the divine order that calls us to partnership, that calls us to depth and connection? Jesus is calling us to see that loving God first, and loving the things God loves, infills and enlivens everything else, due to God’s living relationship with us and the world. It is when our allegiance is given *to* whatever distracting thing, then we will be lost and continually searching. When, for example, we love money for sake of having more and not for the good it can do, or when we love power and publicity for the sake of self-gratification and not for purpose of connection and enlightenment, that is when we will have trouble finding God, because we have closed down our capacity for partnership with the Divine. I know we feel this in our bones these days, as we see the current administration make a pretense of serving God, while clearly only serving themselves. So, we return to the question: What are we in love with? For what we *love* will affect what we are able to discover, what is able to unfold within us. Mary and Joseph were clearly loving Jesus as their son, their boy, and so they looked for him in places where a twelve-year-old boy might be. Could we not imagine that Mary and Joseph hurried past the temple without looking inside, in a rush to retrace their steps. Jesus, however, with a burgeoning knowledge of his connection to the divine, was growing beyond their expectation, just as our Lord calls us to grow beyond our own expectation of where God should be, to see opportunities for partnership, for God’s indwelling, everywhere. Amen.
Readings: Luke 2:41-52 41 Every year Jesus’ parents went to Jerusalem for the Festival of the Passover. 42 When he was twelve years old, they went up to the festival, according to the custom. 43 After the festival was over, while his parents were returning home, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but they were unaware of it. 44 Thinking he was in their company, they traveled on for a day. Then they began looking for him among their relatives and friends. 45 When they did not find him, they went back to Jerusalem to look for him. 46 After three days they found him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. 47 Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers. 48 When his parents saw him, they were astonished. His mother said to him, “Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you.” 49 “Why were you searching for me?” he asked. “Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?” 50 But they did not understand what he was saying to them. 51 Then he went down to Nazareth with them and was obedient to them. But his mother treasured all these things in her heart. 52 And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man. True Christianity 89 In the process of taking on a human manifestation, God followed his own divine design. …in the act of creating, God introduced his design into the universe as a whole and into each and every thing in it. Therefore in the universe and in all its parts God's omnipotence follows and works according to the laws of his own design…. Now, because God came down, and because he is the design, there was no other way for him to become an actual human being than to be conceived, to be carried in the womb, to be born, to be brought up, and to acquire more and more knowledge so as to become intelligent and wise. Therefore in his human manifestation he was an infant like any infant, a child like any child, and so on with just one difference: he completed the process more quickly, more fully, and more perfectly than the rest of us do. …The Lord's life followed this path because the divine design is for people to prepare themselves to accept God; and as they prepare themselves, God enters them as if he were coming into his own dwelling and his own home… It is a law of the divine design that the closer and closer we come to God, which is something we have to do as if we were completely on our own, the closer and closer God comes to us. When we meet, God forms a partnership with us.  As I considered what to talk about today, my mind kept returning to the notion of resilience, which as I understand it, is the ability to encounter adversity while responding in a way that encourages recovery and repair. While this may resonate particularly in these days, when the news is filled with chaos, loss, incompetence and cruelty, we recognize, of course, that adversity is not a modern occurance. It is part of the human condition. We encounter it in personal terms, we encounter it in social and political terms, we encounter it in spiritual terms, and we always have.
This was as true in Jesus’ day as it is in ours. And what we celebrate here today is a God named Immanuel - meaning God with us. Into an experience of adversity long ago - a personal yet universal experience - God decided to be with us. And of course, we can argue that God has always been with us, and that is certainly true. What brings us to celebrate today though, the thing that is so remarkable and poignant about the Christmas story, is that God decided to be human with us in our adversity. Human spiritual story-telling is filled with wonderful visions of the Divine being with us in lots of different ways. But, the Christmas story tells us of a God becoming vulnerable, a God growing cell by cell in the womb of a marginalized young woman, a God who grew up in the context of a brutal empire, a God who learned and changed and loved and sacrificed. The point of the incarnation of God as Jesus was to be in our experience with us, not to erase it, and not to overcome it from the outside looking in. The point was to experience the adversity of the human condition and help us understand that—even so—God is always leading us towards life and resurrection. The point was to help teach us about resilience, the essential truth that adversity does to get to have the last word, God does, and if we believe that, then the work of resilience, restoration and repair, can continue to have meaning, and can continue to give us hope. God did this for us by walking through our experience, every bit of it, honoring the specificity of it, the surprise of it, the exhaustion of it, the ache of it, the beauty of it. This is the gift of Christmas. In the words of author Stephanie Duncan Smith: The incarnation always brings good news, but it never minimizes the realness of our pain. Advent declares the hope that a light is coming, but it first declares the truth that the world right now is so very dark.(1) Resilience isn’t actually found in pretending that adversity doesn’t exist. That’s just denial, that’s toxic boot-strapping, and that keeps us stuck, exhausted, and alone. The key to the incarnation is that it fully declares the truth of the darkness, the brokenness, the disconnection, the disappointment but then goes on to also declare the coming of the light. This is the true boldness of faith. Not assent to various religious formations but bone-deep understanding and trust that God made a universe that will consistently unfold and bring forth light, love, growth, compassion, connection and thriving for all God’s creatures. God entered into the experience of human life to show us this. And so resilience is a practice that rests on the belief that we are not alone in adversity and that our efforts toward restoration and repair really mean something, that they join together with God’s purposes to create an increasingly beautiful and compassionate world. It is a practice that involves saying yes, as Mary did, to a greater purpose, yes to bringing light into the world. If we are to be inspired by the Christmas story, let it be that in our experience of darkness, of hurt, of fear, we choose to respond with grace, recover in compassion, restore with hope, and repair with intention. Jesus is the light of the world, and this light came to us through birth, and a human life. God with us, all the way through. Amen. (1) Stephanie Duncan Smith, Even After Everything: The Spiritual Practice of Knowing the Risks and Loving Anyway (Convergent Books, 2024), 50-51.  Readings: Luke 1:39-56, True Christianity 394, 395, 403 (see below)
See also on Youtube Photo credit: Felix Mittermeier on Pexels We began Advent with the story of Zechariah and Elizabeth. Today we fast forward a little in the gospel of Luke, past the angel Gabriel visiting with Mary and offering her the invitation to be the mother of our Lord. We will hear this text in our Christmas Eve service, but for today, we recognize that it ends with Mary saying “I am the Lord’s servant, May your word to me be fulfilled.” And here is the where the two narratives in the first chapter of Luke converge. We heard three weeks ago about, how after many years of waiting, Elizabeth found herself pregnant with a child who would go on to be John the Baptist, an important prophetic precusor to Jesus himself. Elizabeth and Mary are related, and Mary rushes to Elizabeth to tell her her own good news. Their bond is so touching, underscored by the joyful leaping of Elizabeth’s baby in her womb upon seeing Mary, itself the first fulfillment of what the angel told Zechariah, that his child will be filled with the Holy Spirit. Elizabeth proclaims that Mary is blessed, and then Mary herself speaks, giving us a window into how she understood what was happening to her, what she would be giving birth to. This section of prophetic text is referred to as The Magnificat, from the first line where Mary says my soul glorifies, or magnifies, the Lord. Within this beautiful hymn, we hear about the effects of God’s coming. What is it that happens when God comes to us, then and now, in body or in spirit? The answer is three-fold. When God comes to us we experience blessing, reversal, and the fulfilment of promises. First, a state of blessing. God will only ever regard us with love and care. Indeed, God is not capable of anything else, it would be against the nature of Divine Love. So, the first thing that comes into being when God comes to us is a blessing: worthiness, dignity, hope. We might think of Psalm 139 - we are fearfully and wonderfully made. God sees us: sees all our sacred potential, sees all our flaws, sees all our longings, sees all our striving and our mistakes and our misunderstandings, our apologies, our hard work. God sees it all, and values us. God in particular saw Mary’s humility, her grit, her determination, her loyalty, and in that moment of being seen and of being treasured, Mary’s soul rejoiced in her God. Now, we might not always be capable of seeing this state of blessing and love for ourselves. There are many things that might get in the way, psychological things like our perspectives, learnings, trauma, self-esteem, or earthly things like our busy-ness or distractedness. But the reality is that God always comes first with blessing because God’s basic stance is always our worthiness. Perhaps we don’t always live into that. But God doesn’t waver on it. The second effect of God’s coming is reversal. It’s a good thing we started with blessing because now things get gnarly. Mary casts a vision of God’s power to change things. She spoke of those who are proud and superior being dispersed, scattered. Those who seek to rule over others are thwarted. Those who have accumulated riches at the expense of others ultimately experience emptiness. This is an earthly vision, yes, but we can easily see the personal spiritual levels upon which any earthly embodiment of this vision depends. For those who are proud in their inmost thoughts, as Mary says, proud or superior in the way the understand themselves, they will often act in ways that harm or disregard others. Those who rule because of the seductive personal power of the throne itself, as we see clearly in these days, rule capricously and cruelly. Those who are devoted to the never-ending accumulation of wealth for whatever personal reason often create the conditions of want in many many others. We human beings get things mixed up, its just what we do. So God has to help us get things the right way around. Where we are proud and superior and avaricious and selfish God will help us cast that down and out and away. God will do this for every person who wants it, and the more people who want it, the greater chance the shape of our world will reflect it. Swedenborg puts this in terms of the four kinds of love that shape our lives: love of God, love of others, love of the world and love of self. When we have these loves in the right order within ourselves, then God can truly flow through us without impediment. Love of God doesn’t have to mean how much we go to church, but rather, how much we look to a higher power of love and wisdom to guide us, in whatever tradition, leading us towards growth, meaning, and purpose. Loving others is a natural extension of this, recognizing that divine love and wisdom confers worthiness, dignity, and connection upon us all. Love of the world is not so much affection for our earth, which is good thing, but rather a love of worldly things: wealth, prestige, reputation, power, and getting more of all. And the love of self is not a healthy sense of self worth, but rather the constant practice of putting our own needs and desires above everyone else, making ourselves the center of the universe where no one else matters. We can see that when this kind of love of self and love of the world are our highest ideals that it creates a world in which many will suffer. Mary could see this in her time, and we likewise see it in ours. So the purpose of God coming to us is disruption. Birthing something (or someone) new is an incredible disruption to our status quo, as any parent knows, as anyone who has worked to create something meaningful knows. We cannot create newness in the ways that we were. We cannot create newness when we are stuck in harmful and selfish patterns, or when our priorities are upside down. But when we understand what we truly owe to each other as human beings, as Jesus’ ministry during his life worked to show us, these spiritual reversals within us will ultimately lead to earthly reversals. And so the third effect of God coming to us is the fulfillment of God’s promises. For Mary, that took the form of thinking back to the promises that God made to her ancestors, in particular to Abraham, the father of her people. It prompts us to likewise think of the broader promises that God had made to us through that promise and many others. Such as the rainbow in the story of Noah, a promise that God will never harm us. Such as the invitation to journey to Abraham, a promise that God will help us grow. Such as the person of Jesus, promising that God is with us through everything we might encounter and that whatever feels like death and chaos can ultimately lead to resurrection. God promises us the peace of a heavenly life; we start with God’s essential blessing and we move through change and growth to get there. Which brings us to the question of timing. Now, you know I like a list, but unfortunately, these effects don’t happen like on a list. They don’t even happen just once so they can be ultimately finished. They happen again and again, they happen in small terms and in broader terms, because yes, God came to us in person all those years ago, but God also continues to come into our hearts and minds even now. So, it might be helpful to recall our sermon from Ben Gunter two weeks ago, that lifted up Mary’s partner in this story of God’s coming, Joseph. Joseph is not recorded as saying anything in the biblical narrative, and this may well be because his spiritual gift was patience and listening. Of course we might want to rush through to the end of this list of effects, to open the present before Christmas as Ben shared, to get to fulfilment because surely that must be the best part! But only God knows how much time we need to spend at each stage, or how many times we might need to circle back, and this is true for ourselves as much as it is true for our world. Which finally brings us back to Mary, and what she brought to the picture. There is a modern Christmas song called Mary Did You Know? which always causes me to bristle, because yes, Mary clearly knew what Jesus was working towards, her Magnificat demonstrates this without a doubt. Which makes the courage of her almighty yes that much more inspiring. She was on board with God’s purposes, and gave of her very body to bring those purposes to fruition. But what Mary herself highlights here as being key to her rejoicing is her humility, her openness, her readiness to serve. The humility of both Mary and Joseph made them the ideal people to shepherd God’s coming, to receive blessing without twisting it into self-aggrandizement, to face disruption and reversal without discouragement or mistrust, to encounter fulfilment without with joy, gratitude, curiosity and patience. In all things, may we do likewise. Amen. Readings: Luke 1:39-56 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!” 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.” 56 Mary stayed with Elizabeth for about three months and then returned home. True Christianity 394 There Are Three Universal Categories of Love: Love for Heaven; Love for the World; and Love for Ourselves. 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. True Christianity 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. True Christianity 403 When the Three Universal Categories of Love Are Prioritized in the Right Way They Improve Us; When They Are Not Prioritized in the Right Way They Damage Us and Turn Us Upside Down.  Readings: Luke 1:5-23, Divine Providence #316 (see below)
See also on Youtube Photo by Niloofar Kanani on Unsplash Today we visit with two figures early in the narrative of the gospel of Luke: Zechariah and Elizabeth. We are told they were righteous and blameless; good people doing their best to serve the Lord. They were both of the priestly line, diligently discharging their familial expectations, and all within the context of being an oppressed religious minority under Roman rule, and specifically under the empire’s proxy ruler, Herod, known for his scheming cruelty. One day, as Zechariah is performing his duties at the temple, he is visited by an angel who declares that his wife Elizabeth will find herself with child. Zechariah and Elizabeth were quite old by this time, and had long given up hope of having children, and in this they echo many stories from the Hebrew Scriptures: including Abraham and Sarah, the father and mother of the people of Israel, and Elkanah and Hannah, the parents of the great prophet Samuel. Gabriel the angel tells them that their son will be a prophet in the spirit of Elijah and will be filled with the Holy Spirit before he is even born. This son, who would eventually be known as John the Baptist, would famously preach in the days before Jesus began his own ministry these words: “Prepare a way for the Lord.” But it is interesting to note that, even after lifetime of service, Zechariah wasn’t prepared for the way that God was going to act into his life. In the Swedenborgian perspective, Zechariah represents the parts of us that are diligently trying to understand higher truths, trying to acknowledge that God is a power that is higher than the self. By contrast, Herod - the ruling power in Zechariah’s time - represents our lower nature, always working to make itself king. Herod would willingly destroy those around him in order to maintain power, just as our lower nature does not have time for anything that does not serve the self. In this context, and crucially in contrast to Herod, Zechariah *was* actively submitting to a higher power, actively showing up for a life oriented towards service and devotion. And yet, Zechariah still had doubts. They were completely reasonable ones, the very same ones that his ancestor Abraham had in similar circumstances. Yet even as he went about his work, even as a literal angel shows up, he was unprepared to accept the gift of life that God was trying to give. I can certainly resonate with that, and I wonder if you can too. A big part of my personality is trying to be prepared for things that might happen. I have lists upon lists. I game various scenarios out in my mind ahead of time. I try to have ready and available all the things that I think I might need for a task or project or trip, plus options for a Plan B if needed. And this can be a gift. It is a gift to my family when Thanksgiving, or a family vacation, or life in general goes off without a hitch and everyone can enjoy themselves. It is a gift to this church in the ways that it makes sure I have a sermon to preach each week, or in thinking through how we can accomplish our building restoration. So, on one level, it is a gift to others. But on another, I recognize that is a gift given to myself in response to my own fear. Fear of what? The fear of not knowing what might happen. The fear of having to rely on God. News alert! Your pastor struggles with trusting God. I believe in God, and I love God, but I struggle with trusting God, because it means letting go of control, and that is hard for me. I *know* that I can rely on my own power, because that is (mostly) within my own control. Part of me remains doubtful that trust in God will actually be as effective as my own efforts. My mind certainly believes that God should be my higher power, yet my also mind demands: “tell me exactly how that is going to work? In detail, please, and in advance.” Then, and only then, will I be capable of trust. And this rhymes thematically with the picture of Zechariah doubting what the angel Gabriel came to tell him. He needs assurance, wondering how he can be certain of what will come to pass. He protests that he and his wife are too old, signaling an inability to see new possibilities. And so, he becomes mute. He is unable give voice to the reality of God’s sovereignty, to the reality of what God is capable of, to the reality that trust is actually the *real* way of being prepared for anything that God is going to do. He cannot speak that reality, and so it is not able to be believed and lived. But there is a part of us that can accept it, and this is represented by Elizabeth. As our minds demand explanation and assurance, our hearts know the truth. The truth that there is joy in letting God surprise us, the truth that there is peace in trusting that there is more to God than what we imagine we can control. Elizabeth receives the prophecy and allows for new life to be created within her. As this new life grows, Elizabeth is able to teach Zechariah what trust looks like. And as we will hear about in the coming weeks, Elizabeth will be the one who will birth John, the one who will pave the way for Jesus, and all the ways that Jesus will embody God’s love for humanity, and for each of us personally. However, speaking of Zechariah and Elizabeth separately like this belies the fact that we are of course always both of them. We are not supposed to choose between them; they are married, they are partners, working side by side. Our understanding is *supposed* to try to figure things out, supposed to try to be effective and wise. We all are able to effect so much good when we do. The problem is simply when our understanding starts clinging to its own power. The problem is when it becomes mute on the topic of trust because it has become so focused on effectiveness. We balance this with our heart-centered efforts to remain open and curious about how God is also acting beside us, being ready and willing to bring forth the new life God has in store. In practice, a balance between our Zechariah and Elizabeth natures can often only come when Zechariah (our mind, our fears) stops speaking. When we can experience inner quiet. When the chatter of the outer world and all its expectation, all the ways that it is oriented towards Herod and his selfish ways, can cease for a moment. When Zechariah stopped speaking, that is when he found the clarity he needed. His muteness was not a punishment, it was an opportunity. It was a gift. Swedenborg uses a different image to demonstrate what it looks like to mistake our own prudence as coming from ourselves rather than God. He says that it is like living in someone else’s house, with someone else’s possessions, and convincing ourselves that they are our own. Or, he says that being devoted to our own prudence is like living in a basement and seeing nothing through our windows except what is underground, while those who attribute their own prudence to God are like “people who live in a house and see the sky through their windows.” (1) I love this image of seeing the sky through our windows. Of course we are supposed to inhabit the metaphorical houses of our lives, our vocations, our responsibilities, our relationships, our bodies, our minds. We are supposed to take care of them, show up for and to them, and use them to be effective and kind in the world to the best of our ability. We just shouldn’t mistake them for our own, and we shouldn’t go down to the basement and pretend that is the whole house. Yes, be in the house, but remember to look out the windows and see the vastness of God. Elizabeth had clearly been looking out through the windows the whole time, and was open to seeing what might arrive. Zechariah had wandered down to the basement for a moment and got a bit stuck there, forgetting that he believed in a God of the deep blue sky. But, as we will see in the coming weeks, he will find his way back to the window eventually. So this Advent, amidst the Christmas lists, the entertaining, the decorating, and even the celebrating, let us remember to sit by the window to see the sky. Let us remember that God is dedicated to showing up for us and that we are about to celebrate how God did that, once upon a time. And let us remember that even if the Christmas story was a long time ago, that it reveals to us God’s ongoing nature, one that went to great lengths to reach us and still does even now. Let us sit by the window this Advent and trust in God’s life-giving nature. Amen. (1) Emanuel Swedenborg, Divine Providence #309, #311 Readings: Luke 1:5-23 5 In the time of Herod king of Judea there was a priest named Zechariah, who belonged to the priestly division of Abijah; his wife Elizabeth was also a descendant of Aaron. 6 Both of them were righteous in the sight of God, observing all the Lord’s commands and decrees blamelessly. 7 But they were childless because Elizabeth was not able to conceive, and they were both very old. 8 Once when Zechariah’s division was on duty and he was serving as priest before God, 9 he was chosen by lot, according to the custom of the priesthood, to go into the temple of the Lord and burn incense. 10 And when the time for the burning of incense came, all the assembled worshipers were praying outside. 11 Then an angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing at the right side of the altar of incense. 12 When Zechariah saw him, he was startled and was gripped with fear. 13 But the angel said to him: “Do not be afraid, Zechariah; your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to call him John. 14 He will be a joy and delight to you, and many will rejoice because of his birth, 15 for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He is never to take wine or other fermented drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even before he is born. 16 He will bring back many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. 17 And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.” 18 Zechariah asked the angel, “How can I be sure of this? I am an old man and my wife is well along in years.” 19 The angel said to him, “I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to tell you this good news. 20 And now you will be silent and not able to speak until the day this happens, because you did not believe my words, which will come true at their appointed time.” 21 Meanwhile, the people were waiting for Zechariah and wondering why he stayed so long in the temple. 22 When he came out, he could not speak to them. They realized he had seen a vision in the temple, for he kept making signs to them but remained unable to speak. 23 When his time of service was completed, he returned home. Divine Providence #316 The reason our own prudence convinces and assures us that everything good and true comes from us and is within us is that our own prudence is simply our cognitive sense of identity, flowing from our self-love, which is our emotional sense of identity. Our sense of autonomy inevitably lays claim to everything. It cannot rise above this. Whenever we are being led by the Lord's divine providence, though, we are lifted out of our sense of autonomy and see that everything good and true comes from the Lord. We even see as well that whatever is in us from the Lord always belongs to the Lord and is never ours.  Readings: John 2:13-25, Secrets of Heaven #10143:3 (see below)
See also on Youtube Photo by Jitu Mondal on Pexels Today we advance one chapter beyond the prologue to the gospel of John chapter two. Jesus has just turned water into wine at a wedding in the town of Cana. Now he enters Jerusalem and visits the temple. He is moved to clear it out of the people selling animals and changing currency. Which understandably causes quite a stir. Jesus clearing the temple is a story that is in all four gospels, although the gospel of John places it much earlier in the narrative than the other three. Why were there sellers in the temple in the first place? Jewish temple practice at the time involved animal sacrifice. Observant Jews from all over the region would travel to the temple and would not be able to bring animals with them, so they could procure them from these sellers. Likewise, the temple tax could not be paid in Roman or Greek coins because of the human image of the emperor upon them, so foreign coins could also be exchanged at the temple. We must recognize that the presence alone of these sellers and exchangers was not the problem; they allowed regular people to participate in temple worship. Nor was Jesus’ issue with them a critique of Judaism itself; Jesus himself was an observant Jew and the gospels details many instances of him diligently following Jewish religious practice. What was the issue then? The Jesus of the gospels of Mark, Matthew and Luke explicitly calls these merchants “robbers,” the implication being that they were taking advantage of a religious imperative upon regular people for their own gain. This is a super important critique of all religious systems. When such systems make some observance, practice, or theology necessary to one’s salvation, this opens the door to exploitation of many kinds. And we’ve all seen enough price gouging in our day to know that human beings will try to take advantage of others whenever they can. But the Jesus in John’s gospel doesn’t call the sellers and exchangers robbers. He just says Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!” In the Greek there is a measure of wordplay around the word house: he is saying you are turning a house of worship into a house of trade. This is a larger and more systemic critique. Rather than focusing on isolated abuses, he is lifting up how religious systems can themselves become transactional. A modern example might be what is called the Prosperity Gospel. It is a predatory form of evangelical Christianity that convinces vulnerable people that giving money to the church will incentivize God to provide blessings. But we know that’s not how God works. Charitable giving can certainly help expand us in empathy for those around us, but it doesn’t buy God’s favor. So here, Jesus is making a social and religious critique of human systems, something he does a lot. We can also take it one step further in thinking about how it applies to our own spiriutal journey. In the Swedenborgian worldview, we understand the temple to represent our own mind. And it begs the question: in what ways do we allow our own mind to become a house of trade rather than a house of worship. What sellers and exchangers have taken up residence within our minds, our narratives, our perspectives that keep us focused worldly and transactional concerns rather than on a relationship with God, or on maintaining a safe status quo rather than the way God would have us evolve? Perhaps we have experienced abandonment in the past and now we have created a hard shell to feel safe. That feels like a reasonable exchange but does it allow for growth? Perhaps we have experienced rejection and now we reject others in anticipation to protect our heart. That feels like a reasonable exchange but does it allow for connection? Perhaps at some point we came to believe that our accomplishments will bring us worthiness, so we continue to try to *earn* love and respect from others. That feels like a reasonable exchange but does it allow for inevitable imperfection? Does it allow for peace? Does it allow for the grace of God’s love? Because God does not traffic with these sellers. God does not use them, God does not need them. So, God invites us to clear them out. This is not a judgment on them being there. We all have ways that we have learned to adapt to circumstances and to trauma, ways that we have learned to make our way through the world; all perfectly reasonable and understandable from a worldly point of view. But God’s relationship with us is not built on trade. God’s relationship with us is built on connection. And, as we learned last week, God’s purposes involve using God’s creative power to create newness within us and our world. For that to happen, for a path to be cleared for newness, sometimes these sellers of stories and these exchangers of worthiness need to be cleared out. But as represented in our text for today, clearing out these sellers and exchangers that we have previously relied upon can create chaos. Again, like the people observing Jesus, we might have reasonable questions about whether the chaos is worth it, what it might ultimately serve, and why it needs to happen. So, the people asked Jesus by what authority he was acting. Because it is not unusual, as we well know from current events, for people to try to create chaos for their own selfish purposes. And what Jesus points to as his authority is the sacrifice he is going to make. His authority for clearing out the temple comes from his sacrifice rather than a desire for power. And this is a point that Jesus will make over and over again, with his words and with his life. When we human beings act with a desire for power, all that will come out of that is harm and destruction. When we act from an ethos of sacrifice (and by this I don’t mean being a doormat, but rather a holistic ethos that means we care about others just as much as ourselves), when we act from that kind of ethos of sacrifice, newness and change may *still* feel like chaos but they will ultimately lead to resurrection, they will lead somewhere better. So Jesus says cryptically, metaphorically, that if the temple is destroyed (and chaos really can feel like destruction) then he will raise it in three days. When we act from an ethos of sacrifice, then Jesus promises that the temple can be rebuilt, meaning that a heavenly selfhood can be built within us. Swedenborg writes that the significance of three days (a number always signifying wholeness or completeness) points us towards the three pillars or tasks of our spiritutal growth: repentance, reformation, regeneration. Repentance: seeking clarity, accepting accountability. Reformation: working for change, making space for growth. Regeneration: allowing God to make us anew. As we heard in our Swedenborg reading for today, when we practice this kind of faith, love, and life, then “Divine Worship” is present in everything we do. Our life becomes the temple. Our life becomes an embodiment of Jesus’ ethos of sacrifice. Now I didn’t necessarily intend to preach what feels like more of an Easter sermon right before Advent! But it can be helpful for us to remember where the Christmas story is heading. Birth is disruptive, as much as it beautiful, and hopeful. The sweet baby in the manger grew up and took out a whip (!) and drove the sellers from the temple, challenging us to remove anything that gets in the way of truly worshipping our God. This will be a life-long process for ourselves, and a process spanning many life-times for the human race. All we can promise is to do our part. Amen. Readings: John 2:13-25 13 When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14 In the temple courts he found people selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. 15 So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. 16 To those who sold doves he said, “Get these out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!” 17 His disciples remembered that it is written: “Zeal for your house will consume me.” 18 The Jews then responded to him, “What sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?” 19 Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.” 20 They replied, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?” 21 But the temple he had spoken of was his body. 22 After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken. 23 Now while he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Festival, many people saw the signs he was performing and believed in his name. 24 But Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all people. 25 He did not need any testimony about humankind, for he knew what was in each person. Secrets of Heaven 10143:3 …purification from evils and falsities consists in refraining from them, steering clear of them, and loathing them; the implantation of goodness and truth consists in thinking and willing what is good and what is true, and in speaking and doing them; and the joining together of the two consists in leading a life composed of them. For when the good and truth residing with a person have been joined together their will is new and their understanding is new, consequently their life is new. When this is how a person is, Divine worship is present in every deed they perform; for at every point the person now has what is Divine in view, respects and loves it, and in so doing worships it.  Readings: Genesis 1:1-5, John 1:1-18, Apocalypse Revealed #940 (see below)
See also on Youtube Photo by Nick Scheerbart on Unsplash Today we gently start making our way towards the Advent season by spending some time with the beginning of John’s gospel, which is known as John’s prologue. Unlike Luke and Matthew, John’s gospel does not begin with a birth narrative but rather a theological reflection. Part poetry, part prose, the prologue draws on what may well be an early Christian hymn, as well as ideas from the Jewish wisdom tradition, weaving it together with the introduction of the character of John the Baptist, as a witness to the coming of Jesus Christ, the incarnation of God. Part of what the author of the prologue is trying to express is the enormity of the eternal acting in, through, and upon the temporal. It describes an eternal God reaching out to enter into our human world, our human lives. The gospel writer borrows an idea from Jewish and Greek philosophy to speak about the eternal part. What we translate in English as the Word, is the greek term Logos - meaning in a broader sense “the creative plan of God that governs the world.” (1) The gospel writer uses that term in a new way, speaking about a new part of God’s creative plan that governs the world: the incarnation of Godself as a person. The author deliberately starts the prologue with an allusion to the first words in the bible: In the beginning… In the beginning, God spoke everything into being in the book of Genesis. And throughout the Hebrew Scriptures God would continue to speak through the law and the prophets. And now, the author tells us, that same Word, that same creative power, that same creative ethos, will enter into our world as one of us. This is what we will soon celebrate during Advent. God continuing to create. God continuing to create worlds within us and around us. The author then segues to using another poetic term with connection to the story of creation: light. In Genesis, God said Let there be light, and it was the beginning of everything. Now in the prologue we are told that the light is still shining, and it is indeed still the beginning and the source, of all life. God’s creative power is life-giving, in the beginning, and now. A large part of the prologue is given over to a consideration of our response to God’s creative power, asking what then is our reaction to the light? How does the world react? The word translated here as world is not actually referring to the earth as a planet, but rather humanity and its domain. What will the reaction of humanity and its domain be to the on-going shining of the light? Rejection or acceptance? And what will *our* reaction be? What will our reaction be to God’s essential creativity, God’s ongoing project of creating new life? The answer here can tell us a lot about our basic stance towards the project of spirituality. The whole of what is powerful about the notion of creativity is that creativity makes something new that didn’t exist before. Creativity is the power to make something new. Both Genesis and John tell metaphorical stories about the scope of God’s creative power on a grand scale, but the way that *we* most intimately come to know and experience God’s creative power is from the way that God is able to act inside of us. It is the experience of God creating something new within and through us. The same power whereby God created the universe helps us create a delicious meal, tell a great story, craft a beatiful toy or piece of clothing, build a community. The same power piece by piece forms new insights within our minds, or expands our capacity to love in new ways. And the question becomes again: what is our reaction to this process, to this power? Because if we are not on board with this essentially creative aspect of God, then what are we even doing here at church? Any spiritual project, in any tradtion of spiritual journeying, has to be about newness, or it isn’t really about God, it’s about our comfort. If we really are committed to spirituality, then we have to WANT to understand things in a new way, and to not simply be affirmed in our certainty. We have to WANT to learn to love in new ways, and not simply be told who we are allowed to exclude. And this is what much of religion, or people’s practice of it, gets wrong. (Various forms of religious nationalism, I’m looking at you). When religion becomes of project of “arriving” - getting the right belief which then confers some measure of chosenness, of superiority, of certainty, it has to necessarily reject newness, evolution, and growth, because those things threaten that elite and self-satisfied status. When religion serves the self, it wants nothing to do with newness. The gospel of John poetically depicts this dynamic when it speaks of the light shining in the darkness. The word used to describe the response of the darkness to the light is a fascinating one. Our reading says the darkness has not overcome the light, but some translators say the darkness does not comprehend the light. And I think it is the latter that gets more closely to what we are speaking about today. The darkness suffers from a fundamental misunderstanding of God’s purposes. God’s presence is life-giving light, and the whole reason it is life-giving is because it is creative - it makes newness. It continually creates and evolves life within us, continually invites us to re-evaluate and grow. This is how God builds heaven within us, and how we become more loving and wise, more angelic. This is what we are all doing here, this is why we were created in the first place. God did not create us to be stagnant and self-satisfied, God created us with the intention and the invitaton that we might participate in and partner with God’s creative power, so that ultimately, we might also be able to as fully as we can experience the essence of God’s love. Swedenborg wrote about a kind of spiritual movement, a kind of spiritual consciousness, that was dedicated to partnering with God’s creative power and he called it “The New Church.” He saw it as a necessary step in the evolution of God’s relationship with humanity, and a necessary step in each person’s spiritual journey. The earthly ecclesiastical organizations that coalesced around his writings also called themselves “The New Church” aspirationally, as a reminder of what they were looking towards, and also as a way to differentiate themselves because they were looking at Christian theology in a new way. Two hundred years later though, this movement is no longer new and the name is super confusing. Our branch of the movement now mostly uses Swedenborgianism to refer to the tradition. Which is fine. It’s a workaday name that says what it means. But it also cannot communicate the expansive theology at the center of what Swedenborg was trying to say about God and about how religion tends to ossify and exclude and forget what God’s essential creative power is all about. The New Church, as a name, did once apply to a new movement. Now though, I believe it applies because we are committed to newness, and more specifically committed to a God that works through newness. We believe in a God who is a compassionate loving wise force, and who is dedicated to the creation of newness within us. The word that our tradition gives to the process of spiritual growth - regeneration - literally means making of something anew. We deeply believe in this principle. We believe that this is what God is all about, the most potent and effective expression of love that God can give. And I don’t mean change for the sake of change because that is exhausting. But I do mean the notion that people, relationships, institutions, ideas all need to continue to grow and change in order to continually become the best versions of themselves. In the simplest terms, God always invites us to open our hearts and minds, not close them down. Now, none of this means that our tradition has been all that good that being committed to newness. Being committed to newness takes courage and equanimity and sometimes we just want certainty and sameness. I sure do! But I continue to be excited and energized by the idea of the New Church — people the world over being commited to welcoming and not willfully misunderstanding the light. I want to be a part of that, and I hope you will join me. During Advent, we will celebrate the way that Jesus made God’s creative ethos known to us. We will celebrate a God who made his dwelling among us, and who found ways to help us, even now, gain insight and growth and inspiration. What an incredible act of creative power! The ripple effects have been beyond our imagining, and with our help, I hope they will continue to flow. Amen. (1) The New Interpreter's Bible, p443 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. John 1:1-18 1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all humankind. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. 6 There was a man sent from God whose name was John. 7 He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all might believe. 8 He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light. 9 The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. 11 He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. 12 Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God-- 13 children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God. 14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. 15 (John testified concerning him. He cried out, saying, “This is the one I spoke about when I said, ‘He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’ ”) 16 Out of his fullness we have all received grace in place of grace already given. 17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known. Apocalypse Revealed 940 …in the New Jerusalem there will be no falsity in its faith, and the people in that church will not acquire their concepts of God from any natural sight, namely from their own intelligence, or out of a desire for glory springing from conceit, but they will acquire those concepts from the Lord alone in a state of spiritual light from the Word… …a natural sight due to a desire for glory that does not spring from conceit is present in people who find a delight in useful endeavors out of a genuine love for the neighbor. Their natural sight is also a rational sight that has inwardly in it a spiritual light from the Lord. The desire for glory in them comes from the brilliance of the light flowing in from heaven, where everything is radiant and harmonious, for all useful endeavors in heaven shine.  Readings: Haggai 2:1-9, Heaven & Hell #286 (see below)
See also on Youtube Photo credit: Francesco Ungaro on Pexels This week we prepare ourselves, with one final text, to take a break from our Old Testament journey for a time. Last week we visited Joshua’s final chapter. As leader of the Children of Israel, he settled them in the promised land, and towards the end of his days, he guided them into a renewal of their ongoing covenant with God. Now we fast forward again, several hundred years. In the intervening time, the Israelites coalesced into a nation with a succession of kings, some good some bad. They split into two nations, the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah. The northern kingdom eventually fell to Assyria and the people were scattered. And then the southern kingdom fell to the Babylonians, and the people there taken into exile in Babylon. Finally, Babylon was defeated by Persia and the Persian king allowed the people of Judah to return to Jerusalem. They are faced with the arduous work of rebuilding their society, and the physical rebuilding of the temple becomes a important part of that effort. Which brings us to Haggai. We don’t know much about Haggai. He was a prophet from around 520BCE and his existing writings take up a brief one page of the bible as we know it now. As joyful as the return from exile must have been, it also was a complicated process of reintegration and restoration, socially, economically, and spiritually. In our text for today, Haggai speaks to the stakeholders in the new rebuilding process: the governor and the high priest, and to the people overall. After a seventy year exile, not many of them remember a time before the temple was anything but rubble. We can resonate if they were looking at a project that seemed insurmountable. Perhaps many wanted to give up. Perhaps many were not even sure what they were building for anymore. But Haggai reminds them to be strong, and to remember that God has been with them the whole time, and that their covenant with God remains in effect. Though ups and downs, though defeat and exile, and now on the precipice of the daunting task of restoration, Haggai reminds them that God remains present and that the ultimate destination is peace. And in this place I will grant peace,’ declares the LORD Almighty.” The Hebrew word for peace here is shalom. I won’t pretend to be an expert on how the notion of shalom is understood within the Jewish context. But I *have* always resonated with the way that shalom is used in the bible: to indicate a peace is not just about quietness, or the absence of conflict, but also about wholeness or completeness. God does indeed promise us peace. and yet the journey we have been following these several weeks has seemed anything but peaceful. What seemed like the biggest main event: being freed from slavery in Egypt by Moses, was indeed integral but it turned out to be only the beginning. It didn’t bring peace, it started the journeying. When we start to take steps away from the false ideas, narratives, allegiances, and habits represented by Egypt in our spiritual life, that doesn’t mean our journey will be smooth sailing from there on out. If there is anything we have learned from journeying with the Children of Israel it is this truth. In fact, coming out of Egypt can make us feel very vulnerable, and also impatient. I mean, come on, can’t we have the peace already. Where is the peace? Aren’t we there yet? And in this place I will grant peace,’ declares the LORD Almighty.” What place then? Because, as much as we would love it to be so, the physical restoration of the temple spoken of here by Haggai would not be the end of the story either. The temple would indeed be rebuilt and eventually the Jewish people would have a few hundred precious years of self-rule. And then along would come the Roman Empire, and we find ourselves in the time of Jesus. Not long after that, the temple is destroyed once more, never to be rebuilt again. So “this place” can’t be the physical temple. What is it then? I think the answer has to be contained within the notion of shalom itself. “This place” must be the wholeness and completeness that we are able to find in God. It is two years now since we lost one of the most beloved members of our community: Millie Laakko. And this week, my mind kept being pulled to these words from her memorial sermon: I think Millie is who we all want to be when we grow up. She was an angel but not because she was good, it was because she was whole. She combined love with discernment, compassion with clarity, intention with action. We will miss her so terribly, and not only because she was awesome and lovely, but because she reminded us, though her steadfast love and kindness, that we were awesome and lovely too. She was an angel but not because she was good, it was because she was whole. Even as I wrote those words two years ago, I had no idea where they came from, they just felt true. Goodness is indeed a stepping stone, but goodness is also sometimes such a slippery creature. Good according to who? It is necessarily subjective, necessarily buried in the multitude of relationships that human beings have with other human beings, necessarily entwined with the nuanced question of what we owe to each other. Goodness is a difficult target to hit sometimes. Wholeness though? Doesn’t that feel like a completely different game? Wholeness is something woven rather than targeted, it is something lived into rather than achieved. And in that way, I think it is much more a sibling to peace than goodness could ever be. I have always loved Aristotle’s notion of the Golden Mean. In his philosophy known as “virtue ethics” Artistotle posited that in order for people to “flourish” as human beings, we should strive for a balance in virtues. Anger for example, should only be exhibited at the right time, in the right amount, for the right purpose. Too much, and we are volatile and cruel, too little and we are a doormat. Or generosity: too much and we do nothing but take care of others, never taking a moment for our God-given individuality, too little and we think of nothing but ourselves. Or courage: too much and we are impulsive, too little and we are cowardly. And so it goes for every quality a human being can possess. The Golden Mean feels much closer to the idea of wholeness than goodness does, in the same way that the notion of “flourishing” is not the same as “happiness.” It hinges on a sense of balance, but more importantly, a sense of awareness. Awareness, or as it is sometimes called, mindfulness, is one of the most important practices that we can bring to our spiritual journey. It helps us to make space for reflection, for accountability, for nuance, for compexity, and to integrate those reflections and experiences into the way we live our lives. In terms of the Golden Mean, a commitment to awareness allows us to be flexible, to make the decisions that keep our virtues and characteristics in balance, even when or especially when our natures might tend in one direction or another. This feels much less about rightness, but rather about wisdom. And I don’t know about you, but the moment I start thinking about wisdom rather than rightness, I start feeling more peaceful. (Which I have to admit must be progress for someone like me who has always had a fair bit of teacher’s pet energy!) And in this place I will grant peace,’ declares the LORD Almighty.” Rather than calling on the Israelites to build a physical space that could mediate peace, I believe that Haggai was calling the displaced and dispirited Israelites into an eternal space of wholeness, anchored in the ongoing presence of God. In their specific moment of personal and national restoration, he called them to remembrance, to strength, and to steadfast work. He called them to a sense of being shaken up, knowing that, in the spirit of wisdom and awareness, it would always bring them back to the glory of God, as it always had and always will. During these days, these difficult and dispiriting days, let me ask: what is it that is keeping you whole? What is it that is keeping you in balance? What is it that is keeping you anchored in the ongoing presence of God? Our answers may differ, and they may change, but the asking will always lead us towards shalom. For I am with you,’ declares the LORD Almighty. This is all we need to know. Amen. Readings: Haggai 2:1-9 1 on the twenty-first day of the seventh month, the word of the LORD came through the prophet Haggai: 2 “Speak to Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, to Joshua son of Jozadak, the high priest, and to the remnant of the people. Ask them, 3 ‘Who of you is left who saw this house in its former glory? How does it look to you now? Does it not seem to you like nothing? 4 But now be strong, Zerubbabel,’ declares the LORD. ‘Be strong, Joshua son of Jozadak, the high priest. Be strong, all you people of the land,’ declares the LORD, ‘and work. For I am with you,’ declares the LORD Almighty. 5 ‘This is what I covenanted with you when you came out of Egypt. And my Spirit remains among you. Do not fear.’ 6 “This is what the LORD Almighty says: ‘In a little while I will once more shake the heavens and the earth, the sea and the dry land. 7 I will shake all nations, and what is desired by all nations will come, and I will fill this house with glory,’ says the LORD Almighty. 8 ‘The silver is mine and the gold is mine,’ declares the LORD Almighty. 9 ‘The glory of this present house will be greater than the glory of the former house,’ says the LORD Almighty. ‘And in this place I will grant peace,’ declares the LORD Almighty.” Heaven & Hell #286 …Divine peace is within the Lord, arising from the oneness of his divine nature and the divine human nature within him. The divine quality of peace in heaven comes from the Lord, arising from his union with heaven's angels, and specifically from the union of the good and the true within each angel. These are the sources of peace. We may therefore conclude that peace in the heavens is the divine nature intimately affecting everything good there with blessedness. So it is the source of all the joy of heaven. In its essence, it is the divine joy of the Lord's divine love, arising from his union with heaven and with every individual there.  Readings: Joshua 24:1-3, 14-25, Secrets of Heaven 8560 (see below)
See also on Youtube Photo by Jeremy Boley on Unsplash When we last left the Children of Israel, two weeks ago, Moses had just died, and the people were about to enter into the promised land under the leadership of Joshua. Now we fast forward to Joshua’s final chapter. The Israelites have spent many years finding their place in the land, and that has included many battles against various antagonists. As Joshua is about to leave them, he gives a farewell speech that is designed to reinvigorate their commitment to their covenant with God. We will recognize this renewing of the covenant as an ongoing theme in the life of the Israelites, and of course, in ourselves. We, too, enter into covenants, we too make statements and stands and promises to ourselves and the people around us and to God. We might do so in particular and important ways on particular and important days: for example, when we get married, the day our children are born or baptized, our first day at a new job or our first day at school, a naturalization ceremony, or an election day, just to name a few. But as important as each of those days are, days that establish a covenant, days when we actively make a stand or a decision that will dictate the shape of all of our future days, each of the days that come in-between are important as well. Days when we are tired and sad and distracted, days when no one is going to throw us a party for just showing up, days that feel like we might not be making progress, days that we feel we can just let slide. We are making choices on those days too. Smaller choices, sure, more mundane choices, perhaps, repeated choices, definitely. But less important choices, I don’t think so. The point of a covenant, the way in which it becomes something that forms and shapes what our future looks like, hinges on whether or not we uphold that covenant in our each and every day. We are not necessarily going to do that perfectly all the time, of course, but what we do in the aggregate matters, the overall direction of our intention matters, and our willingness to put in the work matters. But somewhere within the multitude of those ordinary days, we will all need a pep talk sometimes, we will all need a reminder as to why we entered the covenant in the first place. And this is what Joshua was doing for the Children of Israel. Our reading was only a portion of the speech, so we don’t hear everything he says in the reading, but one thing he does do is take them through their history, reminding them of what God has done for them. He reminds them about God’s call to Abraham, about how God brought them out of slavery and brought them to victory in the promised land. Joshua also brings it into the personal realm, saying…as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord, demonstrating solidarity and humility as a leader. And, as the people declare their loyalty to God, Joshua tests them a little. Are you sure? he asks. Are you really sure? Because there will be some risk to serving God, some cost to our selfhood and our comfort. Once we decide we want to align with divine love, we find that it is not just about warm fuzzy happy feelings. Making a stand for love, justice, integrity and righteousness is not always easy. All our worst impulses will find their way to the surface one way or another, and the demands of love will cause there to be conflict between our own selfishness and fear, and what God is calling us to. But the alternative is serving those other gods of selfishness and fear. The alternative is giving in to them, and letting that be our covenant, letting that be the shape of our lives. If we don’t want that, then we must return to our covenant with God and renew it as needed. We say as Joshua did, as for me and my house—as for me and my actions, my choices—we will serve the Lord, and we do so as a remembrance of what is important to us. We do so as a remembrance of how far we have come. And we do so as an act of hope, an act of speaking into being the shape of our future days. As the text says, we do so in order to be witnesses both for and against ourselves…we draw our line in the sand to be visible on the days we are grateful *and* on the days we want to give up. “No, we will serve the Lord.” say the Children of Israel “Yes, we are witnesses.” We do our part. Then sometimes we forget to do our part. And so we remember to do our part again. We commit to showing up again and again and again. What is key to remember though, is that God’s providence in our lives, God’s leading us forth, is not contingent of whether *we* renew the covenant or remember the covenant. God’s providence for us is already existent, already active, because God’s loving nature demands that it be so. The renewal of the covenant, choosing *this day* who we will serve, is choosing to step into providence that is already happening, choosing to respond as gracefully and as actively as we can to the flow, choosing acknowledgment and gratitude and conscious partnership. The problem with this is that sometimes we think in transactional terms. Our earthly lives are largely lived in transactional terms: do this to get that. But God’s providence is different. It is already happening, and *not* just already happening in the good things, but already happening in all parts of our lives. When we renew the covenant we are remembering this important aspect as well. We are remembering that through God’s love and wisdom, *all* things can make a contribution towards a person’s life to eternity. We heard this from our reading: God's providence is different from any other kind of leading or guidance in that it constantly has in view what is eternal and is constantly leading to salvation. It does so through various states, sometimes joyful and at other times miserable; and though these are beyond the person's comprehension they all nevertheless make a contribution towards [a person’s] life into eternity. This is essentially what Joshua’s warning was about. The covenant is not about ensuring that only good things happen going forward, and we are not promised there won’t be miserable times. We are promised that God’s leading has an eternal view, and that all things move us toward our ultimate transformation, if we let them, if we keep our hearts and minds open to the possibility. Sometimes, the miserable things are even more instructive to us than the good things. (Which, let’s be honest, totally sucks!) But, when we know the point of the covenant is transformation (and not primarily comfort) then we have a greater chance of accepting this truth with equanimity. When things are going well, God is leading. When things are not going well, God is still leading. You see, the covenant exists in perpetuity because of one thing only: God’s steadfastness. The one true God exists; and the choice is ours, whom will we serve? Whom will we serve on the day after election day, a month after the new year, five years after getting a new job, a decade after our wedding day, and so on. Will we continue to serve the cause of love, of inclusion, of truth, of honesty, of integrity, of courage? In the words of Father Thomas Keating: we should begin a new world with one that actually exists.(1) This is what God does with us everyday, and the world through us. We renew and we renew, we say okay this day, and now this day, and now this day we will serve the Lord, and thus we make a new world each day with the one that existed before. Amen. (1)Thomas Keating, Fr. Thomas Keating’s Last Oracle (Contemplative Network: 2020), transcription (October 2018). Readings: Joshua 24:1-3, 14-25 1 Then Joshua assembled all the tribes of Israel at Shechem. He summoned the elders, leaders, judges and officials of Israel, and they presented themselves before God. 2 Joshua said to all the people, “This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: ‘Long ago your ancestors, including Terah the father of Abraham and Nahor, lived beyond the Euphrates River and worshiped other gods. 3 But I took your father Abraham from the land beyond the Euphrates and led him throughout Canaan and gave him many descendants. 14 “Now fear the LORD and serve him with all faithfulness. Throw away the gods your ancestors worshiped beyond the Euphrates River and in Egypt, and serve the LORD. 15 But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.” 16 Then the people answered, “Far be it from us to forsake the LORD to serve other gods! 17 It was the LORD our God himself who brought us and our parents up out of Egypt, from that land of slavery, and performed those great signs before our eyes. He protected us on our entire journey and among all the nations through which we traveled. 18 And the LORD drove out before us all the nations, including the Amorites, who lived in the land. We too will serve the LORD, because he is our God.” 19 Joshua said to the people, “You are not able to serve the LORD. He is a holy God; he is a jealous God. He will not forgive your rebellion and your sins. 20 If you forsake the LORD and serve foreign gods, he will turn and bring disaster on you and make an end of you, after he has been good to you.” 21 But the people said to Joshua, “No! We will serve the LORD.” 22 Then Joshua said, “You are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen to serve the LORD.” “Yes, we are witnesses,” they replied. 23 “Now then,” said Joshua, “throw away the foreign gods that are among you and yield your hearts to the LORD, the God of Israel.” 24 And the people said to Joshua, “We will serve the LORD our God and obey him.” 25 On that day Joshua made a covenant for the people, and there at Shechem he reaffirmed for them decrees and laws. Secrets of Heaven #8560 God's providence is different from any other kind of leading or guidance in that it constantly has in view what is eternal and is constantly leading to salvation. It does so through various states, sometimes joyful and at other times miserable; and though these are beyond the person's comprehension they all nevertheless make a contribution towards [a person’s] life into eternity. |
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