Church of the Holy City

Breaking Up Complacency
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
September 2, 2012

1 Kings 19:1-18 Matthew 8:23-27 Psalm 88

The path of spiritual attainment is not always a smooth, straight, path. It is not always peaceful. In fact, it can, perhaps must, be accompanied by distress and conflict. In our Old Testament reading this morning, the prophet Elijah stood in the presence of God. But before he stood in God’s presence, he was reduced to a state of utter despair. He came to a broom tree, sat down, and prayed that he might die. He said, “I have had enough, LORD, take my life.” And it was in this condition of utter despair that God appeared to Elijah in the form of a soft, still voice. And there are times when the currents of our life become furious storms and, like the Apostles, we cry out to God, “Lord, save us!”
There is a good reason why spirituality often exacts a high price from us. When things are going our way, we get complacent, self satisfied, and forget about spirituality and our continual need for God in our lives. There is a poem of Wallace Stevens that illustrates this idea well. I have been reading it for 25 years and it still moves me. In this poem there is a woman who reflects on mortality and the good things of this earth. Yet her reflections are qualified by her complacency with the good things of earth she knows. So the poem begins:
Complacencies of the peignoir, and late
Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,
And the green freedom of a cockatoo
Upon a rug mingle to dissipate
The holy hush of ancient sacrifice.
She dreams a little, and she feels the dark
Encroachment of that old catastrophe . . .
There are a couple things I would like to emphasize about this opening stanza. First, the woman is complacent with her peignoir, coffee, oranges, and sunny chair. She has all the comforts of this life, and they have made her complacent with life. All these good things “mingle to dissipate/The holy hush of ancient sacrifice.” I take this line to mean that she has no place in her world for religion, called by the poet, “The holy hush of ancient sacrifice.” And with no religion in her life, death is something fearful, called “the dark/Encroachment of that old catastrophe.” Without spirituality, death is a catastrophe. It means the end of all those good things of this world with which the woman is so complacent. This woman would like the things of this world to equal the eternal blessings that only spirituality can give. And she resents religion:
Why should she give her bounty to the dead?
What is divinity if it can come
Only in silent shadows and in dreams?
Shall she not find comforts of the sun,
In pungent fruit and bright green wings, or else
In any other balm or beauty of the earth,
Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?
She wants to cherish the things of the earth like the things of heaven, in fact, claims that the things religion teach do not equal the beauties of the earth:

She says, “I am content when wakened birds,
Before they fly, test the reality
Of misty fields, by their sweet questionings;
But when the birds are gone, and their warm fields
Return no more, where, then, is paradise?”
There is not any haunt of prophesy,
Nor any chimera of the grave,
Neither the golden underground, nor isle
Melodious, where spirits gat them home,
Nor visionary south, nor cloudy palm
Remote on heaven’s hill, that has endured
As April’s green endures; or will endure
Like her remembrance of awakened birds,
Or her desire for June and evening, tipped
By the consummation of the swallow’s wings.
However, content as she is with the beautiful things of this world, there is still something missing: “She says, ‘But in contentment I still feel/The need of some imperishable bliss.’”
The poem never gives her anything more than the transitory, passing things of the world. Her contentment with the things of the world has rendered her spiritually blind. So, too, do we all have the potential to lose ourselves in the world, and to forget about the spiritual things that really matter. The truths about God that we learn in early childhood can become covered over with selfish concern and worldly interests. When this happens, we need to be shaken out of our complacency. We need to pass through sorrow, and trials in order to wake up to spirituality. When we have been brought through distress, the truths which are stored deep within us come to light:
These are stored up, and not manifested until he comes into this state; which is a state rarely attained at this day without temptation, misfortune, and sorrow, that cause the things of the body and the world, and thus of man’s own, to become quiescent, and as it were dead (AC 8).
Swedenborg refers to these shocks to our system as temptations. In his system, temptations are more than just struggling against our craving for chocolate when we are trying to eat healthy. Temptations are more than just trying to resist bad impulses. They are mortal struggles in which our very lifestyle is threatened. In temptations, we let go of our worldly inclinations, and open ourselves up to God’s inflowing life and love. We are shaken out of our complacency and our consciousness is lifted up to spiritual issues. When this happens, the truths we have learned cease to serve our own glory and become serviceable to God and our neighbor. Before temptation, the truths we know, which are vessels that receive God’s life, are turned away from God, toward self.
When therefore these vessels, which are variable as to forms, are in a contrary position and direction in respect to the life . . . it may be evident that they must be reduced to a position in accordance with the life, or in obedience to it. This can in no way be effected so long as man is in that state into which he is born, and to which he has reduced himself; for the vessels are not obedient, being obstinately resistant, and opposing the heavenly order according to which the life acts; for the good which moves them, and with which they comply, is of love of self and the world, . . . Wherefore, before they can be rendered compliant and fit to receive anything of the life of the Lord’s love, they must be softened. This softening is effected by no other means than by temptations; for temptations remove what is of self-love and of contempt for others in comparison with self, consequently what is of self-glory, and also of hatred and revenge arising therefrom. When therefore the vessels are somewhat tempered and subdued by temptations, then they begin to become yielding to, and compliant with the life of the Lord’s love . . . (AC 3318).
When we have been shaken up enough, we begin to look at ourselves and our place in the world differently. Our personality changes. When we are seeking glory and power, we are savage, competitive, and harsh. When we have been broken down by temptations, our whole personality changes. “He is afterward gifted with another personality, being made mild, humble, simple, and contrite in heart” (AC 3318).
I remember when I first finished my Ph.D. program. My head was full of a multitude grand theological theories, historical details, and cultural creations. But where my own faith was in all this, I didn’t know, or care. I was also drinking alcoholically. At that time, I thought that what I needed was a full-time university teaching position. Then I could continue to drink and theorize about religion and have the respect of a university position behind me. But this didn’t happen. I ended up in a state in America that was the third lowest in education. There was no university in the city. There was no library to speak of. There were a whole lot of bikers and rednecks who cared little for the things I cared most for. I used to sit in a bar and stare into the crowd, unable to imagine where I was. I found out later from a waitress that she though I was high on drugs because of that blank stare.
But what happened transformed me for the better. Being forcibly removed from the university and all its theorizing made me take a look at myself. I turned within and asked myself what I could take from my education and make my own. I began to form, or reform, a personal belief system. And as you all know, losing a teaching job in Florida is what led me to quit drinking. In the rooms of AA, I learned a whole new way of approaching the world. All the ego and perfectionism, and insecurity that drove me to drink was undone. In my 12 years in Florida, I became a new man. A better man.
This transition period was not easy. Most of my ideas about the kind of life I should be living were challenged and changed. This change was pretty much forced on me. I wouldn’t have freely chosen it. But I feel that where I am now is better for me—and those around me—than where I was then. Those truths were reduced into a greater place of compliance with God’s inflowing love than they were when I had just graduated. My personality did change into a more accepting, more mild condition.
This is the kind of distress that spirituality can bring upon us. This is the kind of change that only hard knocks can bring about. This is the power that shakes up our complacency and self-glory and lifts us into spirituality. I think that this process is what the Swedenborgian poet Edwin Markham has in mind when he writes:
Defeat may serve as well as victory
To shake the soul and let the glory out.
When the great oak is straining in the wind,
The boughs drink in new beauty and the trunk
Sends down a deeper root on the windward side.
Only the soul that knows the mighty grief
Can know the mighty rapture,
Sorrows come To stretch out spaces in the heart for joy.
(“Victory in Defeat”)

PRAYER

Dear Lord, We know that our spiritual journey is not always smooth and straight. We know that there can be difficulties for us to overcome. We know that we may go through hard times and trials. But these struggles are all for our spiritual welfare. Even as we know that we may find hardships, we also know that we can become complacent with the good things you have given us. We can forget that all of our blessings come from you. We can forget to thank you for the good things we enjoy. We may even forget our utter dependence on you and your leading. It is in times of distress that we remember you and look for deliverance from you. May we not need to await misfortune in order to recognize your gifts and your care for us. May we always be mindful of your love, and may we always give you thanks.

Spiritual Environment and Natural Environment
Yudai Hori
August 19, 2012

Genesis 1:27-31 Matthew 14:13-21 Psalm 104

Today I am going to talk about ecology. However, I have come here as a seminarian of the New Church. I am not a scientist. What I am talking is about how New Church people should understand and engage in ecology activity. I think New Church people should protect our environment not only from natural perspective but also from spiritual perspective.
Divine Love and Wisdom is a book about how God created this world. In this book Swedenborg states that God created the three kingdoms – the animal kingdom, the vegetable kingdom and the mineral kingdom for our sake. New Church people should note that those three kingdoms exist for us to offer “USE” to God. These three kingdoms are in hierarchical relationships in terms of “USE.” The mineral kingdom is for the vegetable kingdom. The vegetable kingdom, for the animal kingdom. And the animal kingdom, for human beings. Eventually human beings for God. It means if we ruin the natural environment, which are the three kingdoms, we ruin the system of the cyclical upswing processes of “USE” established by God.
Swedenborg explains that we receive LOVE and WISDOM from God. These two entities are the sources of our lives. And from LOVE and WISDOM which we receive, we generate “USE,” which is offered to God in return. This love and wisdom is spiritual bread and wine. After we symbolically eat bread and drink wine, we do work. However we also need physical bread and wine–all the food that nature gives us. But if we cannot eat bread and drink wine because of famine caused by damage of natural environment, we cannot work, as we have no energy to do work.
Environmental problems such as oil spill in the Caribbean Sea, cutting so many trees in Amazon, hunting rare species in Africa are instances of critical damages in the three kingdoms. As the damaged three kingdoms cannot offer “USE” to humans, it deprives humans of opportunity to receive “USE” from the three kingdoms and to offer “USE” to God. It causes cutting off a link between God and humans.
It means that ruining the natural environment is not only ruining the natural environment but also ruining the spiritual environment.
It is important for New Church people to know the fact that damaging the natural environment causes damaging the spiritual environment.
Swedenborg states that nature is a creation of God and if we observe it carefully, we can find amazing design of God in it. Many scientific videos about animals, vegetables and minerals made by CBC, BBC and PBS show us its magnificent structure and beauty of things in nature. An atom, a cell, and anatomy of an animal are amazingly structured. Nature is not just nature but the Garden modeled by God. Non-religious people only observe nature as nature. However, New Church people should perceive sacred quality of nature.
If we ruin the natural environment, it means we damage the Garden of God. It is awfully profane deeds. Damaging the natural world is a religiously unethical conduct.
David Suzuki, a famous Canadian scientist, wrote a book whose title is The Sacred Balance. He used a word “sacred” to describe an observable miraculous balance in nature. He engages in ecology activity to protect natural environment from egoistic human activities caused by “principles of economics.”
A daughter of David Suzuki, Severn Suzuki, gave a memorable speech in 1992, at the Earth Summit in Rio, Brazil. She said that if we don’t know how to fix the holes in our ozone layer; we don’t know how to bring salmon back up a dead stream; we don’t know how to bring back an animal now extinct; and we can’t bring back forests that once grew where there is now desert–if we don’t know how to fix it, we have to stop breaking it!
Later in life, Ms. Suzuki studied ethnobotony at the University of Victoria
These two prophets have given us warnings to let us stop damaging the natural environment.
In the book of Jonah, people in Nineveh repented and changed their ways of lives after having listened to the message proclaimed by a prophet Jonah.
Do we have ears to listen to two Suzuki-s to change our lives? Or do we follow footsteps of people in Sodom and Gomorra? Mark 6:11 says, “And whoever will not receive you nor hear you, when you depart from there, shake off the dust under your feet as a testimony against them. Assuredly, I say to you, it will be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for that city!”
We have already had chances to listen to warnings from prophets. It is for us to decide if we will become inhabitants of Nineveh or of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Swedenborg states that New Church people should love both the natural world and the spiritual world.
If we forget God, religion and church and seek worldly pleasures only, we become slaves of sensual pleasures. Many people on earth pursue buying gourmet foods, the latest fashion and luxurious houses without considering God at all.
On the other hand, if a church denies any kind of enjoyable human activities and forces parishioners to live a stoic life to follow God, it is not a good life.
We should love both the National Geographic and Bible. We can enjoy skiing, skating, trekking and camping. Simultaneously we should love going to church, reading Bible and studying the doctrines of the New Church.
If we continue ruining the natural environment, we lose our playground where we work and enjoy leisure, then we let our lives on earth be miserable ones. We should keep our land to let us live, work and play in it joyfully.
As we maintain our church, our houses and our own rooms clean and in order, we have to maintain the condition of the natural environment neatly, as it is our yard.
As the world is becoming smaller rapidly because of increase of the number of population in the 21st century, we have to pay more attention to our natural environment than before.
Religion and nature are two sides of one coin, through which we buy our lives.
In Alaska people who live there protect salmon. For them salmon is not only material food but also icon or representation of their lives. Salmon sustains not only each individual but also all people in a village or a tribe. If they extinguish salmon, a whole village or a whole tribe will disappear. So they protect salmon and held a festival to pray to God. Salmon is for their descendants too. Extinguishing salmon is killing their own descendants.
Salmon is in the river. The river can supply water to us because of trees and mountains. The mineral kingdom, the vegetable kingdom and the animal kingdom are intertwined. We should not extinguish salmon. We should not contaminate water. We should not cut too many trees. If we ruin one of three, it causes a total corruption of all three. Dead bodies of salmon enrich soils. From it trees can grow. If water is contaminated, salmon do not come back to the river. If many trees on the mountain are cut, the mountain cannot sustain water, which causes flood.
Swedenborg states that if one of three elements of human activity, will, understanding and action, a human activity cannot occur. Both in the natural environment and in the spiritual environment, all three elements are relational so that there should not be a lack in any of them.
Ecology and sustainability are two keywords which we often hear nowadays. Adjectives such as “many,” “more,” and “big” were used to signify good quality in the 20th Century. However, now in the 21st century adjectives such as “few,””less,” and “small” are more favored. Unfortunately we have no space to grow more on this planet. We are already in a live or die situation in terms of environmental problem.
Please imagine how you can reduce your consumption of energy and resources to less than half the amount in our daily lives. It takes energy. A transition from having two cars from one car sounds difficult. We have to use our wisdom to let productivity and sustainability coexist in our lives. Abandoning having two four-liter cars and having two two-liter cars is not difficult.
Materialism is a trap set by a serpent in Genesis. We should not be deceived by materialism, a serpent, like Adam and Eve.
On the website of the City of Edmonton in the section of Environmental, there are lots of useful tips about how we can engage in ecology activity in an individual level.
Let us be inhabitants of both a garden of this planet where we can enjoy natural pleasure and a Garden of Eden where we can enjoy spiritual pleasure. To do so we have to value science, nature, environment and theology, religion, church.
Let us worship, honor and praise the name of Jesus Christ who created heaven and earth for our sake.
We have two kinds of bread, natural bread and spiritual bread, or Divine Love. We have two kinds of wine, natural wine and spiritual wine, or Divine Wisdom. Both natural nourishment and spiritual nourishment are important for us. Let us care for the wellbeing of our natural environment even as we care for the wellbeing of our spiritual life. Amen.

PRAYER

O, Lord. Let us know how we should use your gifts and serve YOU to live according to YOUR WILL. Please teach us YOUR WISDOM to let us live good life. Let us be YOUR faithful servants through offering USE to YOU through using YOUR gifts. Please let us enjoy our lives in YOUR natural GARDEN temporarily and in YOUR spiritual GARDEN permanently. Educate us to be good gardeners who keep YOUR GARDEN faithfully. The garden which you created for us has been being contaminated by our egoistic activities for a long time. We have been exploiting natural resources rapidly which you have given us, as we did not use them wisely and economically. Many creatures which you created have disappeared from this planet. Many plants have lost their originality as we modified them. Many minerals have been used up by us greedily. As in Genesis chapter 1 verse 28, we will “be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it” yet not foolishly but wisely. We listen to you, obey you and follow you always and as much as we can. Amen.

The True Bread from Heaven
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
August 5, 2012

Exodus 16:2-18 John 6:22-35 Psalm 78

Our readings this morning concern spiritual food and drink. In the reading from Exodus, the Israelites were fed bread that came down from heaven called “manna.” This was no mere bread. Psalm 78 calls it, “the grain of heaven” and “the bread of angels.” It is miraculous, something never seen by anyone before, so the Israelites call it, “manna.” Manna means, “What?” or “What is it?” We don’t need to seek too far into the spiritual meaning of manna to see that it is God who is feeding us with the bread of angels, or heavenly love. This meaning is reinforced in our New testament reading from John. There, Jesus states that He Himself is the true bread from heaven. He makes this claim almost with a logical sequence. It goes like this: 1) it was not Moses who gave the Israelites manna, but God, 2) God gives the true bread from heaven, 3) the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world, 4) Jesus is the bread of life. So in both Exodus and John, we are dealing with spiritual food that God gives to us.
We can begin to look at this by considering earthly food. In Exodus, the children of Israel are hungry because they are in the desert. They are free from slavery in Egypt, but they are hungry with the spare food they are able to eat in the desert wilderness. They think they will starve to death, and wished they would have died by God’s hand in Egyptian slavery, where food was plentiful. They complain to Moses, who brings their complaint to God. God hears, and responds, sending manna in the morning and quails at night.
All these story elements have a spiritual significance. It is not too hard to see how this story is actually about spiritual growth and development. First, there is release from slavery, which is deliverance from sin. Then there is the famine of being deprived of our former worldly delights and pleasures. We hunger for the only life we knew and want to return to sin’s slavery and the food of our former worldly delights. But in the wilderness famine, when we are deprived of the pleasures of this world, heavenly enjoyment comes into our hearts to fill us with a new kind of delight. This is the manna, the bread of angels, with which God feeds us when we have abandoned the cravings that come from ego and worldly interests. Before our path of spiritual growth, we don’t even know that another life is possible. To us, ego gratification, status symbols, and money seem like the good things of life. We are not aware that there is another life possible. We are not aware that showing love to all those around us and doing good actions are more rewarding than anything that self-interest or worldly satisfaction can give us. To us, spirituality is manna, it is unknown, we say, “What is it?” Swedenborg contrasts these two modes of living,
That hence the bread which was given to the sons of Israel in the wilderness was called manna, is because that bread signifies the good of caring which is unknown to a person before regeneration, and it is not even known that such a good exists. For a person before regeneration believes that beyond the enjoyments of the love of self and the world, which he or she calls goods, there cannot be any good given which is not from that source or of such a quality. If any one should then say that there is an interior good which cannot come to the apprehension, consequently not to the knowledge, so long as the enjoyments of the love of self and the world have dominion, and that this good is what good spirits and angels are in, amazement follows, as at what is altogether unknown and as at what cannot be given; when yet this good immensely transcends the enjoyments of the love of self and the world (AC 8462).
We find a similar contrast between earthly food and spiritual food in our New Testament reading. The crowd has followed Jesus across a lake. Jesus says something to them that I find rather funny. We wonder sometimes what we need to do to bring people into the church. Jesus was no stranger to these questions. He knows that the crowd has followed Him across the lake because they just got fed, and I don’t mean spiritually fed. Jesus says,
I tell you the truth, you are looking for me, not because you saw miraculous signs but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life which the Son of Man will give you (John 6:26-27).
Jesus then says the words that we recite at every communion service. Jesus says, “He that comes to me will never hunger, and he who believes in me will never thirst” (John 6:35). Here, Jesus is contrasting the miraculous feeding of 5,000 people with 5 loaves of bread with feeding the world with spiritual food that gives eternal life. Jesus makes the claim that He is the bread of life that gives spiritual life.
This passage makes me think of a couple other passages from the Gospel of John. In this morning’s reading, Jesus responds to a direct request from the crowd. Jesus says that the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. In response, the crowd asks, “Give us this bread.” This story is quite similar to the story about the Samaritan woman at the well. Jesus tells her that whoever drinks the water He gives will never thirst, and that the water will become a spring welling up to eternal life (John 4:13-14). Like the crowd in this morning’s reading, the woman says, “Sir, give me this water.”
So in both stories we have Jesus talking about eternal food and drink. And we have two different people asking for this eternal food and drink. And in both stories, we have Jesus saying that He is the source of eternal life, which will be given to all who come to Him.
So the question arises, “How does Jesus give us this eternal food and drink?” In Catholic theology, the bread and wine of the Holy Supper is miraculously changed into Jesus’ body and blood. So when a person partakes of the Holy Supper, one is actually imbibing the body and blood of Jesus. We see things differently. We do value the physical act of eating bread and drinking wine or grape juice. But we see these acts as rich in symbolism. We see the bread as symbolic of receiving God’s Divine Love. And we see the wine as receiving God’s Divine Wisdom. We understand God to me infinite Love and Wisdom, so partaking of the bread and wine is symbolic of receiving God into our hearts and minds.
And this symbolism brings to mind a third New Testament passage. When Jesus says that He is spiritual food and drink, He means that He gives spiritual life. We become spiritual beings when we let Jesus into our hearts. Then we are in Him and He is in us. This Jesus says in John 15:
I am the vine and my Father is the gardener. . . . No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing (John 15:1,4, 5).
When Jesus is in us, and we are in Jesus, then we are living out the symbolism of the Holy Supper. We are filled with God’s divine Love and Wisdom, as we live a wise and loving life. Then we will hunger and thirst no longer for the good things of eternal life for we will be receiving day by day what is good for us–just as the Israelites gathered manna just enough for the day. We will feel heavenly joy and delight in Godly and loving deeds. We will have abandoned selfish goals and pleasures and opened our hearts to receive God and the eternal enjoyments that He gives.

Angels of God Ascending and Descending
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
July 15, 2012

Genesis 28:10-22 John 1:43-51 Psalm 85

I have been talking lately about different perspectives on self love. I have discussed healthy and harmful ways of seeing self love. But it occurred to me that I hadn’t considered what the self is. How can we talk about self love without knowing what the self is? Today we will look at what the self is.
Some may wonder at the very question. We are with ourselves all the time so the self seems obvious. It may not sound like a problem or a question at all. But what the self is is indeed a very important issue. On the temple to Apollo on the isle of Delphi in ancient Greece, the Greek phrase gnothi seauton was inscribed. That statement means, “know yourself.” Know yourself was also central in the philosophy of Socrates. The poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge based a poem on it. But Coleridge’s poem concludes with the line, “Ignore thyself, and strive to know thy God!” We will see that knowing the self and knowing God are intimately related. Knowing the self will end in knowing God.
The first thing to say about the self is that we are created in God’s image and likeness. Genesis 1:27 reads, “So God created humanity in his own image, in the image and likeness of God he created him; male and female he created them.” So when we think about who we are, we can say that we are an image of God. This is certainly something to celebrate. We are God’s creation, and so holy and sacred. We are an image of God, and so crowned with dignity and glory. Psalm 8 comes to mind:
what is mankind that you are mindful of them,
human beings that you care for them?
You have made them a little lower than the angels
and crowned them with glory and honor (vss. 4,5).
Being created in God’s image and likeness means further that all humans are an image of God. Not only this, but our very life comes from God. Our life is God in us. There is a Divine spark in our depths. This means that each human we encounter is also an image and likeness of God. It means that when we encounter another person, we are encountering a spark of God. Jesus affirms this in Matthew 25:40, “whatever you did to the least of these brothers of mine, you did to me.” So while we affirm the God-Spark in ourselves, we also affirm the God-Spark in others. While we honor the image of God in ourselves, we also honor the image of God in others. So there is the ancient Yogic greeting, “The God in me greets the God in you.” Yogic philosophy makes some statements about how divine a person can become that are hard for me as a Christian to affirm fully. But, as a Christian, I can readily translate this verse, “The image of God in me greets the image of God in you.”
Being created in God’s image means another thing. It means that we are created–we are creatures. We are not the source of our being. We are not the ones who made ourselves. We are made by God. This means that we do not live from our own power. It looks to us as if the life we have is ours. So much so, that we rarely even think about it. We go about our lives unaware that the life we have is not from us. We are what Swedenborg calls “vessels.” We are vessels of life from God. Think about our life. Think about all the things that go into our life. Think about all the chemical reactions that go on in our bodies. Think about all the processes that our cells do. Think about the beating of our heart. All these things go on without a thought from us. In fact, I would say that these things go on in us despite what we think about them. Very few of us indeed could in any way affect these microscopic and chemical activities by an act of will or thought. Something is keeping us alive beyond our own awareness, indeed shall I say despite our awareness. That life force is God in us. Only God is life Itself. We are receivers of life. We are vessels that hold life from God. We are creatures. We are created.
We can also ask why we were created. I like what Swedenborg says about this. In Swedenborg’s theology, God created the universe and the human race as an act of love. He created us in order to love us. Swedenborg says that there are three essential aspects of love: to love others outside of itself, to desire to be one with them, and to make them happy (TCR 43). God created us to love. God made us into an image and likeness of God so that there can be union. And God gives us His love and all the delights that come from heavenly love in order to make us happy. It is God’s greatest wish that we should be happy and be in a love relationship with Himself. This description of love may sound a little analytic and cold. But I did find a place in Swedenborg’s theology that makes this all sound a little warmer:
Jehovah, or the Lord’s internal, was the very Celestial of Love, that is, Love itself, to which no other attributes are fitting than those of pure Love, thus of pure Mercy toward the whole human race; which is such that it wishes to save all and make them happy for ever, and to bestow on them all that it has; thus out of pure mercy to draw all who are willing to follow, to heaven, that is, to itself, by the strong force of love (AC 1735).
All our life, all our enjoyment, all our happiness comes from what we love. The philosopher Descartes said, “I think, therefore I am.” Swedenborg would say, rather, “I love, therefore I am.” In a book called Divine Love and Wisdom, Swedenborg writes,
Love is our life . . . If you take away the effects of love, can you think of anything? Can you do anything? As the effects of love lose their warmth, do not thought and speech and action lose theirs as well? Do they not warm up as love warms up? (DLW 1)
We are motivated by our loves. As Swedenborg says, take away love and we wouldn’t desire to do anything–so we wouldn’t do anything. Furthermore, our enjoyments come from what we love. We are happy when we are in our loves. We are happy when we are doing what we love to do. We enjoy doing the things we love. Take away love altogether and we would fall down dead.
Now we love different things. And we love different things with different intensity. I suggest that there is in each of us a hierarchy of loves. Some things are nearer our heart than other things. We grieve more deeply when we are deprived of the things that touch our hearts closely. And we rejoice when we are able to enjoy the things that touch our hearts more closely. But I would also suggest that some of our loves would be called higher and some of our loves would be called lower. I love discussing philosophy and I love eating popcorn. I love spending time with Carol and I love playing with my new smart phone. I love listening to a Bach fugue and I love smoking cigars. I think in each of these cases we would call one of these loves more superior than the other.
We can carry this discussion of love to another level. I love God. And my love for God shows itself in my day-to-day life. My love for God shows itself in all the ways I try to do good in the day-to-day life I live. This means that I will try make healthy choices in the way I respond to the world around me. It means I will try to cultivate the best qualities in my character. To the best of my ability, I try to orient my life around the spiritual principles I have acquired over the years. This is love in action. This is how I understand loving God. Swedenborg would call this the dominant, or ruling love. This love dominates my life and subordinates all my other enjoyments and loves to it. It is the highest love in the hierarchy of my loves.
The various loves I have been talking about are symbolized by the angels ascending and descending the ladder in Jacob’s dream. For in our lives, we will find ourselves living out different levels of the ladder of our loves.
So another answer to the question, “What is the self?” we can say that the self is what we love. And the closer we get to our heartfelt love, the closer we get to who we are most truly. When we accept God’s love for us and enter into a mutual love relationship with God, we are becoming heavenly and angelic, and at the same time we are becoming happier. Recall Swedenborg’s words above, God’s love
is such that it wishes to save all and make them happy for ever, and to bestow on them all that it has; thus out of pure mercy to draw all who are willing to follow, to heaven, that is, to itself, by the strong force of love (AC 1735).
Let’s consider what all this means. God wants to bestow on us all that God has. God is infinite, and so all that God has is infinite. Our joy can continually approach infinite happiness, as we approach God. Furthermore, God is love itself. So the more of God’s love we let into ourselves, the more profoundly we love and the greater is the enjoyment of our heart. Remember, our enjoyments flow from what we love, and as God’s infinite love enters our hearts, our enjoyments infinitely expand and enlarge. As God is Life itself, the more alive we will feel. As God is love and life itself, the closer we enter into relationship with God, the more we will feel like our own self. This is because Life Itself, or The Essential Self is in us.
Knowing God is knowing who we are. Our life and love come from God, so who we are is who God is. We come to know ourselves in relationship with God. We come to know God when we reflect that we are made in God’s own image and likeness. We come to know God as we form healthy relationships with the God-Spark in the people we know around us. Knowing ourselves comes down to knowing our God.

PRAYER

Dear Lord, you have told us that we are created in your image and likeness. Help us to know and to discover your holy dwelling in us. Give us to find you in the depths of our being and to manifest your divine love and wisdom, to manifest your divine attributes throughout our daily lives. And we recognise that your image and likeness dwells in the other people that we encounter. Give us to discover your dwelling in the people we meet, and to honor your holy presence in all the people around us. You have told us that whatever we do to the least of your children we do to you. Help us to keep this in mind in all our interactions with our fellows.

Lord, we ask for your peace to descend upon this troubled world. Where there is conflict and war, let there be understanding and peace. Inspire our leaders, and the leaders of other nations to govern their people with compassion and with your Holy Love. Where there is famine and thirst, may good hearted aid come and satisfy the needs of those who want. Where there are natural disasters, may help come from good neighbors and from compassionate governments. Where there is hardship and unemployment, lend your patience and hope.

Lord, send your healing love to all those suffering in body and soul. We ask you to give the gift of health to all in need. Send your strength to our beloved friends and family who are afflicted, weak, or ailing. Send your healing Spirit to all in need, that they may live out a healthy life of service to you and their fellows.

Affirming the “Self”
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
June 24, 2012

1 Samuel 17:4-11, 32-40 Mark 35-41 Psalm 107

This Sunday I take to heart some of the comments we heard about self-love in our discussion a while back. I thought them over well, and wrote to another minister, Rev. Gardiner Perry, to get his comments on the subject. Rev. Perry is uniquely qualified to comment on the issue of self-love as he is an accomplished Swedenborgian scholar as well as a certified psychotherapist. My reflections and the comments of my fellow minister have shown me that self-affirmation is indeed a part of the heavenly life.
But I found that there are two kinds of self-love. One is negative and one is positive. Rev. Perry defines negative self-love as follows:
Self love (amor sui) can be understood as the spiritually problematic phenomenon Swedenborg portrays: it is love of self at the expense of others; self-centeredness; abuse of others for one’s own gain; and even the abuse of power when there is a power differential in the relationship.
However, he soon went on to say that if an individual has made the least progress in striving for a spiritual life, that self affirmation is to be cherished. He says, “This awareness is to be cherished, and is rightly considered in many traditions as a great blessing.” The important insight I gathered is to affirm who we are as individuals, as the agents of an activity that only we can do, and to affirm the unique persons that only we are. So Rev. Perry says,
However, if I, you, or anyone with whom you interact is on a more positive path, then one can afford to say, ‘Yes’ to my having my own existence. I can say Yes to self affirming attitudes, to self affirmation; and, when it comes to ministry . . . a pastor can say, ‘Yes, you can love yourself as you are.’
I believe this approach to self-affirmation is Biblical. And we see it in the story about David and Goliath. When David is about to fight Goliath, Saul clothes him in heavy, traditional warrior’s armor. But David refuses to wear someone else’s armor. He refuses to accept the traditional garb of warfare. He trusts in God and in himself. He goes out to meet the gigantic and formidable Goliath with only his sling, staff, and five smooth stones. David, in other words, goes out to meet Goliath as the shepherd that he is. He does not pretend to be a soldier; he does not wear a soldier’s armor; and he trusts that God will give him victory as He had when David was defending his sheep against lions or bears. David believed in himself as he was, and in the God who protects him.
I also reflected on an essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson called “Self-Reliance.” In that essay, Emerson affirms each individual’s unique power to manifest divinity in their own way. He begins with self acceptance. Emerson teaches that,
There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.
True self-love is doing just what Emerson says. It means that we “take himself for better, for worse.” And also we are to till “that plot of ground which is given him.” Emerson asserts that great men have always done so,
Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so.
Emerson moves beyond mere self-acceptance. He affirms the unique gifts and contributions that only we can do when we act of our own unique powers. When we look within, and find God within us, we will hear a voice that only we can hear.
Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another, you have only an extemporaneous, half possession. That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him. No man yet knows what it is, nor can, till that person has exhibited it.
When we follow that voice, and let the God within us shine forth, then we are exhibiting God’s Wisdom in a way no other human can. And we find that we are not acting by our own power, but by God shining through us.
We lie in the lap of immense intelligence, which makes us receivers of its truth and organs of its activity. When we discern justice, when we discern truth, we do nothing of ourselves, but allow a passage to its beams.
Before I scare traditional Swedenborgians with too much talk about self-affirmation, I claim that this understanding of self-love is consistent with Swedenborgian theology. I have already shown that it has a basis in the Bible, in the story of David and Goliath. I will now show that Swedenborg agrees with Emerson’s statements on self-affirmation. We are each of us a unique creation, and we have uses to perform that only we can.
No one man, spirit, or angel is ever just like another, not even as to the face. When I only thought of two being just alike, or equal, angels expressed horror, saying that every one thing is formed from the harmonious concurrence of many things . . . Uses in the heavens are likewise in all variety and diversity and in no case is the use of one exactly similar and the same with the use of another; thus neither is the happiness of one similar and the same with that of another (HH 405)
So I believe it is appropriate to celebrate who we are as individuals, and to love who we are, and to cherish our unique gifts.
I will say a few words, though, about negative self- love. This may be called egotism, selfishness, or, as my fellow minster said,
love of self at the expense of others; self-centeredness; abuse of others for one’s own gain; and even the abuse of power when there is a power differential in the relationship.
There’s a story about inappropriately loving self that comes to mind from my university days. When I was in graduate school, I played bass in a pop-trio. We had myself, a sax and a guitar. We ran into trouble with a bar owner and our continued employment there, and we sent our sax player to negotiate with him. I think that our sax player got the wrong message from the bar owner, or he spun what the bar owner said in his own favor. The sax player, let’s call him Bob, came back to us and said,
OK. He said that I’m the reason that we’re here. He said that my sax is why we’re hired at all. Without me we wouldn’t be here. Other bands have guitars but we’re the only one that has a sax.
Now I’ll admit, having a sax did make us unique. But where would Bob be without the bass and guitar to back him up? I very much doubt that the bar owner would hire Bob all alone to play his sax. Bob was exaggerating his contribution to our band putting himself above the ensemble we were together. I would point to this behavior as self-love in a negative sense. Now I’m not saying that Bob was evil, nor egotistical in other areas of his life. What I am saying is that I think his attitude in this story showed self-love as ego, and not the healthy kind of self-affirmation that makes room for community. But then I went on to exhibit negative self love, myself. I told Bob, “Well if you’re the only reason we’re here, you don’t need me.” And I quit the band on the spot.
I think this short story shows what my fellow minister called, “love of self at the expense of others.” Bob and I were both too pumped up with pride to work for the common good of our band. And the result was that we broke up. I should say that our guitar player, Mike, was above such petty displays of ego. It turned out that he and Bob formed a duo without me that got jobs in bars for a long while after I left the band. But we were all able to bury the hatchet, and whenever I went to a bar they were playing at, they always asked me up to sing a couple songs with them.
But let’s return to healthy self-love. Let’s recall Swedenborg’s words,
No one man, spirit, or angel is ever just like another, not even as to the face. When I only thought of two being just alike, or equal, angels expressed horror, saying that every one thing is formed from the harmonious concurrence of many things . . . Uses in the heavens are likewise in all variety and diversity and in no case is the use of one exactly similar and the same with the use of another; thus neither is the happiness of one similar and the same with that of another (HH 405)
We can affirm our unique gifts and also affirm the unique gifts of others. I think that self-love and neighbor love can happily coexist in us. We are all unique because the universe is perfected by diversity. So Paul says,
The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!” . . . there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it (1 Corinthians 12:21, 26).
That is how I see positive self-love. As Emerson says,
Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation . . . That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him.

PRAYER

Lord, we give you thanks for the gifts and talents you have given us. For each one of us is unique and different, and we each have our own special way of making your wisdom manifest. May we seek you within our hearts, as we do in your holy Word. May we listen to the inspiration that you give to each one of us, so that we may know our call and live truly to it in our lives. May we seek our own way, the way you have given to each one of us; may we walk content on the path that is ours to walk; and may we till the soil that is on our own plot. Give us to rest content in our lives, and in who we are. For you have given us to ourselves to keep in service to you.

Lord, we ask for your peace to descend upon this troubled world. Where there is conflict and war, let there be understanding and peace. Inspire our leaders, and the leaders of other nations to govern their people with compassion and with your Holy Love. Where there is famine and thirst, may good hearted aid come and satisfy the needs of those who want. Where there are natural disasters, may help come from good neighbors and from compassionate governments. Where there is hardship and unemployment, lend your patience and hope.

Lord, send your healing love to all those suffering in body and soul. We ask you to give the gift of health to all in need. And Lord, there are special people in our lives who we wish for you to heal and bring back into a fuller enjoyment of life and our world. We pray for them now. Bring them a full and speedy recovery. Send your healing power to all those in need.

Planting Holiness
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
June 17, 2012

Ezekiel 17:22-24 Mark 4:26-34 Psalm 92

This Sunday’s talk follows the two previous talks. Two Sundays ago, I asserted that we are not wholly bad or good. I said that we should not be surprised to find that we have both in us. Then last Sunday I talked about what to do with the evil we see in ourselves. That brought up the issue of repentance. We should not be afraid to see evil in ourselves, and then to turn from it and begin a new life. It behooves us nothing to see that we may have maladaptive behavior traits from our upbringing, and to do nothing about them. We don’t need to blame ourselves, or our upbringing. We need to play the hand we were dealt, and turn from sin.
This Sunday I have a more pleasant topic. This Sunday we will look at the rebuilding that follows upon repentance. For hand in hand with repentance comes reformation. As we turn from sin, good is implanted in its place. Our lives become more loving, accepting, and heavenly. And we also feel better. Because when the vexations of our soul are removed, peaceful and happy feelings begin to fill our mind and spirit.
Our Bible readings for this morning treat this theme. Isaiah talks about bringing low the high and haughty tree and planting a new tree on a high mountain. Jesus talks about seeds growing into grain, and the mustard seed growing into such a large plant that birds can roost in its branches. These are all images of our new life, as we are reformed by God.
This may sound strange, but we need to be taught what spiritual life is. In fact, we need to be taught everything. Unlike most animals, we are born with essentially no instincts. There is nothing inborn in us about how to live. We first learn how to live through our families. From our upbringing, we are fit–well or ill–to live in the world. This may be called first birth.
The same process happens for our spiritual life. We need to learn about God’s world. Some of us have learned about God’s world as we grow up. But even so, this infantile knowledge of God’s world needs to be enhanced by adult knowledge about the dynamics of heavenly life. So the process of reformation is in many ways a mental process. It is one of learning about spiritual life. Swedenborg tells us,
that a person may be regenerated, it is necessary for this to be done by means of the understanding . . . and it is done through the information which the understanding receives, given first by parents and teachers, afterward from reading the Word, from preaching, books, and conversation. The things which the understanding receives from these sources are called truths; it is the same, therefore, whether reformation is said to be effected by means of the understanding, or by means of the truths which the understanding receives. For truths teach a person in whom and in what he should believe, also what he should do, thus what he should will (TCR 587).
“Truths teach a person in whom and in what he should believe, also what he should do.”
As we learn what to believe in and what we should do to inherit eternal life, we measure our lives against what we are learning. This is the searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves that I mentioned from the 12-step programs. It is also repentance and the beginning of reformation. We are learning what good is, and we are learning what evil is. We will probably see also what the psychologists tell us about the conflicted nature of humanity. Freud talked about three aspects to our personality that are constantly in conflict. There is the Id which seeks pleasures and desires insatiably. Then there is the Super-Ego, which is all the cultural mores that we learn and the principles of propriety. These two are in conflict. Then there is the Ego, which seeks to rationally arrange a truce between these two personality aspects. Freud was influenced by Plato, who had a similar three-part system of the personality. For Plato, the lowest part of our personality was like Freud’s Id. He called it the epithumia, the lowest part of us. In the epithumia are all our desires for sensual pleasures. The next up is the thumos, which is made up of noble emotions like honor and courage. The highest aspect of our soul is the nous, which is all reason and rationality. Freud was also influenced by mystical Judaism which teaches that there are up to 12 aspects to the soul. Swedenborg also describes a three-part model of the soul. The lowest is the natural, which centers on worldly life. Then there is the spiritual, which centers on truth and love for the neighbor. Then the highest is the heavenly, or celestial, which centers on love of God. However we describe the soul, we will see that we humans are in conflict as to what we desire. Our lower nature will want things that our higher nature doesn’t want.
Swedenborg describes this conflicted nature of humanity in terms of inner and outer. As I said above, our minds learn spiritual truths. And we measure our lives against the truths we have learned. Here is where our conflicted nature shows itself. Our outer person wants the things of this world. These are primarily the things that favor our self-interest. But our inner person wants the things of heaven which are for others and for God. So we find Swedenborg saying,
A combat then arises because the internal person has been reformed by means of truths, and from these it sees what is evil and false, and these still are in the external or natural man . . . For it is well that the flesh is opposed to the spirit, and the spirit to the flesh . . . (TCR 596).
But conflict isn’t the final result of all this. As we progress spiritually, we drive out the blockages to the spirit, and let in heavenly light and heat. Good replaces evil or character defects or maladaptive behaviors. We become more and more filled with God’s love and peace, and our lives become happier. Swedenborg describes this in terms of the internal conquering the external
when the internal man conquers, the external is subjugated; and . . . when this is subjugated, lusts are dispersed, and affections of good and truth are implanted in place of them; and these are so arranged that a person may do the goods and truths which he wills and thinks, and may speak them from the heart (TCR 597).
I can think of one area in my life where such a transformation happened to me just how Swedenborg describes it. For some reason, and it doesn’t matter how or why, in my early adult life I was very rebellious. I was going to set the world straight. I would resist customs that I felt were misguided; I would protest against things that weren’t according to my way of thinking; I would correct society when it went wrong; and I would correct you when you were wrong. I wanted to arrange the world according to my understanding of the way things should go. It didn’t occur to me that the world was doing just fine without my help. Well, you can imagine what that did to me. I wasn’t big enough to make the world go my way. And as I corrected people when they were wrong, they tended to shy away from me. The result was that I became frustrated and angry at the world, and lonely.
I learned a truth that transformed my life. I was told the simple sounding truth that I needed to withdraw from the debating society, and to accept the world on the world’s terms. I couldn’t make the world fit into my expectations of it. I learned that God accepts the world as it is, so could I. God is God, not me. God is running the show, not me. What a relief to be unburdened from the task of running everything. That broad and general truth liberated me from my constant fighting. When I came to accept things as they are, the world became a much friendlier place for me to live in. I could listen to other people and accept them and their views even if they differed from my own. If a car whizzed past me on the road, I didn’t need to correct him or her–I could accept that they were going to drive that way, were likely pent-up and had their own demons to wrestle with. I came to see myself as a fellow-citizen in the world, not it’s would-be dictator. I grew comfortable in the world, and in my own skin. I m no longer angry, pent-up, and frustrated. I learned to live and let live. This perspective is summed up very well in a poem by Robert Frost called The Draft Horse:

With a lantern that wouldn’t burn
In too frail a buggy we drove
Behind too heavy a horse
Through a pitch-dark limitless grove.

And a man came out of the trees
And took our horse by the head
And reaching back to his ribs
Deliberately stabbed him dead.

The ponderous beast went down
With a crack of a broken shaft.
And the night drew through the trees
In one long invidious draft.

The most unquestioning pair
That ever accepted fate
And the least disposed to ascribe
Any more than we had to to hate,

We assumed that the man himself
Or someone he had to obey
Wanted us to get down
And walk the rest of the way.

I do still try to make the world a better place. I do not say that all the evils in it are acceptable. But there are appropriate ways to effect change. And one needs to learn to pick one’s battles. I participate in movements and events to effect change in society like the seminar to end racial discrimination, which I MC’s through the Interfaith Centre. And in Florida I lectured in many venues to raise consciousness to the stigma and neglect of persons with mental illnesses. But if my efforts do not succeed in effecting the change I want, I no longer become angry or frustrated. The results are in God’s hands. As we heard in Mark, this morning, “Whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. All by itself the soil produces grain.” My approach to life now is like another line I love from a Frost poem about mowing a hay field, “My long scythe whispered to the ground/And left the hay to make.”
By the power of His Divine love, God is planting a seed that grows into a tree in the soil of our souls. As we root out the weeds that choke out God’s light, fruit trees spring up. New loves replace distorted pleasures. Our own well-being, the welfare of others, and humility before God come to reign in our souls. “And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning.”

PRAYER

Lord, we thank you for the special gift of our fathers. We thank you for the love and care that only fathers can bring to a family. We thank you for the guidance and nurturing from our fathers. Often we take our fathers for granted, and we don’t show them the appreciation they deserve. Today we pause and reflect on all that our fathers have contributed to our lives. We thank you God for our fathers, and we thank our fathers for supporting us in our life’s journey.

Lord, we ask for your peace to descend upon this troubled world. Where there is conflict and war, let there be understanding and peace. Inspire our leaders, and the leaders of other nations to govern their people with compassion and with your Holy Love. Where there is famine and thirst, may good hearted aid come and satisfy the needs of those who want. Where there are natural disasters, may help come from good neighbors and from compassionate governments. Where there is hardship and unemployment, lend your patience and hope.

Lord, send your healing love to all those suffering in body and soul. We ask you to give the gift of health to all in need. And Lord we ask you to send the power of your healing Spirit to all your children. Bring them into the strength and wellness they were created to enjoy. Send your healing power to all those in need.

The Redeemer Will Come to Those Who Repent
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
June 10, 2012

Isaiah 59:12-21 John 4:7-14 Psalm 130

Last Sunday I talked about evil. I said that we should not be surprised to see that there is evil in us. I illustrated this with a poem by Dylan Thomas that said we are not wholly bad or good. I also quoted Swedenborg, who said that we have evil spirits attached to us and also angels attached to us. The reason why we have evil spirits attached to us is because we are born with evil tendencies and some of these become acts. If we did not have the freedom to feel those tendencies, we would not be able to live. Swedenborg tells us the following unpleasant news,
That spirits that communicate with hell are also adjoined to a person, is because a person is born into evils of every kind, and so his first life is only from them; for this reason, unless there were adjoined to a person spirits like himself, he could not live, nor indeed be withdrawn from his evils and be reformed (HH 293).
But I don’t mean to leave us in evil. Today I will be talking about what we do with the evil we see in ourselves. I call our attention to that last line in the citation above, “unless there were adjoined to a person spirits like himself, he could not live, nor indeed be withdrawn from his evils and be reformed.” This line refers to our theme this morning, which is repentance. Isaiah tells us that, “The Redeemer will come to Zion, to those in Jacob who repent of their sins” (59:20). This means that God will purify our souls and come to us when we repent. So the question becomes, “What is repentance?”
Repentance is a process. It is a process by which evil is removed and good is implanted in its place. Last Sunday I cited a passage from Swedenborg that just touched on how this process works. In Heaven and Hell Swedenborg writes,
That a person cannot be reformed unless he has freedom, is because he is born into evils of every kind, which yet must be removed in order that he may be saved; nor can they be removed unless he sees them in himself and acknowledges them, and afterward ceases to will them, and at length holds them in aversion; then they are first removed (HH 598).
That is the process in a nutshell. We first see and acknowledge evils in us. Second, we cease to will them. And third, we hold them in aversion–which means that they become distasteful to us. This short statement is actually the whole process of repentance, reformation, and regeneration, which can be found in True Christian Religion, nos. 510-620. This Sunday we look at repentance, which is the first thing that we do with the evil we see in ourselves.
We can only change ourselves if we see that we need to be changed. Plato said that the unexamined life is not worth living. Repentance requires real self-knowledge. It requires what 12-step programs call a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. When we look at ourselves, we should not be surprised to find areas where we need to change. We may see very unflattering aspects to our personalities. This is normal for every human being. When Jesus says that we need to be born again in order to see God’s kingdom, he doesn’t mean only a few bad eggs. His statement includes all of humanity. So the first step in spiritual growth is to see and admit that we have evil in us. Swedenborg’s short statement on this goes as follows,
The question is, therefore, How ought a person to repent? The reply is, for one to examine himself, know and acknowledge his sins, make supplication to the Lord, and begin a new life (TCR 330).

The process of spiritual rebirth is one of actual character transformation. And this character transformation cannot be done in the twinkling of an eye. Nor can it be done magically by God without our cooperation. In order for us to change, we need to take responsibility for who we are. It is we who need to look at ourselves, acknowledge our sins, ask God for help, and begin a new life. Swedenborg puts this another way. He says that,
when one is considering evil with the mind, and is intending it, he should say to himself, “I am thinking of and intending it; but because it is a sin, I will not do it.” By this means the temptation injected from hell is checked, and its further entrance prevented (TCR 535).
He goes on to add the humorous remark that, “It is wonderful to say that one can find fault with another . . . and yet it is hard for him to say so to himself . . .” (TCR 535).
When we are examining our lives, we will find that we are driven by one ruling love. Swedenborg calls this the reigning love, or the ruling love, or the dominant love. The ruling love is what we love above all things. We enjoy and love many things, but they all come from what we love above all. Swedenborg describes our ruling love as follows,
All the enjoyments that a person has are of his ruling love, for a person feels nothing else enjoyable than what he loves, thus especially that which he loves above all things; whether you say ruling love, or that which is loved above all things, it is the same thing (HH 486).
Our repentance involves identifying our ruling love, and checking it against what we know to be good. What drives us? What do we seek to do? What do we enjoy doing? Are we motivated by heavenly loves? What kinds of loves and enjoyments make up who we are?
Swedenborg seems to use the term “ruling love” in two senses. In one sense, the ruling love is what defines us as an individual. We are what we love above all things.
A person is such as the dominance of his life is; by this he is distinguished from others; according to this his heaven is made if he is good, and his hell is made if he is evil; it is his very will, his selfhood, and his nature; for it is the very being of his life (TCR 399).
And likewise, Swedenborg says,
All the enjoyments that a person has are of his ruling love, . . . Those enjoyments are various; they are as many in general as there are ruling loves, consequently as many as there are men, spirits, and angels, for the ruling love of one is not in every respect like that of another (HH 486).
So to know who we are, we need to know what our ruling love is. We can get an idea of it by examining what kinds of things we enjoy, and to see what their source is. It shouldn’t be that hard to discover what we love above all things. Swedenborg tells us,
What a person loves above all is continually present in his thought, because it is in his will and makes his veriest life. . . . It is in his will like the unseen flow of a river which sweeps along and bears him away even when he is acting in some other way, for it is that which gives him life (TCR 399).
The second sense in which Swedenborg uses the term “ruling love” is even more directly related to our repentance. In this second use of the term “ruling love” there appear to be only four loves that qualify. Of these four ruling loves, two are heavenly and two are hellish. These four loves appear over and over again in Swedenborg’s works. I think that all Christians would agree on the two heavenly loves, since they are Biblical. But I haven’t heard much in other churches about the two hellish ruling loves. The four are as follows,
There are two loves from which, as from their very fountains, all goods and truths arise; and there are two loves from which all evils and falsities arise. The two loves from which all goods and truths are, are love to the Lord and love toward the neighbor; but the two loves from which are all evils and falsities, are the love of self and the love of the world. . . . The two loves from which are all goods and truths, which, as was said, are love to the Lord and love toward the neighbor, make heaven with a person, for they reign in heaven; and because they make heaven with a person, they also make the church with him. The two loves from which are all evils and falsities, which, as was said, are love of self and love of the world, make hell with a person; for they reign in hell; consequently also they destroy the church with him (TCR 399).
So our ultimate spiritual aim is to love God above all and to love our neighbor as ourselves, as Jesus says in Mark 12:28-34. I have said a lot about examining ourselves and rooting out the evils we may see in ourselves. But I also found something remarkable in Swedenborg that makes this whole repentance thing appear easy. So easy that I’m not sure how far to run with it. Swedenborg appears to say that if we do good from a religious motive, we avoid sin and are accepted by God. He does hedge when he talks about this, but in the end he seems to say that those who do good from a religious motive avoid evil. So at first Swedenborg is ambiguous,
All they who do good from religion avoid actual evils; and yet how rarely do they reflect upon the interiors . . . in the belief that they are not in evils because they are in good, yes, that the good covers the evil. But, my friend, the first of charity is to flee from evils (TCR 535).
What does he really mean here? It would appear that Swedenborg is saying both, that doing good from religion saves a person from evil and also that doing good doesn’t cover up evil. But having said this, he comes back to his original statement,
But yet, all who do good from religion, not Christians only but also pagans, are acceptable to the Lord, and after death are adopted; for the Lord said . . . Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of My least brethren, ye have done it unto Me. Come, ye blessed, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world (Matt. 25:31).
Swedenborg also lets us off the hook if we are basically good, even if we do occasionally commit evil. In a surprisingly lenient passage, Swedenborg says,
But good spirits are never punished, though they had done evils in the world, for their evils do not return; and I have learned that their evils were of another kind or nature than those of evil spirits, not being done purposely contrary to the truth, and not from any other evil heart than what they received hereditarily from their parents, into which they were carried from a blind enjoyment when they were in externals separate from internals (HH 509).
I think that the conclusion from all this is what a person intends. If we’re trying to be good from a religious principle, we will find heaven. If we deliberately do evil because it is against God and because we want to break God’s principles, we will find hell. I lean toward the four love model in regard to our ruling love. If we have love for God and the neighbor first in our hearts, we will find heaven because it is a state of love. On our path of good-will we will see evil in ourselves. We will want to avoid it when possible and come to a place where the better light fills our souls. As we advance on our spiritual path, we will continue to carve a place for God in our hearts. Then, as God fills our souls ever more fully with His life and love, like the woman at the well, we will ask for living water, and find it given as “a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (John 4:14).

PRAYER

Dear Lord, you have promised forgiveness of sins and eternal life to all those who repent and turn to you. Help us to trust in this promise as we go about the work of our spiritual growth. Give us the courage we need to look at ourselves fearlessly, so that we may know who we are and where our lives need amendment. Give us strength to shine a light on our feelings and thoughts. Reveal to us our ruling love, that which we love above all things. And lead our spirits to love you above all, and the good life that love for you brings. Lead us to love our neighbor as ourselves, and to wish them well for their own sake. Lord we give you thanks for your mercy and forgiveness. We know that you hold our wellbeing always in your Divine Providence.

Lord, we ask for your peace to descend upon this troubled world. Where there is conflict and war, let there be understanding and peace. Inspire our leaders, and the leaders of other nations to govern their people with compassion and with your Holy Love. Where there is famine and thirst, may good hearted aid come and satisfy the needs of those who want. Where there are natural disasters, may help come from good neighbors and from compassionate governments. Where there is hardship and unemployment, lend your patience and hope.

Lord, send your healing love to all those suffering in body and soul. We ask you to give the gift of health to all in need. Give all the breath and energy they need to fulfil the calling to which they have been summoned. Send your healing power to all those in need.

We Are Not Wholly Bad or Good
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
June 3, 2012

Isaiah 6:1-8 John 3:1-17 Psalm 29

I’d like to open today’s talk with a short poem by Dylan Thomas. It’s from a play called, “Under Milkwood.” The poem is actually a prayer recited by the town’s priest, and it goes like this:
We are not wholly bad or good
Who live our lives under Milkwood
And thou, I know, wilt be the first
To see our best side, not our worst.
This poem captures our theme beautifully. For we are not wholly bad or good. We have traits of both in us. This is why Jesus tells Nichodemus that we must be born again in order to see the kingdom of God. This is an all encompassing statement. Jesus doesn’t say some of us must be born again. His statement includes all of humanity, “Unless a man is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John3:3). We need to be born again of water and the Spirit. This suggests Jesus as the Source of living water, which He told to the woman at the well in Samaria. And it suggests our need to accept God’s Holy Spirit into our hearts in order to receive spiritual life.
We find a similar theme in Isaiah. In our reading this morning we find sin and redemption, or in other words, rebirth. When Isaiah has the vision of God enthroned on high, his first response is consciousness of his own shortcomings. He cries,
Woe to me! I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty (6:5)
God’s response is not one of punishment or anger, but one of redemption and salvation. Isaiah’s mouth is purified with a coal taken from the altar of the temple, and then he is ready to serve God.
We need a healthy humbleness in our spiritual life. We need to remain conscious of our need to be reborn. However unattractive it may sound, we need to be aware of sin in our lives. The Bible teaches us not to hold ourselves above others, not to see ourselves as wholly righteous, and to recognise that we live only from God. Furthermore, it teaches that we receive the power to do and love good from God alone. I think of that passage in Luke. It warns us against self-righteousness. The story begins with the important words,
To some who were confident in their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable” (Luke 18:9).
A Pharisee goes to the temple and says,
God, I thank you that I am not like all other men–robbers, evil-doers, adulterers–or even like this tax collector (18:11).
While the tax collector’s prayer is opposite. He says, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner” (18:13). Jesus says that the tax collector went home justified before God.
I think, too, of the sinful woman who shows her love for Jesus. Luke tells us that she was, “A woman who had lived a sinful life.” She anoints Jesus’ head with oil, cleanses His feet with her tears, wipes them with her hair, kisses them and pours oil on them. The Pharisee challenges Jesus about this. He doesn’t think that Jesus should have let her do this. He says to himself,
If this man a prophet, he would know who is touching Him and what kind of woman she is–that she is a sinner (7:39).
Jesus’ reply is, “Her many sins have been forgiven–for she loved much” (Luke 7:47).
The relationship between sinfulness and righteousness is not black and white. There isn’t a clear line between good and evil as we find them in a person. Like the Dylan Thomas poem, we are not wholly bad or good. A little introspection will show us that we have both in us. Swedenborg teaches that,
With every person there are good spirits and evil spirits; by good spirits a person has conjunction with heaven, and by evil spirits with hell (HH 292).
We have both good and evil spirits around us because we have both qualities in us. We have evil spirits with us because we have evil in us that is part of our life. Not a pretty thought, but an honest one. Swedenborg gives us the following unpleasant news,
That spirits that communicate with hell are also adjoined to a person, is because a person is born into evils of every kind, and so his first life is only from them; for this reason, unless there were adjoined to a person spirits like himself, he could not live, nor indeed be withdrawn from his evils and be reformed. Wherefore he is held in his own life by evil spirits, and is withheld from it by good spirits; by means of both he is also in equilibrium; and because he is in equilibrium, he is in freedom, and can be withdrawn from evils and inclined to good, and good can be implanted in him (HH 293).
Being reborn, as Jesus says we must be, is a process. It is not a magical transformation that happens in the twinkling of an eye. It is a process in which we see, fully acknowledge, and turn away from our character flaws. In fact, as we let God’s love into us, we no longer crave our former lusts. We love heavenly delights instead. Loving God and loving the neighbor become pleasant to us. Aristotle claimed that a person isn’t truly virtuous until he or she enjoys virtue. Swedenborg describes this process succinctly,
That a person cannot be reformed unless he has freedom, is because he is born into evils of every kind, which yet must be removed in order that he may be saved; nor can they be removed unless he sees them in himself and acknowledges them, and afterward ceases to will them, and at length holds them in aversion; then they are first removed (HH 598).
Seeing our character defects, and turning away from them opens us up to receive their opposite. For when we realise that we aren’t the centre of the universe, we first begin to live for God and for our neighbors. When we first realise that the short-lived vanities of the world like fame or wealth or popularity don’t make us truly happy, then we first begin to seek out treasures for ourselves in heaven. Then we come to value honesty, truth, wisdom, and all the varieties of good service we can do. This is how the process of spiritual rebirth happens.
God is continually lifting us upward to Himself all through our lives. Swedenborg says,
There is actually a sphere elevating all to heaven, that proceeds continually from the Lord and fills the whole natural world and the whole spiritual world; it is like a strong current in the ocean, which draws the ship in a hidden way. All those who believe in the Lord and live according to His precepts, enter that sphere or current and are lifted (TCR 652).
Everyone can be lifted up into heavenly love and into God’s kingdom. Swedenborg is very clear on this, “Since all men have been redeemed, all may be regenerated each according to his state” (TCR 579). We all have our own path to God. Since we all have unique personalities, hereditary dispositions, and different upbringings, our regeneration is unique to each one of us. Swedenborg explains,
All may be regenerated, each according to his state; for the simple and the learned are regenerated differently; as are those engaged in different pursuits, and those who fill different offices . . . those who are principled in natural good from their parents, and those who are in evil; those who from their infancy have entered into the vanities of the world, and those who sooner or later have withdrawn from them . . . and this variety, like that of people’s features and dispositions, is infinite; and yet everyone, according to his state may be regenerated and saved (TCR 580).
Meanwhile, we live in between heaven and hell. We should not be surprised to see some character traits in ourselves that are unhealthy and need amendment. We don’t want to put our head in the sand and cower under a supposed spiritual perfection. To do so would prohibit us from the primary means of our salvation. Our sins are removed to the extent that a person, “sees them in himself and acknowledges them, and afterward ceases to will them, and at length holds them in aversion” (HH 598).
Finally, I need to say something about self-esteem in the light of character defects and the theological word “sin.” Nearly every spiritual program has a confessional component to it. And this also includes 12-step programs like AA and Al-Anon. Step 4 in AA and Al-Anon talks about making a rigorous moral inventory of ourselves. In Catholicism, there is confession to a priest and absolution. In our religion, we talk of self-examination and confession privately before God. But when taking these confessional steps, a rigorous moral inventory is a true inventory. It is an assessment of strengths as well as weaknesses, character virtues and character defects. It is not a place for crushing guilt or shame. But an assessment and amendment of life is required in all these systems. “Unless a person is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” It is in our best interest to do so. For instance, in Al-Anon they talk about coping mechanisms that may arise under alcoholic environments that no longer work, or that interfere with more healthy ways of showing and receiving love. Where would a person be if they continued to live out behavior patterns from childhood in adulthood? Where would a person be if they continued to practice unhealthy coping skills when they have the opportunity to live in open, healthy, and loving relationships?
Change is hard. But as they do in other programs, I urge us all to be fearless in our self-appraisal. Ask God to shine a light on our lives and to give us the wisdom to see where and how we can amend our lives. Admitting that we may be able to live a better way does not mean we need to lose self-esteem. In fact, it takes true self-esteem to embrace our shadow. It takes psychological strength to accept who we truly are. For we are not wholly bad or good. Embracing our whole self is the way to true self-esteem, and to spiritual growth and progress.

PRAYER

Lord, we trust in your care and in your providence. We know that you hold us all in your loving embrace. We know that you continually lift us upward to you. We ask that you give us the courage to look at ourselves, to see where we are strong in our faith and where we have weaknesses in our spiritual program. Let us fearlessly see where we have fallen away from your heavenly delights. And give us the power to change and amend our lives so that we may fill our hearts with the good things of your kingdom. As we turn away from sin and darkness, we pray that you inspire all good delights in us. Fit us to receive the heat and light that make up heaven’s environment, and bring us to you and to our eternal home with you.

Lord, we ask for your peace to descend upon this troubled world. Where there is conflict and war, let there be understanding and peace. Inspire our leaders, and the leaders of other nations to govern their people with compassion and with your Holy Love. Where there is famine and thirst, may good hearted aid come and satisfy the needs of those who want. Where there are natural disasters, may help come from good neighbors and from compassionate governments. Where there is hardship and unemployment, lend your patience and hope.

Lord, send your healing love to all those suffering in body and soul. We ask you to give the gift of health to all in need. Heal all of our loved ones and comfort us as we wait with them.

Your smallest or most generous free-will offering would be greatly appreciated for this important work. Cheques may be made out to The Edmonton New Church Society, and mailed to:
Church of the Holy City
9119-128A Avenue
Edmonton, AB T5E 0J6
Canada

And Was Carried Up into Heaven
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
May 20, 2012

Isaiah 25:6-9 Luke 24:44-53 Psalm 47

This Sunday is traditionally called “Ascension Sunday” because on it we celebrate Jesus’ ascension up into heaven. With the ascension, God and Man became one completely and totally. There are some statements in Swedenborg about this process that I don’t fully understand. But as some of you might, I will cite them for you to ponder.
First, and this may not be too hard to understand, God had a Humanity even before His incarnation. It is from God’s Humanity that we, ourselves, have our humanity. So it says in Genesis,
And God said, “Let us make a person in our image, after our likeness” . . . So God created a person in His own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them (Genesis 1:26, 27).
But God’s Humanity was spiritual and made of spiritual substances. It had not reached all the way down into the ultimates of creation, or our natural world. God’s Humanity did reach the lowest level of creation, or this material world, when God took on flesh in the form of Jesus. So John testifies,
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God; all things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made. . . . And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father (John 1:1-3, 14).
So Sw, in a very short sentence says that God always had a Humanity, but God’s Humanity was only in what Sw calls “first principles.”
That God is a Human, and that every angel and spirit is a human from God, is shown in several places in the treatise concerning “Heaven and Hell,” and will be more fully shown in the treatises concerning “Angelic Wisdom.” But God from the beginning was a Human in first principles, though not in ultimates; yet, after He took on the Human in the world, He also became a Human in ultimates (Doctrine of the Lord, n. 36).
So God’s power and His Humanity came down into the ultimates of creation and took on human flesh in Jesus Christ. (As a footnote to this citation, we see that in this book that Swedenborg already had in mind the ideas for the book that became Divine Love and Wisdom.) It may not be too hard to understand that God came down to earth and took on human flesh–believing this doctrine is another matter. But then Swedenborg says something that is hard for me to understand.
Swedenborg goes on to say that Jesus put off everything of the humanity thatHe had from Mary, and put on Divine Humanity in its place. He calls the human that Jesus had from Mary a material human, and the Human that He put on a “substantial” Human. Swedenborg discusses this idea in the light of the Athanasian Creed,
So we read,
He had a Divine essence and a human nature,–the Divine from the Father, and a human nature form the mother; and thence he was equal to the Father as to the Divine, and less than the Father as to the human: also (as the doctrine of the faith which is called the Athanasian Creed teaches) that He did not transmute this human nature from the mother into the Divine essence, nor commix it with it; for the human nature cannot be transmuted into the Divine essence, nor can it be commixed with it. And yet from the creed is our doctrine, that the Divine took on the Human, that is, united itself to it as the soul unites itself to the body, until they were not two, but one person. From this it follows, that He put off the human from the mother, which in itself was like the human of another man, and thus material, and put on the Human from the Father, which in itself was like His Divine, and thus substantial; from which the Human also was made Divine (Doctrine of the Lord n. 35.
I don’t understand what a substantial Humanity is, compared with a material one. I looked at the Latin and didn’t find much helpful. I did find one interesting thing, though. The Latin word Materia has for its root the word Mater. Mater means “mother” and so one meaning for the Latin word Materia would be “maternal.” Another meaning is our word, “matter.” So Jesus’ material body could be both His maternal body, or His material body, or the body made of matter.
The process by which Jesus became one with God the Father was a mutual turning of God to Human and Human to God. God came down into the Human Jesus and the Human Jesus turned toward His Divine origins. So in order for God to fully become one with Jesus, there had to be a mutual movement of Human to God and God to Human. So John 17 reads, “Father glorify thy Son that the Son may glorify thee,” and, “Thou, Father, are in me, and I in thee” (1, 21). God glorifies the Son–which is movement of God to the Human–and the Son glorifies God–which is movement of the Human toward God. Swedenborg comments on this doctrine as follows,
The Lord said these things because the union was reciprocal, of the Divine with the Human, and of the Human with the Divine . . . Thence union was full. It is the same with all union: unless it is reciprocal, it is not full. Such, also, there must be, of the Lord with humans, and of humans with the Lord (Doctrine of the Lord 35).
This brings us to our part in the process of spirituality. As the Humanity of Jesus turned to God, we also need to do our part and turn to God in like fashion. God is always coming to us; God is continually turned to us; God continually wants to enter into relationship with us. We have a part to play in order to make this a reciprocal relationship. We need freely and of our own choice to enter into a relationship with God.
Jesus tells us what our part in this mutual love relationship is. In Luke 24:47 Jesus says, “repentance and forgiveness of sins should be preached in His name to all nations.” Forgiveness is perhaps the sweetest message of Christianity. But forgiveness is not cheap grace, a term that the Christian theologian Bonheoffer used. Forgiveness is not just a free gift. It is the result of a process of character transformation. Forgiveness is the product of repentance.
There is a story from the 1600′s that shows us how some Christians view the gift of forgiveness. The story is called Pilgrim’s Progress. In the Christian display in city hall here in Edmonton, the doctrine I am referring to was written up as representative of Christianity. This doctrine holds that faith is what saves a person. We see it in Pilgrim’s Progress, a story from the 1600′s, and this doctrine hasn’t changed since.
The story Pilgrim’s Progress is a story about salvation told from the English Protestant perspective. Almost every Protestant church subscribes to the doctrine of salvation we find in it. In this story, the main character is a man called Christian. The story begins with Christian described as a man in rags with a heavy pack on his back,
I saw a man clothed with rags . . . a book in his hand, and a great burden on his back.
As he read, he burst out . . . crying “What shall I do, to be saved? I perceive by the book in my hand that I am condemned to die, and after that to come to judgment.”
In this description of Christian we see the old Christian doctrine of original sin. This doctrine teaches that Adam’s sin of disobedience to God is passed down all the way from him to each one of us. We inherit Adam’s original sin at birth. That original sin is the burden on Christian’s back.
But according to Protestant teachings, faith in Jesus will make all our sins fall away. Someone gave me a tract here in Edmonton that said faith in Jesus would cause all my sins to be forgiven–past, present, and future. Our hero Christian holds this belief. After describing what heaven is like, he tells us how to enter heaven. He claims that the doctrine of freely given grace, cheap grace, is Biblical.
The Lord, the Governor of that country, hath recorded that in this book; the substance of which is, If we be truly willing to have it, he will bestow it upon us freely.
The doctrine of free grace is illustrated in the course of the book, when Christian sees the cross of Jesus. Upon gazing at it, the pack instantly drops off his back.
Just as Christian came up with the cross, his burden loosed from his shoulders, and fell from off his back, and began to tumble, and so continued to do, till is came to the mouth of the sepulchre, where it fell in, and I saw it no more.
Then was Christian glad and lightsome, and said, with a merry heart, “He hath given me rest by his sorrow, and life by his death.” Then he stood still awhile to look and wonder; for it was very surprising to him, that the sight of the cross should thus ease him of his burden.
This church sees the process of salvation differently. Notice that in Pilgrim’s Progress, it is Christ’s death that frees Christian of his burden. This form of Christianity sees Christ’s crucifixion as a sacrifice that atones for our sins, just like the animals that the Jews sacrificed in the temple were thought to atone for their sins. But in the light of our Bible reading, we see things differently. It is not Christ’s death that saves us. Rather it is the power of the risen and glorified Christ that gives us the ability to repent and change our lives. It is when Christ rises from the dead that repentance and forgiveness is preached to all the nations.
Our salvation is a love relationship between God and us. While God comes to us, we need to open our hearts and let Him in. We need to respond to God’s invitation to the wedding feast. We do this by actively turning away from the things that would come between us and God. It is just like our relations with friends and lovers here on earth. Sometimes we have to hold our tongue in order to keep our relationship positive. Sometimes we need to sacrifice our own wants to rejoice in the delights our friends have. Sometimes we need to put our own needs second in order to help a friend through a difficult time. In short, sometimes we need to let go of self-interest in order to live in relationship with our friends and lovers.
It is the same with God. We need to put God first, self second. Just as we sacrifice our own ego-driven wants in order to stay in relationship with humans, so we need to put selfishness aside in order to find a loving relationship with God. This is what repentance means. But repentance is a subject for a sermon in and of itself. All we need to know today is that forgiveness is the product of repentance. Forgiveness is not cheap grace. And relationship with God is not with Jesus in agony on the cross. Relationship with God is the blessing of the risen and glorified Lord. Jesus said to his disciples,
“Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be preached in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.” . . . Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and lifting up his hands he blessed them. While he blessed them, he parted from them and was carried up into heaven. And they returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and were continually in the temple blessing God (Luke 24: 46-47, 50-53).

A Mother and the Child She Has Borne
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
May 13, 2012

Isaiah 49:8-18 Luke 2:41-51 Psalm 139

Today we celebrate the special love that mothers have for their children, and we have for our mothers. There is a bond between mother and child that is perhaps the strongest bond of love humanity knows. Our actual body partakes of our mothers’ body as we are being formed in her womb. The Psalmist writes, “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb” (Psalm 139:13). In the miracle of birth, God’s creation is mirrored in the formation of each human in the body of our mother. It is no doubt this intimate and indeed physical connection that mothers have with their children that generates the special love of mothers for their children.
There are not many Bible passages that mention mothers–except in passing. But those in which mothers have significant role are extremely instructive. When God wants to tell us about His boundless love for humanity, He uses the image of mothers and their children–not the image of fathers. In Isaiah, God says, ”
Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne?
Though she may forget, I will not forget you! (Isaiah 49:15)
This passage uses hyperbole. No mother can forget her baby. So great is God’s love, even if a mother can forget her baby–which she can never do–God will not forget us. This is the poetic way that Isaiah speaks of God’s infinite love. And the image He uses is the closest thing we can know on earth of God’s love–that love of a mother and her children.
And it is a mother’s love that we see illustrated so well in our story from Luke. On the return home from Passover in Jerusalem, Mary, Joseph, and their friends and family don’t notice at first that Jesus has remained back at the temple. We can imagine a grand company of relatives and close friends who have celebrated this most holy festival together. It would be like a Christmas dinner we might celebrate with our extended family and maybe visits to friends’ homes. But we celebrate Christmas dinners indoors, while for Mary and Joseph, the festival involved a pilgrimage to the sacred city of Jerusalem. It is not implausible that a child could be missed as the friends, relatives and family begin to depart for home in a grand caravan. Well the family only travels a day before they notice that Jesus is missing. We are told that they looked high and low for Jesus for three days in Jerusalem before they find Him in the temple! And we see the most concern and anxiety Jesus expressed by His mother. It is Mary who says,
Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you (Luke 2:48).
This short story tells us a lot. It tells us, first of all, that it was Jesus’ mother who was raising Jesus. She it was, who talks to the young Jesus. She it was who oversaw Jesus’ early development. It was His mother who primarily raised Jesus.
This story tells us, too, that Mary could guide or even shall I say discipline the young Jesus? Was Mary giving Jesus a mild scolding? How are we to read the words, “Why have you treated us this way? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you.” She was no doubt expressing her love and concern for Jesus, but Luke adds the following words later in the story, “Then he went down to Nazareth with them and was obedient to them” (2:51). If Mary wasn’t scolding Jesus, she was teaching Him about concern for others, especially His parents. Was she teaching Him the respect and manners society would expect of Him?
But there is more still to the story. After Mary’s exclamation to Jesus, Jesus responds,
“Why were you searching for me? Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?” We are told that the friends and family of Jesus didn’t understand what He was saying. All except Mary. Luke tells us that, “His mother treasured all these things in her heart.” Jesus’ mother pondered what Jesus said, and meditated on who her son was and would grow up to be. This is the second time that Luke tells us Mary pondered who and what Jesus was and would be. Earlier, after Gabriel announces to Mary that her child will be the Son of God, after the star stops over the manger, and after the shepherds come to the cradle telling tales of a vision of angels, after all this, Luke tells us that “Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart” (Luke 2:19). It is often our mothers who know our dispositions best, who meditate on the kind of person we are, and who guide us as we grow up into our own persons. It is often our mothers who meditate on our talents and nurture our development. These are some of the things Mary pondered, when Jesus said He “must be in His Father’s house.” This is what Mary pondered after the miracles and wonders of Jesus’ birth. Mary and every mother meditates and reflects on her child’s character and guides his or her development.
And it was Mary, Jesus’ mother, who initiated His first recorded miracle. Mary had been raising Jesus. She had been reflecting on who He was. She had observed His nature. She knew Him best, and knew what He could do. Jesus and His disciples were at a wedding feast in Canaan. The host ran out of wine. And it was Mary who knew what Jesus could do to remedy the situation. She goes to Jesus and tells Him, “They have no more wine.” There is a note of humor in this passage, I think, because Jesus appears to try to get out of it. He says, “Dear Woman, what have you to do with me? My hour has not yet come.” Mary apparently ignores this, and being a bit pushy tells the servants, “Do whatever He tells you” (John 2:4-6). So despite Jesus’ protestations, his mother tells Him to go ahead and help out, anyway. This is the occasion when Jesus turns the water into wine, the first miracle credited to Him. And it was His mother who got Him to do it when He apparently didn’t want to. His mother knew Jesus could help out the host, and she urged her Son to do so.
Swedenborg sees mothers as symbolic of the church. For just as a mother nurtures us, raises us, and teaches us right from wrong, so does the church in a spiritual way. This is why we have in our hymnal the song, “O Mother, Dear, Jerusalem.” Learning right from wrong, and learning all about God and His kingdom can all be called truths. These truths are what we learn in church, and so we can say the function of the church is to teach us truths. Truths, then, are what the church is spiritually made of. So the church is truth in an organized form. The church stands for truth, and symbolizes truth when we read about it in the Bible as Jerusalem, or the temple. When we are doing what we know to be true, we are in heaven. For heaven is not a place–it is a state of mind. So heaven also is made of divine truth, and as a place of truth, Heaven is symbolized by mothers. And further, since all Swedenborg’s symbols end up representing God, We have the remarkable symbolism of mothers with the Lord Himself as to Divine Truth. So Swedenborg writes of
the signification of mothers, as truth, and in the supreme sense the Lord as to Divine truth, thus His kingdom, since Divine truth which proceeds from the Lord makes heaven (AC 8897).
In fact, families signify our spirituality and in the highest sense God’s nature. So some of the symbols go as follows: fathers symbolize good and mothers truth. Children and more distant relatives symbolize loves and knowledges in our lower or more external selves. God is both Father and Mother, as divine love and divine wisdom, just as heaven is the union of love and wisdom, or good and truth. And when we have God in us, we are images of God’s nature. So we too, are that marriage of love and wisdom, good and truth.
So it is very clear that for Swedenborg, Motherly imagery is just as appropriate for God as is Fatherly imagery. Christianity is largely dominated by Father imagery–or at least Protestant Christianity is dominated by Father imagery. In Catholicism, Mary has a much more powerful role.
In today’s society, families are made up of various relations. There are adoptions, step-parenting, live-in lovers, and single parent families. In many families we don’t have both father and mother. This means most often that single parent families are single mother families. The burden of work, housekeeping, and raising children all being born by the single mother is tremendous. Society doesn’t seem to care about aid for single mothers, and they are most often left to fend for themselves–often living near or below the poverty line. Even establishing day care for working mothers was a battle hard fought, and still isn’t always available. And the cost of paying day care facilities is again born by the single working mother.
But this is a price that most mothers are willing to pay for the child they love so dearly–since that is the only way to uphold the bond of love between them. The love of mother and child is perhaps the closes image we have for God’s love for us. Recall Isaiah’s words,
Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne?
Though she may forget, I will not forget you! (Isaiah 49:15)
God wants to compare Himself to a mother when talking about Divine love. Recall Mary’s solicitude for Jesus, pondering His nature and guiding Him in the manners of home, family, and society. Given all that we have seen from the Bible this morning, I will make the controversial statement that when we pray “Our Father” we may want to add or think “Who loves us as our mother.”