Church of the Holy City

The Mountain Top
Rev, Dr. David J. Fekete
March 6, 2011

Exodus 24:12-18 Matthew 17:1-9 Psalm 2

I can think of three story elements from our Bible readings for this morning. They are all interrelated with one another. First, there is the mountain. Moses ascends Mount Sinai, and Jesus ascends a high mountain whose name we are not told. Then there is the presence of God on the mountain top. In Exodus, the glory of the Lord settles on the mountain and appears like a consuming fire. In Matthew, the glory of God shines through Jesus Himself as His face beams as bright as the sun and His clothes become as white as light. Furthermore, the same bright cloud of God’s glory that settled on Mount Sinai settles on the mountain where Jesus, Peter, James, and John are. We hear God’s voice saying that Jesus is His beloved Son with whom He is well pleased. The third story element is God’s laws and commands. God calls to Moses to come up onto the mountain top in order to receive God’s law and commands. In Matthew, Moses and Elijah appear on either side of Jesus, as representatives of the law and the prophets. They appear because Jesus is the human embodiment of the law of God, or in other words, the Word made flesh. Swedenborg tells us that Jesus Christ is Divine truth of the Word in human form.
It’s no accident that these story elements all surround a mountain. God’s glory appears to Moses and Jesus on the mountain top. Why would Moses and Jesus need to go up to a mountain top in order to experience this revelation of God? We don’t need Swedenborg’s system of correspondences in order to understand the meaning of mountains for the Biblical writers. Mountains are high places. Some of the very names for God involve mountains, or high places. In Genesis, God is often called El Shaddai which means, “The Mountain One.” Another name for God in Genesis is El Elyon, which means “God Most High.” And El Elyon was worshipped on none other than the mountain on which Jerusalem was built.
It’s not as if God lives on mountains. God is actually present everywhere. It would be too literal a reading of these stories to think of God as actually living on mountains. Rather, it is the symbolism of mountain tops that gives the power of these stories. We talk of God as being above. We pray for God to send us help from on high. As high places, above the ordinary places in the world, mountains were associated by the ancients as holy places and the dwelling of God. So when God appeared to the Biblical writers, He appears on mountain tops. This mountain revelation is a powerful symbol in the Bible. It gives power to our ideas about God when we envision the mountain covered with the glory of God.
In ordinary language we use reference to heights to describe important events in our lives. When we have particularly strong feelings of connection with God we talk about being on a spiritual high. On the natural level, even when we are very happy, we say we are feeling high. There was a psychologist named Abraham Maslow who talked about rare and exceptional human experiences as Peak Experiences. The Wikipedia–thank God for that wonderful research tool–defines just what these peak experiences are. It says,
Peak experiences are described by Maslow as especially joyous and exciting moments in life, involving sudden feelings of intense happiness and well-being, wonder and awe, and possibly also involving an awareness of transcendental unity or knowledge of higher truth (as though perceiving the world from an altered, and often vastly profound and awe-inspiring perspective).
Maslow describes peak experiences in a book entitled, Religions, Values, and Peak Experiences. In its very title, one can see that Maslow is considering the realm of religions when he talks about peak experiences. Notice, too, that these special moments are called peak experiences, drawing language from mountain peaks.
I like Maslow’s term, but it would be best to leave his psychology behind as we proceed to talk about spiritual peak experiences. In our spiritual life, we will find times when it seems that God is particularly close to us. There are times when we feel the presence of God more strongly than at other times. Sometimes these peak experiences happen when we are in special natural environments on earth. I have found these experiences at our various church camps. But it doesn’t have to be limited to these spiritual surroundings. I can recall one special peak experience I had when I was in my late teens. I was just standing on the front lawn of my parents’ house. I looked at the sun, and thought about God as the spiritual sun, and thought about my church friends, and then felt this wonderful closeness of God. I knew in that moment that there was a God. I had felt Him in my heart with as much certainty as if I had touched Him with my hand. Since then I have never doubted the existence of God, although my relationship with God has been a bumpy road.
Our journey of spiritual growth is not an even line of progression. It is not even a straight, uphill pathway. Rather as we grow and mature spiritually, we will have peaks and valleys. We will have experiences of wonderful union with God. and then we will come down from the mountain to the world of ordinary experience. Both Moses and Jesus came down from their mountains. Jesus’ complexion turned back to normal and didn’t shine with the brilliance of the sun. We can treasure our peak experiences of God, but acknowledge that we won’t necessarily stay there. I remember how sad and disappointed I used to be when I would leave Almont, and return to my ordinary life in school and at home. I see this feeling, too, when I work at youth retreats and Paulhaven Camp when the spiritual high that the teens feel together in God’s name must be left behind for life back at home and away from camp. But these peak experiences of the nearness of God still remain with us, although pushed back into the recesses of our unconscious minds. When Moses came down from the mountain, where he met God, he carried with him the tablets of stone on which God’s law was written. Swedenborg might call this part of our personality the inner self. There will be moments when this inner self shines brilliantly through our personality and then moments when it is clouded over with the darkness of life in this world.
There is also the issue of the lawgiver that we can associate with these peak experiences. The Wikipedia says that the peak experiences may also involve “an awareness of transcendental unity or knowledge of higher truth.” The is the lawgiver of our Biblical stories. This is the law and commands that God gave to Moses on Mount Sinai. And this is the appearance of Moses and Elijah in the mountain top experience of Jesus, Peter, James, and John. During a peak experience, our minds may find resolution of a problem, a new truth may intuitively come to us, or we may find how a particular truth we memorized actually works in real life. This relationship with truth may help create the peak experience itself. We may come into that higher feeling of God’s presence by contemplating a Bible passage, or a teaching from a theologian. I once asked the teens at Paulhaven Camp if they thought that the camp would still have that magical feeling if we took away chapel, classes, and confirmation class. They all said, “No, it wouldn’t be the same.” So chapel and religious instruction helped to create that peak experience that they associated with Paulhaven.
I think that in a mountain top experience, God’s presence is intimately connected to truth. We show our love for God by living according to His principles. Jesus says,
If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him (John 14:23).
We see from Jesus’ words that love to God means doing what Jesus teaches. So conjunction with God depends on learning what Jesus teaches and then doing what Jesus teaches. Love of God is not just a feeling. In our society, we think of love as a feeling. But love is actually an ongoing relationship. It means how we are acting in relationship to our beloved. So loving God is actually a relationship in which we are doing Godly things. We can’t do Godly things unless we know what they are. So Swedenborg writes,
Love to the Lord is nothing else than committing to life the precepts of the Word, the sum of which is to flee from evils because they are hellish and devilish, and to do good because it is heavenly and Divine (DLW 237).
Only by the lawgivers Moses and Elijah can we find the glory of God that enveloped the holy mountains in our Bible stories. There is an intimate relationship between God’s laws and God’s presence. We love God when we do what God asks of us. Only by learning God’s law from the Bible and applying what we learn to our lives can we open ourselves to God’s presence. But as we grow spiritually, as we learn truths intuitively or by conscious study, and as we flee evil and do good, more and more we feel God’s presence. We will be transported to the mountain top. We will see the glory of God and bring that glory into our ordinary lives. We can expect to go up and down the mountain as we travel along this pathway in life. By going up the mountain to experience God’s nearness, we will have God in our hearts to shine through our lives when we go down the mountain. Our peak experiences will elevate the plane on which we live in ordinary life. As we progress spiritually, our peak experiences will grow higher, our comprehension of truth will grow more profound, and our lives will become more and more characterized by a love of doing good. Then God will come to us and make His home with us forever.

To Truly Call Him, “Lord, Lord”
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
February 27, 2011

Deuteronomy 11:18-21, 26-28 Matthew 7:21-29 Psalm 31

Jesus tells us that not everyone who calls Him, “Lord, Lord” will enter His kingdom. Not even those who perform miracles of healing and who proclaim their faith in prophesy, are sure of entering His kingdom. Jesus tells us that only the person who, “hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who builds his house upon a rock.” In Swedenborg’s system of correspondences, a rock signifies truth. And only a person whose life is grounded in spiritual truth can withstand the temptations and allurements of selfishness and the world’s seductions. It is not enough to call out, “Lord, Lord.” By this I understand those outward forms of religion such as attending church, reading the Bible, saying prayers, and even those who may know and study religions. These outward forms of religion are all good. And they can be very helpful in developing a spiritual life. But to truly be a spiritual person, it is not enough to only know about religions. It is not enough to only attend church. It is not enough to only confess being a Christian. No, to be a truly devout person, one needs to hear Christ’s words and apply them to life.
We hear a similar message in our Deuteronomy reading for this morning. The teachings in Deuteronomy are the same as those Jesus gives us. In Deuteronomy 11:18 we read, “Fix these words of mine on your hearts and minds.” God’s laws are to be internalized; they are not just to be known. No, Deuteronomy tells us to fix God’s commands on our hearts. This means that they are to be so intimately internalized that they are in our hearts, and hence all our thoughts and deeds. Since God’s laws are in our hearts, then they will be with us, as Deuteronomy says, “when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down, and when you get up” (11:19). That pretty much covers all of our lives.
What Jesus and Deuteronomy are talking about are spiritual truths. The rock on which the wise man built his house symbolizes building a life that is centered around spiritual truth. There are many places one may turn to in seeking spiritual truth, but I believe that church is one very important source of spiritual truth. Churches represent faith traditions. And I don’t mean just our denomination. Most churches, be they of the different Christian denominations, or of world religions such as Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, or Taoism to name a few, most churches are based around a tradition that has grown up over years of practice and reflection.
There are good things and bad things about a tradition. The good thing about a tradition is that it collects the wisdom of spiritual masters over a long period of time. In this respect, we can benefit from those who have gone before us. We can learn from wisdom that has been added to over time by those who have experienced spirituality in its depths and have struggled with spirituality in their own souls. We can benefit from those who have had the time to study spiritual texts in depth and who have shared the results of their study. Spiritual traditions can light our way as a lantern in the night.
The bad things about a tradition stem from the very things that make them good. Sometimes the words of humans are added to the words of sacred texts in such a way as to obscure the purity of the sacred texts. Sometimes human interpretations can cover over the sacred texts of a tradition. In a tradition, it is possible for human words to replace God’s Word. Then, the teachings of humans can mislead followers of a tradition, or distort God’s true message.
But I still affirm the need for a tradition. Some seekers today make up a brand of spirituality a la carte. By that, I mean they may pick something from Buddhism that they like, perhaps some Sufi poetry, a smattering of Taoism, and maybe the words of Jesus. While I am open minded about other wisdom traditions, there is a problem with this approach to spirituality. Spirituality a la carte can end up merely reinforcing the self. It is the self that chooses what the individual will take or reject. This is a problem, since a good deal of spirituality is the negation of self. Spirituality has as its goal the transformation of the individual from a self-oriented life to a God-oriented life. Spirituality also teaches the subordination of self to service to others. Spirituality levels pride and teaches humility. So without a faith tradition, one can end up only reinforcing the self that spirituality seeks to moderate. In many places, Swedenborg talks about, “How contrary to heavenly love and how filthy is the love of self” (AC 2040). On the other hand, if a person is firmly committed to a faith tradition, I do believe that faith can be expanded by reference to other great works of spirituality.
Spirituality teaches us to put God first, and the neighbor on equal footing with ourself. This teaching is not what society tells us. Society teaches us to seek self-affirmation and to get ahead at all costs–even if that means getting ahead by stepping on the heads of our neighbors. Society teaches us to seek social status and to get ourselves in a position to feel superior to others. Everwhere in shopping malls we are presented with images of the ideal person. Clothing stores show us what the perfect body and well-dressed individual should look like. They also show us what the ideal business person should dress like. Usually this means buying expensive designer clothes. We are shown pictured of health enthusiasts with sculpted abs. Posters and movies show boney models or actresses with body types that I consider unhealthy. Where can a person turn to find an alternative image from these icons? Where else but to a faith tradition?
Spiritual practice requires effort. We need to ask God into our lives, and we need to act in such a way that we admin the divine rays into our lives. I found some very provocative passages about this in Swedenborg. The rock on which the wise man builds his house signifies truth. And it is through truths that we learn what is good and what is evil. When we apply truth to our lives, we open ourselves to God’s love. The Swedenborg passages I found suggest that God is always there–but we can block God’s inflowing life and love. We use truth to get evils out of the way that stand between God and us. Swedenborg tells us that
There are loves of three kinds that constitute the heavenly things of the Lord’s kingdom; these are marriage love, love for infants, and the love for society or mutual love. . . . Whatever covers up, obstructs, and defiles these loves [must be removed] (AC 2040).
Note the language that is used here. We must remove whatever, “covers up, obstructs, and defiles.” This means to me that we have those heavenly loves in us already, and the problem comes when we block these loves. Swedenborg makes this even more clear. He writes,
so far as the evils of the lusts, and the falsities from them, are removed, the person is purified; and so far heavenly love can appear” (AC 2040).
So heavenly love appears when we remove what Swedenborg calls evils and falsities. Apparently, these things cover over heavenly loves that are in us. When we purify ourselves by removing those lusts, then heavenly love appears–there is nothing blocking it anymore.
It is truth that teaches us what is blocking the heavenly love that is in our soul. This is what is signified by the stone on which the wise man built his house. The stone is that truth that we can use to purify ourselves from the lusts of selfishness and worldliness. Swedenborg writes, “without knowledges of truth there is no purification. . . . a stone signifies truths” (AC 2040). As the wise man built his house on the rock, we need to form our lives upon truths. It seems to me that the church is the most fruitful place to learn spiritual truths. In a church one has the power of tradition–both living and historical. We are a community, and we can all benefit from the spiritual experiences of each other, as we sojourn in this life. Then there is the history of wisdom that church traditions provide. Now I am well aware that there is bad religion out there that drives thinking people away from the church. and I am well aware that we can find God outside the church. We can access wisdom traditions on our own. But I think that when we seek the truths that make a strong foundation for our house of life, the church is an invaluable resource. The people in it, and the people in its past are a solid support for our spiritual development.

The Lord Comforts His People
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
February 20, 2011

Isaiah 49:8-16 Matthew 6:24-34 Psalms 130, 131

One of the verses from this morning’s Psalms is, “Like a weaned child I am content.” Contentment with the Lord’s guidance and providence is also the message we heard from Matthew 6. With beautiful nature imagery, Matthew tells us not to worry. God knows what we need and will provide. We hear this teaching also in our Isaiah reading for this morning, “For the LORD comforts his people.”
The Isaiah reading has a number of beautiful images about how God will restore the land and His people. We hear about feeding beside the roads, pasture on barren hills, mountains being leveled into roads, no more hunger or thirst. We are told that the Lord will never forget us. Isaiah asks, “Can a mother forget the baby at her breast?” The Prophet uses hyperbole. He says that even if a mother can forget her baby–which we know can never happen–God will never forget His people.
But this isn’t the whole story. In this morning’s Psalms, we hear a different voice. We hear the voice of waiting. The Psalmist is waiting for God’s redemption:
I wait for the LORD, my whole being waits,
and in his word I put my hope.
I wait for the Lord
more than watchmen wait for the morning,
more than watchmen wait for the morning.
Israel, put your hope in the LORD,
for with the LORD is unfailing love (Psalm 130: 5-7).
When I hear these words, I hear a man who is waiting for the promises we heard in Isaiah and in Matthew. The Psalmist says, “I wait for the LORD.” Then for emphasis, he repeats an appeal to God, “I wait for the LORD more than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning.” When I hear these words, I hear a voice saying, “Where is that restored land in which I will no longer hunger or thirst?” I hear a voice saying, “I am seeking God’s kingdom, why are not all those other worldly things being given to me?” Isaiah and Matthew promise that God will take care of us, and so does the Psalm. Psalm 130 says, “Israel, put your hope in the LORD, for with the LORD is unfailing love.”
So we have two messages from this morning’s readings. We are told to put our hope in God and not worry. But we are also told that this may mean waiting for the good things we are promised.
I think that we can all relate to the Psalmist. In this difficult economy, we may all feel want and privation. We may only just barely make ends meet–or maybe not even that. While the Psalmist seems to keep up his hope as he waits on God, I suspect that we may sometimes fall into despair. We may ask, “How can Jesus tell us not to worry?” “How can Jesus tell us that our heavenly Father will take care of us?”
There are a few comments I can say about this. One comment is about how God gives us the Kingdom. The other is about how we can live while we are waiting.
First of all we need to listen to the words of Isaiah. The passage we heard begins with these words, “In the time of my favor I will answer you.” I read this line to mean that God will hear our prayers and attend to our needs in His time, not our time. We have a tendency to want things right now. We want things to come to us in the moment we ask for them. But Isaiah tells us that the things we want come to us in the time of God’s favor. Good things come to us when it is good for us to have them. Just reflect on some of those celebrities we hear about. Money and fame come to them–sometimes at a young age. What more could we want than money and fame? Yet we see lives ruined by this money and fame granted too early in life. We hear about celebrity rehab and drug abuse. We hear about child custody battles with the courts. And it doesn’t have to be all that early in life. Look at Charlie Sheen. In his mature years his life is still consumed with drug abuse and prostitutes. He has been in and out of rehab countless times and just doesn’t seem to get it. He stars in a comedy show, and the irony is that his own life is a comedy. A comedy or a tragedy. Living a simple life with a modest income may not be all that bad after all.
This brings us to the Matthew passage. Jesus tells us not to worry. He says that the birds are fed by God, and that we are more important than birds. God will take care of us. He tells us not to worry about clothing, the lilies of the field are clothed in more beautiful garb than was King Solomon himself. One thing I take from that passage is how Jesus is talking about worrying about the future. “What shall we eat? What shall we drink? What shall we wear?” Then as a summary, Jesus tells us not to worry about tomorrow:
Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will take care of itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
Eckhart Tolle has gotten a lot of millage out of living in the present. But we see from Matthew that Jesus spoke these words way before Tolle. Tolle just reminds us of Jesus’ eternal truths.
I worry a lot, and I don’t think I’m alone in this. But when I think about it, most of my worrying is about the future. It’s about something I want that I don’t have yet, or something I have that I’m afraid of losing. Will I have enough money to get through the week and buy all the needs and treats I want? How much money is left in my checking account and how much will I be spending? These questions rise up in my mind especially when I have free time to sit and think. This often means sit and worry. This worry is about what I don’t have and what I want. And notice that this worry is all about the future.
Then there are those times when I worry about losing something good I have. Let me give you one extreme example of this. Since I came to Edmonton, I’ve been trying to learn how to ski. I’ve never skied before in my life. Carol loves to ski and got me out on the ski hill. I took a lesson and learned how to do the snow plow. But even though I could snow plow my way down the ski hill, it wasn’t really fun for me. I was terrified. It’s so easy to lose control that it felt more like work for me. So skiing for me was a combination of work and fear. I didn’t really see the fun in it. But I did believe that it could be fun. I would talk with ski enthusiasts and they all assured me that the time of fear would go away eventually and I would find fun in it. Well, I’m happy to say that that did happen for me. I had a breakthrough! It just happened last time I went out skiing. I took another lesson and moved beyond the snow plow. I learned how to stand, how to hold my arms, and how to keep up enough speed to make turns correctly. Make no mistake, when I began this lesson I was terrified. But the fear went away and I got that control the instructor was trying to teach me. As soon as the lesson was over, I forgot to apply half or what he told me. But I remembered what he said, and I knew what I was supposed to do. After a few runs down the hill, I started having a ball. I was actually having fun skiing. In fact it was a riot! I went to visit Carol after I finished for the day all excited to tell her about how much fun I found skiing–finally! But later that night, would you believe what my mind did to me? I started worrying. You just wouldn’t believe what I worried about. I worried that I would forget how to do what I was doing, and that I would lose that feeling of fun next time I went skiing. I actually worried that I wouldn’t have fun next time I went skiing. Now this is pretty ridiculous. But I think it illustrates an important point. This was a fear of losing something I had. And notice in this case too, I was worrying about the future.
I do believe that God will provide. Jesus is telling us that our lives will be more content if we just keep our minds on today. The future is in God’s hands, not our hands. Our task is to do the best we can in the present. Then we need to let go of consequences. The consequences of our actions are in God’s hands. And when we want control over consequences, we are going to end up worrying and making ourselves miserable. Each day has enough trouble of its own. Let’s not burden our minds with worrying about what is coming down the road.
Finally, all these remarks can be tied together with a line from Isaiah. In Isaiah, the Lord tells us, “He who has compassion on them will guide them and lead them to springs of water.” If we want to be content with our lives, we need to let God guide us. If we try to make things happen the way we think they should go, we will become frustrated and worrisome. When we worry about the future; when we want things to come out the way we want them to come out; when we are afraid to lose something we think we should have; we are not open to God’s guidance. We are taking the world into our own hands. And I assure you, our hands are not big enough to hold the world in them. Trust that God is leading us to springs of water is the key to contentment. This we heard in the Psalm today. “In his word I put my hope.” When the future looks grim, we need all the more to hope that God will provide. When we worry about the future, we need to remember that the future is in God’s hands. We will only find true contentment when we rest in God’s guidance. God will guide us to springs of water. But God will guide us in the time of His favor. When we are in periods of difficulty, we need to repeat the words of the Psalmist: “I wait for the LORD, my whole being waits, and in his word I put my hope.”

Divine and Human Love
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
February 13, 2011

Genesis 29:14-20 John 15:9-17 Psalm 33

With Valentine’s Day coming up, it seems fitting to reflect on the subject of love. We heard Bible stories that treat three forms of love. In the Gospel of John, we heard two forms of love. We heard of Jesus’ love for humanity, and we heard the injunction for us to love each other, which can be called brotherly love. Then in a beautiful love story in Genesis reading, we heard about the love between Jacob and Rachel. Jacob served Laban seven years to earn Rachel’s hand in marriage. And we are told that it seemed like only a few days so great was his love for her. When we experience love, we are often transported out of the realm of time and space. In all three forms of love, divine, brotherly, and romantic, time has no meaning as we are transported into eternity by the experience of love.
I think of these three forms of love as a triangle–with divine love at one corner, brotherly love at another, and romantic love at the third angle. I like the triangle image because these three loves are interconnected. Divine love is the highest form of love, and without it we would not have the other two. All the holy loves we know are from God’s unbounded love flowing into us. Jesus tells us, “Apart from me you can do nothing.” We need to receive God’s love and wisdom in order to do good and to be filled with the loves for each other and for our partners. Jesus tells us,
No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me (John 5, 4).
Our love for God must come first. Jesus tells us to
Love the Lord with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength (Mark 12:30).
We love God by learning His ways and then by incorporating His precepts into our lives. Only when we apply God’s loving laws to our lives are we able to practice the other two loves. For without the love that flows in from God, we are not able to love our brothers and sisters, or our partners.
While love for God is the highest form of love, I put brotherly love and romantic love on a similar level. Some might say that universal love for the whole human race is a higher form of love than romantic love, but I disagree. The experience of being in love with one special person is just as divine as is the universal love for each other. In fact, there are suggestions in Swedenborg that in marriage love couples feel the highest blessings of heavenly joy. Swedenborg writes of this love,
The states of this love are innocence, peace, tranquility, inmost friendship, entire confidence, and mutual desire of heart and mind to do each other every good; and from all these come blessedness, happiness, joy, pleasure–and from the eternal fruition of these, heavenly joy.
Swedenborg is in love with repeating all these adjectives about marriage love as he explains why God instituted marriage love.
He from the inmosts infused into persons marriage love, into which He might gather all the blessedness, happiness, joys, and pleasures that together with life proceed and flow in only from Divine Love through His Divine Wisdom . . . Innocence, peace, tranquility, inmost friendship, entire confidence, and mutual desire of mind and heart to do each other every good are mentioned–because innocence and peace are of the soul, tranquility is of the mind, inmost friendship is of the bosom, entire confidence is of the heart, and mutual desire of mind and heart to do each other every good is of the body from these (CL 180).
I remember a debate I had with someone about this. He vehemently disagreed with my views about marriage love, or romantic love. His opposition was because in marriage love we want our love to be reciprocated. He thought that because we wanted to beloved back by our partner, we were not loving purely. He thought that we should love unconditionally, without any thought of being loved in return. However, my position, and the position of Swedenborg, is that all love wants to be loved in return. Not only to be loved in return, but to be conjoined with those we love. This is equally true of brotherly love or of marriage love. Swedenborg writes of the three essentials of love in his work True Christian Religion, “The essence of love is to love others outside of itself, to desire to be one with them, and to make them happy from itself” TCR 43). I think that loving someone outside ourself is pretty clear. And when we look at parents, for example, we see how much love wants to make their children as happy as they can. This is equally true of marriage love and of brotherly love. But what about wanting to be one with the beloved? Swedenborg explains the nature of divine love, and how much God wants to be conjoined with the human race,
Love also, viewed in itself, is nothing else than an effort to conjunction; therefore that this object of the essence of love might be attained, God created humans in His image and likeness, with which conjunction may be effected. That the Divine love continually intends conjunction is manifest from the words of the Lord, that He wills that they may be one, He in them and they in Him, and that the love of God may be in them (John 17:21-23, 26) (TCR 43).
There’s another striking line from that John passage that I would like to share with you. Jesus says, “Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am” (John 17:24). Indeed, it is God’s will to have us be with Him, where He is in heaven. This is the kind of love that flows into us from God. And as God’s image and likeness, we, too wish to be united with those we love.
It is true that we are told to love our enemies, from whom we would not expect reciprocity. But in this case, we would still stand ready to accept our enemy into friendship, should their heart change. This brings us to the third corner of the triangle of love: love for our brothers and sisters. As God does, we are called upon to love the whole human race. We are called upon to do good to everyone with whom we come in contact. We are called upon to wish well to everyone. But I don’t think that this means that we are to befriend everyone. We all have different dispositions and peculiarities. There are some people that we click with, and others that we just don’t seem to connect with. I don’t see this as a problem. Friends are made of shared experiences, similarities in disposition and likes and dislikes, and other particularities. I think it is a plain fact of human existence that we will find some with whom we get along better than with others; some with whom we will enjoy friendship, and others with whom we won’t. But universal love is still a strong force. Even with those we don’t befriend, we can enjoy making happy. Even to those we don’t befriend, we can do good. Even to those we don’t have a mutual bond of connection, we can wish well. In many cases, we may find that Christian love is strong enough to forge a bond of connection with people very different from ourselves.
Universal love for our brothers and sisters is not always exercised the same way. We need to express our love with discretion and wisdom. Sometimes we need to show what is called “tough love.” We don’t want to give a drug addict money so that they can score more drugs. We may have compassion and give them food. Or we may try to find them shelter on cold nights. But we wouldn’t want to enable destructive behaviors. This means destructive behaviors of any kind. A parent who disciplines his or her child is still showing love. Or sometimes we may need to confront acquaintances of ours whom we think are doing hurtful things. It is a true test of friendship to endure criticism and to feel comfortable to give criticism. None of us like confrontation. But as Swedenborg would say it, love needs to be given with wisdom. There’s a line to this effect. It goes, “Doing good to the evil is doing evil to the good.” Should we find ourselves in a position of discipline or correction, though, our words must be respectful, courteous, and loving. Gandhi said, “Whenever you have truth, it must be given with love or the message and the messenger will be rejected.” Our object in healthy confrontation is amendment, not judgment or superiority.
With God in our hearts, our love life will be happy on all three angles of the triangle of love. God comes first, perhaps we will find supreme delight in marriage or romance, or maybe we will find love for the whole human race fulfilling for our souls. However and wherever we find it, love is at the very heart of Christian life. May we all remain open for opportunities to feel and to express Christian love in all our affairs.

The Internal and External Church
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
January 30, 2011

Ezekiel 43:1-7 Revelation 21:9-26 Psalm 27

As we have our Annual General Meeting today, I thought I’d reflect on the meaning of just what a church is. So I selected Bible readings that had visions relating to the church. In Ezekiel, there was the vision of the rebuilt temple, which the glory of the Lord filled. Then in Revelation, we have a vision of the holy city New Jerusalem. There is actually no temple in it because the Lord Himself is present in it as its temple. In both the Ezekiel passage and the passage from Revelation, the Lord Himself is present in the temple and in the Holy City.
These passages caused me to reflect on the Edmonton Church of the Holy City. We are named after that vision in Revelation that we just heard. Would we say that the presence of the Lord is here, with us in this church? This is a question that I can’t answer for the church. This is because for us in this material world, the spiritual world is invisible. This is a question not for me to answer, but for each member and friend of this church to answer for themselves. Those who find the Lord here, find the Lord in their own heart. It is my belief that people of this church do find the Lord here, and I hope that that is why they come back Sunday after Sunday.
The church itself can be viewed in two ways. There is an internal and an external to the church. The internal of the church is what happens to each of us personally. And the external of the church is what we do when we come together in this building. When we have the church with us internally, it shines forth in the externals of our worship. But externals can be separated from internals, if we do not have the internal church in our hearts. Let us look a little deeper at just what is meant by the internal and external of a church.
We will start by considering the internal of the church. We are each one of us a church in miniature. Or at least we can be. We are a church individually when we have the things a church stands for in us. What would that be? The church stands for the worship of God. We have the internal of the church with us when we have the worship of God in our hearts. Worshipping God means more than listening to sermons, singing hymns that praise God, or hearing Bible readings about God. The true worship of God is letting God into our hearts, and minds, and lives. We are a church in miniature when we have God’s love in our hearts and God’s wisdom in our minds. Then when we act from love, through our best understanding of what love is; when our lives and actions flow forth from love and wisdom, then we are a church in miniature. Then when we go into a church building and participate in the worship service, we are bringing God into the church. Then when we hear sermons, hear readings from God’s Word, and when we sing hymns of praise and thankfulness to God, then we are bringing the internal of worship into the church building. Then the presence of the Lord is with us in the church building.
There is a second aspect to the internal of the church. This second aspect reflects the two great commands of Jesus. Jesus said that the heart of the law is all summed up in two great commands–love the Lord above all and love the neighbor as yourself. We have just looked at the first of these commands–love for the Lord. The second aspect of internal worship concerns the relations of the congregation to each other. The second aspect of internal worship is feelings of love for our fellows in this church. It means thinking well of each other and caring for each other. I have heard it expressed on numerous occasions how this church feels like a family. This is what is meant by the second aspect of internal worship. It is feelings of love for each other in this church community.
We are now in a position to look at what the externals of a church are. Let’s begin by looking at the most external of the church. That would be the physical church building that we enter on Sundays. The church building is a unique building very different from any other building we enter. It is different from a movie theatre. It is different from a store or a shopping mall. It is different from a restaurant. A church building is constructed as a place for worshipping God. The architecture and symbols in a church are all designed to call our attention to God. In a church building we have a raised altar, to signify a holy place within an already holy place. Then on the alter we have another higher altar on which are the Bible and the candlesticks. This symbolism is meant to show God’s immediate presence in the opened Word on the altar and the illumination from God’s Spirit in the lighted candles. God’s presence, then, can be thought to flow forth from the altar into the congregation. But there is another current that brings God’s presence into the church building. That is when each member of the congregation sees the altar and the opened Word, then their hearts open to these symbols and God’s presence flows from the congregation upward to the altar. (All of the language I have been using is metaphorical. I have been using language that involves space and direction. But as I am talking about material symbols, I hope it won’t be taken too literally, as if God’s Spirit actually flows down and up.)
The next level of external worship is the ritual of the church service. There is the responsive reading from a Psalm. This is a way of bringing the voice of the congregation and the voice of the minister together as we jointly invoke God’s presence in the church. We hear readings from the Lord’s Word. Many members of this church community have commented to me that they find my sermons to be the high point of the worship experience. I am gratified to hear this. But I suggest that the reading of the Lord’s Word is actually the high point of the worship experience. The Bible is God’s Word and a devout hearing of it can actually bring God’s presence into the hearer’s consciousness. Then we have the singing of hymns. These can be outpouring in song of gratefulness to God and of love for one another. Music touches the heart in a way that speech doesn’t. I have from time to time pondered the songs we sing from the Book of Worship. To a modern ear, these songs can sound to some degree outdated. I have thought about bringing a guitar into the worship service, and new, modern Christian songs. But that would mean learning all new songs, and may prove too much of a burden for the congregation. In any event, I am still toying with the idea.
These things constitute the externals of worship. In themselves, they mean nothing. By that I mean that if worship consists only of coming into a church building, reciting a Psalm, hearing a Bible reading and a sermon, and singing, without bringing the internal of worship to the experience, then the externals are without life. They would be like an empty shell with nothing inside it. On the other hand, though, if a person has the internals of worship in their soul, then the externals are charged with a power that even amplifies the internals. The opened Word, the candles, the Bible readings, the sermon all call forth the movements of a holy heart and give these externals a life. It is like the soul and the body. The internals are the soul of worship and the externals are like a body. And everything is most powerful when externals are filled with internal meaning. What would love be without a handshake, a hug, or a kiss? Externals can be extremely powerful if they contain internals.
Let us now consider this church itself. Between the members and supporters of the church we have about 45 people. And each person in this church body is an individual. This can be a blessing or a curse. Individuality and diversity mean that we have 45 different talents that each individual can bring to the life of the church. Swedenborg tells us that heaven is perfected by the variety and diversity of the communities and individuals in it. We have a significant pool of resources, when we consider 45 people all contributing their talents to the common good. Then the variety in this church is a blessing. On the other hand, 45 individuals can also mean 45 different opinions about how things should be going in the church. This can lead to division and conflict. Then the variety of our congregation becomes a curse. Today we are having our Annual General Meeting. I would like to see everyone fired up with a zeal for how they think the church should be going. I would like to see everyone willing to take part in the leading of our congregation. But I would also like to see respect for difference and variety. We can differ with each other and still remain a unified congregation. I would like to see respect for the common good of this church prevail. That means hearing and understanding each other. Maybe our way can yield to someone else’s way. Maybe someone else has an idea we haven’t thought of. Lets’ see our individuality and diversity as a strength, not a liability. Let us remember the two internals of the church–love for the Lord and love for each other. Then this external church organization will have its externals fill with the spiritual internals it stands for.
When externals are filled with internals, then God is present in the church. Then the glory of the Lord is in this temple. Then God and the Lamb are in the Holy City. Then we will find God dwelling with us in the Church of the Holy City.

Salvation to the Ends of the Earth
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
January 23, 2011

Isaiah 49:1-7 John 1:29-42 Psalm 40

Our Bible readings this morning concern the salvation of the human race by the Lord Jesus Christ. In Isaiah we heard a prophesy about the coming of Jesus and His salvation. There we read,
It is too small a thing for you to be my servant
to restore the tribes of Jacob
and bring back those of Israel I have kept
I will also make you a light to the Gentiles,
that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the earth (49:6).
This phrase is said by God Himself, who, in Isaiah is called, “the Redeemer and Holy One of Israel.” And in John, we find that our Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel is none other than Jesus Christ Himself. When John sees Jesus, he cries out, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” Only our Redeemer can do this, so Jesus is one and the same with the Old Testament Jehovah, the Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel. We have the testimony of Luke to this effect. The angel Gabriel says to Mary that her child will be, “the Holy One”–the same wording that Isaiah uses to talk about Jehovah. From the Isaiah passage, and from John’s exclamation, we see that with the coming of Jesus Christ, salvation extends to everyone. In Isaiah our Redeemer brings salvation to the ends of the earth. And John says that Jesus takes away the sin of the whole world.
It is through the Divine Human Jesus Christ that salvation comes to the human race. What this means is that Jehovah, the God we read about in the Old Testament, took on a human body for the sake of salvation. Swedenborg testifies to this when he writes, “The Lord from eternity, or Jehovah, took on the human to save men” (L 31). Jesus tells us that He is the one who brings us salvation. He calls Himself the true shepherd, who gives us all eternal life,
Anyone who does not enter the sheep pen by the gate, but climbs in by some other way, is a thief and a robber. 2 The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. . . . 7 Therefore Jesus said again, “Very truly I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. . . . 9 I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. They will come in and go out, and find pasture. . . . I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full (John 10:1-2, 7, 9, 10).
It is the recognition of this saving power of Jesus that causes Simon to be renamed Peter, which in Greek means “rock.” In John, we heard about Jesus renaming Simon “Peter” but John leaves out why. Matthew fills in the details. When Jesus asks the disciples who He is, Peter says, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16). Jesus responds immediately,
“Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church” (Matthew 16:17-18).
It was not on Peter himself that Jesus would build the church on, but rather the church is built on the recognition that Jesus is the Messiah. And it was Peter’s recognition of this truth that caused Jesus to call him the rock.
Jehovah God took on the human in Mary to bring salvation to the whole human race. This is because God loves us with an unlimited love. And like all lovers, God wishes to give us all the happiness we can bear. And heavenly happiness is the same thing as salvation. Swedenborg describes the nature of God’s saving love for the whole human race,
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).
Although we often hear about God being a punishing judging God, nothing could be farther from the truth. God is mercy itself, and wishes to draw all upwards to Himself and into heaven. John testifies to this truth, as Swedenborg tells us,
That the Lord imputes good to every person and evil to none, hence that He does not judge any one to hell, but so far as a person follows raises all to heaven are evident from His words: Jesus said, “When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all persons unto Myself” (John 12:32); “God sent His Son into the world not to judge the world, but that the world through Him might be saved” (John 3:17); Jesus said, “I judge no man” (John 8:15) (TCR 652).
Likewise In another place we find Swedenborg saying,
Divine mercy is pure mercy toward the whole human race to save it, and it is likewise with every person, and never recedes from any one; so that whoever can be saved, is saved (HH522).
But what about that last line? I mean the one that goes, “whoever can be saved, is saved.” Who are those who can be saved? Well, Swedenborg makes this very clear in his book, True Christian Religion, “Since all men have been redeemed, all may be regenerated each according to his state” (TCR 579).
So all humans can be redeemed and saved. But we have a role to play in salvation. It isn’t just given instantly. We are saved by faith–true faith. The faith that saves is not just belief. Saving faith is the faith that comes from a life lived in love. A life that is lived in love is called charity. When we are doing good in all aspects of our life, then we are living the life called charity. So Swedenborg tells us,
The light of heaven from the Lord’s Divine Human cannot reach to any but those who live in the good of faith, that is, in charity; or what is the same, those who have conscience. The very plane into which that light can operate, or the receptacle of that light, is the good of faith, or charity, and thus conscience (AC 2776).
Some would like to take the easy way out. Some think that the way we live doesn’t matter, as long as we believe in Jesus. But salvation is just as much a matter of living well as it is a matter of believing rightly. We need to live a good life, and also we need to believe what is true. Then both our heart and our mind are involved in the spiritual life. By heart and mind, I mean the whole person.
But all the power we have to do good, and all the power we have to understand truth is given to us by the Divine Humanity of Jesus Christ. For it is God Himself, acting through the Divine Humanity of Jesus Christ, that brings salvation to the whole human race.
For the universal truth of all is that the Lord united His Human to the Divine itself, and that thus man has peace and salvation. And it is a universal truth that man must be conjoined to the Lord, which is effected by rebirth, that he may have peace and salvation (AC 10730).
This is why Jesus says that He is the gate through which we must enter, in order to be saved. We cannot understand God in God’s infinity, or God’s essence. We need God’s revelation through Jesus Christ in order to come to God. Swedenborg makes this very clear. “The Infinite Being, that is Jehovah, could in no way be manifested to man except through the Human Essence, thus through the Lord” (AC 1990).
The absolute and complete union of Jehovah God and Jesus Christ took place in stages throughout Jesus’ life on earth. In the Arcana Coelestia #2520 we read, “The Lord’s life was a continual progression of the Human to the Divine, even to absolute union” (AC 2520). This process took place until all the human was made divine and all the divine was made human. As Swedenborg puts it, “The Lord made all the human with Himself divine” (AC 2194). Since the union of divine and human took place gradually, we have language recorded in the Gospels that makes it look as if God and Jesus were two separate beings. But there is only one God. The union is complete and total. God became man and man became God in the one person of Jesus Christ. The union of God and the Christ is not a metaphor as if two separate people work together as if they formed a union. It is a union in one person. Swedenborg shows us that no other model of the union between God and the Christ is possible than a union into one person.
There is not meant a union such as that of two who are distinct from each other, and are conjoined merely by love, as a father with a son, when the father loves the son and the son the father, or as when a brother loves a brother, or a friend a friend, but it is a real union into one, that they be not two but one . . . and because they are one, therefore also the whole Human of the Lord is the Divine Being or Jehovah (AC 3737).
This is a highly controversial point, but it is at the heart of the New Christianity. This is what is meant by Simon Peter’s confession that Jesus is the Messiah. This is what Jesus means when he says, “anyone who does not enter the sheep pen by the gate, but climbs in by some other way, is a thief and a robber” (John 10:1). In short, Jesus is the way the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Him (John 14:6). And this is the rock on which Jesus builds His church.

Gold, Incense, Myrrh, and Herod
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
January 16, 2011

Isaiah 60: 1-6 Matthew 2:1-13 Psalm 72

Our Bible readings this morning suggest two ways to respond to Jesus: spiritually and earthly. And our Bible passages suggest two ways to feel about Jesus. We can feel adoration and gratitude for the gifts of God. Or we can feel threatened by God–yes, threatened. The prophet Isaiah is all about the glory of God, and the Magi from Persia brought gifts to baby Jesus as tribute to His spiritual glory. These passages suggest adoration and gratitude. Our Psalm reading is one of the royal Psalms. That is, it is about a mighty king. And the birth of a new king, from an earthly perspective, is what King Herod felt threatened by. I suggest that we may respond to Jesus in both these ways, when we consider the inner sense of these passages. Jesus can be worshipped in spiritual glory, or Jesus can be seen as a threat to us, surprising as this may seem.
King Herod saw Jesus as a political threat. Herod was king of the region of Israel in which Jesus was born. He certainly had ample reasons for seeing Jesus as a political threat. First, the Magi ask Herod where the king of the Jews had been born. Herod was supposed to be king of the Jews, so these words would not have been well received by Herod. He then asks the chief priests and rabbis where the king would be born. They tell him that out of Bethlehem, “will come a ruler.” More threatening words. So the birth of Jesus was seen by Herod as the birth of a potential king who would threaten his rule over Israel. For this reason, he asked the Magi to tell him where Jesus was after they had found Him. As Matthew tells us, it was Herod’s intention to kill Jesus.
But in Isaiah’s prophesy, we do not find words about an earthly king, but rather we find words about the glory of Yahweh, the God if Israel. This prophesy talks about the time of Christ’s incarnation. Isaiah says, “See, darkness covers the earth and thick darkness is over the peoples.” But the glory of God will shine in this thick darkness,
Arise, shine, for your light has come,
and the glory of Yahweh rises upon you . . .
Yahweh rises upon you
and his glory appears over you (60:1, 2).
The Gospel of John echoes these words, “The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (1:5, 9). In Isaiah, the glory of Yahweh brings spiritual elation: “Then you will look and be radiant, your heart will throb and swell with joy (60:5). John echoes this, too, “To all those who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God” (1:12). These passages tell us about receiving the Christ spiritually, and how that will illuminate our lives and make our hearts throb with joy.
The gifts of the wise men symbolize people who are filled with devotion to God. The gold, frankincense, and myrrh symbolize all the things in a regenerate person.
By gold, frankincense, and myrrh are signified all things of the good of love and of faith in the Lord, by gold those of the good of love, by frankincense those of the good of faith, and by myrrh those of both in the externals (AC 9293).
These three qualities are the three levels of our personality. The highest level is called celestial, or heavenly. The second level down is called spiritual. And the lowest level is called natural, or external. The heavenly level is concerned with love for God. The spiritual level is concerned with a love for truth and a love for our neighbor. And the natural level is concerned with our actions that flow from love and truth. When our actions flow from love for God, according to the truth we learn from the Bible and other teachings, then our natural level, or external, shines with the spiritual life God gives us from on high. Then, the celestial and spiritual levels shine through our external behavior with divine life. The three gifts of the Magi signify a condition when all three levels are opened up and we give thanks to God for the joy and peace He gives us. This is what is symbolized by the gifts of the wise men. We have all three levels in our soul. But it takes spiritual cultivation to realize them all. There is a process by which we come into this condition, and it doesn’t happen instantaneously.
We may think that this is the way we all want to live. We may see Jesus as a glorious gift to our lives. Jesus may feel great to us. We may think that, of course, we want to have that life symbolized by the gifts of the wise men. For most of us, this is true–some of the time, perhaps a lot of the time. But then there are times when we may feel differently. Believe it or not, there may be times when Herod’s ghost arises in our souls, and we don’t feel good about Jesus.
The problem for us comes at that lowest level of our personalities–the natural or external level. Our lowest level is where our actions reside. Our lowest level is where we confront the world. Our lowest level is that level where we meet the world, other people, and where our survival instincts are. When spirituality meets with a love for worldly interests we may find conflict. This is when Herod appears, and Jesus is seen as a threat.
The reality of God can be a threat to our ego, or our self-hood. Recognizing that there is a God means that we are not God and our way isn’t the only way. We can be attached sometimes to our own way of doing things and don’t want to see things done differently. Sometimes, maybe often. The reality of God means that we aren’t the most important thing in the universe. It means, indeed, that we aren’t even the most important thing in our own lives. Our external level, the level adapted to life on earth, struggles hard to keep us oriented to ourselves. Yet the reality of God means that we need to become humble, open to other people’s needs, and to recognize that everything we have is a gift from God, not our own power. I once heard it put this way. “There is only one thing you need to know about spirituality–there is a God and you’re not it.” Easier said than done. When we want the world to go our way; when we want material things in the world that we don’t have, when we want more money than we have, when we aren’t content with our lot in life–we are playing God. We are supposing that our way is better than God’s way. Then we want God out of the way so we can do things according to our whims. Then King Herod is ruling in our souls.
But we are all here today in church. And for us, there is a God. We are here because we recognize that we are not the final masters of our destiny. We are here to give thanks and to worship. But we are also here to learn. The spiritual and celestial levels of our soul are the first ones that are formed. The two of them are also collectively called our internal level. Our internal level is the first level formed when we are in the process of spiritual growth. Our internal level is where our knowledge about God and God’s laws reside. This internal level is above our lowest level. It is the internal level that gives direction to our behavioural level. It gives direction to our external level, in other words. Our internal level tells us how to live. That is the struggle that I would guess we all are going through in our lives. We need to learn what God’s will for us is. We don’t have this information imbedded in us from birth. Then, as we learn more and more about what God’s will for us is, we need to implement that into our lives and do it! This isn’t always easy, depending on the habits we have learned early in life and due to our natural tendency to think of self first. This struggle to live according to spiritual laws is called temptation. It is a struggle to bring into action and life what we have learned about God’s will and love for our neighbor. It is that struggle to realise that there is a God and I’m not it.
But as we wrestle with these currents in our soul, we will ultimately gain ground. Our internal will more and more shine forth in our external. The love and truth that we know within will become love and truth without. Our external will shine with internal light. In the land of thick darkness, a light has dawned. Opening our celestial and spiritual degrees mean letting God into our heart, mind, and ultimately our behavior. We only know true joy when we have God with us. Joy is love in act. And God is the source of all love. Even in the very deeds of our lives in this world, we will know heavenly joy. The light shines in the darkness. Does the darkness comprehend it? More and more, it does. Cracks in our ego and self-interest break open and God’s light shines through. Our external begins to look like our internal. Gold, frankincense, and myrrh are brought to God as a thank-offering. Our hearts throb with joy. And in our joy, with overwhelming gratitude, we give thanks to God.

The Name of Jesus Christ
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
January 2, 2011

Numbers 6:22-27 Luke 2:15-21 Psalm 8

Our Bible readings this morning concern the name of God. In our reading from Numbers, after the blessing, God says of Aaron and his sons, “So they will put my name on the Israelites, and I will bless them (6:27). I use this blessing at the end of every service, as do many of our ministers. Indeed, it is a blessing used by many different denominations. When we say it, we say, “The Lord bless you.” But in the Hebrew, the proper name of God is in the text. That name is Yahweh. This name for God was given to Moses at the burning bush and it is under the name of Yahweh that the whole Israelite culture was organized. The name Yahweh, however, was considered too holy to speak. So in place of Yahweh, Jews then and Jews today, say Adonai, which means “Lord.” So when this blessing is spoken, usually we honor that convention and say, “The Lord bless you.” But the important thing about the numbers passage is the actual name of God, Yahweh. The purpose of the Numbers blessing is putting God’s name upon the people of Israel.
In our New testament passage, we heard about the circumcision of Jesus. Then he is formally given the name Jesus. When we hear the name Jesus Christ, we can easily think of common names that have a first and last name such as John Smith. In that way of thinking, Jesus is the first name and Christ would be the last name. But there is a deep meaning behind the names when we say, “Jesus Christ.” In fact, there are levels of meaning for the names Jesus Christ. Those names are not just a first and last name.
On the natural level, Jesus is the Greek name for the Hebrew Joshua. Recall that it was Joshua who led the Israelites in their conquest of Canaan. Joshua brought the Israelites into the Promised Land. The meaning of the Hebrew name Joshua is “Savior.” So we can say that as its Greek equivalent, the name Jesus means Savior. And it is Jesus who leads us into the Promised Land of heaven.
The name Christ is the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew “Messiah.” Messiah means “anointed,” and it refers to the anointing of kings. The Messiah was eagerly looked forward to by the Jews as the divine king who would drive out the Romans, rule on the throne in Jerusalem, and usher in a period of peace throughout the whole world. Jesus claimed to be the Messiah in His trial, but all through His ministry He tried to redefine what the Messiah meant. The kingdom and the peace that the Messiah would bring is all within us.
So the two names Jesus Christ mean Savior and King. Jesus is our savior and he rules in our hearts. But on the spiritual level, the two names mean more. They encompass all we need for salvation. For Swedenborg, Jesus refers to the Lord’s Divine Love, or Divine Good. Christ refers to The Lord’s Divine Wisdom, or Divine Truth. The Lord is Divine Love and Divine Wisdom itself and so the two names Jesus Christ refer to all that God is.
Jesus Christ means salvation for us because when we embody love and wisdom, we have God inside us. All of heaven is made up of God’s divine love and wisdom. The heat there is God’s divine love and the light there is God’s divine wisdom. These two qualities proceed from God as the sun in the spiritual world. God as He is in Himself is infinite and He cannot be in any created thing because we are all finite. This means, essentially, that God is too big to be in us as He is in Himself. But he shines out from His own life into heaven, and from heaven into our souls as the heat and light of the spiritual world. And the sun of the spiritual world shines forth from the Lord Jesus Christ.
as He cannot be received by any one as He is in Himself, He appears as He is in Himself as the sun above the angelic heavens, the proceeding from which in the form of light is Himself as to wisdom, and in the form of heat is Himself as to love. The sun is not Himself; but the Divine love and Divine wisdom going forth from Himself proximately, round about Himself, appear before angels as the sun. He Himself in the sun is a Human, He is our Lord Jesus Christ both as the Divine from which are all things, and as to the Divine Human (AR 961).
All of heaven is made up of this divine love and divine wisdom from God. So we can live in heaven to the extent that we have God’s love and wisdom in our hearts. If we do not have divine love and wisdom in us, we cannot endure the heavenly atmosphere. This is why our religion is called mystical. Mysticism means an actual conjunction with God. Mysticism of this sort can be found in the Eastern Orthodox religion, too. In that faith, they call it divinization. We need to be conjoined with God in order to live in heaven–that is, we need to have God’s love and wisdom in our hearts in order to live in heaven. So conjunction with God is salvation. On one occasion, Swedenborg heard angels talking about this, and they were talking about, “the one God, of conjunction with Him, and of salvation thence” (AR 961). Conjunction with the one God is salvation.
The person Jesus Christ has caused much confusion and controversy in Christianity. While Christians know that there is only one God, they also try to reconcile the oneness of God with the words of Scripture that seem to suggest a three persons. This issue is called the Trinity. And the classical formulation of the trinity says that there are three persons with one essence. This cannot be understood. Swedenborg himself began his life with that idea. He had to give up the ideas about the trinity that he grew up with as a Lutheran. Swedenborg’s theology is so consistent throughout that we don’t realize that he had to learn these heavenly truths and actually change the way he had been thinking before his enlightenment. The angels who were talking about God that Swedenborg heard told him that his thinking did not agree with the idea of God in heaven.
The angels perceived in my thought the common ideas of the Christian Church concerning a trinity of Persons in unity and their unity in trinity . . . and they then said, “What are you thinking of? Are you not thinking those things from natural light with which our spiritual light does not agree? Therefore unless you remove the ideas of that thought, we close heaven to you, and go away” (AR 961).
He responds to the angels that his ideas about the trinity were about God’s attributes:
But then I said to them, “Enter, I pray, more deeply into my thought and perhaps you will see agreement.” And they did so, and saw that by three persons I understood three proceeding Divine attributes, which are creation, salvation, and reformation; and that these attributes are of the one God . . . (AR 961).
The angels accept this idea of the trinity, and then they separate off the old ideas of the trinity that Swedenborg grew up with as they enlighten his mind.
After this the heavenly light before seen above the aperture returned, and gradually descended, and filled the interiors of my mind, and enlightened the natural ideas of the unity and trinity of God; and then the ideas received about them in the beginning, which were merely natural, I saw separated, as chaff is separated from the wheat by winnowing, and carried away as by a wind into the north of heaven and dispersed (AR 961).
This must have occurred early in Swedenborg’s enlightenment because from the first pages of the Arcana Coelestia through his last book True Christian Religion, Swedenborg is consistent that there is only one person in the Godhead. His doctrine of God brings together the Old Testament reading this morning and the New testament reading. Our teaching is that Yahweh God of the Old Testament came down to earth in the body of Jesus that He took from Mary. So the Creator God who always was and from whom all things are, came into the material world and took on a material body. The Old Testament Yahweh is Jesus’ soul, and Jesus is the body of the Old Testament Creator God. God’s soul acts through His body, Jesus Christ, and acts to give us all life and salvation. With Yahweh as the soul, through His body Jesus Christ, God acts to bring joy and salvation to the human race. The activity of God through his body Jesus Christ is the Holy Spirit. So Swedenborg says of Jesus Christ:
The Lord Jesus Christ: in Him is the Divine being itself from which all things are, to which the soul of a person corresponds, the Divine Human, to which the body in a person corresponds, and the proceeding Divine, to which activity in a person corresponds (AR 961).
This perfect conjunction of God the Father and Jesus Christ as the soul is in the body is spoken of in the Bible. John’s Gospel tells us, “For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself” (John 5:26). Only in a perfect union of Father and Son can life in itself be one. There cannot be more than one life in itself. Two or more itself’s cannot exist logically. Jesus is Life Itself because of His complete union with Life Itself who created all things. Swedenborg argues this point philosophically. It may be difficult to understand, but it does make sense and shows how Swedenborg’s whole life made him fit to explain the teachings of the New Church. For Swedenborg,
the Divine being, which is also the Divine manifestation, because it is one, the same, the itself, and hence indivisible, cannot be given in more than one; and that if it were said to be given, manifest contradictions would follow (AR 961).
So let’s forget about all the manifest contradictions that would follow from several beings who are being itself. Let’s instead turn to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ whom we can readily picture and understand. Let us turn to Jesus Christ for our salvation. And let us act to incorporate the divine love and wisdom of God through Jesus Christ into our hearts and lives. Then we will be united with God and find joy and peace in heaven where love and wisdom are heat and light itself.

An Ordinary Night
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
Christmas Eve, 2010

It was an ordinary night, like any night. To all appearances, it was an ordinary family, like any family. It was a humble family of the working class–of no particular distinction. Not an Emperor; not a king; not an aristocrat–not even a religious leader such as the Sadducees ot Pharisees. It was a night in an ordinary place in the remote fringes of the Roman Empire. Bethlehem was a small town of no particular distinction in the Roman Empire. Not like Rome, or Athens, or Alexandria, or Damascus, or Corinth, or Ephesus. And it was an ordinary birth, as all human babies are born. He was in many respects an ordinary baby–in need of protection, care, and suckling from His mother.
Yet to those who had eyes and ears, it was an extraordinary night. Magi from the east knew that it was an extraordinary night. These were wise men of the Zoroastrian religion, who studied the stars and saw an extraordinary star in the sky. Elizabeth and Zechariah knew that an extraordinary birth was about to take place, for they had been told so by the angel Gabriel. Ordinary shepherds on night watch also knew that it was an extraordinary birth. A whole chorus of angels had appeared to them and told them so. And His mother knew that this was an extraordinary night, and an extraordinary baby whom she had just given birth to. Her husband Joseph and she had been told so by the angel Gabriel, also.
Only to those who had eyes to see and ears to hear, was Christ’s birth anything other than ordinary. Only to those who had eyes and ears, was the birth of Christ something extraordinary. Only to those with eyes and ears, was Christ’s birth the coming of God into our material world.
Caesar Augustus knew nothing of it. None of the other petty kings and princes of the Roman city-states knew who had been born that night. King Herod, ruler of the very province of Christ’s birth, knew of Christ’s distinction only from the foreign Magi who had come from Persia to worship the baby. And Herod didn’t even know the place in his realm where this birth happened.
That’s the way God wanted it. That’s the way God is. God does not appear to anyone in the clouds of glory, descending from the sky for the whole world to see. God doesn’t force Himself on anyone. Rather, God invites us quietly to come to Him. And there is no more powerful way to call forth a loving response than to come to us as a baby. It is a baby’s unique power to calm, to soften, to stir the heart, and to call forth love. A holy awe surrounds all babies. And baby Jesus was no different in this respect.
But Jesus’ soul was God Himself. Although born of a human mother, Jesus’ origins were from on high. The angel Gabriel tells Mary that, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.” Mary was carrying in her womb God incarnate, God who had taken on human flesh. This means that love itself had become human; love itself had taken on a material body. The source of all innocence was now an innocent baby. Innocence itself had become human, had taken on human flesh. Can we imagine what it must have felt like to be in the presence of that baby! To those who could feel, there would be no mistaking what child had been born to Mary.
Things are not all that different today. When we come to God today, it is in the midst of our ordinary lives. The world doesn’t stop; the heavens don’t open; God doesn’t appear in the clouds of glory. Rather, like that ordinary birth 2,000 years ago, God comes to us in the midst of our ordinary worldly affairs. It is we who must pause in our ordinary lives; it is we who must open our eyes; it is we who must seek the Christ as we go about our lives in this world. If we don’t seek that star; if we don’t hear the angels; if we don’t pause in the presence of that holy innocence, we will not find the Christ–just as the whole Roman Empire knew nothing of that extraordinary night and birth.
Let me illustrate this with a metaphor from this Christmas season. Like a lot of us, I rush around the stores looking for the Christmas gifts I want to buy for my loved ones. I dodge the crowds, and wait for cashiers–and I admit it, sometimes I wait impatiently. In the middle of all this, there are those baby strollers. As I hurry down the aisles of the shopping malls, there are those strollers in my way. Sometimes I dodge around them without breaking stride. Then, though, there are other times. There are times when I slow my pace; I look in the stroller; and I gaze on that baby’s face, bundled up in winter clothes. I look at the parents who are trying to shop while pushing around their precious baby. This is a time to stop and wonder at the mystery of birth and the innocence from which we have all started our lives. It is a holy moment in the midst of our ordinary lives.
More and more it seems that in society today people are working longer hours and more days. Just to make ends meet, we can take on extra work, or work longer shifts. Our free time is being squeezed out by the demands of this world. But we can never do without a place for God in our lives. It may not mean coming to church on Sunday morning. But somewhere, at some time, we need to open up to God. Just as He came to earth quietly, God will not impose Himself on us. God quietly knocks at the door; we must open it.
If our eyes remain closed, we will never see the wondrous Divine-Human who came to earth 2,000 years ago. But if we are like the shepherds; if we are like the Magi; if we are like Zechariah and Elizabeth, then we will see with wonder that glorious birth that happened 2,000 years ago. Christ will be in our lives and live in our hearts. Christmas time will remind us of the joy of our Savior who entered into our world so long ago and remains with us today. And in the ordinary affairs of our ordinary lives, an extraordinary miracle will transpire. Christ will be born within us.

The Virgin Will Be with Child
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
December 19, 2010

Isaiah 7:10-16 Matthew 1:18-25 Psalm 80

This morning’s readings emphasize women, specifically Mary. The Isaiah passage talks about the virgin who will be with child. It is foretold that this child will be called Immanuel. Immanuel in Hebrew means “God with us.” The passage from Matthew talks about Mary specifically, who is carrying our savior, God with us, Jesus Christ.
It is fitting and proper for us to dwell on the place of women in Christianity. When they play a pivotal role in the narratives, as is the case this morning, we need to pay especial consideration to their place. Unfortunately, in the Judeo-Christian tradition, men tend to dominate the narratives and theology. This is especially the case in Protestant Christianity, where the role of Mary is considerably reduced from her role in Catholicism.
Mary plays a unique role in the Christmas story. She is the one who carries our Lord in her womb and gives birth to the Savior of humanity. And yet, Mary is in a vulnerable place in Jewish society–as vulnerable as Jesus Himself was as the baby born of Mary. Matthew shows us how the fate of women is beholden to the power of men. At the very beginning of the story of Jesus’ birth, Joseph is about to divorce Mary. Without a husband, women in the Jewish world were helpless, since men controlled all the money, land, and power. So even the mother of our Lord was subject to the will of her husband. And in our society today, in many cases, women are still victims to the will of their mates. When couples separate, most often it is the woman who is left to care for the children, and in too many cases without help from the father.
Fortunately in the Christmas story, an angel of God announces to Joseph that Jesus was conceived in Mary by the power of the Holy Spirit. And this miraculous conception makes Joseph’s marriage holy and indeed, ordained by God. Even in ordinary human marriages and ordinary human births, we are confronted by a miracle. When an egg is fertilized a miraculous process is initiated by which a full human being is formed out of the mother’s own body. The baby is nurtured by the mother’s food. The mother’s blood flows through the baby’s veins. The baby grows and matures into a complete person who is completely distinct from its mother. And then when the baby is delivered from the mother’s womb, it is as if a part of the woman has left her body. Medical science still cannot discern how this gestation takes place. We don’t know how a cell becomes a heart, or the lungs, or a kidney, or a brain. This is a miracle that God oversees and that leaves us in wonder.
The attachment that a mother has for her child is perhaps the strongest loving attachment known to the human race. And there are references scattered throughout the Gospels to the role that Mary played in the life of Jesus. We find in Mary those same qualities that define mothers today, and that have defined mothers throughout the ages. Again and again, we find that it is Mary who cares most for her child, and who knows Him best. When Jesus stays behind in the temple talking with wise rabbis, and the holy family notices Him missing, it is Mary who worries about Jesus. She says, “Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you” (Luke 2:48). Then, when Jesus becomes an adult, knowing His powers, it is Mary who urges Jesus to perform His first miracle. This is the story of the marriage feast. They run out of wine and Mary asks Jesus to help out. Like a typical young adult, Jesus tries to get out of it, “Dear woman, why do you involve me? My time has not yet come” (John 2:4). Like a typical mother, Mary ignores Jesus’ protestations and tells the servants, “Do whatever He tells you.” They bring jars of water to Jesus, who then turns the water into wine, performing His first miracle urged on by His mother. And finally at the end of Jesus’ ministry, His mother stood by her son at the cross. In every way, we see a mother’s love exemplified in Mary. Although a holy woman, chosen by God to bring salvation into the world, Mary was still a mother, and lived and loved as mother do today and have through the ages.
Telescoping back a little, we can consider another bond of love. I mean the holy family. Joseph, Mary, and Jesus form an ideal image of Christian family. It is an ideal family, and an ideal I fear we are losing to a very great extent today. In Matthew’s birth story, we are told that Jesus will be the Savior of humanity. I have just said that we are losing the ideal of the Christian family, and here, society needs so much to recognize its need for a savior. Unfortunately, I have noticed that those most in need of salvation are the same people who seem self-content and feel that they need no savior. Yet the brokenness we see in family life today calls out for salvation and healing. Many couples today have split up, leaving their children with family life that lacks wholeness. For whole personality development, children need strong male and female role models. Yet in so many households today, we find single parents–which almost always means single mother households. This situation leaves the mother with the burden of working, housekeeping, and childrearing all on her own. The amount of quality time that a mother can devote to her child is being squeezed out by the demands of life in this broken world. And there are even worse scenarios to consider. As Sister Lucinda can tell us, many households are broken and scarred by domestic violence. Not only are relationships strained, but actually abusive and violent to the extent that flight is the only solution. I will give Sister Lucinda time to speak to this situation, if that is her inclination. Our families are very much in need of salvation. The brokenness of our fallen world is most painfully felt in the abusive households that our society has generated. As in the days of Christ, we are still a culture very much in need of healing. Very much in need of a Savior.
There is a final relationship that this morning’s readings bring up. We have considered the relationship between mother and child. We have considered the relationship between members of a family. We now turn to our relationship with God. For ultimately, the Bible readings for this morning are about the birth of Jesus Christ, our Savior. This suggests the mystical relationship of the spiritual marriage. The relationship between Christ and the community of believers is compared to a mystical marriage in many places in the Bible. In several places in the Gospels, Jesus says things like, “How can the guests of the bridegroom fast when he is with them?” (Mark 2:19). Or in Paul we find,
He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds it and cares for it, just as Christ does the church–for we are members of his body. “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” This is a profound mystery–but I am talking about Christ and the church (Ephesians 5:28-32).
And in Revelation we are all invited to the marriage feast of the Lamb, “Then the angel said to me, ‘Write; “Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb!”‘” (Rev. 19:9).
Swedenborg describes God as infinite love and infinite wisdom. God enters our minds and hearts when we acquire wisdom and let God’s love into our hearts. When the union of love and wisdom that God is, enters us as the finite love and wisdom we acquire, then we are married to God. God is in us and we are in God. This is spiritual marriage. And everything we have considered above depends on this spiritual marriage. A mother filled with God’s love and wisdom cares for her child and raises him or her to be a good citizen and spiritual individual. A couple who is filled with God’s love and wisdom knows how to care for each other’s needs and knows how to show love in healthy ways. And every person finally has a spiritual loving relationship with God, which is the primary and most essential relationship of all. Jesus came into the world to bring a fallen world back to God. And with Christ’s incarnation, the world was given a new way to come to God through the person of Jesus Christ. This love relationship is eternal. This love relationship lasts beyond the grave. And this love relationship brings healing to a broken world. This is the ultimate significance of that mother’s child, who came into this world 2,000 years ago.