Church of the Holy City

A Banner for the Peoples
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
December 5, 2010

Isaiah 11:1-10 Matthew 3:1-12 Psalm 72

Once again this Sunday we find extremely optimistic readings from the Old Testament and rather frightening readings from the New Testament. Our responsive reading this morning from Psalm 72 was about a renewed and glorious earth. The righteous Messiah was to endure forever–as long and the sun and moon. In his days the righteous will flourish and prosperity will abound. Crops will abound and all the nations outside Israel will be blessed through him. Clearly, this is no ordinary ruler, no human king. This prophesy is about a cosmic Messiah, a king who is a divine being with power beyond any mortal. We can see in the reading from Psalm 72 that over time, the hopes for a Messiah grew far beyond the role that an ordinary human could fulfill.
We find a similar grand prophesy in Isaiah. Isaiah talks about a shoot from the stump of Jesse sprouting. Jesse was King David’s father, so the shoot from Jesse would be a descendant of King David. This is the Messianic promise that God makes with David. God promises David that there will be one of his children on the throne in Jerusalem forever. In 2 Samuel 7, God tells David, “Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me; your throne will be established forever” (16). After the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem, there was no Israelite king on the throne–let alone a king from David’s lineage. So prophesies began to come out promising that some glorious day in the future, the king from David’s lineage would come to Jerusalem and take the throne there. It is such a king that Isaiah refers to when he talks about the shoot from the stump of Jesse.
But in Isaiah, too, we see that the Messiah hoped for is superhuman. The kinds of things this Messiah would do no ordinary human could. When this Messiah comes, the whole world will be transformed. The whole cosmos will be reconciled to God. In the days of this Messiah, “The whole earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea” (11:9). Peace will abide throughout the earth.
The wolf will live with the lamb,
the leopard will lie down with the goat
the calf and the lion and the yearling together,
and the lion will eat straw like the ox (11:6-7).
This Messiah will be filled with the Spirit of God:
The Spirit of the LORD will rest on him–
the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding
the Spirit of counsel and of power,
the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD–
and he will delight in the fear of the LORD (11:2).
These expectations are called apocalyptic expectations. They refer to a reconciliation between God and the entire cosmos. In some apocalyptic writings, God Himself will rule over a restored universe. In the readings we have heard this morning, the final apocalyptic age will be ruled over by the Messiah, from David’s lineage. These apocalyptic hopes were very prevalent in the time of Jesus. And exactly what the Messiah would be was mixed up according to several versions, as is typical of any doctrine.
We encounter these apocalyptic expectations again in our New Testament reading from Matthew. The big difference between the Matthew account of the apocalyptic age and that of Psalm 72 and Isaiah 11 is where we are on the timeline of events. Psalm 72 and Isaiah 11 talk about the time after the great cosmic battle between light and darkness that precedes the end times. John the Baptist talks about the battle itself. His words are somewhat frightening as he speaks about the coming Day of Yahweh. John says, “The axe is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire” (Matthew 3:10). This statement is about the nearness of the great battle between light and darkness. Jesus Himself made a similar remark in the Sermon on the Mount. There He says, “Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire (Matthew 7:19). John then talks about the coming Messiah with similarly frightening words, “His winnowing fork is in his hand and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering the wheat into his barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire” (3:12).
In some ways Jesus fulfilled the Messianic hopes of the Israelites and in some ways He didn’t. Both Matthew and Luke are careful to trace Jesus’ lineage through King David. This genealogy establishes the claim that Jesus can be the Messiah. However, He didn’t drive out the Romans and establish a throne in Jerusalem as many Israelites had hoped He would. In this, Jesus did not fulfill the Messianic hopes of many. On the other hand, Jesus did become that “banner for the nations” that Isaiah had talked about. Jesus was a superhuman being who healed, was filled with the “Spirit of the LORD,” as Isaiah claimed He would be–or as Matthew puts it, the “Spirit of wisdom and righteousness.” Jesus did reclaim the lost sheep of God, and brought Godliness to a fallen world. Considered from the cosmic power of His ministry, Jesus did fulfill some aspects of the hopes for the Messiah. Jesus was truly a God-Man, that Isaiah had prophesied about.
Then when we consider the effects of Jesus’ life and ministry, we see just how much He established a new cosmic age in the world. Recall that in the world in which Jesus lived, the Classical gods were the popular world religion. It was an age of Jupiter, Apollo, Demeter, Vulcan, Persephone, Diana, and the whole pantheon of Roman and Greek deities. Not only was Christianity a new religion, it was forbidden by the state on pain of death–horrible death, as Romans were so good at. Yet Christianity thrived and grew as an underground movement for three-hundred years. The good news of Jesus and love was unstoppable. In 313 AD the Emperor Constantine passed the Edict of Milan which made Christianity legal, and the great Roman Empire became a Christian Empire with Constantine as its first Emperor. The face of the whole western world was transformed.
Jesus had truly become a “banner to the peoples” with His ministry of peace, love, and healing. His message replaced the religion of an entire empire. The impact of Jesus was truly that Divine Human that the Messiah had become in the prophesies. But sadly, it seems that the world wasn’t transformed to the extent the apocalyptic writers had hoped for. The lion, leopard, and the wolf are still the same fierce predators they had always been. And humanity is still the fierce savage that he was in the past. Wars are still waged, blood is still spilled. The earth is not filled with the knowledge of the LORD as the waters of the sea. It seems that spirituality has not only not filled the world, but may be fading in strength from our society.
In the Bible there is a term that occurs in places. There is always a “faithful remnant” that remains after conquests. So after Babylon conquered Judah, a faithful remnant remained that still worshipped Yahweh. I see this in our world today. While it may look like Christianity is fading. While it may look like spirituality is on the decline. There is still a faithful remnant of Christians in the world who practice Christ’s gentle teachings. Those who come to church, come here because they want to worship, not out of bare custom. We don’t see the workings of God above. Nor do we know what plans He has for our world. It was the pagan Romans and Greeks that embraced Christianity when it first dawned on the world’s consciousness. Christianity was not embraced by the Jews to whom Jesus came. Perhaps it is those we see in the world that are unchurched who will be the first to embrace the New Jerusalem in whatever form it descends from heaven in.
Meanwhile, our task is clear. We call ourselves Christians, and for us, following in the way of the Christ is our task. While we may remain open to wisdom traditions from all ages, we will form our foundations on the teachings that Christ gave us 2,000 years ago. The words He spoke are timeless and fathomless. They are just as alive to us today as they were to his followers 2,000 years ago. As we seek to let Jesus into our hearts and lives; and as we seek to let His Spirit flow through us, we are being baptised daily with the Holy Spirit and with fire, as John the Baptist said Christ would do for us. Ours is not to bemoan or worry about the future of Christianity in the world. Ours is but to do our best to practice Christianity in our individual lives and to act in society to transform our social policies into more humane and just institutions. For such is what Christ would have us do, even as we await that better world where:
the wolf will live with the lamb.
the leopard will lie down with the goat
the calf and the lion and the yearling together,
and the lion will eat straw like the ox (11:6-7).

The Day of Judgement
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
November 28, 2010

Isaiah 2:1-5 Matthew 24:36-44 Psalm 122

Both of our Bible readings this morning deal with the coming of the Lord, or the last days. In Isaiah, the last days will be a time of peace throughout the planet, God will settle all disputes, and the law will be promulgated throughout the world. Our New Testament passage seems to me to be a little more frightening. It is written in New testament terminology, so instead of the coming of Yahweh, or Jehovah, we have a story about the second coming of Jesus. According to the letter of the story, the righteous people will be taken up to heaven, while the unrighteous will be left on earth. So we have the famous passage,
“Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left (Matthew 24:40-41).
Fundamentalist Christians talk about this a lot. They emphasize the second coming of the Lord and this passage about some being taken up to heaven and some left behind. They call this the “rapture”–those who are taken up are “raptured” up into heaven. There is even a fiction series about when the rapture happens. All manner of calamity takes place as airplane pilots are raptured up and their planes crash; bus drivers are raptured up with the same result, and so on.
Christians have been waiting for this to happen ever since the time of Christ. Jesus says of the second coming, “I tell you the truth, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things will have happened” (Matthew 24:34). But that generation did pass away and all those things did not happen. In the year 1,000AD, since it was the millennium, everyone in Europe thought that the Second coming would happen. But it didn’t. Then in 2,000AD a lot of people were preparing for the second coming. But it didn’t come. Today there are many, many Christians who are warning us to be prepared for the coming of the Lord. I’ll wait.
But if Jesus’ words are true, there needs to be another way to understand them. Let’s assume that Jesus was telling the truth. That the sun would be darkened, the moon not give its light, the stars fall from the sky, the heavenly bodies shaken, and the Son of man will come in the clouds of the sky with great glory, flashing like lightning (Matt. 24:29-30). And let’s take Jesus at His word and assume that all these things happened before the people of His generation had passed away. Nobody saw all those calamities. But Jesus tells us that they had to have happened. Given these facts, we can make sense of Jesus’ statements if we consider these remarks to be about what goes on in the spiritual world, or inside the soul of each individual. When Jesus was asked by the Pharisees when the Kingdom of God would come, Jesus told them,
The Kingdom of God does not come visibly, nor will people say, “Here it is,” or “There it is,” because the kingdom of God is within you ( Luke 17:20-21).
How much plainer can Jesus speak. “The kingdom of God is within you.” This means that all those predictions about the coming of the Kingdom are inside us: the darkened sun and moon, the stars falling from the sky, the shaken heavenly bodies, the coming of the Son of Man in the clouds of the sky, flashing like lightning. All these things are inside us. We won’t see these things happen on the earth. In order to understand the second coming of the Lord, we need to look inside. The dreadful cosmic phenomena refer to falsities that will darken the light of the Gospel truth in the final days. The coming of the Son of Man in the clouds of glory is the revelation of truths from the Bible in the appearances with which some of them are clouded. The shaking of the heavens also refers to struggles that we of the church go through in trying to live a Christian life in a fallen world.
It’s hard to reconcile the Old Testament passage and the New Testament passage. The Old Testament passage speaks of a renewed earth, when the law will be taught to everyone and in that passage we hear the beautiful line that “they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.” The Old Testament speaks of a renewed earth while the New testament speaks of people being taken up out of the earth and into heaven. Both of these passages are about the end of days.
The two passages can be reconciled, however, when we look at them from what they mean for each of us. We are told to be ready for the coming of the Son of Man because we don’t know when He will come. Jesus tells us, “You must always be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect Him” (Matt. 24:44). The coming of the Son of Man calls our attention to judgement. The warning to be ready is a call for us to be vigilant about our spirituality. There is a final judgement upon our death, but, in fact, judgement is daily–in fact, minute by minute. Every day we confront choices about how we will respond to the issues we encounter. Every choice can be seen as the coming of the Son of Man. Every way we respond to each other or to our life’s situations is a statement about our spiritual condition.
Sometimes we need to fall back on a lesson we have learned in life or in church when we choose how to respond to life’s situations. As we make more and more positive choices, we become more and more firmly committed to a Christ-centered life. This is what Jesus means when He says, “You must always be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect Him.” Practicing spirituality every day in every aspect of our lives is being ready for the coming of the Son of Man. For if we live that way, we will be ready to face the Lord when He comes to us.
This is also what is meant by the prophesy in the book of Isaiah. When we are seeking spiritual teachings, and when we put love for God above all, then Mount Zion is raised up as “chief among mountains” (Isaiah 2:2). Mount Zion was where the temple stood in ancient Israel, and as such, it symbolizes God’s presence on earth and with each of us. When we enrich our spiritual knowledges by learning and seeking, then we are being like those who say in Isaiah, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD . . . He will teach us His ways, so that we may walk in His paths” (Isaiah 2:3). So in reality, as the prophet says, “The law will go out from Zion, the word of the LORD from Jerusalem” (2:3).
Both the Old Testament passage and the New Testament passage, however, do talk about the end of days. In both passages, there is a feel of attainment. This is a picture of life when a person has become regenerated. In Swedenborg, there is a final place that a person can come to in his or her spiritual pathway. And by place, we do not mean a geographical location. We mean rather a state of mind. In the final step of our spiritual development, we are called celestial people. Before this, we were called spiritual. The spiritual person has doubts, struggles, even at times will sink into despair. But when we become celestial all these struggles cease. If we are persistent in our spiritual work, we have the promise that there will come a time when there is rest, and the struggle stops. When we have so practiced the law of the LORD that it is written in our heart, when we do good from a love of good, then we will come to a place of peace. Swedenborg writes,
Another reason why the celestial man is the Sabbath, or rest, is that combat ceases when he becomes celestial; evil spirits depart, and good spirits and celestial angels draw near; and when these are present evil spirits cannot be, but flee far away (AC 87).
This is that end state that Isaiah talks about when he says,
He will judge between the nations
And will settle disputes for many peoples.
They will beat their swords into plowshares
And their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation will not take up sword against nation,
Nor will they train for war anymore (Isaiah 2:4).
The spiritual war that goes on in our souls is over. This promise of peace is held out to each one of us. Jesus tells us, “He who stands firm to the end will be saved” (Matthew 24:13). The celestial person is surrounded by heavenly angels and has God’s ways written upon his or her heart. Such an individual acts from love, not self-compulsion. And the celestial person feels a wonderful joy and peace:
None can know what the tranquility of peace of the external man is, when conflict or unrest from lusts and falsities ceases, but he who has known the state of peace. This state is so joyous that it surpasses every conception of joy. It is not only a cessation of conflict, but it is life coming down from interior peace, so affecting the external man as cannot be described. Then truths of faith and goods of love are born which derive life from the joyousness of peace (AC 92).
This joy and peace is what Isaiah was talking about in the last days, and this is what it means to be taken up by Jesus–not physically from this world but taken to Jesus in our hearts and souls.
and it is the state we will find ourselves in when we are taken by Jesus.
For many of us, this may seem a ways off. But I think we can hold on to the hope that it is attainable. There can be for us a place of peace and joy beyond the words of this world. On this we have the prophesy of Isaiah, the words of Jesus, and the testimony of Swedenborg.

All the Law and the Prophets
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
November 21, 2010

Exodus 20:1-21 Luke 10:25-28 Psalm 119

Today I would like to consider the catechism. Formally speaking, a catechism is a compilation of knowledge about spirituality that a person needs to know to be confirmed into a church. In the Catholic Church one needs to attend confirmation class and be taught the catechism in order to be confirmed. The catechism for this is a set of questions that the priest asks and the initiate needs to answer them to be confirmed into the church. Some of our older children’s hymnals had a catechism in them. But Swedenborg himself only identified one set of propositions for the catechism of the New Church. In his book True Christian Religion, Swedenborg identifies the Ten Commandments as the catechism for the New Church. So for this Sunday, and those following Advent, I will be looking at the Ten Commandments.
Swedenborg tells us that the Ten Commandments are the sum total of all that religion teaches. He writes,
they were in brief summary an aggregate of all things of religion, by which conjunction of God with man and of man with God is given, therefore they were so holy that there is nothing holier (TCR 283).
He divides the Ten Commandments into two tablets–one tablet contains commands that relate to love of God, and the other contains commands that relate to love of the neighbor. We heard in our Luke reading that all the law comes down to love of God and love of the neighbor. Since the Ten Commandments contain a list telling us how to put into practice these two commands, they contain the whole essence of all the law and the prophets. By the law and the prophets are meant the whole Bible. So Swedenborg holds that the Ten Commandments contain all that is of doctrines and life.
Now because love to God and love toward the neighbor are the all of the Word, and the Decalogue in the first tablet contains a summary of all things of love to God, and in the second table all things of love toward the neighbor, it follows that the Decalogue contains all things which are of doctrine and of life (TCR 287).
This is a grand claim. And from a literal reading of the Ten Commandments it may not look like they contain “all things which are of doctrine and life.” But in Swedenborg’s Bible interpretation, there are three levels of meaning. There is the literal level–which is the text taken at face value. But there are also two internal levels of meaning. There is the spiritual level which relates to the church. And there is the celestial level which relates to God. When considered in its fullness–when all three levels are considered–one can see that the Ten Commandments contain all the law and the prophets. This Sunday we will consider the first commandment.
The First commandments is: “You shall have no other gods before me.” On the literal level, this command forbids idolatry. Today, I know of no one who worships a figure carved out of wood or stone, as they did in the time of Moses. But this commandment also forbids the worship of any human as a god. As a child of the Reformation, Swedenborg took issue with the veneration of saints. For him, the saints were humans–albeit very, very good humans–but humans nevertheless. They may be excellent models of life to follow, but to hold that they have some special spiritual power and can intercede for us between God and man would be a violation of the first commandment. I know of some who value humans in another way. A friend of mine said to me once that everything he needed in life could be found in the works of William Shakespeare. The man Shakespeare became a god for him, and Shakespeare’s work his sacred text. This is a form of idolatry. Finally, anything a person values above God is a form of idolatry. This is a very real issue in our world today. If a person values money and what money can bring above all things, then he is holding money up as a god. This can lead to all kinds of evil. When the unbridled lust for wealth is given free reign, humanity can be trampled over heedlessly. I think of the terrible havoc reaped by the ruptured oil pipe in the Gulf of Mexico recently. I can’t help but think of this as caused by the greed of British Petroleum who thought of their profits first, and the welfare of the Gulf and the people who live by it last. The CEO of BP even had the nerve to say in an interview that he cared for “the little people.” “The little people.” We can see what he thought of himself in order to make a statement like that.
In the internal meanings of this commandment, Swedenborg becomes doctrinal in a way that doesn’t appear in other of his writings. In fact, he seems to change his mind even in his consideration of other commandments. In the spiritual and celestial levels, Swedenborg claims that Jesus alone is to be worshipped as God incarnate. As he puts it, “the Lord our Savior is Jehovah Himself, who is at once Creator, Redeemer, and Regenerator” (TCR 294). All who acknowledge and worship any other God than the Lord the Savior Jesus Christ, who is Himself Jehovah God in human form, sin against this commandment” (TCR 295). Swedenborg then goes on to argue against the doctrine of the Trinity.
This narrow view of who God is doesn’t gibe with Swedenborg’s liberal attitude in other places in his writings. In discussing the same commandment, Swedenborg opens up his description of God to a more general characteristic:
Jehovah the Lord is infinite, immeasurable, and eternal; He is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent; He is the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End; who was, is, and will be; He is love itself, and wisdom itself, or good itself and truth itself; consequently, life itself; thus the only One, from whom are all things (TCR 295).
Seeing God as “the only One, from whom are all things” is a pretty broad understanding of God. And in fact, when Swedenborg discusses the command to honor one’s father and mother, he applies this command to the whole community of saints spread all over the world. He writes, “In the celestial sense, by father is meant our Lord Jesus Christ; and by mother, the communion of saints, that is, His church, spread all over the world” (TCR 307). I take this to mean that Swedenborg affirms all who worship God according to the teachings of their church. This would include all the world religions. He goes on to speak about God as father in extremely inclusive language.
It is to be kept in mind that there continually proceeds from the Lord a Divine celestial sphere of love toward all who embrace the teachings of His church, and who obey Him as little children in the world obey their father and mother, apply themselves to Him, and wish to be nourished, that is, instructed by Him (TCR 308).
Clearly, Swedenborg isn’t referring here only to Christians in Europe and Christian missionaries in other parts of the world. And we also know that Swedenborg holds up the Africans in particular as being especially favored in heaven. In Heaven and Hell we find, “Among the Gentiles in heaven, the Africans are most beloved, for they receive the goods and truths of heaven more easily than others” (326). The celestial sphere proceeding from the Lord reaches even into nature, where the sun is called father and the earth mother:
This is most universal, and affects not only men, but also birds and animals, even to serpents; nor animate things only, but also inanimate. But that the Lord might operate into these, even as into spiritual things, He created the sun, to be in the natural world as a father, and the earth to be as a mother. For the sun is as a common father, and the earth as a common mother, from whose marriage arises all the germination that adorns the surface of our planet. From the influx of that celestial sphere into the natural world arise the wonderful progression of vegetation, from seed to fruit and to new seed. It is from this also, that many kinds of plants turn as it were their faces to the sun during the day, and turn them away when the sun sets; it is from this also that there are flowers which open at the rising of the sun, and close at his setting; and from this it is that song birds carol sweetly at early dawn, and likewise after they have been fed by their mother earth (TCR 308).
We see here an early articulation of the kind of reverence for mother earth as a holy creation that is popular today. This reverence was illustrated fantastically in the movie Avatar. And it seems to me from these passages, that Swedenborg is affirming God’s outpouring of holiness into the whole world and everyone in it.
What I take from the first commandment is reverence for God as God is seen all over the world. For me, God is indeed the risen and glorified Jesus Christ. But it isn’t Christians alone who “wish to be nourished, that is, instructed by Him” (TCR 308). We have many different religions in the world and many different names for God. But there is still only one God. And whether we find God in a Catholic church, or a United Church, or in a synagogue, we will find the same one God who is Father to us all.
This commandment urges us to hold God sacred and God alone. Though society may offer us seductive alternatives in the form of man-made inventions–including the economic structure of the world economy–we need to remember that a loving God is at the centre of everything. No other gods before the one true God. Not ourselves, not money, not prestige, not power;–no other gods. And for us, this God is all love married to all wisdom.

The Kind of Fast God Has Chosen
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
November 14, 2010

Isaiah 58:3-11 Mark 12:28-34 Psalm 31

In the Psalm we recited today, God tells us, “How abundant are the good things that you have stored up for those who fear you.” And the Psalmist confirms this when he says, “Praise be to the Lord, for He has showed me the wonders of His love.” We are promised that, “The Lord preserves those who are true to Him.” And on our part, we are told, “Love the Lord, all His faithful people!”
These passages tell us that God has abundant good things stored up for those who love Him. As infinite love, there is no limit to the good things God can give us. But we need to do certain acts in order for these good things to come to us. We find suggestions of what we need to do in our Isaiah and in our Mark readings.
I selected the Isaiah reading because it shows us the twofold nature of how we are to approach God in a worthy manner. Isaiah tells the Israelites two things: show justice and compassion, and desist from evils.
The passage begins with God declaring to the Israelites how their days of fasting are unworthy. They are only performing outward rituals, and ignoring the true nature of fasting. The Prophet asks,
Is this the kind of fast I have chosen,
Only a day for a man to humble himself?
Is it only for bowing one’s head like a reed
And for lying on sackcloth and ashes?
Is this what you call a fast,
A day acceptable to the LORD? (58:5)
Not only are the Israelites indulging in empty ritual, they are actually doing evils on their fast days. The Prophet accuses them:
Yet on the days of your fasting, you do as you please
And exploit your workers.
Your fasting ends in quarreling and strife,
And in striking each other with wicked fists.
You cannot fast as you do today
And expect your voice to be heard on high (58:3,4).
Worship of God–then and now–cannot be just a matter of ritual. There is an internal to true worship, which touches on the kind of life we are living. Again from Isaiah, the Prophet tells the Israelites what they need to do in order for their fasting to be acceptable to God. He points to justice and compassion as deeds one needs to perform in order for worship to be acceptable:
Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
To loose the chains of injustice
And untie the cords of the yoke?
Is it not to share your food with the hungry
and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter–
When you see the naked, to clothe him,
And not to turn away from your own flesh and blood? (58:6-7)
Finally, the Prophet tells the Israelites to desist from evil actions:
If you do away with the yoke of oppression,
With the pointing of the finger and malicious talk,
And if you spend yourselves on behalf of the hungry
And satisfy the needs of the oppressed,
Then your light will rise in the darkness,
And your night will become like the noonday (58:9,10).
So the message of the Prophet is instruction about what kinds of deeds need to be done in order for their fasting to be acceptable to God, and also showing the Israelites the kinds of evils from which they must desist. But his message doesn’t end in these teachings. There are also wonderful promises about what the Israelites will receive if they perform right fasting to God. In beautiful poetry, he promises them,
Then your light will break forth like the dawn,
And your healing will quickly appear;
Then your righteousness will go before you,
And the glory of the LORD will be your rear guard.
Then you will call, and the LORD will answer;
You will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I. . . .
The LORD will guide you always;
He will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land
And will strengthen your frame.
You will be like a well-watered garden,
Like a spring whose waters never fail (58:8,11).
Jesus captures the essence of these teachings in his answer to the teacher of the law. The question was, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?” Jesus’ answer is more general than was Isaiah’s, but in being more general it is more encompassing. We all know very well Jesus’ answer, “Love the Lord God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’” (Mark 12:30,31). Jesus’ answer covers more of our life since he is talking about love. Isaiah talked about compassion for the needy, but Jesus’ saying covers love for everyone.
What I like about the Isaiah passage, however, is its twofold nature. It is not enough to just do good. We need also to refrain from evils. So Isaiah says, “do away with the yoke of oppression,/With the pointing of the finger and malicious talk” (58:9) as he also commands compassion for the oppressed and needy. This is in keeping with Swedenborg’s understanding of the process of regeneration. We have looked at how love flows into us from God, and how this influx opens up the higher reaches of our consciousness. But I haven’t said much about how we play a role in this process.
We open the higher reaches of our consciousness by the way we practice religion, or by our spirituality. Swedenborg teaches that there are three levels to our soul. There is the earthly level, the spiritual level, and the heavenly level. We move from one level to another like a quantum leap. These levels are like layers on a wedding cake–a lower layer, a middle layer, and the highest layer. Within each level we expand gradually higher and higher, more and more inward. But this kind of growth is still within the level we are on. Then, when we have gotten as high as we can within one level, we jump up to the next level. This is called by Swedenborg continuous and discrete levels. We progress incrementally as a continuous progression on one level. Then we jump up to the next level as a discrete quantum leap.
The three levels in our soul are none other than the three levels of heaven. In heaven there are the same three levels–earthly, spiritual, and heavenly. Some old-time Swedenborgians may know these levels by different names–natural, spiritual, and celestial. So in the earthly level, or in the earthly heaven, one can progress further and further in love and wisdom without jumping up to the spiritual level. And likewise, one can progress in the spiritual level further and further in love and wisdom without jumping up to the heavenly level. We have all these three levels in our soul, but they only exist potentially until we actually open them up.
This comes to our participation in the opening of the three levels of our soul. Our lowest level is concerned with knowledge and rationality. The spiritual level is concerned with a love of uses from a love for our neighbor. And the heavenly level is concerned with a love for uses from a love for God. Swedenborg gives us a description of these levels of our mind in his book Divine Love and Wisdom.
these three levels are called earthly, spiritual, and heavenly. When we are born, we come into the earthly level, which gradually develops within us in keeping with the things we learn and the intelligence we gain through this learning, all the way to the summit of intelligence called rationality. This by itself, though, does not open the second level, the one called spiritual. This level is opened by a love for being useful that comes from our intelligence; but the love for being useful is a spiritual one, a love for the neighbor.
In the same way, this level can develop by incremental steps all the way to its summit; and it does so by discovering what is true and good, or by spiritual truths. Even so, these do not open that third level that is called heavenly. This is opened by a heavenly love for being useful that is a love for the Lord; and love for the Lord is nothing but applying the precepts of the Word to our lives, these precepts being essentially to abstain from evil things because they are hellish and demonic and to do good things because they are heavenly and divine (DLW 237).
From this passage we see that the two higher levels of our mind are opened by the two great commandments of Jesus: love for the neighbor and love for God. The spiritual level is concerned with a love for discovering what is good and true out of a love for our neighbor. The heavenly level is concerned with applying the precepts of the Bible to our lives. I chose the Isaiah passage this morning with the heavenly level in mind. Isaiah tells the Israelites to abstain from certain evils and how to do certain goods. And Swedenborg tells us that the essence of love for God is “essentially to abstain from evil things because they are hellish and demonic and to do good things because they are heavenly and divine.”
So this passage tells us what our responsibility is in the process of regeneration. To learn knowledges and grow in intelligence and into rationality. This is on the earthly level. Then when we jump up to the spiritual level we learn what is good and true in order to love our neighbor. Finally we apply what we have learned into our lives by abstaining from evil and doing what is good out of a love for God. If we are diligent in our practice of spiritually, then we can look forward to Isaiah’s promises:
Then your light will rise in the darkness,
And your night will become like the noonday (58:9,10)
Then your light will break forth like the dawn,
And your healing will quickly appear;
Then your righteousness will go before you,
And the glory of the LORD will be your rear guard.
Then you will call, and the LORD will answer;
You will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I. . . .
The LORD will guide you always;
He will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land
And will strengthen your frame.
You will be like a well-watered garden,
Like a spring whose waters never fail (58:8,11).

Spiritual and Earthly War
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
November 7, 2010
Remembrance Day

Deuteronomy 20:10-18 Matthew 10:34-42 Psalm 46

This week we will celebrate Remembrance Day. Remembrance Day brings to mind the subject of war. I have selected today’s Bible readings with war in mind. I have selected Bible passages that show the diversity of Biblical testimony about war. In our Deuteronomy passage, we find God telling the people of Israel about how to wage war. For the nations that surround the Promised Land, the Israelites are to first offer peace. If the nations accept their offer of peace, then they become enslaved. Neither choice is a good one. But for the land that Israel would take over and live in, holy war was commanded. In this, all the residents were to be put to the sword and all their idols were to be destroyed. It is passages like this that make the Old Testament a hard book for some to come to terms with.
But the command of holy war is not the only voice in the Old Testament. Nor does it reflect the only way God was seen. In Psalm 46, which we read responsively today, God is the bringer of peace. The Psalm reads:
He makes wars cease
to the ends of the earth.
He breaks the bow and shatters the spear;
he burns the shields with fire.
So in the Old testament, to see God as the orchestrator of war only, is a mistake. The Old testament also sees God as the bringer of peace.
These differing testimonies about war and peace reflect the times in which the Bible was written. In the culture of the first millennium BC, war was a way of life. If you didn’t attack neighboring city-states, they would attack you. There is a line in 2 Samuel 11 that makes this way of life clear. It is the beginning of a story about King David. The story begins with the following words: “In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war . . . ” Spring is here–time to wage war. This simple statement shows us that war was a way of life in Biblical times. So the writers of the Bible saw God as a warrior God.
But there was also the idea of God as the bringer of Shalom. Shalom means peace, but it also means more than just peace. When a country is in a state of Shalom there is rest from war, justice in the courts, order in the kingdom, and fertility in the land. Shalom reflects a state in which God fills the hearts of the people and the land with His blessings. This is what is reflected in the Psalm, where we find God making wars to cease even to the ends of the earth. His shalom covers the entire created world.
In our New Testament passage, I chose an unusual saying of Jesus. Here, Jesus says, “Do not suppose I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword” (Matthew 10:34). This is the same Jesus who tells us to turn the other cheek, to forgive 70 times 70 times, and to love our enemies. In the same group of sayings from this morning’s reading, Jesus says,
A man’s enemies will be the members of his own household. . . . Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me . . . Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will find it (Matthew 10:36, 37, 39).
Due to the general tone of Jesus’ message to us, we are compelled to take these words spiritually and symbolically. I think they are best understood in the light of the last line–”whoever loses his life will find it.” We see that these sayings are directed to spiritual rebirth and putting aside our old self to find a new life in God. This new life only comes with struggle and work, and the image of the sword symbolizes fighting for a new spirituality as we grow out of our inherited disposition.
So our Bible readings today talk about two aspects of war–earthly war and spiritual war. The theme of earthly war is in our Deuteronomy passage, and the theme of spiritual war is in our New testament passage.
The first thing to be said about war is that it is not God’s will that there be war. Swedenborg writes,
It is not because of divine providence that wars happen, because wars are inseparable from murder, plunder, violence, cruelty, and other appalling evils that are diametrically opposed to Christian caring (DP 251).
God does not will the murder and cruelty associated with war. But there are two aspects to the way God works with the human race. There is God’s will and then there is what God will allow. God allows evils to occur in order to preserve human freedom and to lead us into salvation. According to Swedenborg, “saying that God allows something to happen does not mean that he wants it to happen but that he cannot prevent it because of his goal, which is our salvation” (DP 234).
There is a reason why wars are permitted. In war, we see the evils that humans are capable of. In order for us to be reformed, we need to be aware of the evils that are in us. This is what Jesus was talking about when he says that we need to lose ourself in order to find ourself. We need to see and acknowledge the evils into which we were born and which we have accepted into our lives in order for us to decide to consciously let go of them.
There is also the fact that if it were not for this permission, the Lord could not lead us out of our evil, so we could not be reformed and saved. That is, unless evils were allowed to surface, we would not see them and therefore would not admit to them; so we could not be induced to resist them. That is why evils cannot be suppressed by some exercise of divine providence. If they were, they would spread and devour everything that is alive like the diseases called cancer and gangrene (DP 251).
In this context I think about World War II. This war was essential as the totalitarian regime of Hitler had to be stopped. We saw in that war how terrible racism could be in the horrors of the concentration camps. Anti-Semitism was a sickness that could be found all through Europe and North America. The concentration camps were perhaps the most terrible manifestation of Anti-Semitism, but in lesser forms, all of the Western world was guilty. It was not God’s will that innocent Jews were tortured. But what did come of this horror was the statement now posted on the concentration camps–”Never Again!” We see in this a very clear statement of Swedenborg’s claim that wars bring hidden evils out into the open so that we can put them away.
This week we honor the memory of those who gave their lives to safeguard liberty. We owe the peace we know in our country to those who paid the ultimate sacrifice and to those who fought to save us from oppression. It’s easy to take our civil liberties for granted. We don’t live in a country where we need to present identification papers to authorities on a whim. We can express ourselves freely in speech and in the press. We have the freedom to live in safety and in love with one another. We owe all this to those who fought and who died in wars. They deserve to be remembered and honored in this week and on November 11.
Warfare is also spiritual. We all have a war to wage within our souls. We have been looking at how we change over time, as God flows into our hearts and shapes our behaviors and emotions. This process does not come without struggle. We begin life oriented to ourselves and oriented to the world’s goods. This is what is meant by Jesus words, “Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me.” Clearly, we are not being told to withhold love from our parents. The ten commandments tell us to honor our father and mother. Rather, what Jesus means is that we need to love heavenly things above our innate impulse to love ourselves above all. Father and mother symbolize what Swedenborg calls proprium. Our proprium is the self we are born with. It is composed of the things that favor only what we want. It is composed of ego driven cravings. For many, it is also maladaptive ways of living. We need to see where we need to change. And when we identify maladaptive modes of living, we need to ask God for help and let go of them. So God allows evil to happen. He cannot suppress evil in us by His own power. To do that would be to violate our free will, which God will never do. So God permits evil to surface. Only then can we see it and consciously and deliberately drive it from our lives.
The Lord cannot rescue any of us from hell unless we see that we are in it and want to be rescued. This cannot happen unless there are instances of permission that are caused by laws of divine providence (251).
Earthly war and spiritual war are interrelated. Earthly war serves the same function that spiritual war does. It allows evil to be seen and when evil is seen it can be driven from society and from individual souls. Let us be clear, God does not will for there to be war. But He allows war for the sake of our salvation. In war and in peace, God’s providence is working in every minute detail to bring us all to Himself. There is no aspect of human life in which God’s providence is not working. And God’s will is a heaven from the human race. When we are victorious in spiritual war, we come into the Shalom of God’s peace and joy. And this, finally, is God’s will.

How Good Forms Truth
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
October 31, 2010

Isaiah 55:1-7 Matthew 7:7-20 Psalm 34

Last Sunday we looked at the nature of truth. We saw that with us truths evolve and change as we grow. We also noted that since we are all different, truth with one person may be different from truth with another person. Today we will look at the interrelation between what is good and what is true. A truly evolved person is a union between truth and good. Truth alone is useless. And good alone has no direction. We need to be good and that good needs to be directed by truth. Truth tells good how to operate. This is the great marriage principal in Swedenborg. All through his theology we find the marriage principal by which good and truth are married together to make a whole individual. We will have more to say about this later.
The subject of good is at the heart of Swedenborg’s theology. Good is the goal of everything we learn. Every truth we learn points us toward some good. We learn truths in order to become good people. The highest angels, do not even think from truth. They think from the good that is in their hearts.
Swedenborg’s use of the word “good” is complex. He uses it in several different meanings. One meaning is the common one. Good can mean the opposite of evil. Here, there is good and evil. But there is another way Swedenborg uses the word “good.” In this other way of thinking, good is whatever we love. The thing that we love is called a good. In this use of the word, good can be an evil. For instance, greed and selfishness are evil loves. And there are goods that they love. Some of the goods that greed and selfishness love are status, power, control over others, and material possessions. In this sense, good means whatever we are driven by. So Swedenborg can talk about, “the good which moves [truths], and with which they comply, is of the love of self and the world” (AC 3318).
This definition of good leads us directly into today’s talk. For truth is nothing but a vessel that holds some good. So Swedenborg says,
Man is nothing but an organ, or vessel, which receives life from the Lord . . . This love, or the life therefrom, flows in and applies itself to the vessels which are in man’s rational and which are in his natural. . . . These vessels in the rational man, and in his natural, are those which are called truths (AC 3318).
At its best, truth holds heavenly goods–” The heavenly is love and charity; all truth is therefrom; and because all truth is therefrom, it is nothing but a kind of vessel” . . . (AC 1496).
Truth is a very broad word. It can means facts. But it can also mean our world-view–how we think the world is and how we should act in the world. Truth is our attitude. Truth is how we view others compared with ourselves. Truth is what we think is important. All these meanings of truth, though, relate to some form of love. All these meanings of truth hold something we call good.
We saw last Sunday that truth changes with us over time. So also does the good that truth holds. Our loves and our goods evolve over time. In our early life, it may well be the case that our truths hold selfish and worldly goods. Truth can be filled with a love that is not heavenly. How can this be? Let’s consider one very simple, very basic truth. “There is a God.” That seems simple enough. It is simple, until we consider what kind of love it is married to. This simple truth can be filled with worldly and selfish love. “There is a God” can mean, “My God is the true God.” From there it can mean, “Your God is a false God.” The progression can then be, “What I believe is the only true belief.” And from there, one can think, “I must destroy everyone who doesn’t believe what I believe.” The history of religions shows us that this is a very real consequence of self-love acting in the name of religion. It motivated the Christian crusades in the middle-ages. And worse still, it motivated the Spanish Inquisition. And today we see it motivating fanatical terrorists. So when we look at truth, we need to consider how it relates to love and what kind of love it relates to.
We learn truths all through life. Many of the truths we learn are from our childhood. And we may find that our early relationship with truth is motivated by self-love and worldliness. When Swedenborg wrote, a person could be highly thought of who knew a lot of theology. Religion was much more deeply imbedded in society. People could gain a reputation by spouting off all their knowledge about religion. Today, that isn’t the case. There are academic theology departments, and religious scholars can get a reputation in the university. But that is a very narrow audience. For the most part, our society is becoming less and less concerned with religion. But we are all here in this church. And for us, religious truth is important. So what Swedenborg says about the evolution of truths is relevant for us.
Swedenborg claims that early in life we are motivated by self and world oriented loves. This is proper and a necessary part of our evolution. We need to provide for ourselves and find work in society. But the difficulty comes when we look at how tenaciously we hold onto these early motivations. Ultimately, the loves for self and the world need to be replaced with loves for our neighbor and for God. Love for heaven and for God are higher loves and these loves flow into us from God. But Swedenborg asserts that we can hold onto our early loves quite powerfully. Then, our loves for ourselves and for the world can block the heavenly love that is flowing into us from God. As our loves for self and world clash with the inflowing love for God and heaven, we experience temptations. It is through temptations that the truths we learn early in life can become filled with heavenly love.
Good itself, which has life from the Lord, or which is life, is what flows in and disposes. . . . This can in no way be effected so long as a person is in that state into which he is born, and to which he has reduced himself; for the vessels are not obedient . . . for the good which moves them, and with which they comply, is of the love of self and the world . . . Wherefore, before they can be rendered compliant and fit to receive anything 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 hatred and revenge arising therefrom (AC 3318).
What Swedenborg is describing here, is how love flows into our hearts and minds and shapes our truths into forms that can hold it. It is this inflowing love that adapts our truths to be more accurate. This is why truth changes with us. Heavenly love is flowing into our consciousness and shaping our truths so that they can hold God’s love more and more fully. A person that is thinking, “I am all that matters to me,” has little room in his heart for a love for God. A person that thinks, “I am the greatest,” can’t think, “God is the greatest.” So the truths we hold in our consciousness need to be shaped into truths that can hold spiritual loves. We play a part in this process. We need to actively prepare a place for God in our consciousness. We make room for God when we see evil and abstain from it. When we abstain from evil and do good, our personality evolves. God shines a flashlight on our souls and we are able to see with greater clarity the limitations that interfere with the love God is giving us.
When we do abstain from our evils by the Lord’s agency, then, our love for evil and its warmth are put aside and a love for what is good, with its warmth, is brought in in its place, enabling a higher level to be opened. The Lord actually flows in from above and opens it and unites the love or spiritual warmth with wisdom or spiritual light. As a result of this union we begin to blossom spiritually like a tree in springtime (DLW 246).
So just as our truths change, we will find that our loves change also. We become different people. The truths with us evolve and become better suited to God’s love. And as God’s love flows into us more fully, we become more angelic.
This is the reason why a person is regenerated, that is, made new, by temptations, or what is the same, by spiritual combats, and that he is afterward gifted with another personality, being made mild, humble, simple, and contrite in heart. From these considerations it may now be evident what use temptations promote, namely this, that good from the Lord may not only flow in, but may dispose the vessels to obedience, and thus conjoin itself with them (AC 3318).
As I said in the beginning of this talk, good is the ultimate goal of spirituality. The purpose of truth is to shape us into that personality described by Swedenborg: “mild, humble, simple, and contrite in heart.” I think of the fiery argumentativeness of youth, and the quiet smile of wisdom in old age. At least that’s the way it often goes. The choice is up to us. Will we act with God? Will we invite Him into our hearts and minds? Will we be ready to abandon truths that no longer work in our lives? Will we ask for guidance? Regeneration is a wonderful journey. It reminds us that we are only pilgrims and sojourners on this planet. It reminds us that our true home is in heaven, in a rapturous love affair with God.

Truth or Truths?
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
October 24, 2010

Genesis 25:29-34 John 16:5-16 Psalm 119

Last Sunday many issues came up in our discussion that followed the sermon. People felt that more needed to be said about the subject. This Sunday, I will take up the subject of truth. I will ask the question, “Do we have Truth, or merely truths?”
It was observed that truths with us have changed over time. Things that were held to be true at one time have given way to other truths that are different. So the questions came up, “What is truth?” And, “How do we know what is true?”
These questions are in the forefront of contemporary philosophy. Philosophers note that what society takes to be true has changed over time. In the middle ages, society thought that the earth was at the center of the universe. We now know that this is not true. It was also thought by society that time was always constant. Einstein showed that time can change according to gravity. So philosophers say that since truth has changed over time, that there is no truth at all. They don’t say that we can never know truth, they say that there is no truth at all. All we have is opinion that helps us get through life.
In many ways, contemporary philosophy is not far from Swedenborg’s view of truth. He claims that no one has pure truth. In one particularly pessimistic passage, he claims that our lower mind, called our natural mind, is possessed of many falsities. Not only that, he says that it is hard for our natural mind to grasp spiritual truths.
In the natural man there are knowledges, which are in a great measure derived from the fallacies of the senses, and which, notwithstanding their being false, he believes to be true; there are also things innumerable which the natural man does not comprehend, for he is relatively in shade and darkness, and what he does not comprehend, he believes either not to exist, or not to be so; there are likewise lusts, which are of the love of self and the world, and whatever things favor these, he calls truths (AC 3321).
This passage show how limited our capacity for knowing really is. Swedenborg is saying that it is hard for us to grasp real truth, and that the knowledge we do have is distorted by what our senses tell us. Then there is the persuasion that comes from selfish love and worldliness which impels us to want to believe things that favor those loves. This is a pretty dismal view of our capacity for knowing.
But we are not left in this condition by God. A very important part of our regeneration, or spiritual rebirth, concerns knowledge and truth. Just because we begin in relative shade and falsity doesn’t mean that we must stay there. God takes the things we hold to be true and forms conscience out of them.
with a person there is no pure intellectual truth, that is, Divine truth; but the truths of faith with a person are appearances of truth, to which join themselves fallacies of the senses, and to these the falsities of the desires of the love of self and the world. . . . But still the Lord conjoins Himself with man in these impure things, for He animates and vivifies them by innocence and charity, and so forms conscience (AC 2052).
We need to remember, here, that truth is not an end in itself. Mere knowing is not the final use of truth. Truth serves a purpose. And the purpose of truth is to bring us into love. Truth’s function is to show us how to love God and how to love our neighbor. Last Sunday I quoted Swedenborg about this. He writes,
They who are regenerated, first do good from doctrines, for of themselves they do not know good, but learn it from the doctrines of love and charity; from these they know who the Lord is, who is the neighbor; what love is, and what charity, thus what good is (AC3310).
The doctrines we know may indeed be flawed. They may not be, cannot be, totally true. What matters about our truths is whether they can make us into good people. What matters is whether the truths we know can lead us into good feelings and behaviors. So Swedenborg observes,
But it is to be known that never are any truths pure with a person, not even with an angel, that is, without appearances; each and all are appearances of truth; but still they are received by the Lord for truths if there is good in them (3207).
The many knowledges we have in our memory can serve as building materials for conscience. We start off the regeneration process with knowledge that we have acquired in childhood, from our parents, or from teachers, or from our own life experiences. But initially, these knowledges are merely facts in our memory without spiritual life in them. This is the inner meaning of the stew that Jacob cooked in our Old Testament reading. Stew is a bunch of food all heaped together in one pot. This is the condition of our knowledges as we begin our spiritual journey.
The first state of the man who is being regenerated, or in whom truth is being conjoined to good, is, that first of all in his natural man, or in the store-house which is called the memory, there are heaped together doctrines of truth without any certain order (AC 3316).
So in our younger years we are concerned with learning facts as a goal in itself. Our minds are that storehouse of facts in our memory. As we saw above, many of these facts are false, and some are tainted with fallacies from our senses. Then our thinking may be controlled by our worldly ambitions and our self-interest. We begin our spiritual journey by using what we know to guide our life. As we progress in life, we may find ourselves changing our outlook on things, or favoring other truths than those we began with. This does not mean that we are making up our own truths. This does not mean we are blowing here and there according to whims. What it does mean is that God is guiding us. God takes the truths we know, and leads us by them. And God’s leading is from what is less true into what is more true. God can’t stick absolute truth into our heads. What He does is to work with the truths we have learned and shape them into purer love and truer truth.
The truths of conscience are various, that is, they are according to every one’s religion; and these, provided they are not contrary to the goods of faith, the Lord is not willing to violate, because the person is imbued with them and has placed holiness in them. The Lord breaks no one, but bends him (AC 2052).
The Lord breaks no one, but bends him. This means that the Lord little by little bends us closer to purer loves and into truer truths.
So we come to the question, “How do we know what is true?” Here, I think we need some humility. We need to acknowledge that we don’t have total truth, and never can have total truth. Perhaps contemporary philosophers aren’t mistaken when they say all we have is opinion that helps us to get along in the world. For this is just what our truths do. They show us how to live. They show us who the neighbor is, how to love the neigbor, and how to love God. But all of these things are qualified. Truth teaches us who the neighbor is, how to love the neighbor, and how to love God according to our best lights. We will only know truth according to our best lights. It takes humility and trust to recognise this point. It takes humility because we have to admit that we may not be right. And it takes trust because we have to trust that God is leading us into purer love and truer truth. The fact that we have abandoned truths we held years ago does not mean that everything is relative. It means, rather, that we are in a process. It means that we are growing. It means that we are regenerating.
But the question of relativism is a very real question. If no one has total truth, does that mean that anything goes? I say no. There are sufficiently clear social norms that we can all agree on, such as the 10 commandments. But we need to be very careful of how we use truth in our dealings with others. Recall Swedenborg’s words. “The truths of conscience are various, that is, they are according to everyone’s religion; and these . . . the Lord is not willing to violate, , because the person is imbued with them and has placed holiness in them.” We need always to remain respectful of the religious views of others. If God is not willing to violate them because the person has placed holiness in them, we, too, must not violate the beliefs of others. We may discuss religion with others, but we may not denounce their beliefs. The truths we have are our truths; the truths others have are their truths.
We find ourselves testing truth as we live our lives. We may well find that one way of doing things doesn’t work very well. We may find that truths we lived by at one time are not as effective as truths we acquire later in life. The final answer to the question, “How do we know what is true?” is, “What teaches us to love?” The way we show love is a measure of the truths we know. We need to remember that we are in a process. We need to remember that we are regenerating. We need to remain humble and trustful in our understanding of truth. What we take to be true may change over time. But this does not mean that our search for truth is aimless. It simply may mean that we are in God’s guidance.

What Is Truth?
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
October 17, 2010

Deuteronomy 30:11-20 Mark 4:30-32 Psalm 86

Today I thought we would reflect on what faith means. To some, faith means to believe what the church teaches without question. Even in doctrines that are hard to understand, or even can’t be understood, one is told to believe on faith. Another way faith is viewed in the Christian tradition is the belief that Jesus bore our sins on the cross. If we believe that He bore our sins, that belief is faith. We look at faith differently than this. For us, faith is the same as truth. Whatever is true is faith. Faith is the sum total of all we hold to be true. Swedenborg writes, “All the elements that constitute faith are truths. Faith, then, is nothing but an array of truths shining in our mind” (TCR 347). This means that we must understand truth. Faith is not a part of our minds and our souls unless we understand it and can make it a part of our lives. Blind acceptance has no part in Swedenborg’s definition of faith. So we are encouraged to question, to explore, and to find truths that make sense in our lives.
Truth teaches us how to walk in God’s ways. These are the commands mentioned in our Old Testament reading. Moses tells the Children of Israel,
See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. For I command you today to love the LORD your God, to walk in His ways, and to keep his decrees and laws; then you will increase, and the LORD your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess (Deuteronomy 30:15-16).
Faith is all those decrees and laws that Moses tells the Israelites to keep. While some of these decrees are oriented to life in the first millennium B.C., all we need to be saved can still be found in God’s Word, including the Old Testament. Swedenborg in many places stresses the importance of turning to the Bible to find the truths we need for salvation. He tells us,
Truths need to be taken from the Word, because all the truths that make a contribution to our salvation are there. These truths are genuinely effective because they have been given by the Lord and have been engraved on the entire angelic heaven. As a result, when we learn truths from the Word, without our knowing it we come into contact and association with angels (TCR 347).
And in the New Testament, we heard God’s kingdom compared to a mustard seed. The mustard seed starts our very small, but grows into the largest of the garden plants. This tells us that faith grows and increases. Our faith grows according to how many truths we learn and integrate into our lives. In True Christian Religion, Swedenborg affirms this idea, “Faith is perfected according to the abundance and coherence of truths . . . for then one thing strengthens and confirms another” (TCR 352). As we are on the path to heaven, we begin with a few truths that we may have learned when we were young. But if we seek God and His Kingdom, we continue to seek out new truths and greatly expand our array of truths. One truth then supports, illustrates and confirms another. And from some few truths, we become fortified with many more truths that strengthen our faith and show us ever more clearly the way to walk in God’s path.
We need to learn truths because we are not born with them. Babies know nothing and must learn everything they need to live. They learn to walk. They learn to talk. They learn to read and write. And as they grow and mature, a young person learns how to conduct themselves in life. We are born equally ignorant of spiritual truths. I just saw a movie about the founding of Facebook. Its creator is now the youngest billionaire. But along the way he alienated himself from his best friend–in fact, he alienated himself from everyone. He was smart enough to make a multi-billion dollar company, but was appallingly dumb in the spiritual truths of friendship, trust, loyalty, and love. We all start from different places in our spiritual journey, but we all need to learn truths that will guide us into heaven. So Swedenborg writes,
With the good of life from doctrines . . . the case is this: they who are regenerated, first do good from doctrines, for of themselves they do not know good, but learn it from the doctrines of love and charity; from these they know who the Lord is, who is the neighbor; what love is, and what charity, thus what good is (AC3310).
But learning truths isn’t the whole story. What really matters is what we do with those truths. Swedenborg describes the process by which truths turn into spiritual life. Spiritual life progresses in us by means of a twofold process. We acquire the truths that tell us how to live a heavenly life, and while we are learning truths, God flows into our minds and hearts with love. This process happens by degrees. We have higher and lower aspects to our minds and personalities. The lowest part of our mind is mere knowing alone. So knowledge is the lowest part of our mind. In this part of our mind, we store knoweldges in our memory. Then the next higher realm is our rational mind. It is our rational mind that makes decisions. We judge and choose by means of our rational mind. Then a still higher level of our mind can perceive and see that a truth is true. Swedenborg lists these levels of our minds,
Truth learned is one thing, rational truth is another thing, and intellectual truth is another; and these succeed one another. Truth learned belongs to knowledge; rational truth is truth learned confirmed by reason; intellectual truth is conjoined with a perception that a thing is so (AC 1496).
And above this is our spiritual degree where we love heavenly life and see spiritual truth. We progress from knowledge in the memory to life in the spirit. We learn truths ourselves. And as we learn truths, God flows into our memory and lifts up the truths that are genuinely spiritual and that can be filled with love. The truths that are then enlightened form our rational mind. This is a selection process whereby some truths are not lifted up into our rational mind, and some are not. This is because not everything we learn is true. We also learn things that are false and that do not conduce to heaven. Swedenborg describes how heavenly light enlightens the knowledges that are in our memory,
Divine good with a person flows into his rational, and through the rational into his natural, and indeed into its outward knowledges, or the knowledges and doctrinal teachings therein . . . and there by adaptation it forms truths for itself, by which it then enlightens all things that are in the natural mind (AC 3128).
After truths have been lifted up into our rational mind, then love flows into our rational mind and fills our hearts with heavenly affections for doing good and for loving God. Swedenborg describes the order in which our spirituality develops,
When a person is being instructed, the progression is from knowledge in the memory to rational truths, afterwards to intellectual truths, and at last to heavenly truths (AC 1495).
So it looks as if we raise ourselves up by how we progress in relation to truth. It looks like we learn knowledges, confirm them by our reasoning abilities, and then see their truth from inner light. But what is really going on is different. What is really going on is that spiritual love and wisdom are flowing down from God, through heaven and into our minds. This inflowing love and wisdom is forming the lower reaches of our consciousness so that it conforms with heavenly realities. So the real process isn’t us lifting ourselves up, it is God forming our minds to receive Him.
Order is, that the heavenly shall flow into the spiritual and adapt it to itself; the spiritual will thus flow into the rational and adapt it to itself; the rational will thus flow into the knowledge and adapt it to itself (AC 1495).
Truth actually has its origin from love, or what Swedenborg calls the heavenly degree. So not only are our minds formed by heavenly love flowing down into our minds, but truth itself is formed by that same heavenly love. Truth is living truth when it is filled with heavenly love. Truth has no other purpose than to teach us how to be loving Christians, and how to love wisely.
The truth has not any life from itself, but from the heavenly which flows in. The heavenly is love and charity; all truth is therefrom; and because all truth is therefrom, it is nothing but a kind of vessel. . . . [In heaven] truths are never regarded from truths, but from the life which is in them; that is, from the heavenly things which are of love and charity in the truths (AC 1496).
So it is incumbent on us to learn all God’s decrees and laws, in order for Him to flow down from heaven into our minds and illuminate the truths there. It is important for us to learn those decrees and laws so that we will know how to love, who to love, and how to live spiritually. It is the natural progression for those on the heavenly pathway to respond to the inflowing heavenly power that is adapting our minds to receive it. By remaining open to that inflowing heavenly life, our truths grow and support one another. Our faith grows as the mustard plant, so large that birds can perch in its shade.

The Foreigner’s Praise
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
October 10, 2010
Thanksgiving Sunday

Leviticus 23:33-36, 39-43 Luke 17:11-19 Psalm 118

Our New testament story is so typical of how things can be with us. When we are in distress, we call out to God. Then, when things are going well, we can forget all we have to be thankful to God for. And once again, the New testament author shows the spirit of true thankfulness through the foreign and despised Samaritans. Ten lepers appeal to Jesus to be cured. He sends them to the priests and they are cured. Only the Samaritan alone comes back to thank Jesus and praise God. I have talked about how the Samaritans were viewed by the Israelites before, but some brief review may help us to understand the story better.
The Samaritans were foreigners who settled in northern Israel after Assyria had conquered it. They were largely of Assyrian origin. Their scriptures were not the ones used by the Israelites in Judah. And they constructed their own temple on Mount Gerizim, as a rival to the one in Jerusalem. So the Jews in Judah, the Jews that Jesus lived among, saw the Samaritans as heretics, and even enemies. But true worship of God transcends place and sect. Jesus tells the Samaritan woman at the well, “A time is coming when you will worship the Father neighbor on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. . . . A time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth” (John 4:21, 23). And it is a heretical foreigner–a Samaritan–who shows us all the spirit of thankfulness.
Our reading from Leviticus concerns one of the three great agricultural festivals. They are Passover, the Festival of the First Fruits of the Land, and The Feast of Tabernacles, also translated as the Feast of Booths. We heard about the Feast of Tabernacles. It was celebrated in the autumn when all the crops had been harvested and gathered in. And in a society that depended upon the year’s harvest for its very survival, it is only natural that the autumn harvest festival would also be one of thankfulness for the year’s crops.
So we have two themes of thanksgiving from our Bible stories. One is thanksgiving for bounty–the Old Testament story. And the other a theme of thanksgiving for deliverance from distress and for healing–the New Testament story. Both these stories are ours.
Let’s begin by considering thanksgiving for bounty. We all have so much to be grateful that we cannot enumerate everything. Sure we gripe about not having enough. Sure we struggle to make ends meet from pay check to pay check. I struggle and gripe. But dwelling on what we don’t have only gets in the way of our peace. Instead, we can look at all the things we do have. When we do that, we will find that our cup truly flows over. Last year I bought a new car, which added a rather high car payment to my monthly expenses. What shall I look at? Shall I complain each month about the car payment? Or shall I be grateful each time I’m driving my car that I now have reliable transportation? Each time I find myself in that car, I am buying peace of mind and confidence with that car payment. We can even get more basic than that. I have a roof over my head. My apartment meets all my needs. I am dry when it rains. I am warm inside when it is cold outside. I have room for my bed, and in addition I have room for my electric piano and my bookcases. I have food. I have enough food and good food to keep me healthy. And my health gives me the ability to fulfill my uses in this world. I have clothes. I have all the clothes I need. I have shorts and t-shirts for the summer. I have long pants and long-sleeved shirts for the autumn. I have warm jackets for the winter. I even have enough money for an occasional trip to the ski-hill in the winter to cheer me up in Edmonton’s cold, dark winters. I have the love of a dear friend whom I love back with all my heart. We have here a healthy and loving faith community. We have a place where Swedenborg’s inspired theology can be proclaimed and heard. We have a place where people can explore spirituality as God is leading them without condemnation or judgement. We have a place where people care for one another and friendships blossom. And we can get even more basic than this. There are some sombre lines from Walt Whitman that I’ve always liked. He writes, “It seems to me that everything in the light and air ought to be happy;/Whoever is not in his coffin and the dark grave, let him know he has enough” (“The Sleepers,” 79-80). What I am talking about is called a “gratitude list.” It is a list of all the things we have to be grateful for. A mind filled with gratitude is happy. It is fitting that we take one day out of the year to think about all we have to be thankful for. For it is too easy to forget as the year passes by, and we find ourselves worrying about what we don’t have. We can carry the spirit of Thanksgiving into the year that follows. We can give thanks for the blessings we all have. We will find life more blessed and happy when we dwell on all our many blessings.
On a spiritual level, we can give thanks to God for His continual work of salvation. Through all the challenges and trials we experience in life, God is with us. God is ceaselessly lifting us upward toward him. God is ceaselessly lifting us upward into heavenly joy. God is ceaselessly elevating us out of worldly and selfish loves and into spiritual and Godly joys.
This is both an active and a passive process. Sometimes we feel deep anguish and pain, and we cry out to God for help and deliverance. We cry out of our misery like the lepers cried out to Jesus. I think you all know that poem about the footprints in the sand. A man is walking on the beach and there are two sets of footprints. His own, and those of Jesus who is walking next to him. It happens that the man falls into deep despair and finds only one set of footprints on the beach. He cries out to Jesus where were you then? Jesus responds, “Those footprints were mine; I was carrying you.” God is with us in our moments of trial and despair. God hears our prayers, and answers. Inevitably, our trials come to some resolution. We may find ourselves in a new frame of mind. We may find ourselves on a new spiritual plateau. Rarely do we ever come back to the same place we were before our trials. And this new spiritual place may be God’s answer and healing that we cried out for. But our life eventually levels out; our distress eases. Our life then should be a constant prayer of thanksgiving. But is it? Do we remember to give thanks to God for His deliverance? Whom are we like–the Samaritan, or the other nine lepers? I have been describing God’s help as an active process so far–when we cry out for God’s help and we find deliverance.
But there is also a passive process to God’s salvation. Sometimes we go about our lives for a long while with no serious challenges or trials. We go to work; we live out our family life; we visit with friends. And yet, all the while, God is working in the background. We look back over the years, and we see how different we are from the person we were in the past. In fact, this is one reason why the Buddhists say there is no self at all. When we wonder when the change occurred, we can’t say; we can’t put our finger on when the change happened. But happen it did. Through all the events in our life in the world, God was working on our soul. God was lifting us upward. Lifting us so subtly and so gently that we weren’t even aware of His work. It was as if we were carried along in the powerful current of Providence, as in a river.
Both of these processes are the workings of God’s Divine love. It is out of love that God is continually bringing us toward Himself. Every lover wants to be close to his or her beloved. And God is love itself. So it is only natural that God would want to be close to us. It is only natural that God would want to bring us close to Him. And for God’s love, we can give thanks with our whole heart. As we thank God, we are returning the love He lavishes on us. We can return God’s love by being loving in our own lives. Jesus tells us, “If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love . . . This is my command: Love each other” (John 15:10, 17). Obeying Jesus’ commands; loving each other; these are the ways to truly show gratitude and thankfulness to God. As we enjoy the Thanksgiving feast and the love of family and friends, let us keep in mind that Thanksgiving Day is both a spiritual holiday, and an earthly holiday. Let us remember to give thanks to God for our bounty and for God’s help and deliverance. Then, Thanksgiving Day will be on earth as it is in heaven.

Self-Transformation
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete

2 Kings 5:1-14 Matthew 9:1-8 Psalm 103

God has given each of us the power to transform ourselves. And Jesus tells us that we need to be reborn in order to enter the kingdom of heaven. Being reborn means that a new self needs to be born out of the self we have inherited by birth. Some churches teach that when a person accepts Jesus as their personal savior, that they are then reborn in an instant. We see things differently. Accepting Jesus as a person’s savior doesn’t make one into a different person. We see the process as one that involves true personality development and personality change. Perhaps accepting Jesus as one’s savior begins the process of personality change. But changing into another person, or another personality, takes place over time, and by means of countless processes.
Swedenborg describes this process by borrowing images of birth from nature. We are reborn in a manner analogous to the way we were first born. There is first conception, then gestation in the womb, birth, and growth into adulthood. “This formation is like conception, gestation, birth, and education” (TCR 583). The process of gradual birth from a seed into maturity is echoed in other natural processes. Swedenborg uses the Latin term regeneration, which means rebirth.
That a person can be regenerated only by successive steps, may be illustrated by the things in the natural world, one and all. A tree cannot reach its growth as a tree in a day; but first there is growth from the seed, next from the root, and afterward from the shoot, from which is formed the stem; and from this proceed branches with leaves, and at last blossoms and fruits. Wheat and barley do not spring up and become ready for the harvest in a day. A house is not built in a day nor does a person attain to his full stature in a day, still less to wisdom (TCR 586).
The spiritual rebirth that Swedenborg describes is one that opens us up to greater and greater love and wisdom. It brings us closer and closer to God, and lets God’s Spirit enter more and more fully into our hearts and minds. It thus makes us love deeper and understand with greater clarity. So there are levels of spiritual development.
We can tell clearly from the angels of the three heavens that there are levels of love and wisdom. Angels of the third heaven so surpass angels of the second heaven in love and wisdom, and these so surpass angels of the farthest heaven, that they cannot live in the same place. Their levels of love and wisdom mark them off and separate them (DLW 179).
In Swedenborg’s system, angels are not a different class of being. They are all humans who have developed themselves spiritually. They have developed themselves by means of the process of spiritual rebirth. This is what brings them into such intense heavenly light and warmth. Swedenborg describes the kind of light that angels are surrounded with, and tells us that it is so intense that it is beyond any light we can see in this world.
As for the spiritual light that surrounds angels, I have been allowed to see this with my own eyes. For angels of the higher heavens, the light is so brilliant that it is indescribable, even by comparison with the brilliance of snow; and it also has a glow that defies description, even by comparison with the radiant glory of our world’s sun. In short, this light is a thousand times greater than the light at noon on earth (DLW 182).
People who have been through near-death experiences often comment on this light.
And we all can come into this brilliant light and vernal heat by the spiritual cultivation called regeneration, or spiritual rebirth. This is because we are essentially spiritual beings clothed with a material body. When we lay aside our material body, we are clothed with a spiritual body, and we live as angels.
a person is born spiritual as to his soul, and is clothed with what is natural, which forms his body. When this body, therefore, is laid aside, his soul comes clothed with a spiritual body into a world where all things are spiritual, and is there associated with his like (TCR 583).
But what does all this talk about spiritual rebirth mean? I think that it means that we cannot be content with the status quo. It may well be that the life we are living isn’t our true birthright. It may well be that we need to develop, change, and grow into a different person than we were from birth, and now are.
We may not know this. We may not see this. I have spoken with some people who have told me that they are completely whole, do nothing wrong, and think that their life is going fine. I find this uncritical way of life hard to understand. Socrates said that the unexamined life is not worth living. And only by looking in the mirror, or by turning within, will we see the need for development and growth.
But by what measuring stick will we evaluate our lives? This is where spiritual education comes in. We need to educate our minds in order to see whether there are growth areas we need to cultivate. For Swedenborg, the first step in the process of rebirth is to educate the mind. Our minds are what tell us whether we are on the right track or not. There are two general aspects to our personality that Swedenborg describes: the will, and the understanding. The will is our whole emotional component. It is what we love. It is what we enjoy. It is what we want. The understanding is our intellectual component. It is everything we know. It is everything we understand. It is everything that we believe. The process of spiritual reformation begins by enlightening our minds, our understanding, to see where we are going in life.
Therefore, 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 that the understanding receives, given first by parents and teachers, afterward from reading the Word, from preaching, books, and conversation. The things that the understanding receives from these sources are called truths . . . For truths teach a person in whom and in what he should believe, also what he should do (TCR 587).
We need to form our minds first, in order to see whether we are on the right track. This assumes that we do not know what is true and right from birth. I can go along with this assumption when I look around at the world in which I live. We don’t live in a world like the middle ages. Then, great cathedrals stood in the middle of cities. Everywhere one turned, there were images and writings about spirituality. Fiction and art all surrounded sp concepts. Today, it seems to me that society teaches that materialism, profit, wealth, and power are the values one should strive for. And yet Jesus teaches humility, and the wealth of spirit. The messages of spirituality are vastly different from the messages from our society. This is why Swedenborg tells us that our minds need to become spiritually educated by, “parents and teachers, afterward from reading the Word, from preaching, books, and conversation.”
Our enlightened minds, then, look at our will, our emotions and our loves, and tell us if we are in harmony with spiritual laws or material laws. Here, we may encounter some struggle. One may have the notion that one’s own way of doing things is the way everyone should do things. We may have prejudices against people who are socially or economically different from us. Our sense of self-importance may cause us to try to control others, or boss them around. We may not have that love in our hearts for the whole human race that Jesus so beautifully taught. I can’t list all the ways we may be blocking the love and compassion that spirituality teaches. I can only suggest that there is some merit to Swedenborg’s claim.
The final step in spiritual rebirth, or self-transformation is to train ourselves to act in accordance with spiritual principals. We need to actively remove the character defects that block God’s inflowing love. We need to do this ourselves, and not wait for God to do it for us. For as I said at the very beginning of this talk, we have the power of self transformation. God has given us this power, and when we exercise it, we are working together with God. And working together with God conjoins us with Him. Swedenborg writes,
the power to act right is from the Lord, and the will to act from this is as it were a person’s; for he is in freedom of will, and from this can act together with the Lord and thus conjoin himself (TCR 576).
Some churches teach that human effort can contribute nothing to salvation. This is true to a certain extent. But when it is realized that God has given us the power to transform ourselves, then we are not using human effort at all. Swedenborg illustrates this in an amusing story.
A person must purify himself from evils and not wait for the Lord to do this immediately; otherwise he may be compared to a servant with face and clothes fouled with soot and dung, who comes up to his master and says, “Wash me, my lord.” Would not the master say to him, “You foolish servant, what are you saying? See; there are water, soap, and towel. Have you not hands, and power in them? Wash yourself.” And the Lord God will say, “The means of purification are from Me; and from Me are your will and ability; therefore use these My gifts and endowments as your own, and you will be purified (TCR 436).
Remember our Old Testament story? The general Naaman didn’t want to wash himself in order to be cured from leprosy. He wanted Elisha to wave his hand over the spot where the leprosy was and cure him. But when Naaman did wash himself, he was cured. And in the New Testament, the healing of the paralytic is related to the forgiveness of sins. Healing symbolizes spiritual purification.
Self-transformation, purification, spiritual rebirth–all these amount to the same thing. And that is, we cannot accept the status quo. There is so much, much more that lies in wait for those who seek God with all their heart. Our souls can grow and progress to eternity. We can open our inner self to those high heavens in which are the spiritually advanced angels. And we, too, can become as advanced as they are. All angels are from the human race, and it is our birthright to become one–even in this life unconsciously, and then in the next consciously.