Church of the Holy City

Confronting Love
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
March 7, 2010

Deuteronomy 10:12-22 Matthew 13:44-45 Psalm 25

Today’s Bible readings were selected as texts about love. In Deuteronomy we read, “The LORD set His heart in love upon your fathers” (10:15). And although this passage specifically speaks about the children of Israel, it also applies to the whole human race. And we, in turn, are told,
What does the LORD your God require of you, but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all His ways, to love Him, to serve the LORD with all your heart and with all your soul” (10:12).
A life filled with love for God, and a life that receives God’s love is God’s kingdom with us. In the New Testament, Jesus compares God’s kingdom to a pearl that a merchant sold everything he had to possess. Selling everything he had to obtain the pearl is exactly what is meant by serving the LORD with all your soul. We give everything to and for God.
Love is our life. Whatever we are is a form of love. We don’t often think of love in those terms. We think of loving a certain person, or maybe loving to do a certain something, but we don’t usually think of love as our very life. Bu Swedenborg teaches us that love is our life itself:
Love is our life. For most people, the existence of love is a given, but the nature of love is a mystery. . . . Even though the word “love” is so commonly on our tongues, still hardly anyone knows what love is. . . . We are wholly unaware that it is our very life–not just the general life of our whole body and of all our thoughts, but the life of their every last detail (DLW 1).
We can grasp this somewhat, when we reflect on our lives. We feel so alive when we are doing something that we love. And we feel unhappy when we are compelled to do something that we don’t love. This is because the source of our very lives is a special form of love that is unique to each of us.
Thinking of love as our very lives, not just a part of our lives, but our very life itself brings up another point that follows. We say so often that God is love. And this is true, God is love. But if love is our very life, then God is our very life. We live because God is in us. The love that activates everything we do is God acting in us. We do not live by our own power. We live by God’s life in us. This is because only God is life itself. We are vessels of God’s life. We are receivers of the one and only Source of life and love.
God alone–the Lord–is love itself, because he is life itself. Both we on earth and angels are life-receivers. . . . The Lord, who is the God of the universe, is uncreated and infinite, while we and angels are created and finite. . . . No one can be created directly from the Uncreated, the Infinite, from Reality itself and Life itself, because what is divine is one and undivided. We must be created out of things created and finite, things so formed that something divine can dwell within. Since we and angels are of this nature, we are life-receivers (DLW 4).
All of heaven is God’s outflowing Spirit. The very atmosphere, the very light, the very heat are all God’s own Spirit emanating from His Being. Angels live in that atmosphere, that light, that heat when they have God’s love in them. It is true that everyone has God in them as their life. And it is true that everyone’s soul is near God. But when it comes to a person’s experience and life, only when God’s love is active in a person’s heart, thought, and behavior can we say that God is truly in them. Only then does a person feel God’s love and experience heavenly delight.
The Lord, being love in its very essence or divine love, is visible to angels as a sun; that warmth and light flow from that sun; that the outflowing warmth is essentially love and the outflowing light essentially wisdom; and to the extent that angels are receptive of spiritual warmth and spiritual light, they themselves are instances of love and wisdom–instances of love and wisdom not on their own, but from the Lord. Spiritual warmth and light flow into and affect not only angels but also us, precisely to the extent that we become receptive. Our receptivity develops in proportion to our love for the Lord and our love for the neighbor (DLW 5).
Swedenborg breaks down human psychology to three basic categories. First, there is our voluntary part. This part of our psychology is what feels. It is all the various emotions that we have for different things all taken together. Second, there is our thinking part. This is everything we believe to be true, everything we know, and everything we remember. It is also our decision-making aspect. Finally, there is our behavior. This is the action part of us. This is where the two other levels come into play. Whatever we do is the result of our voluntary part and our thinking part acting. So our actions are the sum total of everything we are. Our voluntary part and our thinking part act into our behavior. We don’t think about it, but everything we do is an instance of our voluntary and thinking part. We usually just pay attention to what we ar doing, and we don’t think about the love that is motivating our behavior, or the decision making that goes into our behavior. In this sense, our behavior is the grounding of our whole pershohood. It is sometimes called the container of our higher aspects.
Everything in the three levels of the earthly mind is enclosed in the works that are done by our physical actions. . . . Everything proper to our minds, to our volition and discernment, is enclosed in our actions or deeds . . . and the deeds of people whose earthly minds are moving up into heaven contain everything they have that is good and true, and also that angels perceive both simply from what we say and do. This is why it says in the Word that we are to be judged according to our works and that we will have to give an account of our words (DLW 277, 281).
So in a very real sense, our behavior is a measure of the way we are receiving God’s life and love.
We can get an idea of the quality of our love by looking at what we enjoy. We find expressions of our love to be delightful. Another way to see this is to pay attention to our delights. What we find delightful is a measure of our love. We feel greater joy as our love approaches God more closely. To the extent that our loves rise above selfishness and the materialism, we come into heavenly happiness. Maybe we have felt this in our own experience. If not, we are nevertheless told that the more elevated our loves are, the more happy we become. Swedenborg describes this in a most remarkable passage that I found in the Arcana Coelestia. Like Plato, Swedenborg describes loves ascending toward God as if a person were climbing up a ladder. But what really caught my attention is that people were described as being elevated up into higher heavens after they had entered the spiritual world. I had previously thought that a person could only enter the heaven he or she had come to in their life in this world. But this passage talks very plainly about God elevating spirits from one heaven up even into the third heaven. Swedenborg describes this while talking about how much happier we become as we are lifted upward from one heaven to another.
For it is the nature of every enjoyment to be more vile as it goes more to externals, and more happy as it goes more to internals. For this reason, . . . in proportion as externals are stripped off, or rolled away, enjoyments become more delightful and happy–as may be evident enough from a person’s enjoyment of pleasures being vile while he lives in the body, in comparison with his enjoyment after the life of the body, when he comes into the world of spirits; so vile indeed that good spirits utterly spurn the enjoyments of the body, nor would they return to them if all the world should be given them. The enjoyment of these spirits in like manner becomes vile when they are taken up by the Lord into the heaven of angelic spirits; for they then throw off these interior enjoyments and enter into those that are still more interior. So again to angelic spirits the enjoyment which they have had in their heaven becomes vile when they are taken up by the Lord into the angelic or third heaven, in which heaven, since internal things are there living, and there is nothing but mutual love, the happiness is unspeakable (AC 996).
There is another passage that reinforces this one. In this passage, Swedenborg talks about spirits being elevated into higher heavens according to the instruction they receive in the spiritual world.
But from the first or external heaven one cannot be taken up into the second or interior heaven before he is instructed in the good things of love and the truths of faith. So far as he is instructed he can be taken up, and come among angelic spirits. It is the same with angelic spirits, before they can be taken up, or come into the third heaven, or among angels (AC 1802).
We are elevated in heaven, and on this world, by our reception of God’s life and love. We are nothing but vessels that receive God’s love and life. And we are receivers of God by how we act. All the levels of our minds come into play through the way we act in this life. We feel more peaceful and happy as we grow in our love for our neighbors and for God. Some of these spiritual experiences lie buried beneath the demands we have for life in the material world. But there are times I think we all can point to when we are lifted up and when we feel keenly the joys of spiritual love. The process of elevation into the joys of heaven begins as we turn from selfishness and cravings for the rewards of this world and turn toward the Source of all life and love. We will increasingly come to believe and maybe even to feel, that all the life and all the love in us are actually God in us. We are but the lamp that God lights with His holy fire.

Doubt and Consolation
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
February 28, 2010

Genesis 15:1-20 Luke 13:31-35 Psalm 27

Both of this morning’s Bible passages deal with doubt. Abram had no heir and was sad that his property would revert to his servant from Damascus. He also doubted that he would take possession of the Holy Land as God had promised. In the New testament, it is not exactly doubt that we confront. But we do see a similar sorrow. Jesus is sad that the inhabitants of Jerusalem seemed to spurn the love God held out for them. This is one of those few passages where we are given a window into Jesus’ own state of mind. We see His great love for the Israelites, and his sorrow at their rejection of God. He says, “How often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!” (Luke 13:34).
In the internal sense, these two Bible passages are remarkably close. In the Abram story, Swedenborg interprets this as Jesus’ doubt about the future of the church and the human race, while He was on earth. Throughout His life, Jesus was tempted and filled with doubt and even despair. These temptations happened as the human body He took on at birth was brought closer and closer to its divine origins. All through His life, God and man were being united in one body. But this means that Jesus sometimes was in his humanity and in some distance from God, who was deep in His soul. Sometimes the way was dim for Jesus. Sometimes, He was disconnected from His divine origin. And when He was in that condition, He was tempted by all the hells. In the story of Abram, Swedenborg teaches that Jesus had doubt about the spiritual state of the human race. Swedenborg writes,
Here in the internal sense are continued the things concerning the Lord after He endured in boyhood the most severe temptations, which were against the love which he cherished toward the whole human race, and in particular toward the church; and, therefore, being anxious concerning their future state (AC 1778).
When a person is tempted, the loves that they know are twisted by the hells so that one feels doubt and despair about those things that they love. This is because the hells are continually trying to destroy humans, from a love of killing. The Lord’s love was infinite and devoted to the salvation of the whole human race, so His combats with the hells were the most profound that can be imagined. Yet we need to keep in mind that it was Jesus’ desire for the salvation for the whole human race that caused the doubt and despair He experienced. Swedenborg writes, “He was fighting for the salvation of the whole human race from pure love,” and we are told that, “He could not but conquer” (AC 1812).
According to Swedenborg, at the time of Christ, the church was in a state of external ritual, and not the heavenly love that truly makes a church alive. This caused the Lord grief, as He wills for everyone to be with Him in the highest heaven.
There are in the Lord’s kingdom those who are external, those who are interior, and those who are internal. Good spirits, who are in the first heaven, are external; angelic spirits, who are in the second heaven, are interior, and angelic spirits, who are in the third, are internal. They who are external are not so closely related or so near the Lord, as they who are interior; nor are these so closely related or so near as those who are internal. The Lord, from the Divine love or mercy, wishes to have all near to Himself; so that they would not stand at the doors, that is, in the first heaven; but He wishes them to be in the third; and, if it were possible, not only with Himself, but in Himself (AC 1799).
We see this desire to unite Himself with the whole human race in this morning’s New Testament Passage, “How often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!”
But the story does not remain in despair and doubt. God promises Abram children as numerous as the stars and that he will find peace in his final days. And Abram believes this promise. And we are told that this symbolizes consolation Jesus felt that a new church would be raised up and heaven would be filled with an immensity of souls who love God and their neighbour. This is the way it is with all things in the world. There is a springtime, or a beginning, a summer, or active life, an autumn, or time of dimming life, and winter, which symbolizes the end of a day, a season, or a year. So it is with the church, or with those who love God and the neighbour. There are the early days of a church, when love is mutual and all see one another as brothers and sisters. Then people fall away from this early love. In the history of Christianity we can see this as the church became a world power and actually warred with princes and kings. We see this even more graphically in the atrocities of the Inquisition. For Swedenborg, the church was at its final stage, or winter, during his lifetime. But even as the early Christians were a ray of light and love in a troubled world, the book of Revelation, and Swedenborg’s interpretation of it promises a new church, or a new beginning for Christianity.
Will we be children like Abram, and trust in God’s promise? Or will we live in doubt and despair. There are certainly enough signs that Christianity is in a decline today. I attended a meeting of the National Council of Churches, and across denominational lines, churches are showing a weaker presence in society. Some churches are closing their doors. The only churches that are showing signs of strength are fundamentalist churches. I see all these facts as signs of a church in decline. But I have a strong belief that the new church promised in the book of Revelation will follow the decline of the old Christian Church. I had my doubts about the future of the church before I researched for this sermon. But what I came away with is the kind of consolation that Jesus received. That is, I came away with a consolation that a new church is being raised up as the old church is declining. I can even look at the present state of the church with hope. Maybe we are in a winter of the old, while a springtime of the new is emerging.
Where are we in this process? Are we the children of the spring, bringing heaven to earth? Or are we children of the winter? I remember asking one of our ministers what evidence she saw of the new church? She said, “It is all what is in the hearts of the people. It is in a person’s relationship with God.” She put the issue right on my own faith and life. The new church is right here in this building if it is in our hearts. The new church is everywhere in the world where people find a heartfelt connection with God. We can’t see any of this from the outside. We can’t look around us and see who has the Christ light in their hearts and who doesn’t.
It may look to us as if the church is losing its influence in society, as the church looked to Jesus while He was on the earth. But I take heart in the fact that infinite love wants me to be one with Him for eternity. He wants to be one with everyone. That is a power that can hardly fail, if we but do our part and turn toward God. This is a God who would gather us all under His wings as a hen does her chicks, if we are but willing. All we can do is to respond to God. Bringing the human race to Himself is God’s work. We can be a witness to God’s love in the life we lead. And to that extent we can aid God in His mission to gather the human race under His wings. But ultimately it is God who is drawing the human race to Himself. It is His concern, and, if you will, it is His worry—not ours.
This church and Christianity in general are in God’s caring hands. They are in the hands that want to bring everyone up into the highest heaven, and into intimate relationship with Himself. Are we children of doubt, or of the promise? Are we like Abram? Will we look up at the stars and believe?

Rejoice in all the Good Things
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
February 21, 2010

Deuteronomy 26:1-11 Luke 4:1-13 Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16

In today’s reading from Deuteronomy, we heard the story of the journey of the Israelites from Egyptian slavery to settling in the Promised Land. For Swedenborgians, this story is not just one of historical interest. For us, the journey from Egyptian slavery to the Promised Land is a story that symbolizes our own inner growth. We are on that journey in this life. It is a journey from the limitations of self-interest into the blessings of Godly love and love for each other. The New Testament story about Jesus is in keeping with this story. In our New Testament reading, we heard about Jesus’ temptations. This account is the only time temptations are mentioned in the Gospel narratives, but the last line in the story brings up a most important point about Jesus’ temptations. In my translation it reads, “When the devil had finished all this tempting, he left him until an opportune time (Luke 4:13). It’s that “opportune time” that interests me. It means that the devil wasn’t done tempting Jesus at the end of this story. It suggests that the devil would come back and tempt Jesus again at some opportune time. In our theology, we are taught that Jesus was tempted all through his life, not just in this one occasion after His baptism. That teaching is consistent with the suggestion we read about in Luke, the devil left until an “opportune time.” The pairing of the journey from slavery to the Promised Land and the temptation of Jesus also makes theological sense from a Swedenborgian point of view. It is through temptations that we are brought into the Promised Land of the soul. It is by temptations that we are brought into the blessings of love that God gives us as a heavenly gift. And when we feel something of the heavenly joys of love that God gives us, we give thanks to God and rejoice in all the good things He gives us.
Swedenborg teaches that there isn’t one single devil who opposed God. Rather the devil in the Bible means all the hells taken together. So for Swedenborg there are devils in the plural, but not one single devil who is the opposite of God. This means that when Jesus was tempted, He fought against all the whole hells together. It was in his human form that Jesus was tempted. For the hells cannot approach God as He is in His essence. God’s flaming love is too pure and holy for any devil to come near it. In fact, even the highest angels cannot come near God as He is in His essence. It is with God’s Divine Human that we can become united, and it was for the purpose of union with the whole human race that God took on the human and came into our world. And through his human form, God was able to interact with the hells, be tempted by the hells, and ultimately bring them into order. Through Jesus’ temptations, he grew out of everything the earthly human form received from Mary, and He put on the Divine Human. This happened progressively throughout Jesus’ life. With the resurrection, Jesus and God became fully one and God and Man became one being.
We come to God in a similar way. We grow out of a self and world orientation and into a God and heaven orientation. For most of us, this process happens through temptations. Temptations happen when what we know we should be doing conflicts with what we are used to doing from our birth. Swedenborg’s view of our human nature is both positive and negative at the same time. In our infancy and early childhood, God and the angels are particularly close to us. They impress on our character an innocence and a love that remains with us throughout our lives. These early experiences of love and innocence are called remains because they remain with us. Sometimes they are buried deep in our unconscious mind; at other times they are present and fully conscious to us. These remains are God’s dwelling with us. God is with us in the psychic memory of those early states of love and innocence.
But as we grow up, we acquire a sense of self. This is a natural process in human development. We look to our own needs. Often, our own self-interest dominates our consciousness. We want to impress the world with who we are; in fact, we want to impress upon the world what we are. We expect the world to yield to us. We also acquire a sense of the world. We want the good things of this world. Perhaps we have high ambitions and want wealth and fame. Perhaps our wants are more modest and we want a fancy car, nice clothes, good food. If these desires don’t grow out of order, they are perfectly natural and appropriate for our development. These things we acquire upon reaching adulthood—a sense of self and a sense of the world constitute our “natural level.” Swedenborg calls this the natural level because it is formed by nature. Self and the world are two things that nature gives us with birth.
But we are born for higher things. It is also natural for us to progress above and beyond these two desires for self and for the world. If we continue our personality development, we grow into a love for God, which is the opposite of self, and we grow into a love for our neighbour, which is the opposite of the world. This progress happens through cultivation of spirituality. By this I mean that we learn what it means to love God and what it means to love our neighbour. The first stage in this spiritual development is one of knowledge. We learn the 10 commandments. We learn life lessons from the stories of Jesus in the New Testament. These days, people are also learning truths from other world religions. Over the past few years, I have noticed interest in Buddhism and Sufi poetry from those near me. I, myself, learned much helpful spirituality from the religions I studied in graduate school such as Taoism and Hinduism. The truths that teach spirituality do not have to come from formal schooling. We learn them from our parents and from the world around us, too. I think almost everybody has learned some form or right and wrong.
The spiritual truths we learn are lifted above our natural level. They form a higher level of our consciousness. The level of our consciousness that our spiritual truths are in is called the rational mind. But knowing is not the final goal of spirituality. We need to make our lives conform to what we know to be true and good—we need to act rightly and think truthfully. This is where temptations come in. Our natural level has been formed to adapt to the demands of the world and our selves. Sometimes there is conflict between what we have learned spiritually and the life we have been living. I don’t think that this conflict has to be there. I believe that for some people, their grasp of truth is enough to keep them from harmful actions and thoughts. These people would avoid wrong and think truthfully according to what they have learned. For others, and I am in this category, there is a conflict between the way I have been living and what I know to be right and true. Then temptations happen to us. The truths in our rational mind act upon our self-limiting behaviours and strive to bring them into conformity with the higher ways of living we have learned.
In my own life I can this dynamic in my own sense of rightness. If someone else disagreed with me, I would typically react in one of two ways. Either I would argue with them, and try to convince them that I was right and they were wrong, or I would think to myself that they were wrong and simply avoid their company. One can easily see how these reactions would isolate me from my fellows. It would also create enemies who didn’t like me. And it also got me into trouble with some of my professors in school. It was the program of AA that taught me how to escape from this self-defeating behaviour. There is a line in one of their books that said something like, “We had to resign from the debating society.” I didn’t like hearing that. As it turns out, I was actually on the debating society in high school. They also asked me, “Do you want to be right, or do you want to be happy?” I struggled with this teaching. I began by disagreeing with it. But day after day, week after week, I went to AA meetings and this would come up time and again.
I don’t quite know when it happened, but I ultimately found myself less and less argumentative. And when I let go of this self-defeating behaviour, the Promised Land opened up before me. I was able to actually listen to others who differed from me without difficulty. That was a milestone. I could listen. And I think that the primary ingredient in healthy relationships is the capacity to listen. I was still free to speak my peace, but others didn’t have to agree. I could remain in relationship with others who saw things differently than I. I found more friends than I had known before. My own mind was more at peace with the world. I was able to love others who were different from me. This is the kind of thing that temptations bring us. And it was those truths fro AA that set me on my course of self-ammendment. We struggle with limiting behaviours and desires, and put away those desires that limit our love for God and for our neighbours. When we do this, God fills the void with love and positive feelings. God is continually working with us, teaching our rational mind and giving us the power to implement in our natural lives what we have learned. This is what is symbolized by the deliverance from slavery. When we are living in our natural level without thinking, we are slaves to our lower nature. But God does not leave us there. God teaches us how to rise above our limits and how to come into the peace, innocence, and joy of heavenly love.
This is the first week of Lent. In traditional Christian churches, people give up something for Lent. Some quit smoking; some give up red meat; some quit drinking. I would commend this to you. But I would suggest something a little more spiritual. I would ask you to think about your life. Maybe there is some aspect of your personality you are finding causing conflict in your relations with others. Maybe you have stopped talking with God. Maybe you just wish to look back on your life and see if you have made spiritual progress. Then, we can remember God and give thanks. We would never change without God’s leading. As the Source of all that is good and joyful, it is God who gives us those very heavenly loves and joys. We can take no credit for our deliverance from the slavery of self. It is all the work of God. We then find a new best friend in the risen and glorified Jesus Christ. And we also find harmony and happiness in relationship with our fellows. Then, as the writer of Deuteronomy says, “You and the Levites and the aliens among you shall rejoice in all the good things the Lord your God has given you.”

Experiencing the Mountain Top
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
February 14, 2010

Exodus 34:29-35 Luke 9:28-36 Psalm 99
There are two aspects to the Old Testament and New Testament stories that tie them together. One is the glowing faces on Moses and Jesus. The other is the mountain top where each one communed with God. There is a further connection between these stories and our Valentine’s Day celebrations today. In Swedenborg’s system of correspondences, mountains symbolize the holy things of love. They represent love for God and love for each other. It is no coincidence that when Moses’ face shines from his encounter with God; and when Jesus’ face shines through a union with His divine origins, they happen on a mountain top. The Mountain top is where union with God is represented. And union with God means an intense feeling of love—for God is love itself.
We can understand why mountains might represent a close connection with God. When we are in the mountains, we feel a special sublime feeling. I recall when I was at a Swedenborgian church camp in Maine. There were mountains all around us. And one day we had an outing when I and some of the teens climbed a tall mountain nearby. I was younger then, and enjoyed the climb. But when we got to the top, there was the wonder of the view that appeared before me. We saw down to the valley, and across to other mountain tops, and tiny houses and villages. The view was breathtaking. It was not the kind of thing one saw very often. There was a kind of sacred awe I felt as I surveyed the depths below me and listened to the air blowing by me. It is this kind of feeling that led the ancient peoples to think that mountains brought one close to God. I felt the same way when I went to the mountains here in Alberta. Carol and I went skiing in both Banff and Jasper. I had been camping in Banff before we went skiing there. And seeing the mountains for a second time, I recognized some of the peaks. Being in the mountain valley, looking up, I felt that special wonder again that mountains give me. Then when we went skiing, we took the lift way up the mountain to the top of the ski run. We looked across the valley to the peaks on the other side, and stood up there in the still, quiet mountain air. The view of the other mountains across the valley, and the look downward into the valley itself, made the skiing all the more delightful. And when I got down to the bottom of the ski hill, I wanted to go back up not just to ski some more, but because I wanted another look at the view from the mountain top.
These feelings are behind the Biblical use of mountains as a place where one can meet with God. When Moses received the tablets of stone with the Law on them, he met God on a mountain. And his encounter with God shone in his face. When Jesus was transfigured upon the mountain top His face shone like lightning. In the transfiguration, Jesus was in union with God the Father who is Jesus’ soul. When the Father had so filled Jesus with his presence, Jesus shined with His innate divinity. This union with the Father came and when throughout Jesus’ life on earth, and was fully completed forever with the resurrection.
We experience union with God from time to time in our lives. There are those rare mountain-top experiences when we feel really close to God. But most of the time, our union with God is a gradual process in which throughout our lifetimes we grow inward into greater love and upward into clearer thought.
There is a direct connection between our relationship with God and our love for our wives, husbands, or life-partners. As God is more fully in our hearts, our love for our partner grows more deeply. This is because as we receive love more deeply, and as we act more wisely, we have the ability to express that love and wisdom with another person. And love and wisdom are both given us by God, and depend on our relationship with God. In his book on marriage, Swedenborg writes,
Love for the sex and marital love come by an influx of good and truth from the Lord. Good and truth, we have said, are the universals of creation and so are in all created things, in each according to its form. Good and truth also proceed from the Lord not as two but as one. It follows that a universal marital sphere pervades the universe from first to last, from the angels to the lowest forms of life (CL 92).
Marital love also comes of this sphere, because in humans and angels this sphere flows into the form of wisdom. The human being can increase in wisdom to the end of his life in the world and afterward to eternity in heaven. As wisdom increases, his form is perfected. This form does not receive love for the sex, but love for one of the sex. With her he can be united to the inmost, in which is heaven with its happiness, and this union is one of marital love (CL 93).
Our relationship with God is compared to a marriage. God is the groom and the whole church, or those who are spiritually united to God are the bride. This marriage of God as groom and church as bride is the source for the love that lovers feel for each other.
We also deal at this point with the marriage of the Lord and the Church, and its correspondence, because without knowledge and intelligence on this subject one can hardly know that marital love is holy, spiritual, and heavenly in origin and is from the Lord. . . . In order to place the relation in some light of the understanding, we give a separate chapter to that holy marriage, which is with and in those who constitute the Lord’s Church; these and no others have true marital love (CL 116).
Our marriage to the Lord also bears offspring. Of course the idea of offspring is a correspondence, too. With the union of love and wisdom that come from God, a person comes into truth and good, and these qualities of the soul grow and grow to eternity. This truth and good are the offspring that are born from the marriage of God and the Church.
The spiritual offspring, born of the marriage of the Lord and the Church, are truths, from which are understanding, perception and all thought; and goods, from which are love, charity and all affection. Truths and goods are the spiritual offspring which are born of the Lord and the Church, for the reason that the Lord is good itself and truth itself, and these are not two in Him but one, and because nothing can proceed from the Lord except what is in Him and He is. . . . The human being has understanding, perception and all thought by truths, and love, charity, and all affection by goods, for the reason that all human life is referable to good and truth (CL 121).
It only takes a little reflection to see that if a person is filled with love, and acts wisely, his or her relationships will be better, more tranquil, and more harmonious. The actual capacity to love is given us by God. The more we have let God into our hearts, the more we will be able to express and feel the delights of love. Paul gives us one of the most memorable statements about love that western culture has. He tells us ,
1If I speak in the tongues[a] of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames,[b] but have not love, I gain nothing. 4Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. 8Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthians 13:1-8, 13)
How much more satisfying will be our loving relationships if we have the kind of love Paul talks about. We will not be boastful, proud, rude, or self-seeking—the kinds of things that block love, or make a loving relationship difficult. We will keep no record of wrongs, nor rejoice in evil. What Paul is talking about here is forgiveness, which is essential for us fallible humans. Swedenborg tells us that God gave us marital love in order to make us the happiest we can be. I think that when relationships are at their best, we do find that life is happy, perhaps the happiest we can know. In his own way, Swedenborg gives us another beautiful statement about love. It isn’t as famous as that of Paul, but I think it is equally beautiful and I will close with it.
The states of this love are innocence, peace, tranquility, inmost friendship, full trust, a desire in mind and heart to do the other every good; and from all these blessedness, satisfaction, joy, pleasure, and in eternal fruition of these, heavenly happiness (CL 180).

Seeing God Face to Face
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
February 7, 2010

Isaiah 6:1-8 Luke 5:1-11 Psalm 138

I find the Bible readings for this morning both interesting and comforting. They both concern a meeting between man and God. In the Old Testament, the prophet Isaiah sees God above the awe-inspiring cherubim. And in the New Testament reading, Simon Peter, James, and John meet Jesus while they are fishing. In both passages, God comes to the people—they don’t seek Him out. And God comes to the people where they are in life. He doesn’t appear in a period of prayer, or meditation—He comes right in the middle of their lives. The first response of the people to whom God comes is the same. They both feel conscious of their own unworthiness. Isaiah says, “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts (6:5). Likewise, Simon Peter bows down at Jesus’ knees and says, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man” (Luke 5:8). The striking thing about these responses is that they come from the people themselves, not God. It is Isaiah and Peter who see themselves as sinful, not God. And God stays right there with them; He does not depart. He cleanses Isaiah with a coal taken from the temple and despite his fear, Peter follows Jesus straightaway.
I take two basic ideas from these readings. One is how God sees us. And the other is God’s response of cleansing when we are brought into His presence.
I was comforted by the way God acts when He appears to Isaiah and Peter. Both men feel their own unworthiness, in fact, their sinfulness. Yet this is no offence to God. God comes to us regardless of our own spiritual state. We don’t have to be perfect for God to come to us. We need not be saints to encounter God. In so many passages in the Old Testament, we hear of God being angry, or punishing, or even vengeful. But Swedenborg teaches that these are all appearances. They are ideas about God that were given to a primitive, warrior people, who themselves thought that way. So they saw God that way. But Swedenborg sees God very differently. He makes a beautiful statement about how God views the human race. He says that God does not see our evils. And furthermore none of those dreadful images of God represent who God actually is.
The Lord imputes good to every person, but hell imputes evil to every person. That the Lord imputes to man good and not evil, while the devil (meaning hell), imputes evil is a new thing in the church; and it is new for the reason that in the Word it is frequently said that God is angry, takes vengeance, hates, damns, punishes, casts into hell, and tempts, all of which pertain to evil, and therefore are evils. But . . . the sense of the letter of the Word is composed of such things as are called appearances and correspondences . . . when such things are read these very appearances of truth, while they are passing from a person to heaven, are changed into genuine truths, which are, that the Lord is never angry, never takes vengeance, never hates, damns, punishes, casts into hell, or tempts, consequently does evil to a person (TCR 650).
In another place, Swedenborg tells us that God cannot even look at us sternly,
as He wills only what is good he can do nothing but what is good. . . . From these few statements it can be seen how deluded those are who think, and still more those who believe, and still more those who teach, that God can damn any one, curse any one, send any one to hell, predestine any soul to eternal death, avenge wrongs, be angry, or punish. He cannot even turn Himself away from humanity, nor look upon anyone with a stern countenance (TCR 56).
God doesn’t even judge us, let alone damn anyone to hell.
That the Lord imputes good to every person and evil to none, hence that He does not judge any one to hell, but so far as a person follows raises all to heaven are evident from His words: Jesus said, “When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all persons unto Myself” (John 12:32); “God sent His Son into the world not to judge the world, but that the world through Him might be saved” (John 3:17); Jesus said, “I judge no man” (John 8:15) (TCR 652).
And God’s love extends to the whole human race—good and bad. “The love of God goes and extends itself, not only to good persons and things, but also to evil persons and things” (TCR 43).
What would it feel like to see God face to face? Perhaps like the Bible passages we heard this morning, meeting God face to face might make us feel our own unworthiness. In the presence of infinite goodness and infinite love, we would probably see how far from infinite goodness we are. This brings to mind the second aspect of these Bible readings. In Isaiah, God purifies the prophet with a coal taken from the altar. And in the New Testament, despite his own feeling of sin, Peter drops his nets and immediately follows Jesus. When God comes to us, He brings us purification.
What purification means is seen differently in different churches. Some Christians say that Jesus bore our sins, and our sins are atoned for if we believe. Swedenborg sees the matter differently. For Swedenborg, our sins have become a part of our personality. They are in our emotions, our thoughts, and our behaviours. They are part of who we are. In order to be purified, we need to examine ourselves and see for what it is each self-limiting thought and response. We need to weed the garden of our personality and root out those aspects that would choke off the fruit of the Spirit.
Sins are removed so far as a person is reborn, because rebirth is restraining the flesh that it may not rule, and subjugating the old man . . . . Who that yet has sound understanding, cannot conclude that such things cannot be done in a moment, but successively, as a person is conceived, carried in the womb, born, and educated . . . . For the things of the flesh or the old man are inherent in him from birth . . . as an infant grows, reaches childhood, then youth, and then begins to think from his own understanding, and to act from his own will. Who does not see that such a house which has been thus far built in the mind, . . . cannot be destroyed in a moment, and a new house built in place of it? Must not the lusts . . . be themselves first removed, and new desires which are of good and truth be introduced in the place of the lusts of evil and falsity? That these things cannot be done in a moment every wise person sees from this alone, that every evil is composed of innumerable lusts; . . . therefore unless one evil is brought out after another, and this until their connection is broken up, a person cannot be made new (TCR 611).
Even though this is a lifelong process—indeed a process that continues to eternity in the next life—the good news is that everyone can be reborn if they are but open to God’s influence. Swedenborg states this in no uncertain terms, “Since all men have been redeemed, all may be regenerated each according to his state” (TCR 579). This idea of rebirth is inclusive, rather than exclusive. It means that everyone has their own path to take in the process of spiritual rebirth. One person’s path may be very different from another’s. Our path may be very different from someone else’s. The variety of ways in which people are reborn are as infinite as there are faces in the human race.
All may be regenerated, each according to his state; for the simple and the learned are regenerated differently; as are those engaged in different pursuits, and those who fill different offices . . . those who are principled in natural good from their parents, and those who are in evil; those who from their infancy have entered into the vanities of the world, and those who sooner or later have withdrawn from them . . . and this variety, like that of people’s features and dispositions, is infinite; and yet everyone, according to his state may be regenerated and saved (TCR 580).
There is a powerful force emanating from God that draws everyone in the whole human race upward to heaven.
There is actually a sphere elevating all to heaven, that proceeds continually from the Lord and fills the whole natural world and the whole spiritual world; it is like a strong current in the ocean, which draws the ship in a hidden way. All those who believe in the Lord and live according to His precepts, enter that sphere or current and are lifted (TCR 652).
I find these passages remarkably refreshing. It isn’t only people who have been brought up good who are regenerated, but even those who Swedenborg says “are in evil.” When I read this, I think about those unfortunate young people who are brought up in neighbourhoods where gangs dominate the culture. Or others who have had difficult upbringings. All these can be reformed and regenerated—each according to his or her upbringing and state of mind.
I think the main point in all this is to be open to God when He comes. In Revelation, Jesus says, “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me” (Revelation 3:20). Let us all listen for that knock. And let us all, regardless of what state we are in, open the door and eat the holy supper with our Lord.

Reacting from Fear or Acting with Faith
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
January 31, 2010

Exodus 16:1-18 Mark 14:66-72 Psalm 55

We are continually being drawn into closer and more intimate union with God. This happens to us sometimes gradually and almost imperceptibly, sometimes in crises in our lives, but it happens continually. Swedenborg writes,
. . . divine love (and therefore divine providence) has the goal of a heaven made up of people who have become angels and are becoming angels, people with whom it can share all the bliss and joy of love and wisdom, giving them these blessings from the Lord’s own presence within them (DP 27).
Since God is a God of love God wants to give us everything He can to bring us into greater and greater joy and happiness. Again from Swedenborg,
The more closely we are united to the Lord, the happier we become. . . . These times of happiness, bliss, and sheer delight intensify as the higher levels of our minds are opened within us, the levels we call spiritual and heavenly. Once our life on earth is over, these levels keep rising forever (DP 37).
But growing toward God means changing. It means leaving behind old ways of thinking and old ways of finding happiness. As we let go of old ways, we come into new ways. And as we do this we are continually growing closer and closer to God.
Change is not always easy for us. When we are comfortable in a certain way of life, we don’t want to let go of it. But change is the very nature of life. The Buddhists say that everything is impermanent, and that everything changes. The secret to happiness for them is to let go of attachments. This means letting go of attachments to everything. There is certainly wisdom in this. Change will come to us whether we choose it or not. Our bodies grow and age. I know that I am now unable to practice the martial art Kung Fu, which I practiced in my early teens. So I have accepted this with grace and now practice the slower discipline of Tai Chi. People will come and go out of our lives. Friends move away for various reasons—work, or their children, or other reasons. Or we, ourselves, move away for the same reasons. And the friendship is put to the test over long distances and the new life our friends experience in their now distant locations. And on a more sombre note, our loved ones die and enter the spiritual world. It is hard for us to accept these changes and losses. At times they can be a real challenge to our faith. But we need to trust in God and accept that through it all He is with us, and guiding us into greater union with Himself.
With all the changes we must go through, we can react in two ways. We can react from fear of the unknown and the new life that we must grow accustomed to. Or we can act in faith. Faith that through all these changes God is bringing us into closer and more intimate union with Himself.
The journey to God involves leaving behind self-interest and coming into interest in our fellows and love for God. All the events that come to us in our lives—all the challenges, the choices, the loss and heartache—all of these events are guided by God’s divine providence. Everything that comes our way is given us to lead us away from self and into relationship with God and our neighbours.
We begin life wanting things to go our way. That is to say, we begin with self-interest playing the dominant role. But after the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to, we learn to let go and let God have His way. Swedenborg illustrates the nature of self-interest in His book Divine Providence. He describes it in its extreme form for the sake of illustration. For most of us, self –interest doesn’t show itself in such an extreme form. But I think that we can recognize elements of our own life in this description.
As for love of eminence and wealth for their own sake . . . it is a love for our own self-importance, and our sense of self-importance is wholly evil. . . . What we inherit is the sense of self that encompasses us and that we participate in by virtue of our self-love—especially by our love of being in control because of our self-love. This is because when we are wrapped up in this love we are totally focussed on ourselves and therefore immerse our thoughts and feelings in our own sense of self-importance. As a result, within our self-love there is a love of doing harm because we have no love for our neighbour, only for ourselves. When we love only ourselves, we see others only as outside ourselves, either as completely worthless or as simply nothing. We regard them as inferior to ourselves and think nothing of doing them harm (DP 215).
I don’t think that many of us see others as completely worthless. Nor would many of us think nothing of doing others harm. But what about that sense for self-importance? What about seeing others as inferior to us? What about that love of being in control? We can see Swedenborg’s description of the self-interested person as being on one side of a spectrum. On the other side would be Jesus’ life of total giving and love. Most of us would fit somewhere in between these two poles. That means that for most of us, letting go of self-interest would play a role in our spiritual development.
But we don’t always want to give up a life that we are accustomed to. In moving toward God, we need to change our thinking, our loving and enjoyments, and our acting. We can want to hold on to the self-interested life and its enjoyments. But the only way we can find heavenly happiness is by dismissing the enjoyments that serve self first. Then we will find that heavenly loves for God and our neighbour are more fulfilling and more pleasant. Finding these loves means letting go of others—something we so often resist. In our Bible reading from Exodus this morning, the Israelites complained about their life in the wilderness. They were reacting from fear of the new life that they were unsure of. Things got so bad that they even wanted to return to slavery in Egypt rather than go forward with God’s promise of prosperity. And in our New Testament reading Peter turned away from Jesus out of fear when Jesus was arrested.
We can take these images as symbols for our fear of moving toward the new life God has for us. The Old Testament image of liberation from slavery is a powerful symbol for our own spiritual growth. When self-interest dominates our lives we are slaves. We are at odds with everyone who opposes us, or everyone who doesn’t do things our way. We think we know what is best for others. We become argumentative. Our cup is so full that we have no room in it for new wisdom. From this perspective, it is easy to see that love for others, and toleration of differences is a liberating choice. We are so much more at peace with our neighbours and ourselves, for that matter, when we let God bring His divine love into our hearts.
We play an active role in this process of growth out of self-interest. We need to dismiss the attachment to self whenever it appears in our lives. We need to ask in every occasion of conflict, “What role am I playing in this?” We also need to ask ourselves, “What can I let go of that is self-interested in this encounter?” Opportunities for growth pop up everywhere in our lives—from great decisions to small matters. When I decided to complete my divinity studies and be ordained into ministry it took a huge leap of faith. I had a life in Florida and a job that I had become accustomed to. But all my life I had that call from God to enter the path of ministry. I followed that call with faith, and now I am in a profession that I love. My personal life is also much richer. But to arrive here, I needed to let go of what I was accustomed to and trust in God’s leading. I had to let go of what my self had become accustomed to and move forward into the promised land as the Israelites did. Then there are those small things in life that challenge our self-interest. I remember playing cards with Carol recently. She made a phone call just before we started, and had a somewhat lengthy conversation with the other person. I sat there waiting to play cards, listening to half of a conversation. I grew impatient. I dealt out the cards. Then I picked up my own cards and looked at them. But wasn’t I getting impatient and a little bit mad sitting there listening to half of a conversation, wanting to play cards? It was a phone call Carol needed to make. And she was cheering up a friend in it. But all this didn’t make me more accepting of the situation. It wasn’t a big issue, and we did play cards, and I won. But there you have it—self appearing in the littlest of situations.
We need to get a grip on self in order to be liberated from the frustrations that arise from it. Then we can sensibly feel the heavenly happiness God is bringing us into. We need to do the work to win the prize. We need to let go and let God. This is how spiritual growth looks from our perspective. But it is actually God working in us that gives us the power to grow toward Him. Swedenborg tells us that God is giving us the power to come into the joys of heaven. He writes, “However, these joys enter us only as we distance ourselves from compulsions to love what is evil and false, which distancing we do apparently with our own strength, but in fact from the Lord’s strength” (DP 39).
We let go of the limitations of self when we trust that there is a better way. When we have faith in the words of God that we read in the Bible, we can accept the changes that come to us graciously. When we live in faith, we don’t fear for the future. When we live in faith we are ready to take the next step toward God. The choice is ours. Will we cling to outmoded ways of living because of a fear for new life? Or will we live in faith and move forward ever upward and inward into communion with God and heavenly joy? As the psalmist sings in the passage we read this morning, “Cast your cares on the Lord and He will sustain you.”

A Kingdom of Priests
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
January 24, 2010

Exodus 19:1-8 Matthew 4:12-22 Psalm 84

Since today we will be holding our Annual General Meeting, I thought I would reflect on the nature of the church. I thought about what constitutes the church, what it means to be in a church, and the relationship between churches like this one and God.
I chose my Bible readings for this morning with this thought in mind. In both the Old Testament and the New Testament, the theme is the calling of people into a church. In the Old testament, God calls the Israelites into communion with Him through Moses. And in the New Testament, Jesus calls the fishermen Peter, Andrew, James, and John to follow Him. And without question, they drop their nets and follow Christ. Also the psalm I selected is based on the house of God. This means the temple in Jerusalem, which was on top of Mount Zion. Even in the psalm, the house of God is a metaphor for living according to God’s ways. The Psalmist writes, “Blessed are those who dwell in your house.” No one lived in the temple, so it is clear that by dwelling in God’s house is meant following the laws of God.
Our Old Testament passage gives us a good idea of exactly what it means to be truly a church member. God tells the Israelites, “If you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then . . . you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:5). God asks the Israelites to obey Him and to keep His covenant. Their covenant with God was the law that had been given them by Moses. So being called by God’s name means to obey God and to follow God’s law. This passage is striking because holiness isn’t seen in the priests or the prophets, or even Moses alone. Each individual will be holy if he or she obeys God and keeps God’s covenant. So God says “You will be a kingdom of priests.” Everyone will embody the holiness of the priest. The same idea is symbolized by dwelling in the house of God, as we heard in this morning’s psalm. Swedenborg writes,
The House of God in the universal sense is the Lord’s Kingdom; in a less universal sense, the church; and in a particular sense the person himself in whom is the Kingdom and the Church of the Lord (AC 2048).
So the House of God is the Lord’s Kingdom everywhere—in heaven and everywhere on earth where people call on God in their lives. In a more narrow sense, it is the Christian Church. And in an even more narrow sense, the House of God is every person who obeys God and keeps His covenant.
The same may be said of our New Testament passage. We heard about four of Christ’s apostles being called to follow Christ. Being a disciple of Christ is obviously not just those twelve that followed Jesus wherever He went. We are all called to follow Christ. We are all disciples of Christ if we embody the principals for which He stands and if we follow His teachings.
The church in its widest sense is wherever the Lord is. Swedenborg defines the church universal as follows,
The Divine of the Lord is what makes the church with a person, for nothing is called the Church but what is proper to the Lord; it is the good which is of love and charity, and it is the truth which is of faith, which make what is called the Church (AC 2966).
Wherever God is, there the church is. And the Lord is present wherever there is love and truth. This means that the church is everywhere. It is not just Christians; it includes Buddhists, Hindus, Taoists, Muslims, and people all over the world who have goodness in their hearts and truth in their minds. Swedenborg makes this point very clear.
Churches are not churches from being so called and from professing the Lord’s name, but from being in the good and truth of faith; it is the good and truth of faith itself which makes the church, nay, is the church, for in the good and truth of faith there is the Lord, and where the Lord is there is the church (AC 3379).
I think that this is a remarkably progressive statement when you consider Swedenborg’s background and the times in which Swedenborg wrote. He was the son of a Lutheran bishop. And he lived in Europe in a time when for all intents and purposes Europe was a Christian continent. Yet despite this, Swedenborg’s broad consciousness was opened to see that wherever goodness and truth were, there God was and is.
The primary distinguishing feature of every church is a life of love, or what Swedenborg calls charity. All the churches in the world would be united if only they held love and living a good life in the primary place. There are always going to be differences of opinion in matters of doctrine. But if only people put love for God and the neighbour and the good life that comes from it in the first place, there would be only one great church the world over. This is the hope and the vision Swedenborg holds out to the world.
If charity were in the first place . . . the church would have a different face, . . . They would then not make many churches by distinguishing according to opinions concerning truths of faith; but they would say that there was one church, in which are all who are in the good of life, not only those who are within the region where the church is, but also they who are outside it (AC 6269).
All the warring factions and dissention about religion would come to an end, if the world could but see that love is what matters most in religion, and the good life that derives from love. This is a radical teaching, and many Christian churches are dead set against this idea. They draw on John 3:16, 18 and emphasize it to the point of heresy. Those verses read,
For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him may not perish but have eternal life. But whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.
For many Christian sects, if a person doesn’t believe in Jesus, he or she will be damned. I interviewed with a Lutheran minister when I was seeking an internship for ministry. He had gone online and found a web page about Swedenborg. He printed it up and highlighted a line from our faith that said God is present to save all people, everywhere whose lives affirm the best they know. He pointed to that line and said, “I can’t accept that!” And up here in Edmonton, I had an unpleasant conversation with a friend who thought that all the billions of people practicing other religions were condemned because of John 3:16, 18. And, of course, she cited that passage in our conversation. I’m with Swedenborg. And the kind of God who would condemn those who do not worship Jesus is not the kind of God I believe in.
We have talked about the church in general as everywhere that God is. We next need to consider the church in particular. The church in particular is each person who has God in his or her heart. Each devout person is a church. And, in fact, the greater church couldn’t exist unless it were made up of the many people who have God in their hearts. We are called, each one of us, to be a church. This means that we are not a church according to where we go to worship, or according to which denomination we belong to. We are a church according to our relationship with God. Swedenborg writes, “The person who is in truths of faith from good, he is a church” (AC 5806). And Swedenborg goes on to make clear that the church as a group must be made up of individuals who all practice love and seek truth.
The spiritual person is a church in particular, and a number are a church in general; if a person in particular were not a church there would not be any church in general; it is the congregation in general which in common conversation is called the church, but each one in the congregation must be of this character in order for there to be any church (AC 4292).
The church as an organization, or religion as an institution has this idea as its purpose. The purpose of a church is to nurture love and truth in its members. It is also a place where people bring their love and express the truths they know. A church is truly alive when its members bring their faith to the worship service and the church community. And a church is truly alive when it fosters spiritual growth among its members. A church is not measured by the number of people who come to it. A church is not measured by the attendance of its members alone. A church is measured by the hearts and minds of its people. A church, be it few or many, is known by God’s presence in it. And God is present when each individual in the church, from the depths of his or her heart, responds to God’s call, and says, “Lord, I will follow you.” A church is a kingdom of priests when its members enter into a heartfelt covenant with God, and agree to obey God and keep the commandments of His Word.

Evil and God’s Providence
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
January 17, 2010

Joshua 1:1-9 John 9

The past several weeks have caused me to ponder the issue of evil. Our church was broken into, and some important things were stolen. Among the things stolen was the church computer, which makes it pretty near impossible to work out of the office now. Then my email box was hacked into. The criminal locked me out of my own mailbox and I had to enter all 165 of my addresses one by one into a new mailbox I had to create. Then we all heard about the terrible earthquake in Haiti, and the devastation it has caused that country. These events can all evils. And we are made aware that contending with evil is a part of the human condition.
I need to make a distinction in this discussion, though. The church vandalism and my email box violation are the result of evil human actions. The earthquake in Haiti is a natural disaster that was not the result of human evil. These are two different kinds of evil, and in the space of this talk I can’t talk about both. I will confine my discussion this Sunday to the issue of human evil.
But we need to keep in mind one very important point. No matter how awful things look, God presides over human affairs and human events. Jesus tells us:
29Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father. 30And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. 31So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows (Matthew 10:29-31).
Swedenborg adds his voice, to teach us that all the events in the world, and in human behaviour, are under God’s care,
. . . every least thing that happens in the world, whether to evil people or to good people, is under divine providence, and particularly that the divine providence is active in the smallest details of our own thoughts and actions and is therefore universal (DP240).
To our finite eyes, it certainly may not look like it sometimes. There’s a verse in a Gordon Lightfoot song about the wreck of an iron tanker that sunk in the seventies, killing its whole crew. The line is,
Does any man know
Where the love of God goes
When the waves turn the minutes to hours?
The Searchers all say
She’d have made white fish bay
If she’d put fifty more miles behind her
It is indeed hard to understand why certain events happen in the world, if God is truly watching over us; if every hair on our head is numbered.
We can take two positions when we think about divine providence. The two positions are simply to affirm providence or to deny it. We will find evidence to support either position depending on which position we take. For those who believe in providence, there is plenty of support. And for those who deny providence, support is not lacking. God’s providence is part of one’s belief system, and like God Himself, cannot be proven to those who refuse to believe. If we remain open to God, we will see countless signs of His power and governance. But if we close our minds to God, we will not see providence anywhere. We will close our mind to any evidence that could present itself. Swedenborg writes,
If we convince ourselves of human prudence to the point of denying divine providence, then when we do happen to see, hear, or read something when we are thinking about it, we do not really notice it. In fact, we cannot, because we are not open to anything from heaven, only to what comes from ourselves (DP 235).
The choice is ours.
When Swedenborg discusses the issue of evil, his perspective is almost exclusively from the person committing the evil—not the victim. So in my discussion, I will first discuss evil as a human choice, then I will make some suggestions about how to react to evil that happens to us.
One thing that needs to be said at the outset is that not everything that happens is God’s will. God governs everything, certainly. But this doesn’t mean that everything that happens is according to His will. He does not will child abuse, or murder, or war, or theft, or any other evil that humans do. These deeds are permitted by God, but not willed by God. But even the deeds that are permitted, but not willed by God, God still governs. Swedenborg writes,
There are no laws of permission that are simply that, or that they are separate from the laws of divine providence. They are the same thing; so 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 salvation (DP 234).
As I said above, Swedenborg’s discussion of evil is almost exclusively from the point of view of the person committing the evil. God cannot, by divine power, keep evil humans from acting on their evil. He has given every human free will, and God Himself is bound to that law. To take away free will would be to take away our very humanity, and this God will not do. So we cannot be forced to be good by God. We cannot be forced to refrain from evil by God. This is only common sense. And it is to common sense that Swedenborg appeals in discussing this point,
Everyone recognizes that none of us can be compelled to think what we do not want to think or to intend what we do not want to intend. So we cannot be compelled to believe what we do not believe; or to love what we do not love, and certainly not anything that we do not want to love. Our spirit or mind has complete freedom to think, intend, believe, and love (DP 129).
Civil law can restrain behaviour. But no law can change the way a person feels and thinks. And when the law is not around, God cannot restrain an evilly motivated individual from acting on his or her desires.
So how are we to react to evil when it happens to us? There are healthy ways, and there are unhealthy ways. One unhealthy way is to blame the victim. This way of thinking makes the victim somehow responsible for the evil that happened to them. In rape cases, some will suggest that the woman was asking for it, or that she enticed the rapist. This was more the case in the past than it is today, I think. We are now taught everywhere that No means No! Blaming the victim can also occur in abusive relationships. The victim of family abuse can feel that she or he set the abuser off, or somehow caused the abuser to become violent. Sometimes blaming the victim can become very generalized. I heard some people say about 9/11 that God had removed His protection from the U.S. because of its sins. In more immediate cases, I have heard that evil can happen to an individual or institution because they are harbouring negative energy and they thus attracted the evil. None of these responses to evil are healthy, nor are they accurate. It was with these responses in mind that I chose this morning’s reading from the New Testament. In it, Jesus’ disciples ask him, “Who sinned, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?” (John 9:1). Jesus replies that neither him nor his parents caused the blindness. The story then proceeds to talk about Jesus’ divine power when he heals the blind man.
Our response to evil is to meet evil with love. Jesus tells us, “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you” (Luke 6:27-28). This is a hard lesson. We are so often tempted to stew on the evil that someone has done to us. We think about them, we grow in our resentment, and we grow in our hatred for the other person. This does nothing but burn up our own soul. It does nothing but cloud our heart with negativity and hatred. It makes us miserable. In AA we call that giving someone free rent in our heads. We are going to encounter evil. We are going to meet with people who are set against our wellbeing. Their evil is between them and God, and they aren’t our souls to care for. If we can’t think positive thoughts about those who do evil for us, we can dismiss them from our minds and think about more positive matters. People who commit evil are sick individuals. They need a doctor more than they need our resentments.
We also need to be careful about how we view others. We are not in a position to decide whether another person has done actual evil. It could well be that actions we perceive as evil were in reality actions that deflated our self-interest, or that challenged our egos. When we take offence, we need to take a good look at ourselves, and see what part we played in the resentment that could be starting. I think Robert Frost has written a very wise poem on this issue. In it, he writes about one reaction to evil that shows a wonderful composure and equanimity. It may be a hard example to follow, but I think it is a good model for us to strive for. His poem is called The Draft Horse, and I will conclude this talk with it:

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

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

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

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

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

This Is My Beloved Son
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
January 10, 2010

Isaiah 43:1-11 Luke 3:15-22

Our New Testament passage this morning is about the baptism of Jesus. For me, this underscores just how human Jesus was. Like us, Jesus went to John in order to be baptized at the start of His ministry. The Bible tells us that Jesus was 30 years old when He was baptized.
But Jesus’ humanity is not the whole story. After He was baptized, heaven opened up and a voice was heard saying, “This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased.” This divine voice tells us that Jesus was more than an ordinary human. Fully human, indeed, but more than human, too. For Christians, Jesus is God incarnate, Immanuel, or the Son of God.
But Jesus’ divine origins should not obscure his full humanity. In Jesus Christ, God fully reconciled Himself to the human condition. He lived the same kind of human life that each of us lives. Swedenborg emphasizes this point:
God assumed the Human according to His Divine order. . . . Now because God descended and because He is order itself, . . . in order that He might become actually Man, He could not but be conceived, carried in the womb, brought forth, brought up, and successively gain knowledges, and by them introduced into intelligence and wisdom. Therefore as to the Human He was an infant as an infant, a boy as a boy, and so on; with this difference only, that He accomplished that progress more quickly, more fully, and more perfectly than others (TCR 89).
So Jesus had to pass through the same stages of life that we pass through as we grow up spiritually. Thus Jesus was baptized as we are baptized, as part of his development.
But exactly who was Jesus? How are we to understand the Biblical language that calls Him “Son of God?” For most Christians, Jesus and God are two separate persons. (That they are of one essence is a mystery, and often ignored.) This makes it easier to deal with the Son of God language. But we all know that there is only one God. Deuteronomy 6:4 reads, “Hear, O Israel, Yahweh our God, Yahweh is one.” If God is one, then thinking of two persons when we think of God is highly problematic. And we are back to the Biblical question, “What does Son of God mean?”
Indeed, that is a gigantic question. What would being a son mean with God as a Father? Clearly, the ordinary process by which an egg is fertilized would not apply. Mary was a virgin. In human reproduction, the male seed is an emission from his body. To that extent, the seed is just a tiny, tiny aspect of male anatomy. And the child that is begotten is quite a separate being from the father, although hereditary traits are still passed down.
Well, then, how would God beget a child? I don’t think that we can know the answer to this immense question. But we do have a scriptural passage rich in suggestion. Here, I’m going to have to indulge in speculation. And my remarks will best be taken as suggestions for your own reflection and speculation. In Luke 1:35 the Angel Gabriel tells Mary, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.” I think that it is important to note here, that the Gospel records Mary’s consent. She says, “I am the Lord’s servant. May it be to me as you have said” (Luke 1:38). The power of the Most High will overshadow Mary, says the angel Gabriel. This tells us that God’s power will impregnate Mary. This is not like the semi-divine births of the Greek and Roman gods. In Classical mythology, the gods took on mortal forms and impregnated women in the ordinary human fashion—that is when they didn’t assume the form of a bull or a swan as some of the gods did. For the Christian idea of God’s Son, we imagine God’s power directly infusing Mary’s egg with divine life. The union between God and Man would be very intimate, with God’s power forming the soul of Mary’s egg.
In Swedenborg’s theology, we are told that God is Jesus’ soul. So by Son of God, he understands God’s human body. The doctrine states that Jehovah God descended and took on a human body in Jesus. “By the Lord the Redeemer we understand Jehovah in the Human; for that Jehovah Himself descended and assumed the human that He might accomplish redemption . . .” (TCR 81). The Bible tells us quite clearly that Jehovah is our savior, and also that there is no other God than Him. We heard that in this morning’s Bible reading, “I am Jehovah, your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior (Isaiah 43:3). . . . Before me no God was formed, nor will there be one after me. I, even I, am Jehovah, and apart from me there is no savior (43:10-11).” How are we to take the words, “Apart from me there is no savior?” We think of Jesus as our savior. And, indeed, He is our savior. The only way to reconcile this apparent conflict is to understand Jesus as the human form of Jehovah God. As Swedenborg puts it, “By the Lord the Redeemer we understand Jehovah in the Human; for that Jehovah Himself descended and assumed the human that He might accomplish redemption . . .” (TCR 81). So for Swedenborg, the power of Jehovah God is the soul of Jesus. And Jesus is the body of Jehovah God. An ancient Christian creed says this. It is called the Athanasian Creed, and part of it goes as follows:
Our Lord Jesus Christ is God and Man; and although He be God and Man, still there are not two, but there is one Christ: He is one, because the Divine took the Human to itself; yea, He is altogether one, and He is one person; for as the and body is one man, so God and Man is one Christ.
By understanding Jesus as the body of Jehovah, and Jehovah as the soul of the Christ, we preserve both the full divinity of Jesus and the oneness of God.
But when we say that Jesus is the body of God, we are referring to the fully glorified and resurrected Jesus Christ. Jesus became fully united to God over time and according to the same process by which we are spiritually reborn. As Jesus grew spiritually, he approached the Father and the Father approached the Christ until the two became fully one.
The Lord [by the acts of redemption] united Himself to the Father, and the Father Himself to Him also according to Divine order. That the union was so effected by the acts of redemption is because the Lord wrought them from His Human; and as He so wrought, so the Divine, which is meant by the Father, came nearer, assisted, and cooperated, and at length They so conjoined Themselves that They were not two, but one; and this union is glorification (TCR 97).
There were times in Jesus life when His humanity was apparently distant from His divine origins. Then, He spoke to God as if to someone else. This is especially evident on the cross, when Jesus says, “My God, My God, Why have you forsaken me.” But there are other places in the Bible where the relationship between Jesus and God are intimately one. This can be seen in the transfiguration on the mountain top (Matthew 17), and in John, where Jesus says, “I am in the Father and the Father is in me” (John 14:10). One could hardly say more plainly that God is Jesus soul, than by saying the Father is in me.
But this union with God and Jesus was a process. It followed the same process according to which we are reborn spiritually. Earlier I read a quote from Swedenborg saying that Jesus approach the Father and the Father approached Jesus so that they became one. In the same manner, we approach God and God approaches us. However, we will never become one with God as Jesus did. But the process is the same human process that Jesus underwent on earth. Swedenborg writes,
. . . the Divine order is that man should prepare himself for the reception of God; and as he prepares himself, so God enters into him as into His habitation and house; and that preparation is made by means of knowledges concerning God and the spiritual things of the church, and thus by intelligence and wisdom; for it is a law of order that so far as man approaches and draws near to God, God approaches and draws near to man, and conjoins Himself with him in his interiors (TCR 89).
It is our role to prepare a place for God by learning spiritual truths that point us in the direction of Godliness. There are many ways by which we are taught God’s ways and the life He would have us lead. But we need to act as if by own power and our own free will to bring God into our hearts and lives. God is all the while subtly working the acts of redemption in us. God stands at the door and knocks. All we need do is open it. And we open the door by learning Godliness, by learning what is good, and by living in every aspect of our lives the precepts we learn.
What I have been talking about this morning is called Christology. It is among the most complex and difficult aspects of Christian theology. Perhaps it will be enough for us to remember Christ’s full humanity, and to follow His footsteps into union with God. Then we will be called children of God, as John 1 puts it. Then Jesus will be in us, even as the Father is in Him.

What Gift Shall I Bring?
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
January 3, 2010

Isaiah 60:1-6 Matthew 2:1-12

According to Church tradition, this Sunday is called Epiphany. It celebrates the visit of the Magi to Jesus and the gifts that they bring. We have just celebrated Christmas—a day of gift giving and receiving. This Sunday of Epiphany is also a celebration of gift giving and receiving. This morning, I’d like us to think a little bit about the gifts that we can bring to God, and also the gifts that God has given to us.
I think of several things when I think of bringing gifts to God. And recall, that God has a humanity as an aspect of His Divinity. And God’s Humanity has some of the same things that our humanity has. When we give gifts, we are happy to see the person’s joy when they open our gifts. I think that God is also happy when He receives gifts from us.
When we think of bringing gifts to God, it may sound strange. We may wonder, “What can God want from us?” And also we may wonder what kind of gift can we give to God? It’s not as if we are in the Christmas story, and we can actually come to the baby Jesus and give Him incense, frankincense, and myrrh. And yet I think that there are gifts we can give to God, and I think that when we bring gifts to God, God is moved with the joy of receiving a gift as we are.
When I first think of giving a gift to God, I think about responding to God’s call. In the book of Revelation, Jesus says, “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me” (3:20). Jesus is constantly calling us into relationship with Himself. Like a lover, He is calling us to respond to His love and to return it. God wants to give us all of Himself, and all the joys of heaven to us. Like everyone who truly loves, God cares about our response to Him. Like all lovers, God wants His love returned. Then we are lifted up into the circle of love and joy given and returned. All we need do is to respond to Jesus’ call and open the door. All we need to do is to let God into our hearts, and to live in such a way that we can be filled with God’s love and joy. In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus says,
Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light (Matthew 11:28-30).
Jesus want us to come to Him, and to live with Him in heaven—whether we are on earth or in the next life. Like a mother to her children, Jesus asks us to love Him in return, and to share in the boundless love He has for us. All we need to do is respond to Jesus call, and to live with Him in eternity. Then we will receive Jesus’ promise, and we will find rest for our souls.
And by responding to Jesus’ call to commune with Himself, we receive a great gift from God. In the Matthew passage I just quoted, Jesus says that we will find rest for our souls when we come to Him. When we respond to God’s call, we receive peace, tranquility, and joy. God takes away the frustrations we feel when we are driven by ego and the craving for wealth, power, and status. For when we are driven by ego, wealth, power, and status, we will never be at peace. We will constantly be in contention with others who are craving the same ends. We will be in conflict with our brothers and sisters. But that’s not all. We will also be in conflict with ourselves. When we are driven by ego, wealth, power, and status, we will never have enough. We will continually be striving for more. And by always wanting more than we have, we will never find peace. When we come to Christ, we leave behind all those worldly lusts. We put God before self, and in doing so we find release from selfish cravings that leave us continually unsettled. So by giving Christ the gift of a loving response, we find that we are the ones who receive. We find a happiness that the world cannot give. We find a love that we can’t manufacture from our egos. We find heaven. So we become part of the circle of gift-giving. We give and in giving we receive.
Then, when I wonder about of what kind of gift we can bring to God, I think of the gift of service. I think of the many ways we can serve God in the world all around us. There are the formal ways of service that come to my mind first. I have just returned from a youth retreat in Michigan. I am the youth chaplain, and part of my responsibilities is to attend retreats and present religious sessions with them. I work hard to prepare lessons that I think they will benefit from. And I engage socially and pastorally with them during these retreats. And like all true giving, I receive back seven fold what I give. The real gift I receive is simply the opportunity to minister to the teens. I treasure the sacred space that opens up when the youth all come together in God’s name. I treasure the opportunity to interact with them and share their dreams for the future and their issues in the present. I feel called into my ministry, and I thank God for giving me the privilege to do what I love and feel called to do.
I feel the same way, indeed, more so, about this church. I do my very best to serve God and to serve the needs of the Church of the Holy City. I feel blessed for the opportunity to lead this congregation, as I am with the youth. The holy peace that descends upon the church during worship is a gift that I share with the church members. And when I am able to visit, pray, counsel, and console church members, I am honoured and thankful that God has brought me to you and you to me. When Carol and I brought the Christmas gifts that the church contributed to the Lurana Shelter, to see the gratitude from Sister Mary was another special way I felt blessed by this church and the generosity you all showed. The gift of service always comes back to the giver seven fold. And the gift of service is another way to bring a gift to God.
There are many ways to show service in our lives. It may be a phone call to a loved one, or to someone who is not able to get out much. It may be giving someone a ride who lacks transportation. It may be as simple as encouragement to someone who is struggling, or in some way engaged with a trying task. It may be a pat on the back or giving congratulations to someone who has succeeded with their dreams or with a certain goal they had. It may be a smile, a handshake, or a hug.
As God continually knocks at the door, waiting for us to open it, so God will give us the opportunity to be of service. If we remain open, God will show us where and how we can give to others in our daily lives. Divine Providence guides us continually throughout our lives. God guides us to opportunities for service. God shows us daily where we can give. In Matthew 25:40 Jesus says, “Whatever you did for the least of these brothers of mine you did for me.” In doing good to those around us, we are doing good for God. When we do good to those around us, we are bringing a gift to God. And God is in the heart of those around us, and is the heart of the social structure we live in. In doing good to others, we are actually doing good to God. In bringing us to service to our neighbours, God is bringing us to Himself.
When our minds are on the good we can bring to the world around us, we find release. We find release from care and worry, we find release from greed and the lust to control, we find peace. This is the circle of giving. In giving to God and the neighbour, we find that God gives us the joy and blessedness of heaven. In Luke 12:32, Jesus says, “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your father’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom.” It is God’s will that everyone should feel heavenly joy and happiness. That is why He stands at the door and knocks. That is why He calls us to come to Him. That is the gift God wants to give to us, when we respond to His call and serve our neighbours.