Church of the Holy City

I Will Bring You Home
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
December 13, 2009

Zephaniah 3:14-20 Luke 3:7-18

Our readings this morning bring up a topic called “apocalypticism.” In various places in both the Old Testament and the New Testament, this theme appears. Apocalyptic writings refer to a great world-shattering event that is expected in the future. The world-shattering events that apocalyptic writers refer to precede the great day of the coming of the LORD. When the Messiah comes, the world will be shaken up radically. Last Sunday, we heard an apocalyptic passage from Isaiah. There, mountains were going to be made low and valleys raised up.
This Sunday we have two very interesting Apocalyptic passages. Our Old Testament passage is from the prophet Zephaniah. Most of Zephaniah is filled with dire prophesies about the destruction of the known world preceding the Lord’s coming. There, God says that He will, “Sweep away everything from the face of the earth, . . . I will sweep away both men and animals; I will sweep away the birds of the air and the fish of the sea” (1:2). It will be a day of great darkness. “That day will be a day of wrath, a day of distress and anguish, a day of trouble and ruin, a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and blackness” (1:15). This prophesy is for the whole world, “I have decided to assemble the nations, to gather the kingdoms and to pour out my wrath on them—all my fierce anger. The whole world will be consumed by the fire of my jealous anger” (8). We see suggestions of this great apocalyptic day of judgment in the Gospel of Luke. John the Baptist tells the crowd, “Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath?” (3:7). He talks about the day of judgment in metaphors, “The axe is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire” (3:9). His reference to the coming of the Messiah is dreadful likewise, “His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire” (3:17).
Apocalyptic prophesies were very much in the air around the time of Christ’s coming. The general Jewish population were expecting the Messiah and the great day of judgment at any time. So Luke tells us, “The people were waiting expectantly and were wondering in their hearts if John might possibly be the Christ” (3:15). In Greek, the Hebrew word Messiah is rendered Christos. So this passage tells us that the people were waiting for the Messiah. Some waited in dramatic ways. The Qumran community pulled away from society and were awaiting the day of judgment in a monastery. They were expecting a great cosmic battle in which the angels of light would fight the angels of darkness. The residents at Qumran were observing rituals of purity the Old Testament described for holy war, and they were prepared to fight alongside the angels of light.
But John the Baptist’s teachings were very moderate about how to prepare for the coming of the Messiah. When he tells the people that the axe is already at the root of the tree, the crowd asks, “What should we do then?” John’s teaching is not radical. He points to life in society, and instructs people to perform their work with justice. So a man with two tunics should share with a person who has none. I find this teaching striking, since the man with two tunics is sharing, not giving up all he has. Tax collectors are told not to collect any more money than they are required to do. Soldiers are told not to extort money or falsely accuse people. So rather than flee from society and await a cosmic battle in monastic communities, John the Baptist tells his followers simply to perform their work in society honestly.
But in the middle of all this dreadful expectation, we find a beautiful passage of comfort in Zephaniah. The apocalyptic terror breaks suddenly, and the prophet says, “Sing, O Daughter of Zion; shout aloud, O Israel! Be glad and rejoice with all your heart, O Daughter of Jerusalem! . . . The LORD, the King of Israel, is with you; never again will you fear any harm. . . . He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing” (3:14, 17). And rather than scattering the people all over the world, this section has the comforting prophesy that God will bring us home, “At that time I will gather you; at that time I will bring you home” (3:20).
When the Messiah did come, it was more like this comforting prophesy than the dreadful day of doom. Jesus came gently to bring love, healing, food, teaching, and salvation to the whole human race. Because the great earth-shattering prophesies didn’t come true, Jews today don’t recognize Jesus as the Messiah. In fact, much of Jesus’ teachings were aimed at reshaping the image of who and what the Messiah was.
Throughout our lives, we encounter the gentle God who is bringing us home. Our true spiritual home is in God’s kingdom, and God is gently leading us all there. The ways in which we are brought to God are many, indeed. Sometimes we go through earth-shattering events in our lives that change our outlook on things. Sometimes we grow slowly by discovering spiritual truths and by applying them to our lives. But whatever course we take, we can find comfort in the fact that God is bringing us to Himself gently, but unceasingly.
We can’t always see God’s hand in our spiritual development. God works secretly to bring us to Himself. God works secretly because His aim is to break our ego, greed, self interest, and pride. If we saw Him doing this overtly, we would resent God and perhaps even resist and work against Him. Swedenborg gives us some examples of how God gently lifts us upward toward Himself and Heaven.
Man by inheritance has the desire to become great; and he also wishes to become rich; and so far as these loves are unrestrained, he wishes to become greater and richer, and at length to become the greatest and the richest. . . . This longing desire lies most deeply hidden in hereditary evil, and consequently in man’s life and his life’s nature. The Divine Providence does not take away this evil in a moment, for if He did, man would not live; but it takes it away too quietly and gradually for man to know any thing about it. . . . If, therefore, man were to see and know that the Lord by His Divine Providence is so working against his life’s love from which he has his chief enjoyment, he could not but go in the opposite direction, become enraged, bear witness against it, say hard words; and finally from his evil remove the operation of the Divine Providence (DP 183).
We can see the operation of God in our lives in hindsight, but not as it is happening. When we look back on our journey in this world, we can see how the Divine Providence of God has brought us to Himself by incremental spiritual advances and by what appear to be miraculous accidents. Swedenborg tells us that,
It is granted to see the Divine Providence in the back and not in the face; also, in a spiritual state and not in his natural state. . . . All who receive influx from heaven and acknowledge the Divine Providence, and especially those who by reformation have become spiritual, while they see events in some wonderful series, from interior acknowledgement they as it were see the Divine Providence, and they confess it (DP 187).
God is continually and gently drawing us to Himself, so that he may give us the joy, happiness, and blessedness of heaven. Again from Swedenborg,
Spiritual love is such that it wishes to give its own to another; and so far as it can do this, it is in its being, in its peace, and its blessedness. Spiritual love has this from the Lord’s Divine Love, which is such infinitely. From this it follows, that the Divine Love, and hence the Divine Providence, has for its end a heaven, consisting of men and women who have become and who are becoming angels, to whom the Lord can give all the blessings and happiness of love and wisdom, and give these from Himself in them (DP 27).
The coming of God into our lives is as quiet and gentle as was Christ’s birth in that manger on that quiet night. There was no world-wide cataclysm. There was no world-wide destruction. There was only the birth of a helpless baby in a village unknown to the great leaders of the Roman world. And so God comes to us, quietly and gently, leading us always upward into heaven, and into greater and deeper heavenly love and joy.

Preparing the Way for the Lord
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
December 6, 2009

Isaiah 40:1-11 Mark 1:1-8

Both of this morning’s readings deal with the coming of the Lord. From the prophet Isaiah, there is the famous passage about the whole world transforming before the coming of the Lord. A highway will be made in the wilderness. Valleys will be raised up and mountains will be leveled. Then the glory of the Lord will be revealed. This is a cataclysmic prophesy. It relates to the whole world, not just the children if Israel. It is an earth shattering event, like those disaster movies that Hollywood produces. But the passage we read concludes with one of the most beautiful and tender prophesies about the coming of the Lord.
He tends his flock like a shepherd:
He gathers the lambs in his arms
And carries them close to his heart;
He gently leads those that have young (Isaiah 40:11).
This Isaiah passage is quoted in the beginning of the Gospel of Mark. It is used to talk about John the Baptist who prepared the way for Jesus’ coming.
There are a couple things to say about these two passages. First of all, it is true that there is great turmoil preceding the coming of the Lord. Obviously this doesn’t happen in the material world. When Jesus came, the mountains weren’t leveled and the valleys didn’t raise up. So these cataclysmic events take place inside a person’s soul. Jesus says that the Kingdom of God is within (Luke 17:21). Second, when John the Baptist talked about the coming of Jesus, he baptized people into repentance. It is in that nature of repentance and preparation for God’s coming that all the cataclysmic events in Isaiah take place. This can be seen in the internal sense of the two scripture readings we heard this morning.
How would you prepare to meet God? What sort of feelings would you have? Happiness? Love? Fear and trembling? Tears? Joy? Are you ready now to meet God? We say that God is always with us, but what if God came to you as a person that you could talk with face to face?
The first thing that the Bible talks about to prepare for the coming of God is repentance. To be ready for God, we would probably want to be in a good spiritual condition. There is a process that the Presbyterians talk about called “sanctification.” I heard it explained that it is if God is shining a flashlight on our soul. Our true nature would be seen in the light.
But there are different levels to who we are. Swedenborg talks about an internal and an external. Our internal is opened to heaven, and into our internal are all our higher aspirations, our desire to do good, our beliefs about spiritual things, and our loves for God and our neighbor. Then there is our external. In our external resides our lower nature. There we find selfishness, the desire to control others and make them do what we want them to do, the drive to feel better than others, the wish to have things our way, and other unhealthy passions. When we look at the internal and external parts of our personality, we can look like very divided people.
Swedenborg teaches that we have these two levels from birth. From conception, there are two levels to our personality. He writes,
The angels also showed me that inwardly this composite structure of a miniature brain was in the design and form of heaven with respect to its setting and its flow, while the outer composite structure was opposed to that design and that form.
. . . the angels said that the two inner levels, the ones that were in the design and form of heaven, were vessels of love and wisdom from the Lord, while the outer level, the one that was opposed to heaven’s design and form, was a vessel of hellish love and madness. This is because we are born into all kinds of evil because of our hereditary imperfection, and these levels are located in our outermost natures (DLW 432).
The goal of repentance and spiritual rebirth is to make our external cooperate with our internal. That is to say that we act outwardly the way our higher self wants to act. So we read,
These flaws cannot be eliminated unless out higher levels are opened, the levels that are vessels of love and wisdom form the Lord . . . (DLW 432).
Swedenborg inherits this doctrine from his Lutheran origins. And Luther inherits this doctrine from Augustine, who clearly teaches that our will has been corrupted and is oriented toward evil. Well, is he right? Here, we need a little self-examination. We need that flashlight to shine on our souls and illuminate our true nature. I know people who tell me that they find no spiritual shortcomings. I have a different picture of myself. I can see that I have aspects of my lower nature that I would like to do away with, or to render quiet so that my higher nature can shine through. There have even been times in my life when I was angry with God, and did things just because they were opposed to Godliness. I’m not proud of those times. And I’m glad that I have been miraculously brought out of that state of mind. But It happened.
Swedenborg tells us that subduing our lower nature can be a very difficult process. Our lower nature is very stubborn. It doesn’t give up its desires easily. In order to break up the hold our lower natures can have on us, we need to go through some earth-shattering changes. Sometimes we are brought into despair about our own spiritual welfare, when we look at ourselves. Sometimes we feel very removed from God’s love and the life He would have us lead. These trials are what Isaiah refers to when he talks about the mountains being leveled and the valleys being raised up. These earth-shaking phenomena symbolize the desires of our lower nature being torn apart in order to let God shine through us. This is the repentance that John the Baptist calls for in preparation to meet Jesus.
But there is more to the story than what I have said so far. We also have hereditary good in us. Our lower nature can possess positive tendencies and a good natured disposition. These hereditary tendencies to good, however, need to be made spiritual, as well. If we are doing good just because it comes natural to us, we are not doing spiritual good. We need to make these tendencies spiritual by doing them from a spiritual motive. We need to do good because God is good and we love God. We need to do good to our neighbor because it is good to love our neighbor.
Actually, it takes effort to do the kind of evil that blocks God’s influx. The kind of evil that condemns is a conscious choice. If a person is mean or cruel, or selfish from a principal, then he or she is in trouble. Only evil chosen because it is opposed to God and we want to oppose God is damning. Now that’s hard to do. We can’t just blunder into that kind of evil. And I would suppose that all of us here are doing our best to follow in God’s footsteps. And that makes a big difference.
I found an interesting passage when I was studying Swedenborg’s account of the spiritual world. He claims that in the world of spirits, where we first go after we pass over, our true nature comes out. Our inner person is revealed. We return to the life we have cultivated on earth. If we have cultivated good, and Godliness, that state returns. If we have denied God and opposed the influx of His love, we are the same way there. But there is a most interesting escape clause in this. I found out that the evils that good people have committed on earth don’t return in the next life. This is because they didn’t commit evil from deliberate purpose. Swedenborg discusses this in Heaven and Hell,
But good spirits are never punished, though they had done evils in the world, for their evils do not return; and I have learned that their evils were of another kind or nature than those of evil spirits, not being done purposely contrary to the truth, and not from any other evil heart than what they received hereditarily from their parents, into which they were carried from a blind enjoyment when they were in externals separate from internals (HH 509).
Swedenborg keeps his doctrine of internal and external in this passage, but tells us that the internal intention is what matters. Good spirits are trying to do good, and they are not acting intentionally contrary to truth. So when they do commit evil, it is of an entirely different nature than those who do wrong because they choose to. For the good spirits, the evils they commit happen when the external person takes total control of their personality. This would not be a permanent condition, as good people are trying to act in a Godly manner. There are normal alternations in everyone’s condition, when we are in externals and when we are internals.
This tells me that while we live here on earth, we can expect conflict in our inner life. If Swedenborg, Luther, and Augustine are right, we have a lower nature that opposes heavenly life. And it is this level of our personality that has to be broken up in order for our inner person to shine through. This is the repentance that John the Baptist calls us to. This is the cataclysmic upheaval Isaiah prophesied about. This is how we prepare a place in the wilderness for the coming of God.
All the while this upheaval is going on, God is leading us like a shepherd. Through troubles and conflict, God is bringing us nearer to Himself. Even when we feel most distant from God, He is closest to us. In the midst of our struggle, God gathers us in his arms like lambs and carries us close to His heart. This, too, is in the Isaiah prophesy. This tender image was captured so beautifully by Handel in the Messiah. He shall lead his sheep, like a shepherd. And so in the midst of turmoil, we will meet the gentle God Jesus Christ, whose birth we anticipate in this holiday season.

Choice and Rationality
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
November 29, 2009

Malachi 3:1-18 Luke 12:13-34

There is an important aspect to our spiritual life that goes by the name “rationality.” Rationality is the ability to make good decisions. And very much of our adult life is making decisions. The Existentialist philosophers say that we are nothing but the sum total of the choices we make.
Our rational mind develops over time. Swedenborg tells us that children lack the ability to make decisions based on their own understanding of truth. He claims that their decisions are based on the authority of their leaders, be they parents, or teachers, or other valued authority figures. But upon reaching adulthood, we start to make decisions based on our own understanding of truth. And it is when we start making our own decisions, from our own understanding of truth that we truly become our own persons. Our identity is founded on the things that our rationality favors. We are individuals according to the choices we make—thus according to the rationality we have cultivated. Until we make our own decisions, we have no real personality, or identity. We are essentially children—even if in adult age.
Our rationality is founded upon truths that we acquire. We find truths everywhere. We learn truths from our parents, from teachers, from reading, from conversation, and from experience. Experience is perhaps the hardest, but the best teacher in many instances.
Some people think that rationality is only how much we know. And our society does value people who know a lot of things. But until these knowledges form a foundation upon which we can make wise choices, the knowledge is useless. Furthermore, the individual does not develop his or her own personality. Swedenborg describes such people. He writes,
I have spoken with some who believed . . . that a person is wise according to the extent of his memory, and who had enriched the memory with many things and spoke almost from it alone, and thus not from themselves but from others, and had gained no rationality by means of the things of their memory. Some of them were stupid, some blank, not at all comprehending any truth, whether it be true or not, and seizing upon falsities which are passed off for truths by those who call themselves educated; for from themselves they can see nothing rationally when listening to others (HH 464).
I can relate to that passage from my own experience. When I was in my Ph.D. program, I was learning a lot about different religions. I learned about Hinduism, and Buddhism, and the history of Christianity from the early Church Fathers through the Reformation. And I was studying contemporary philosophers. I had a lot of knowledge about religion in my memory from graduate school. But I was really lost in all that knowledge. I was reading so much, so fast that I didn’t have time to assimilate the knowledge I was learning. Then, on top of all that, there were certain ways of thinking that were popular then. There is a myth that universities encourage free thinking. But that is not true. Inquiry according to the systems of thinking that are in vogue is really what goes on there. We were taught to be open minded to all religious systems. And with that mindset, it was indeed fun to study different religious systems. But we weren’t supposed to believe any of it. In the university, studying religion is an objective, cultural study.
That point of view came from modern philosophy. There is no truth, according to contemporary philosophy. There is only wanting. There is only what I want to be, what I want to do. And I am completely free to choose what I want. I can’t be guided by any eternal truth because there is no eternal truth. I remember one of my professors in the university who had written a book about God. In that book, he claimed that God is a unique term that brings liberation to the texts in which it appears. That was all he could say about God. That’s where many in contemporary universities are now. And that’s where I was in graduate school, and when I graduated.
I was spiritually lost. Maybe spiritually dead. I was just like those learned people Swedenborg talks about. I had “enriched the memory with many things and spoke almost from it alone, and thus not from themselves but from others, and had gained no rationality by means of the things of their memory.” I thought that I wanted to stay in the university, so I applied to schools with the aim of teaching. But teaching didn’t come through for me. There was just too much competition. But what did happen ended up being the best thing that could have happened to me. I had to move down to Florida, to live with my parents until I could get back on my feet. I’m not saying that this was the best thing that could have happened to me because it landed me in Florida. No, there were other reasons. First of all, there were no universities in the small, retirement community I had landed in. There was no intellectual stimulation at all. I used to stare around me in disbelief when I looked at the scraggly beach and bar crowd I was stuck with. I had no one to sharpen my mind with, no one to debate philosophy with, no one to intellectualize with. At first, I really missed the intellectual stimulation of the university. Then, when I did find full-time work, it was in the mental health field. With many of the individuals I worked with, reasoning wasn’t their strong suit. I found that I was working with my heart and not my head. As mental health workers, we were mostly concerned with the mood of our individuals, and when we did talk about their mental activity we primarily assessed how lucid they were, not whether they understood Plato or Aristotle correctly. And, as I was working for a state institution, we were not allowed to talk about religion. I was about as far from the university as I could be.
And that’s just what I needed. God had a vision for me that I couldn’t see. Swedenborg tells us that,
The rational faculty from these truths is not formed and opened by a person’s knowing them, but by his living according to them; and by living according to them is meant loving them from spiritual affection. To love truths from spiritual affection is to love what is just and equitable, because it is just and equitable, what is right and sincere, because it is right and sincere, and what is good and true, because it is good and true (HH 468).
By cutting off my head, and emphasizing my heart, God was bringing me into a place where I could begin to be affected by all those religions I had studied. I was free from the intellectual trends that dominated the university. And I could sift through all that I had learned and from my heart find what truths agreed with my spiritual loves. In short, I was beginning to choose for myself which truths fit with my best understanding of spirituality. I was forming a rationality of my own. I was becoming a fully functioning spiritual person of my own.
But all that education was not thrown away. Swedenborg tells us that “faith is perfected according to the abundance and coherence of truths” (TCR 352). The more truths we have to work with, the more deeply we understand God and the things that belong to a heaven-bound life. Our beliefs have more to support them, and we understand the world better; we understand heaven better; and we understand God better. We understand what is good in life and we can aim for it. So Swedenborg also writes,
True faith, by abundance of truths coherent as it were into a bundle, also becomes more lustrous, perceptible, evident and clear; it also becomes more capable of conjunction with the goods of charity (TCR 352).
He uses several metaphors to illustrate what faith enriched by an abundance of truths is like. One that appeals to me is this one, “The exaltation of faith by an abundance of truths, may be illustrated by the uplifting of sound and likewise with the melody of many musical instruments played in concert” (TCR 353). Our world-view is formed by the truths we have learned. Our life is lived more wisely by the amount of truth we have to work with.
Without learning truths as we go on in life, we may remain stuck only with the knowledge we acquired in our childhood from our families or neighborhoods. This is particularly tragic when a person comes from a troubled background, and from a rough neighborhood. Without truth’s cleansing power, such an individual is almost destined for a troubled life. Then there are those who simply live by what they knew growing up. This can make for a limited world view, even a crippling one. Robert Frost wrote a poem about this. He talks about an annual ritual when he and his neighbor walk side by side to rebuild the wall between their properties. His neighbor keeps reciting a proverb from his father, “Good fences make good neighbors.” But in this case there is no need for a wall, there are no cattle wandering around to get into each other’s property. His neighbor has never thought about why good walls make good neighbors. He only recites what he remembers from his father. Frost writes,

There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors’.
He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors’.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.

His neighbor has never thought about the reason for walls. As Frost writes,

He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, “Good fences make good neighbors.”

Truth is liberating. It liberates us from limiting world-views. And it liberates us from unhealthy and destructive behaviors we may have learned growing up. There is no doubt, we need to continually learn truths to build up our rational mind. We need to make choices that further God’s kingdom and our own well-being. Without a well-formed rational mind, we are a victim to our environment. We are blown here and there according to society or our own whims. But with a strong rational mind, formed by an abundance and coherence of many truths, we find countless ways to live a good life that God wants for us. Our faith will lead us into heavenly love, and we will know the blessings promised in the Malachi reading from this morning, “Test me in this,’ says the LORD Almighty, ‘and see if I will not open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it’” (3:10). With a well-developed rational mind, we will be truly an individual, and we will know how and when to be true to ourselves.

A Most Precious Vessel
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
November 22, 2009

Haggai 2:1-9 John 6:45-63

From a literal reading of our Old Testament and New Testament passages, one wouldn’t see a connection between them. Yet from the internal sense of the Bible, there is a connection. In the Haggai reading, God says that He will “shake the heavens and the earth, the sea and the dry land. I will shake all nations, and the desired of all nations will come, and I will fill this house with glory” (2:6-7). The house God is talking about is the temple in Jerusalem. It had been destroyed by the Babylonians, and was now going to be reconstructed by Zerubbabel and the remnant of Jews who returned to Jerusalem after the Babylonian captivity. God says further that His Spirit remains among the people of Israel. Then in John, Jesus says that He is the living bread that came down from heaven. He is the bread of life. He says further that if a person eats His flesh and drinks His blood he has eternal life. These two passages from the Bible are united in their emphasis on God giving us eternal life. Jesus promises eternal life if we eat His body and drink His blood. And in shaking the heaven and earth and in rebuilding the temple, the prophet Haggai speaks symbolically of regeneration, or spiritual rebirth.
In Haggai, God says He will shake the heavens and the earth. The heavens and the earth refer to the natural level of our personality. We have higher and lower levels to our personality. Basically, there are three levels: the natural, the spiritual and the heavenly. The natural level of our personality is the lowest level, and it is the level that we all have from birth. It is called the natural level because it is formed from nature, or from biology. In the natural level is our hereditary dispositions we inherit from our parents. In the natural level are also all the survival skills we need to survive in nature. For most of us, surviving in nature doesn’t mean surviving in the wilds like Survivor Man on TV. Surviving in nature means surviving in the society we live in, and in the world around us. So our natural level is concerned with preserving our own life. In the natural level is all our knowledge of how to make a living, how to succeed in our work, how to take care of ourselves, and how to make a name for ourselves in the world. The natural level is interested in preserving the self and in the riches of the world.
We are born into the natural level of our personalities. It is a necessary level to develop so that we can function in the world, and not be dependant on others. In the natural level is the love of self and the love of the material world. Again, we need this level as a beginning point. But spiritual maturity means growing beyond this level of our personalities. If we fail to grow up spiritually, we remain concerned only with what we want. We fail to open our minds to our fellows and to God.
Now I need to back up a little. I need to consider the very source of our life. For none of us live by our own power. There is only one life, one source of life, and that is God. From the moment of conception, God begins to flow into our highest soul with life. In the inmost, highest chamber of our personalities, our soul is a vessel that receives life from God. As our bodies develop, and then our natural level, this highest soul still allows God’s Spirit to flow into us with life and with the ability to judge, reason, and make decisions. Our natural level is not conscious of this highest level, this inmost soul. The inmost soul would be in our unconscious mind.
But we have the capacity to open up, or to raise up our consciousness toward that inmost soul that is always receiving life from God. That is what spiritual growth is about. This means to change our thinking so that we are not just self-interested, but we begin to become interested in our brothers and sisters, and in the good things of God’s kingdom. This is the opening of our spiritual level. But our natural level rebels against this upward movement. The survival instinct of self preservation, and our interest in receiving the world’s riches weigh heavily on our minds. The natural level has to be shaken up before the spiritual level can begin to become operative in us. This is what is meant in Haggai by God shaking the heavens and the earth, the sea and the dry land. The earth, the sea, and the dry land symbolize our natural level. Since we had first learned how to serve ourselves, we need to break up all those survival mechanisms that are based upon self-interest. Furthermore, there are hereditary pleasures from the world that cloud heavenly joys. We need to grow out of them, too.
The strongest belief system in the natural level that has to be shaken up is the notion that we live by our own power. The natural level thinks that it lives by its own power, that it accomplishes its goals by its own power, that it is the master of its own destiny. This mindset is the source of all evil. For when we are interested only in our own ends, we care nothing for others. We care nothing about stomping on the heads of anyone who gets in our way.
So this mindset has to be broken up. For some, this may happen gently by meditation and by spiritual education. But I think for most of us, this mindset is broken up by hardship and tragedy. When we don’t get what we want, when our dreams are broken, we begin to discover that we are not the agents of our own destiny. We begin to become less and less attached to our selfish wants. We begin to step out of the way and look to the welfare of those around us. We begin to search for what is truly good, not just what is good for ourselves.
This stage of development is symbolized by the building of the temple in Jerusalem. Building the temple means building up our spiritual life. Building the temple only happens when the earth has been shaken up. Then the temple rises in its glory, and we begin to bring God’s inflowing love and wisdom into our lives. ‘
The path of spiritual maturity is one of inward to outward. First, the spiritual level of our personality is formed in our thinking. Then our hearts become active and we want to live out the spiritual life our minds have seen to be good and right. We need to bring the spiritual life in our highest minds into the lowest level of our personality. When we are advanced in our spiritual development, the love and wisdom that has formed our inner personality is brought down into the natural level of our personalities. Our outward behavior then is one with the higher aspirations of our spiritual level.
We are now in the place where we are eating Christ’s body and drinking His blood. Only by receiving Christ in our hearts, and then bringing this Christ Spirit into our behavior can we be said to live spiritually. Everyone has God in their deepest soul. But the question is how much this Christ life is integrated with our natural behavior—into our outward life. When we say the Lord’s prayer, we pray for things to go on earth as they are in heaven. This is an image for advanced spiritual life. We live spiritually when God’s kingdom isn’t just a thought, a dream, or a belief. We live spiritually, when God’s kingdom is brought down and integrated into our natural level. Then we don’t need to be elevated out of our natural level to find communion with God. Rather, we bring God into our lives in the world. We bring heaven to earth.
I have been talking as if we are the agents of spiritual growth. But actually, we are partaking of Jesus’ body and blood. When we are advanced spiritually, then Jesus is acting in our lives, and our own will has yielded to God’s will. We have put ourselves in the flow of God’s care. It is God who has given us the power to reach this spiritual level. And we are now being led by God’s Providence. We retain our individuality, but we are vessels of God. When our natural level has been shaken enough, God can flow through our personalities. We will be aglow with spiritual light and filled with spiritual warmth. God is infinite, and each individual human is one reflection of God’s essence. When our natural level has become yielding to our spiritual level, then we show the unique aspect of God we were created to manifest. Then, as it is said in Haggai, God’s Spirit remains among us. Then we have internalized Christ’s body and blood. Then we have eternal life. So Jesus says, “I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life” (John 6:53-54). Until we let Christ’s love and wisdom into our lives, we have no spiritual life. But when we bring heaven to earth in our own souls, then we live, or should I say, God lives in us.

Faith and Works
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
November 15, 2009

Leviticus 19:9-18 John 15:1-12

Swedenborg steers a narrow course between two pitfalls in Christianity. Those two pitfalls are the doctrines of “faith alone” and meritorious works. They are represented by the Protestant churches and the Catholic church. Protestants teach the “faith alone” doctrine. It says that we are saved only by believing that Christ died for our sins. So it is by holding this faith that we are saved. The classic Biblical text for faith alone is in Paul’s letter to the Galatians. There, we read,
a man is not justified by observing the law, but by faith in Christ Jesus. So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by observing the law, because by observing the law no one will be justified (Galatians 2:15-16).
Paul says this general teaching in several places, such as Galatians 3:14, “by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit.” When Paul says we are not justified by observing the law, Protestants take this to mean all good works. They go further; they say that no amount of good works, or good deeds contribute to our salvation. They teach that doing good is trying to reach heaven by human effort. This doctrine they again find in Galatians. “After beginning with the Spirit, are you trying to attain your goal by human effort?” (Galatians 3:3). The works that Protestants denounce are the many commands that we find in the Old Testament. We heard some of these commands from the book of Leviticus in our reading this morning. Leviticus in Latin means “the law.” And it is those commands that Protestants take Paul to be referring to. So following the law would be the commands like not stealing, not lying, not deceiving one another, and even loving the neighbor. None of these good works conduce to salvation according to the Protestant doctrine of faith alone.
Catholics say just about the opposite. They teach that it is by good works that we are saved. This means that the deeds we do give us grace, and that grace is what saves us. The good works they talk about are things like helping the poor, attending mass, participating in charities like soup kitchens, and in extreme forms, withdrawing from the world into convents or monasteries and fasting, mortifying the body, and saying ritualized prayers. At the time of the Reformation, the good works that Catholics emphasized got out of hand. They taught that buying indulgences would get your loved ones out of Purgatory, and that going on pilgrimages would give yourself grace. The problem with these good works is that Catholics would say that one merits salvation by doing these works. It is as if one could get points in their Book of Life by doing enough good works. The temptation was to take credit for the good works that an individual does. Swedenborg is in between these two doctrines.
At times I think that Swedenborg tried to harmonize these two doctrines. Then at other times I think that he tried to go in between them both. In any event, neither Catholics nor Protestants affirmed Swedenborg’s teachings. In fact, the Lutheran Church of Sweden declared Swedenborg a heretic and forbad him to publish in his home country.
It is clear that Jesus teaches us to do good works. All through the Gospels, he is teaching us to be good, to be peacemakers, to be humble, to be pure in heart—in fact he even says, “be perfect, therefore, even as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). In this morning’s New Testament passage, we heard more teachings about doing good works. Jesus tells us to bear fruit. And says, even further, that if we do not bear fruit we will be cut off from God’s kingdom,
I am the true vine and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he trims clean so that it will be even more fruitful (15:1-2).
Jesus clearly teaches than loving Him means following His commands, “If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love” (15:10). Paul, himself, calls one to perform good works. “But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather serve one another in love. The entire law is summed up in a single command, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’ (Galatians 5:13). Paul, like Jesus, talks about bearing fruit, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law” (5:22). So clearly, for Jesus and for Paul, works matter.
But we must do good in such a way that it will be acceptable to God. If we take credit for the good we do, and think that we then deserve heaven, then the good we do is defiled. So Swedenborg writes of this, “The evil of merit is when a man attributes good to himself, and supposes that it is from himself, and therefore wants to merit salvation” (AC 4174). This is where Swedenborg’s mysticism enters the picture. When we do good that is really good, it is actually God working inside us. This Jesus teaches in the passage from John we heard this morning. He says, “apart from me you can do nothing” (15:5). And in the metaphor of the vine and branches, Jesus implies that it is through a mystical union with God that we bear fruit, “I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit;” (15:5). His teachings about the mystical union between us and Him are said more clearly, “Remain in me and I will remain in you” (15:4).
By fully realizing this mystical union between Jesus and us, we are able to do good works in such a way that we do not take credit for doing good. This realization is extremely important. For it is our ego, or what Swedenborg calls proprium, that blocks God’s influx. All our lives God flows into our souls with life, love and wisdom. We are vessels that receive this inflowing life. We grow spiritually to the extent that we receive in deeper and deeper ways God’s inflowing love and spiritual life. We receive this love and life by looking to God, and turning away from self. If we take credit for the good we do, and think that we do good by our own power, then self, or proprium, dominates our consciousness. So Swedenborg writes,
If when a person arrives at adult age, he confirms it in thought, and completely persuades himself that he merits salvation through the good which he does—this evil adheres and is rooted in, and cannot be amended; for they claim to themselves that which is the Lord’s, and thus cannot receive the good which continually flows in from the Lord; but, when it flows in, they at once divert it to themselves, and into their own proprium, and accordingly defile it (AC 4174).
For Swedenborg, we are saved to the extent that we are lifted out of proprium. We are saved to the extent that God is operating in us transparently. When we are filled with God, we are most happy and we are then in heaven. So to take credit for the good we do is to take God’s gifts and turn them into self aggrandizement. It is to make self the issue, not God. To put it more simply, IT’S NOT ALL ABOUT ME! It’s about God.
It’s not hard to do good in such a way that it is acceptable to God, and such that it is saving. That is to emphasize the good itself. God is Goodness itself. When we love God, we love what is good. Then we do good because we love what is good. This is loving God. When we do good with this mindset, we are not thinking about ourselves. We are thinking about the good itself. We are not then walking around thinking ourselves to be such wonderful and good people, because we are not thinking about ourselves at all. A minister I knew as a teen put it this way. We begin by thinking, “Look at the good I’m doing.” Then we say, “Look at the good I’m doing.” Finally we arrive at a place where all we say is, “Look at the good.”
So Swedenborg either steers a course between faith alone and meritorious good works; or he harmonizes both. Faith is certainly there, as we believe that God is the true agent of our good actions. Without a belief in God, none of this is possible. Works are there too, as we love doing what is good. And without good works, or should I say, without God’s Spirit acting in us, we would not find salvation. This is because we are saved to the extent that God is in us and we are lifted out of self. This happens when God does good through us. As John puts it, “If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit” (15:5). It is through that mystical union that all this happens. That mystical union is what Swedenborg is talking about and what Jesus is talking about when He says, “apart from me you can do nothing” (15:5). Without God in us, we can do no good. And when God is in us, nothing will be more delightful than to do what is good.

Love in Act
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
November 1, 2009

Deuteronomy 10:12-22 Luke 12:35-44

Our Old Testament passage this morning talks about serving God, and loving God. So the question arises, how do we serve God? What is meant by serving God? We have a related passage in our New Testament reading this morning. It also speaks of service. Jesus tells us to be ready for our master to return from a wedding banquet. The very master will serve his servants when he comes back, if they are up waiting for him. We are told to always be ready to meet Jesus, for we don’t know when He will call upon us. “You must always be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him” (Luke 12:40). I like this New Testament passage because of its reference to the wedding banquet. Scattered throughout the New Testament are references to a wedding. The wedding symbolizes a state in which a person is “married” to God, or united with God in a bond of love. Recall that line in Revelation, “Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb!” (19:9). When we are united with God in a loving bond, we are always ready to meet Him. So both the Old Testament passage and the New Testament passage talk about being united with God in love and in serving God.
Before I discuss the topic of serving God, I need to clarify some of the Old Testament language. Several times people have told me about their difficulty with phrases like “fear of God,” as we heard this morning in Deuteronomy. God does not want us to fear Him. And there is a higher meaning to fear of God than what we normally take fear to be. Swedenborg talks about holy fear. He writes,
But holy fear is not so much the fear of hell and damnation, as it is of doing or thinking anything against the Lord and against the neighbor, and thus anything against the good of love and the truth of faith (AC 2826).
I take this to mean the fear of causing offence. Even in our common conversations with one another, we can find ourselves saying, “Well, I don’t want to offend you, but . . .” Isn’t this a kind of fear? A fear of offending someone or putting them off. And in our general encounters with other people, we are careful not to say offensive things, or to offend. Isn’t this a kind of holy fear? It is a respect for others, and a desire not to hurt their feelings. It is a fear of causing offense, and we all have it with one another. This is how I understand fear of God. We love God so much that we don’t want to stray from the path of love or offend against the Holy Spirit. Of course God doesn’t get offended with us. But I think all of genuine love has a quality of holy fear in it, in that we care for others and want to remain in mutual love. We have a holy fear of not breaching the love and trust we have for others. This is also true for God. Then there’s the aspect of awe. I think there’s a kind of holy fear in the feeling of awe. And in the presence of infinite love, and infinite goodness; in the presence of the Source of all life, I think we have a feeling of awe, and holy fear.
So we can now come back to our question about serving God. Here we come across a difficult term in Swedenborg. Swedenborg talks in many places about what he calls “uses.” So he says, “Serving the Lord is performing uses” (AC 7038). And uses are the very source of heavenly joy. Everyone in heaven has a use. And we find our joy here on earth by performing uses.
It is easy to take the word use in a narrow sense. We often say to lazy people, “Make yourself useful,” which means that they should get up and do some work. Or when we think of being useful, we think of plumbers, or auto mechanics, who do some concrete service for society. In fact, it is easy to think of use as being only an occupation, or some form of work.
However, I think Swedenborg has more in mind when he talks about use. I looked through the Swedenborg Concordance to find the range of meaning for uses, and I also looked at the Latin word and its Indo-European root. Some translate the Latin usus as service. That is included in the meaning of the word. But there is much, much more than that. I decided to stay with the term use for this discussion. When I went to the Latin, I found some interesting things. First of all, the Latin word is one of those general terms that has a lot of meanings associated with it. The very first definitions given for usus are wide ranging. It is defined as, “use, practice, employment, exercise, enjoyment” (C. T. Lewis, Elementary Latin Dictionary.) We do indeed find employment here. But the word branches off into practice, and some exercise. This is more like a deed—any deed. Then what are we to make of the definition, “enjoyment?” So in Latin, usus ranges from employment to enjoyment.
Then I looked up its Indo-European root and found something even more interesting. The root AV means “delight, desire.” So the root of the Latin word is entirely emotional. It is a form of delight and desire. You see how far away from employment we are now with just the Latin root for use.
So serving God through uses has very much an emotional component to it. Swedenborg employs the word in keeping with these emotional connotations. He writes, “What is love unless there is something that is loved? That “something” is use” (DLW 297). So we see that use is the object of our loves. In general, uses are those things we do to express our love for the neighbor or for God. Use is love taking form in action. So we find Swedenborg saying, “Goods are goods in act, that is, the goods of charity, which are uses” (HH 391). The good things we do are uses. The performance of some deed of love, then, is also use.
The man who is led by the Lord, is in freedom itself, and thereby in enjoyment and blessedness itself. Goods and truths are appropriated to him; there is given him affection and desire for doing good, and then nothing is more delightful to him than to perform uses (AC 6325).
See how affection, desire, blessedness and enjoyment constitute what use is.
Use is connected with charity. Charity for Swedenborg means more than building children’s hospitals, or giving to the poor—the traditional meanings of charity. Charity for Swedenborg is all the acts of love that we perform anywhere, any time. We find Swedenborg saying that uses are the acts of love that we perform, or deeds of charity.
Those who are in charity, that is, in love to the neighbor, from which is all living enjoyment of pleasures, do not look to the enjoyment of pleasures except on account of their use. For there is no charity unless there are works of charity. Charity consists in work, or in use. He who loves the neighbor as himself, perceives no enjoyment of charity except in its exercise, or in use; and therefore a life of charity is a life of uses. Such is the life of the whole heaven; for the kingdom of the Lord, because it is the kingdom of mutual love, is a kingdom of uses. Every pleasure, therefore, which is from charity, has its enjoyment from use. . . . some looking more directly, and some more remotely and indirectly, to the kingdom of the Lord, or to the Lord (AC 997).
In this passage we find that heaven is a kingdom of mutual love, and so it is a kingdom of uses. So again, use is tied to love, enjoyment, and pleasure.
But occupations are not excluded from Swedenborg’s application of the term use. The work that we do to benefit society is certainly a use. But uses are not limited to occupations.
That serving the Lord is performing uses, is because true worship consists in the performance of uses, thus in exercising charity. . . . uses consist during a person’s life in the world, in every one’s discharging properly his duty in his station, thus in serving his country, society, and his neighbor from the heart, in dealing sincerely with his fellow, and in performing kind offices prudently according to the quality of every one. These uses are especially works of charity, and those whereby the Lord is mainly worshipped (AC 7038).
We find here that uses are discharging the duties proper to one’s station. But this statement also includes being sincere. Would we normally call sincerity a use? It is. Then there is that line saying that uses are, “performing kind offices prudently according to the quality of every one.” So use is also being nice and kind.
I think we can say, then, that uses are love being expressed in act. If we love God and our neighbor, we will be performing uses in everything we do.
With a person . . . in proportion as he lives According to Divine order—thus in proportion as he lives in love to the Lord, and in charity to the neighbor—in the same proportion his acts are uses in form, and are correspondences, through which he is conjoined with heaven (HH 112).
Every good deed we do when we love God and the neighbor conjoins us with heaven. Then we are those alert servants who waited for their master to return from the wedding banquet. Then we are invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb. Then we are serving God.

True Love and True Joy
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
October 25, 2009

Isaiah 51:1-11 John 3:27-35

Only through spirituality will we find true joy. There are many things that make us happy, and there are many things that give us pleasure. But true joy comes from the loves and affections of spirituality. Ultimately, from love to God and love for our neighbor, we find what is truly blessed in life.
Our joys derive from what we love. When we are able to do what we love we find joy. And the quality of our joy is according to the quality of our love.
Every one may know very well that there is never any life without some love, and that there is never any joy but what proceeds from love; and the quality of the life and of the joy is as the quality of the love. . . . True love therefore is love to the Lord, and true life is the life of love from Him, and true joy is the joy of that life. There can be but one true love, and therefore one true life, whence flow true joys and true blessings, such as those of the angels in the heavens (AC 33).
Loving God brings us the most profound experience of joy that we will ever know. Love for God and the neighbor is shown in the way a person relates to others. Those who love God and the neighbor wish to share their joy with others, while those who love only themselves and the world want to take all the happiness and pleasure to themselves. The love of giving, is a reflection of God’s very nature. God wishes to give all He has to make the whole human race as happy as we can be.
Love to the Lord and love to the neighbor wish to communicate all their own to others, for this is their enjoyment; (HH 400).

Love to the Lord is such, is because His love is the love of communication of all that He has with all, for He wills the happiness of all. Similar love is in every one of those who love the Lord, because He is in them; hence there is a mutual communication of the enjoyments of angels with one another (HH 399).
Loving God does not mean that we need to spend all our time in prayer, or contemplation of God’s attributes. We show our love for God in the way we live. If we are honest, sincere, caring, and giving, then our lives are a continual prayer. Then we are continually loving God.
We also show our love for God by being useful to society and to others. Lending a hand when others are in need, or just sharing a joke to lift someone’s spirits are ways of loving God also. We love God best when we are doing good things in the world we inhabit.
Without an active life there can be no happiness of life, and that rest from activity is only for the sake of recreation, that one may return more eager to the activity of his life. . . . angelic life consists in performing the good works of charity, which are uses, and that all the happiness of angels is in use, from use, and according to use (HH 403).
The happiness of angels derives from their activities. Angels, like people on this earth, all have functions and occupations they perform. We find ourselves most happy when we are actively pursuing something we love to do. For some lucky people, their occupation is work that they love to do. In this way they are serving society while they are doing something they love. This is the closest image we have to heavenly life and joy. Frost expresses such a happy conjunction of work and play in his poem “Two Tramps in Mud Time.” In this poem work, which is activity done out of need, becomes one with avocation, which is play:
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future’s sakes.
This poem contains one of Frosts rare references to heaven as a reality in life. When love and usefulness combine, the deed is done for heaven’s sake. Frost attended Swedenborgian Sunday school, and his mother was a Swedenborgian, so this poem might be one of those places in which Frost’s Swedenborgian roots shine through.
So Swedenborg claims that joy is truly found in some useful activity that flows from love. He contrasts this view with the notion some have that heavenly joy consists in eternal rest. Some think that heavenly joy will be eternal rest and somehow breathing in joy—possibly from the air. This notion arises when people think that heaven is somehow dramatically different than life here, and that the laws of life we find here are somehow broken in the next life. Instead of finding joy, those who live in idleness get bored and lose their alertness of mind.
Some spirits from an opinions conceived in the world, believed heavenly happiness to consist in an idle life, in which they would be served by others; but they were told that no happiness ever consists in abstaining from work and depending on this for happiness . . . Such a life would not be active but idle, in which the faculties would become torpid . . Those who had the idea that heavenly joy consists in living a life of indolence, and of breathing eternal joy in idleness, were allowed to perceive . . . what such a life is; and it was perceived that it was very sad, and that all joy thus perishing, after a short time they would loathe and nauseate it (HH 403).
Admittedly, sometimes we come home from work just exhausted, and crashing on the couch is all we can do. That is something we do to rest and recharge our batteries. But if you’re like me, after some time, you’ll want to get up and do something. Crashing on the couch only means something when we are working at something else. The joy of activity can be seen in any of the seniors I know. They have retired, and could lie on the couch all day. But most of them tell me that they are busier in retirement than they were when they were working.
Swedenborg tells us that we only feel heavenly joy dimly here. What waits for us, he tells us is beyond words. Swedenborg tells a short story about heavenly joy that delivers a powerful message about how great heavenly joy is.
There were certain spirits who desired to know what heavenly joy is, and it was granted them to have perception of the inmost of their own joy, to such a degree that they could bear no more; and yet it was not angelic joy—scarcely equal to the least angelic joy . . . So slight was it as to be almost cold; and yet being their inmost joy, they called it most heavenly. . . . when one receives his own inmost joy he is in heavenly joy, and cannot bear that which is more interior, but it becomes pain to him (AC 543).
When I hear this passage I have mixed feelings. First, I like the phrase that the spirits were in so much joy that they couldn’t bear any more. Wow. But then, a disturbing voice comes into my mind from my American Capitalist roots. We are told that their joy was not even angelic joy, and so slight as to be almost cold. Well I want the most joy. I don’t want to be fooled by feeling a low degree of joy and thinking it is the greatest joy I can have. Thinking this way, is, of course, silly. Joy is so subjective, what we feel as joy is joy for us. There is also a cautionary note that we find in Swedenborg. He tells us,
He who aspires to the least joy in the other life, receives from the Lord the greatest, and he who aspires to the greatest has the least, also that in heavenly joy there is nothing at all of preeminence above another, and that in proportion to the desire for preeminence, there is hell; also that in heavenly glory there is nothing whatever of worldly glory (AC 1936).
The last shall be first and the first shall be last. Our society teaches us to be the best, the greatest, and to shoot for the top. However when it comes to spiritual matters, these values do us no good. It is the meek that shall inherit the earth. It strikes me as amazing that a man such as Swedenborg would say what he does about the desire for preeminence. With his ponderous intellect, his genius, his noble birth, and relations with the Queen of Sweden, he must have been tempted sorely to feel preeminent over others—because he was! Yet this great genius tells us that looking down on others with contempt or feeling preeminent are sins to be avoided. In spiritual matters, we need to develop an attitude of humility, not ambition. Ambition for spiritual things can be a dangerous paradox. We need rest with the confidence that when it comes to our eternal happiness, God is preparing a place for us. And in that place we will be as happy as we can bear.
Let us not wait for the next life to find heavenly joy. We can find a reflection of it here by being useful to those around us. That includes in our work life. Whenever we can share our joys with others, whenever we can make someone else’s life a little happier, whenever we can bring heaven to earth, then we will find heavenly happiness. And as we bring heaven to earth, we can hope for good things to come in the next life.

Spiritual Journeying
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
October 18, 2009

Genesis 35:1-15 Matthew 2:13-23

We rarely reflect on our psychological states—the various moods we feel or our mental processes. Yet the states of mind we go through are what make up our spiritual life. Actually, when Swedenborg talks about our states, he means more than the passing emotions we go through throughout the day. I think he means more like the general personality we have and how it changes through our lifetime. And this general personality is what our spiritual life is made out of.
Our Bible readings are all about journeys. The stories in Genesis are filled with journeys. I picked a segment out of Jacob’s journeys. In our reading this morning, God tells Jacob to go to Bethel and settle there. This journey is cyclical. Jacob had been living in Bethel earlier, then he traveled all the way to Paddan Aram in Mesopotamia, where present day Iraq is. Then he returns to Bethel, where he has a vision of God, just as he also had a vision of God during his first visit. But with all the experiences Jacob had between visits, when he came to Bethel for the second time, he was a different person that he was at his first visit.
Likewise in the New Testament story, we hear of Jesus’ family leaving Israel to go to Egypt. They remain in Egypt until Herod dies, whereupon they return to Israel. So in the New Testament story, too, we have an account of a cyclical journey. And no doubt spending however long they spent in Egypt must have had a profound effect on the family. They must have returned changed from when they left.
I chose these travel stories, because our spiritual development is a kind of journey. In Swedenborg’s Bible interpretation, all the journeys of the Biblical people and the places they go are symbolic of spiritual states. In life and in the afterlife, our states will undergo changes. Our souls are on a journey through different spiritual states. Swedenborg writes,
The changes of state in the other life are as the times of day in the world, morning, midday, evening, and night, or twilight, and again morning. It is to be known that in the spiritual world there are perpetual changes of state, and all who are there pass through them (AC 8426).
So in our spiritual development, we will be led through various states.
By journeying through different psychological states, we learn and develop as individuals. Swedenborg tells us that the states we go through perfect us. So the leading idea here, is that we are constantly being perfected. Heaven is not a static place, we continue to grow and develop there, as we do here on earth, too. Here is where Swedenborg’s theology is so different from traditional Protestants. He really emphasizes the perfection of the soul. And in this, he may be closer to those yoga traditions of the East that emphasize clarification of the spirit through meditation. Swedenborg’s system is not one of meditation, but his emphasis on the real project of spiritual perfection is just as radical and rigorous.
It is to be known that in the spiritual world there are perpetual changes of state, and all who are there pass through them. The reason is, that they may be continually perfected, for without changes of state, or without variations continually succeeding one another in order, they who are in the spiritual world are not perfected. . . . When it is morning, then they are in love; when it is midday, then they are in light or in truth; but when it is evening, then they are in obscurity as to truths and are in the enjoyment of natural love (AC 8426).
The changes of state that we go through in our spiritual journey reflect the levels of our soul. As we have seen just a few Sundays ago, we have inner and outer aspects to our personalities. We have actually three levels, in Swedenborg’s system. The lowest level is called natural, and concerns life in this world and the cares of the body. Then there is the spiritual level, which is internal. Finally, there is the heavenly level which is the highest and inmost. We are brought through these levels in succession. We find our consciousness sometimes in spiritual heights and sometimes in worldly concerns. The best part about this process of alternating states, is that all the levels we find ourselves on are things we love. We love God and heaven, but we also love the world and the things of the body. So the changes we go through reflect these differing aspects of what we love. Notice that in the quote I just cited, in the lowest state we are in the enjoyment of natural love. Through this cyclical journey from the spiritual heights to the natural lows, we become more and more keenly aware of the delights given by God and more and more keenly aware of the negativity of pleasures of ego.
The different states we have gone through remain impressed upon our soul’s memory. And in the next life, they all return. We will experience the innocence of childhood, the excitement of learning from youth, the adult desire to make a contribution to society, and old age’s calm and serenity.
. . . every state of a person, from his infancy to extreme old age, not only remain in the other life but also returns, and this just as they were when he was living in the world. Not only do the goods and truths of memory thus remain and return, but also all states of innocence and charity (AC 561).
The return of these states and their alternation are how we are perfected. Swedenborg does not just assert that we are perfected, he also describes the process. Our states of evil return too, but they are modified and softened by the states of good that we have been through.
And when states of evil and falsity or of malice and fantasy recur—which also remain and return, every one of them to the least particulars—then these states are tempered by the Lord by means of the good states (AC 561).
As an interesting aside, Swedenborg describes the theological terms evil and falsity as malice and fantasy. This leads me to think we can replace some of the perhaps outworn theological terms in his writings with more contemporary ones. Malice and fantasy sound more descriptive and are perhaps more acceptable to the modern ear than the terms evil and falsity.
We can’t really control this process. And it’s a good thing. God leads us imperceptibly through the different states of our spiritual journey. We can’t see where we are going all the time, but God’s Divine Providence can see just what our spiritual growth requires.
Providence continually regards what is eternal and continually leads unto salvation, and this through various states, sometimes glad, sometimes sad, which a person cannot at all comprehend: but still they conduce to his life eternal (AC 8560).
Borrowing Paul’s terminology, Swedenborg describes the process by which we die to the old self and are resurrected into the new self. Paul writes,
Put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new iun the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness (Ephesians 4:22-23).
The purpose behind the states we go through is to break up the passions of the world and ego and let in heavenly affections. So like Paul, Swedenborg talks about the old self dying and the new self being born,
The new man is altogether different from the old; for the new man is in affection for spiritual and heavenly things, and these make its enjoyments and blessedness; but the old man is in affections for worldly and earthly things, and these make its enjoyments and pleasures. . . . When a person, therefore, from the old man is made new, that is, when he is regenerated, it is not done in a moment, as some believe, but during many years, and indeed, during the man’s whole life, even to its end. For his lusts are to be extirpated, and heavenly affections to be implanted; and the man is to be gifted with a life which he had not before, and of which indeed he scarcely knew anything (AC 4063).
We are led out of worldly passions into heavenly affections by God’s Divine Providence. It is a journey that will be glad at times and sad at times. But we need to trust in God, that what we are living through will conduce to our spiritual progress. I like that phrase in Swedenborg that says, “man is to be gifted with a life which he had not before, and of which indeed he scarcely knew anything.” People in AA often say that if they had made a list of what they wanted when they first came into the program, they would have shorted themselves. We have no clue what beauties lie ahead of us in our journey. We can’t know how delightful heavenly affections will feel until we have been brought into them. What we wanted when we were in a lower spiritual condition seemed good to us then. But as we grew into a more elevated condition, those delights paled before the new joys we discover. The road we walk may be at times one of sorrow, doubt, even despair. But those of us who have the gift of years most likely can look back on their life, and see a more profound joy and clearer thinking than they knew in earlier years.
I wish you all well in your spiritual journeys. We all start from different places, we all are different people, and we all have different journeys. But we are all united in this, we are following the steps of Christ Jesus. And we are all, as children of Christ Jesus, striving to live the heaven-bound life.

The Offering of Thankfulness
October 11, 2009
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete

Leviticus 7:11-15 Luke 17:11-18

In our reading this morning from Leviticus, we heard about a special kind of sacrifice. It is called a fellowship offering in the translation I used. This sacrifice is different from the other sacrifices because it is a spontaneous offering of thankfulness. Other sacrifices are commanded either by the church calendar or by the commission of sin. But the fellowship offering could be done at any time, whenever the person wanted to express his feelings of thanks to God. In Leviticus 16:5, God says, “And if you offer a sacrifice of a fellowship offering unto the Lord, you shall offer it at your own will.” This sacrifice, then, is not to put the person back into favor with God, but is a celebration when a person is already in relationship with God. It is a free outpouring of the heart of thanks for God’s love and a person’s recognition of God’s role in his life. The Israelites performed this sacrifice in some of the great events of their history when they were especially grateful and happy. They performed a thank offering on Mount Sinai, when they first made their covenant with God. They performed it at the consecration of Aaron as Yahweh’s priest, and at the consecration of the tabernacle. They performed it at a solemn covenant renewal performed by Joshua in the promised land. They performed it when they anointed their first king Saul. When David brought the ark to Jerusalem, amid great festivity, they performed the fellowship offering. When Solomon completed the Temple they performed the fellowship offering.
And in the New Testament reading, we hear of ten lepers being healed by Jesus. Only one returns to thank Jesus. That one was from the religion that the orthodox Jews thought were heretics—the Samaritans. This is just one of many references in the New Testament in which the social outcasts are used to show true faith.
The healing of the lepers is symbolic of God’s constant providence that lifts us up into a higher and deeper faith life. This God does sometimes despite us. God knows what we need in order to love Him better. And we, ourselves, sometimes don’t know what we need. Sometimes, indeed, we even act contrary to what is best for us. Yet for all our misguided efforts, for all our shortcomings, God ceaselessly and gently draws us upward toward Himself. And for that, we all can be exceedingly grateful.
We can start to contemplate God’s gifts to us at the most basic level. We can thank God for our very life. God is Life Itself. And He gives us the life we call our own. In the youth of my spiritual development, I couldn’t understand what Swedenborg meant when he said that God gives us life. It felt to me like the life I had was mine. I couldn’t grasp the idea that the life I thought was mine, was actually God flowing into me. It took me years of experience, prayer, and study for me to begin to see that my life is a gift from God. From that insight all of real spirituality begins.
Recognizing that our life is a gift from God takes the ego out of our life. It removes the idea of “I”. It erases the concept of self. The Buddhists teach that there is no self. And when you take away the idea of self, then greed, lust, violence, and hatred all fall away like dead fall leaves.
When we acknowledge that the life we have is a gift from God, then everything we do afterward becomes charged with spiritual life. No longer can we take credit for the good things we do. No longer can we take credit for the spiritual advancement we make. No longer can we take credit for the love we share and the joy we feel. This is the beginning of a true faith life. It means that we can do good, and not think we deserve credit for it. Then the good we do shines with divine rays and is not tarnished with selfish conceit.
We then are filled with a feeling of thankfulness. We are thankful to God for allowing us to do the good that we do. We thank God for allowing us to work with Him to bring heaven to earth. Doing good feels good. Doing good is a joy. And all this is a gift from God.
In our earthly lives, too, we have much to be thankful for. In these difficult economic times, we can become overwhelmed with a feeling of loss. Our retirement investments may have dropped. Some have lost their jobs. And instead of feeling thankful, we rather feel lost and abandoned by God.
It is in these times of difficulty that spirituality can be all the more necessary. When we are deprived of our worldly comforts, we can turn to spirituality for consolation. It is all too often the case that we don’t pray from the depths of our heart until we are brought to desperate times. When we are comfortable with the way things are going, it is all to easy to become complacent, and forget about our utter dependence on God. Sometimes it takes sorrow and difficulty for us to reach out to God and to reestablish our connection with Him. Often when things are most difficult for us, God seems to come closer.
When I have had hard times, I get down to the very basics in my life. Do I have a roof over my head? I give thanks for that. Do I have enough food to eat? I give thanks for that. Do I have a jacket for the winter? I give thanks for that. Do I have people around me who care for me? I give thanks for that. Am I one of the fortunate ones who have a job? I give thanks for that. When I make lists like this, I see just how much I have and how much I have to be thankful for. Then there are the extras. Do I have reliable transportation—that might mean a bus ride or a car? Do I have a stereo I can listen to music on for free? I give thanks for that. Do I have clothes to wear? When I break things down to the basic level, I have countless things to thank God for giving me. Life looks rich and joyous when we take the time to count all the little things we have that we take for granted.
On Thanksgiving Day most of us will be enjoying a feast with family and friends. This is one of those special days out of the year when we make time for family and friends. It is a time to renew bonds of love and to show one another how much they mean to us. We need these special days, because in the rush of our work lives we don’t always show our loved ones how we feel for them. We rush from home to work; we clean the house on our days off; we go grocery shopping; we perform countless chores and rush through life. So on days like Thanksgiving Day, and other holidays, we slow down and enjoy those whom we love. Days like Thanksgiving Day make us stop the hustle and bustle of our work lives and look around us. And especially don’t forget to thank the people who worked so hard to cook everything!
There are those unfortunates, however, who are unable to celebrate as we do. There are some who have fallen through the cracks of society and can’t seem to make their way. I think of the many homeless for whom Thanksgiving Day might mean a special meal at the shelter, but not the warmth of home and family. A large number of the homeless suffer from mental illnesses, and for one reason or another haven’t received proper treatment, or haven’t found government subsidies to support them. Some, indeed, are victims of drug addictions; some come from difficult or abusive family environments; some, it seems, just haven’t gotten the proper start in life that we all take for granted. When we say our Thanksgiving grace, I suggest that we also say a prayer for those who have been left out of society for whatever reason.
Let us all remember the countless blessings that have come into our lives. Let us remember the blessings of daily living we often forget. Let us rejoice and give thanks for our families and loved ones. Let us especially give thanks to God for His constant care and His constant work of salvation that His grace provides. Let us not be like the nine lepers who were healed by Jesus, but didn’t think to give thanks to God. Rather, let us be like the Samaritan who returned to Jesus, bowed down and gave thanks. Let Thanksgiving Day be for us a free will offering of gratitude to God in the joy of this holiday.

Internal and External Worship
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete

1 Kings 8:1-14 Matthew 15:8-20

Last Sunday we considered the opening of the internal person. After talking about the internal person, we got into a discussion about how the church service relates to the internal person. To some, we sounded a little judgmental about those people who don’t go to church. Today I will talk at greater length about the relation of the internal person to church services.
I will try to walk a tightrope here. I’m going to try to say that a person doesn’t need to go to church to be saved, and yet at the same time I’m going to try to say that there is value for spiritual people in going to church. So I will begin with the first part of my claim. A person does not have to go to church in order to be saved. Going to church is called the external of worship. Loving God and the neighbor is the internal of worship. And loving God and the neighbor is what really counts in a person’s worship life.
Internal worship, which is from love and caring, is real worship; and that external worship without this internal worship is no worship (AC 1175).
To claim that only people who go to church are the saved is to make external worship the be all and end all of worship. Swedenborg cautions against such reasoning.
To make worship of the form without its essential, is to make internal worship external—as for example, to hold that if one should live where there is no church, no preaching, no sacraments, no priesthood, he could not be saved, or could have no worship; when yet he may worship the Lord from the internal (AC 1175).
So let’s be clear on that. A person may love his or her neighbor and love God inwardly and still not go to church.
At the same time, however, I do think that church is valuable in a person’s spiritual development. People have told me how much better they feel when they attend church. I think that that is because the internals of these people find a place where they can open up in the church service. One hour concentrated on God fills a person’s heart with God’s very Spirit. Furthermore, there are spiritual states of mind that arise in church services. Finally, hopefully a person learns spiritual truths in church—although these can also be learned outside the church. So Swedenborg writes,
But a person, while he is in the world, ought not to be without external worship also. For by external worship internal things are called forth, and by means of external worship the external things are kept in a holy state, so that the internal things can flow in. And besides a person is thus imbued with knowledges, and prepared for receiving heavenly things, and also gifted with states of holiness, though he knows it not; which states of holiness are preserved to him by the Lord for the benefit of the eternal life; for all the states of his life return in the other life (AC 1618).
Then a person brings out into the world the spiritual nurture that he or she receives in the church building or from a church service.
As our internal level develops in us, we also need to have it grounded in an external. This is one function that church serves. It is similar to our soul’s development. To be whole people in this world, we need a soul and a body. So church is like the body for our internal person.
Nevertheless with everyone who is of the church there ought to be both, namely, an external and an internal; otherwise there is no spiritual life with him, for the internal is as the soul, and the external as the body of the soul (AC 8762).
Spiritual people will find value in attending church, but they don’t make going to church the essential thing. In fact, those who think that going to church is the only thing that matters, are making what is external to be the essential thing. So Swedenborg says,
Let it be also supposed, for example, that men place the very essential of worship in frequenting churches, going to the sacraments, hearing sermons, praying, observing feasts, and many other things which are external and ceremonial, and persuade themselves that these, with talking about faith, are sufficient—all of which are formal things of worship. . . . They indeed who make worship from love and caring essential, do these things likewise . . . but they do not place the essential of worship in these things. In the external worship of such men there is something holy and living, because there is internal worship in it; but in the external worship of the former there is nothing holy and nothing living (AC 1175).
A friend of mine talked about her childhood and how, as she puts it, the church guilted her into attending. Rather than going as an act of love and free will, her sense of guilt and obligation made her go. Even to this day, there is at times a struggle with her when she gets the slightest feeling of obligation about church. When it works, church is a free expression of love for God and a place of spiritual refreshment. It is a place where one can bring their feelings for God and share them with others. It is also a place for community as ones feelings for other people can be safely expressed. Any sense of obligation and guilt about attendance would stifle these freely expressed joys. Such worship would become external as the internals of love can’t survive in an atmosphere of compulsion.
The states of holiness that a person can find in church are God’s very dwelling place in a person’s soul. As we mature spiritually, we sometimes let go of some of the things we learned in childhood. But our spiritual maturity is a very gradual process and we need to respect the forms of worship that others know. Something that appears quite evident to us may conflict with the beliefs that others have grown up with. And special sensitivity needs to be observed when we discuss faith issues with others. We want to preserve the faith others know, as we respectfully state our truth. Gandhi once said, “Whenever you have truth, it must be given with love, or the message and the messenger will be rejected.” Swedenborg comments on this,
The Lord by no means wishes to destroy suddenly, and still less in a moment, the worship implanted in any one from infancy; for this would be to tear up the root, and so to destroy the holiness of adoration and worship, which is deeply implanted and which the Lord never breaks, but bends. The holiness of worship, rooted from infancy, has this nature, that it does not bear violence, but a gentle and kindly bending (AC 1992).
I try to be respectful when discussing my beliefs with others. But it’s not always easy. I can be very convinced of my own truths, and there is a side of me that has a delight in argument. I recall with dismay one of our Spiritual Discussion nights. One of the people there that night mentioned the devil. At once, another member of the group said, “Swedenborg doesn’t believe in the devil.” Then the Garden of Eden came up, and the serpent, and the long and short of it was that this person’s childhood beliefs were attacked in one night. I regret that incident. That isn’t a Christian attitude to take with regard to the beliefs of others. However, I must add that usually our discussions are delightful and characterized by mutual respect.
The worship in a church building, as I have said above, is for spiritual refreshment and the expression of love. The way a person lives outside the church building will determine what a person brings into a church building. Living a loving life makes all that a person does holy.
A person is in worship continually when he is in love and caring; external worship is only the effect. The angels are in such worship; with them, therefore, there is a perpetual Sabbath (AC 1618).
If a person is open to it, church can give us joys and delights that we just can’t find elsewhere. And we can carry that joy into all aspects of our life.
We may find a great benefit in going to church. The formal things of worship may excite the internals of our souls and we may feel spiritual refreshed when we return home Sunday morning. Church may keep our external person in line with the loves and truths of our internal person. But going to church is not the essential thing in our spiritual life. The essential thing is what lies in our hearts. The essential thing is how we relate with our neighbor and how we relate with God. Is our life characterized with love and care?
But we need to realize, too, that others who don’t go to church may have an inner love for God and their neighbor also. We don’t want to make the externals of worship the main thing. So we are left in that ambiguous position of affirming church for ourselves, but not making it the main thing of worship.