Church of the Holy City

How Truth Points to Good
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
March 8, 2009

Exodus 22:16-23:9 Matthew 5:17-48

Last Sunday I talked about doing good to the neighbor and love to God and the neighbor. There were a lot of questions and comments that followed the talk. So I thought in the next few Sundays I would go into love and doing good, and hopefully address some of the issues that were raised last Sunday.
When Plato tried to talk about the Good in his dialogue entitled The Symposium, he realized that he had a very high and lofty subject to discuss. He thought it was so lofty that the closest he could come to the Good is one step down, namely, the True. He thought that truth was as close as he could get to the Good with his mortal rationality.
In some ways, Swedenborg says a similar thing. We can’t come to good except through truth, though Swedenborg does say that we can get to good. All genuine truth points the way to good. Truth is nothing else than what leads us to good. “All truths are knowledges of good; the truths which are not from good, or which do not regard good as the end, are not truths” Swedenborg writes in AC 3680. Likewise we find that, “when good is formed so as to be intellectually perceived, it is called truth” (AC 3049).
That is why this Sunday, our Bible readings were all laws, or rules for conduct. I deliberately picked Bible passages that we would identify as truth, or as laws for behavior. And they all point to what is good, or how to be good. In Exodus I picked a section that has a lot of what lawyers would call “case laws.” They are laws about how to adjudicate matters regarding property and social interaction. So we find laws like, “If you come across your enemy’s ox or ass wandering off, be sure to take it back to him” (Ex. 23:4). And in the New Testament we find this teaching reinforced by Jesus when He says, “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matt. 5:43-44).
The relationship between love and case law can be seen in these two passages. If you do love your enemy, when you see his or her ox wandering off you will return it to them. This is because you care for them and want what is good for them—that is what love is. But to reinforce what to do on a strictly behavioral plane, in case a person does not feel love, we have the law that tells you to return the wandering ox to its owner, your enemy. The case is the same with all the laws we find written in the Bible. In case a person doesn’t feel love for their neighbor, we have a list of laws that tells us how to act toward them. These laws can be called truths. They tell a person how to behave in order to be a good person, and then ultimately in order to be a loving person.
Our first inkling about how to be good comes in the form of truth. We call this conscience. Our conscience tells us what is right and what is wrong. But conscience must be formed. And it is formed out of truths.
Conscience is formed by means of the truths of faith, for what man has heard, acknowledged, and believed makes conscience in him. . . . Hence unless it is the truths of faith that he hears acknowledges, and believes, he can have no true conscience. For it is through the truths of faith . . . that man is regenerated. . . . From this it is evident that the truths of faith are the means by which he may become, or live, a man according to what faith teaches, the principal of which is to love the Lord above all things, and the neighbor as himself (AC 1077).
We are created such that our natural instincts are not always good. Often, perhaps always, we need to be taught what it is to be a good person. This teaching is done by truths. But there is a tricky part to truth.
We none of us have actual truth. None of us are able to grasp Divine truth. All we have now, and all we ever will have is an appearance of truth. Appearances of truth are approximations of truth that are suited to our mindset and to what we have experienced in life.
Truths Divine themselves are such that they can never be comprehended by any angel, still less by any man, as they exceed every faculty of their understanding. That still there may be conjunction of the Lord with them, truths Divine flow in with them in appearances, and when truths Divine are with them in such appearances, they can both be received and acknowledged. This is effected by adaptation to the comprehension of every one . . . (AC 3362).
This brings us to the questions raised by Darren and Lynda. I affirm Darren’s comment that whatever a person does in the moment according to his or her understanding of good is good for that person. We none of us ever have anything more than that. We only have the appearances that fit with our best understanding of good. And that understanding of good may be very flawed. This brings us to Lynda’s question about the child molester. Obviously, this individual’s conscience is perverted. But conscience continually grows and our appearances of truth become more and more genuine. Our mind also acquires more and more truths of different kinds. This means that the child molester can be instructed by the law or maybe by a treatment facility to see the sickness of his or her behaviors. Such instruction and treatment would be truths that improve the sick conscience into one more healthy.
Faith is perfected according to the abundance and coherence of truths . . . 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, and consequently of being separated from evils; and successively more removed from the allurements of the eye and the lusts of the flesh . . . Especially it becomes more powerful against evils and falsities (TCR 352).
So for all of us, truth that we learn, truth that has become a fact in our memories points the way to good. Truth begins to live when we start to do good from what we have been taught. When the truths we have learned are put into practice, then they become part of who we are as people. They enter our intentions. They become things that we will. In Swedenborg’s language, they become part of our will. Like Aristotle, we start to do good because we have been taught what good is. This becomes habit. And ultimately we enjoy doing what is good.
Truth does not have life from itself, but from good, and it has life from good when man lives according to truth; for it then infuses itself into the man’s will, and from his will into his actions, thus into the whole man. . . . when a man wills truth, it is then on the threshold of his life; and when from willing he does it, the truth is in the whole man; and when he does it frequently, it recurs not only from habit, but also from affection, and thus from freedom (AC 4884).
This is why it is so critical to learn truths. As we heard above, “Faith is perfected according to the abundance and coherence of truths” (TCR 352). We are born totally dumb. We don’t know anything. Everything has to be taught to us. This includes teachings about what it is to be good. We learn truths everywhere. We learn them through experiences in life. We learn them through reading the Bible. We learn them through preachings in church. We learn them through theology, philosophy, and literature. I would suggest here, that TV, movies, and Media, along with society in general and the specific neighborhoods some live in are not very good places to learn genuine truths. We need the presence of the church and holy scriptures especially in today’s society.
The knowledges we have of truth are filled with love and good by God when we start acting on them. Swedenborg calls truths vessels that hold good, or love. We learn truth, and God fills these containers with good and gives our truths life. We apply principals of truth to our lives and begin to do good—for all truth is a statement of what good is. In the course of time, the truth becomes transparent and only good itself shines through. When we have so committed teachings about good to our hearts that we instinctively do them, then good is all that appears.
When a man is being regenerated, that is, when he is to be conjoined to the Lord, he proceeds to the conjunction by means of truth, that is, through the truths of faith; for no one can be regenerated except through knowledges of faith, which are truths, by means of which he proceeds to conjunction. The Lord goes to meet these through good, that is charity, and applies this to the knowledges of faith, that is, to its truths; for all truths are recipient vessels of good, and so the more genuine the truths are, and the more they are multiplied, the more abundantly can good accept them as vessels, reduce them to order, and at length manifest itself; so that at last the truths do not appear, except so far as good shines through them (AC 2063).
With this background of truth, we are now in a much better position to consider what good is next Sunday. After that, we will be able to look at love.

Living for Others
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
March 1, 2009

Leviticus 19:9-18 Luke 22:24-30

“Who is greater?” Jesus asks, “The one who sits at table or the one who serves.” Jesus says the obvious, of course it is the one being served. He then goes on to say that He Himself came to serve. Thus Jesus reverses the common perception about who is greater. It is greatest to serve, not to be served. And in the middle of the Old Testament book of Leviticus, a book primarily devoted to tedious regulations about sacrifice, we find the words, “love your neighbor as yourself” (19:18). We all recognize this Leviticus passage as one of the two great commands that Jesus taught. But many do not realize that Jesus was not teaching something new. The Pharisee is asking Jesus which commandment is the greatest in the Law—namely the first five books of the Bible. So Jesus answers the Pharisee by quoting the Law—namely Leviticus 19:18, “love the neighbor as yourself.”
Jesus calls our attention to a bold new way to look at our purpose in life. Some people question what their purpose is on earth. Particularly people who have survived a near death experience. Jesus tells us our purpose is to serve others. Swedenborg says this in a simple sentence, “Man is not born for the sake of himself, but for the sake of others; that is, he is born not to live for himself alone, but for others . . .” (TCR 406). This message is as bold today as it was when Jesus first said this in the first century A.D.
This means we’re not here to look out for number one. We’re not here to get what we can out of life. We’re not here to seek fame and fortune for ourselves. We’re here to do something good for someone else.
This is about the opposite that our society teaches us. We’re taught by society to make a name for ourselves. There’s an old song by a strange group called Devo that captures the kind of messages our society tells us. They say, “Move forward! Get ahead!” Get ahead, get to the top of your office or business. Make a lot of money. There’s another rock song that goes, “What have you done for me lately?” Imagine walking into the office of some CEO and saying, “What are you doing for your neighbor? How are you serving?”
But we’re not here to serve ourselves. We’re here for the sake of others. We’re here to say a kind word to the grocery clerk when we buy our groceries. We’re here to cheer up our friends when they are having a bad day. We’re here to spread joy in whatever way we can. This is what heaven is all about.
The enjoyments and happiness in the other life are constantly communicated from one to many by a real transmission that is wonderful . . . and these communications are effected without any loss to him who communicates. . . . From this it may be manifest what the happiness of those who love the neighbor more than themselves, and who desire nothing more than to transfer their happiness to others. This has its origin from the Lord, Who thus communicates happiness to the angels (AC 1392).
What a beautiful image of God Swedenborg gives us. He says that when we share our joys with others, we are an image and likeness of God. Sharing joy, says Swedenborg, “has its origin from the Lord, Who thus communicates happiness to angels.” God, for Swedenborg, is not a condemning God, is not a stern, judging God, but a God who wants to communicate happiness to angels.
Sharing joy with others is a selfless act. When we genuinely love others from the heart, we don’t take credit for the good we do them. We are happy if we have made them happy and the happiness of others is our concern.
They who are in this enjoyment [heavenly good] do not wish to hear of merit, for they love to do good and they perceive that they are favored in the doing; and they are sorry if it is believed that their doing is for the sake of a return. They are like those who do good to friends for the sake of friendship, to brother for the sake of brotherhood, to wife and children for the sake of wife and children, to their country for the country’s sake, thus from friendship and love. They who do acts of kindness also say and urge that the do them not for their own sake, but for theirs (TCR 440).
So far I have been talking about doing good to the neighbor in terms of the individual. But the neighbor is also a group of people. The neighbor is also the people of the city we live in, or the country we live in, or the people in our church, believers everywhere of all creeds, or society in general. So the neighbor is also people in a collective sense. Now I have to come back to that CEO that I painted in a negative light earlier. I asked the CEO, “What have you done for others?” Well it is entirely possible, that by being a conscientious CEO, that business man is serving society. In this sense, by doing the job a person is called to do, people serve the greater good of society, or the neighbor in a collective sense. This is the heart of the famous “Protestant work ethic” that we hear about sometimes. Doing one’s job, whatever that job is, is a calling from God to serve society. People traditionally think that only ministers have a call from God. But the Protestant work ethic says that the owner of a factory, a plumber, a teacher, a social worker, and an auto mechanic all have a calling from God to do the work they have chosen. So doing your job faithfully is a religious act. It is doing good to the neighbor as a collective. It is an act of charity.
Charity itself is to act justly and faithfully in the office, business, and work in which one is, because all things which a man so does are of use to society; and use is good; and good, in a sense apart from persons, is the neighbor (TCR 422).
The neighbor is also good itself. And when we love the neighbor spiritually, we love the good that is in a person, not just the person. This idea has its origins in Aristotle’s friendship philosophy. Aristotle teaches that only the virtuous person can truly be a friend. And it is virtue first that one seeks out in another. Swedenborg says essentially the same thing, substituting only the word virtue for good. So Swedenborg teaches that we are to love the neighbor according to the good we see in him or her.
… a man is to be loved according to the quality of the good in him. Therefore good itself is essentially the neighbor. . . . Now as the Lord is to be loved above all things, it follows that the degrees of love toward the neighbor are to be measured by the love to Him, thus by the measure in which another possesses the Lord in himself, or has possession from the Lord; for so much good he also possesses, because all good is from the Lord (TCR 410).
Seeing the neighbor as good itself combines Jesus’ two great commands into a marvelous unity. Jesus said that the two great commands were to love the Lord above all and to love the neighbor as oneself. But when we understand the neighbor to be good itself, and when we acknowledge that all good is from God and is God, then loving good is loving God. “He who loves good because it is good and truth because it is truth, eminently loves the neighbor, because he loves the Lord who is Good itself and Truth itself” (TCR 419). So loving good and loving truth, wherever we find it, is loving the source of good and truth, namely God.
Some people seek spirituality in exotic forms. They practice yoga, or meditate, or fast, or, like me, do Tai Chi. But spirituality is not a commodity a person can gather and have as a personal possession. Spirituality is measured by a person’s relationships. Is one a good neighbor to all the people they come in contact with in their daily lives. So one measures spirituality by whether one is a good friend, a loving parent, a sympathetic partner, a friend to strangers. If yoga, or meditation, or fasting, or Tai Chi make a person more responsive to the people he or she encounters in their daily life, then these are valuable spiritual practices. If these disciplines make a person a faithful worker, then they are valuable. The point here, is that spirituality is seen in the extent to which a person embodies those two great commandments from the Torah, loving God and loving the neighbor. And these two commandments come down to loving and doing good, according to one’s best understanding of good.

The Mystical Marriage
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
February 15, 2009

Hosea 2:14-23 Revelation 19:4-9

In honor of Valentine’s Day, I thought I would talk about love this Sunday. And the love I will be talking about is that love between two people who have devoted their lives to one another. What is surprising, is that very few theologians talk about interpersonal love. Whenever they talk about love, they tend to want to talk about what the Greeks call agape. Agape is a spiritual love to all of humankind and is characterized by selfless giving to others. For many theologians, this form of love is the only form that theology should deal with. Love between two individuals, which we celebrate on Valentine’s Day is called in the Greek language, eros. Eros is best translated as desire. And theologians think that this isn’t all that important for religion.
But mutual love between couples finds a central place in Swedenborg’s theology. The special relationship between lovers is found in his very first works and his later works. He calls it “the fundamental of all good loves, and as it is inscribed upon the very least things of a person” (CL 68). Due to the time in which he lived, Swedenborg’s discussion of romantic desire is treated within the context of marriage. But the principals he describes can be applied to all couples, whether formally married or not—provided that they have made a commitment to one another.
In various places in the Bible, the relationship between God and the church is compared to a marriage. We heard this today in both our Old Testament reading and our New Testament reading. In the passage from Hosea, God says to the people of Israel, “In that day you will call me ‘my husband’” (2:16). And further in the same reading, God says, “I will betroth you to me forever” (2:19). And the passage we heard from Revelation speaks of marriage between Jesus and the Church. A mighty voice is heard saying, “the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready” (19:7). And the angels say to John, “Write: ‘Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb” (2:9).
The marriage between God and the Church is more than just a symbol, or metaphor. The intimate union in love between God and the Church is the origin of love between married pairs, or between those who have made a commitment to one another, whether formally married or not. As the Apostle Paul says of this mystical union, “This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the Church” (Ephesians 5:32). And Swedenborg talks about this mystery in his book Marriage Love. In that book he develops a complex theology of marriage love that I would like to begin to discuss this morning. With the Bible, Swedenborg asserts that the source for love between couples is God’s union with the church. There he writes,
The correspondence of this love is with the marriage of the Lord and the Church. That is, as the Lord loves the church and desires that the church shall love Him, so husband and wife mutually love each other. It is known in the Christian world that there is a correspondence between them; but what it is is not yet known. . . . marriage love is heavenly, spiritual, and holy, because it corresponds to the celestial, spiritual and holy marriage of the Lord and the church (CL 62).
When Swedenborg talks about the church, and I think this goes for the Bible as well, he means everyone who is conjoined with God. Another way to put this to say the church is the community of believers. Or, everyone who is seeking a relationship with God according to their notion of religion. The church is God’s dwelling in the soul of each person, and collectively in the souls of all who are in relationship with God. Those who are in a relationship with God are in that mystical marriage between God and the church.
We can say that a person is in the church if he is in relationship with God; or we can say that the church is in him or her. Whenever a person is doing good according to what he or she knows about good, then a person is in the church, or the church is in him or her. Swedenborg calls this the marriage of good and truth. “The marriage of good and truth is the church in a person; for the marriage of good and truth is the same as the marriage of charity and faith, since good is of charity and truth is of faith . . .” (CL 62). So when a person is doing good according to what he or she knows to be right, then God is in them.
According to Swedenborg, God is infinite love and infinite wisdom. From love comes what is good and from wisdom comes what is true. So when a person is doing good according to truth, then God’s love and wisdom is in that person. And since God actually is love and wisdom, God is actually in that person. Thus when a person does good according to what he or she knows to be true, God is in them, and they are in that mystical marriage of the Lord and the Church.
That is the theology Swedenborg constructs around romantic love. And as the marriage of God and the church, or the union of good and truth, is what salvation is all about, the love couples feel for one another is absolutely central in Swedenborg’s theology. As with so much in Swedenborg, no matter where you start, everything comes together when you follow his ideas through. And here in his discussion of love, all the essentials about the relationship between God and humans come together. But Swedenborg doesn’t just discuss love from its theological basis in God, he also discusses the feelings of love. And for most of us, that is what Valentine’s day is all about.
Since romantic love is based on the union between God and the church, it is the most fundamental love of all loves. The love couples feel for one another is one of the most powerful feelings we can experience.
In this love are gathered all joys and all delights, from first to last. . . . Now, as marriage love is the fundamental of all good loves, and as it is inscribed upon the very least things of a person . . . it follows that its delights exceed the delights of all loves . . . For it expends the inmost things of the mind, and at the same time the inmost things of the body, as the delicious current of its fountain flows through and opens them. . . . all the states of blessedness, satisfaction, delight, gratification, and pleasure that could ever be conferred on people by the Lord Creator are gathered into this love (CL 68).
The only other love that compares to the intensity of romantic love is that between parents and children, and this love is bound up in married love.
In love between couples, all the essentials of what it means to love are found. In a true loving relationship, giving happiness to the other person is at its heart. This is the case with divine love, as well. God wants to give the human race as much happiness as we can bear. And to do this, God gives us the mutual love between couples.
. . . . as love is such that it desires to share its joy with another whom from the heart it loves, yes, to confer joys upon him and from thence to take its own, infinitely more then does Divine Love—which is in the Lord—towards humans, whom He created to be a receptacle both of the love and wisdom proceeding from Himself. . . therefore He from the inmosts infused into humans marriage love, into which He might gather all the blessedness, happiness, joys, and pleasures that together with life proceed and flow in only from Divine Love through His Divine Wisdom . . . (CL 180).
It is fitting that we take one day a year to celebrate this wonderful gift of God to the human race. In the society of ancient Greece, love was considered a god. We are not far from that idea in Christianity. Our God is also the God of love. And as we let God’s love into our hearts, we cannot but love others, as God does. And especially, when we find someone who has captured our heart we feel an exquisite joy in relationship with that one special person. Feeling that marriage love, is just about the same as feeling heaven’s joy,
The states of this love are innocence, peace, tranquility, inmost friendship, entire confidence, and mutual desire of heart and mind to do each other every good; and from all these come blessedness, happiness, joy, pleasure,–and from the eternal fruition of these, heavenly felicity. . . (CL 180).

On Holiday Every Day
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
February 8, 2009

Exodus 16:11-30 Luke 22:24-30

As you know, I have just returned from holidays in Florida. The weather was beautiful, and my vacation was relaxing and fun. I saw old friends, swam with the dolphins, went to the beach for sunsets, and sunned by the pool and hot tub. But maybe most important, all the stresses and pressures of my work were forgotten. We woke up when we felt like it, and took each day however we felt.
Then I got home and had a power bill to pay, a Blue Cross payment, and auto repair bill, and a phone bill. My pension money came from the United States, so I had to open up a mutual fund account. I had to catch up on my phone messages and emails, and there was a wedding coming up the upcoming week end. And the February newsletter needed to be written up, as well as preparing the regular worship service. And sometime in all this I needed to unpack and get my laundry done.
Although there may have been a lot of things waiting for me upon my return, we wouldn’t want a life only made up of holiday time. King Henry the IV in the Shakespeare play says, “If all the year were playing holidays to sport would be as tedious as to work; but when they seldom come, they wished for come.” There is a spiritual side to this view of holidays that I would like to explore with you this morning.
I read from the New Testament a passage about heaven. Some people form their ideas about heaven from that passage. In it, Jesus says, “you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom and sit on thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (Matt. 22:30). From this passage, many think that the eternal life will be non-stop feasting or sitting on thrones judging everyone. Then there is the Old Testament passage that points directly to the issue of holidays. Moses calls the Sabbath day a day of rest. From this, and other passages, some get the idea that heaven will be a place of eternal rest—perhaps reclining forever in paradisiacal gardens. Holidays forever.
But common sense tells us that resting forever would soon come to boredom, maybe even misery. Don’t get me wrong—I wouldn’t have minded a few more weeks in Florida. But having lived there for 12 years, I am well aware that the fun in the sun becomes commonplace after a while. Believe it or not, you quit going to the beach. A friend of mine that I visited this holiday said he hadn’t been to the beach in a year. Yes, even the beautiful Florida beaches become commonplace after some time. So Swedenborg astutely observes,
Those who had the idea that heavenly joy consists in living a life of indolence, and of breathing eternal joy in idleness were suffered 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).
In one of his visionary experiences, Swedenborg talks about those who think heaven is reclining forever in beautiful gardens. He meets these people who have been in a paradisiacal garden for seven days, and they already have become sick of it. I’ll let Swedenborg tell the story, which has a note of humor in it. The spirits he meets say,
It is now seven days since we came into this paradise. When we entered our minds seemed as if elevated into heaven, and admitted to the inmost happiness of its joys. But after three days this happiness began to grow dull and to decease in our minds and become imperceptible, and so it came to nothing. And when our imaginary joys thus ended we feared the loss of all the delight of our lives, and became doubtful about eternal happiness, even whether there is any heavenly happiness. . . . Here we have sat for a day and a half; and as we are without hope of finding the way out, we have been resting ourselves on this bed of roses and looking around us at the abundance of olives, grapes, oranges and lemons; but the more we look at them the more our eyes tire with looking, our smell with smelling, and our taste with tasting. This is the reason of the sadness, lamentation, and weeping in which you see us (CL 8).
Swedenborg’s visions of heaven and hell tell us that life there is much like life here—only inexpressible. When I’ve talked with some people about the traditional ideas of heavenly joy—ideas such as singing hymns forever, reclining in paradisiacal gardens, eternal rest, feasting with the Patriarchs and Apostles—I ask them if that wouldn’t become tiresome after a while. Then they come back with statements like, “everything will be different there and we will be totally transformed into something different.” In other words the laws that govern ordinary human life wouldn’t apply there. With ideas like that, any reasonable picture of heaven is thrown away and anything goes—rational or irrational. A poet once said, “What if heaven were more like earth than on earth is known?” And what gives us the greatest joy here, will give us the greatest joy there.
Holidays are fun and relaxing, and they even serve an important use in our lives. Holidays serve a purpose by refreshing our spirits, literally recreating us—so holidays are also called recreation—and rejuvenating us. They make us ready and fit to return to our vocational callings. In Heaven and Hell, Swedenborg observes, “it may be known to all that without an active life there can be no happiness of life, and that rest from this activity is only for the sake of recreation, that one may return more eager to the activity of his life” (HH 403).
Another use of holidays is to lift our consciousness above all those cares of the world. Holidays are carefree. This, again, can point to a spiritual use of holidays. They lift us out of worldly considerations. That is if you can forget about hotel bills, the cost of eating out, and the price of souvenirs. I am happy to say I did forget about all that. I had so much money to spend and I spent it freely and had a ball.
When I came home, all those worldly affairs came crashing down on my head. But it occurred to me that I don’t need to fill my head with all that. I paid my bills and got back to work, a vocation that I love. I’m not saying, though, that I wouldn’t have enjoyed another week in Florida. But when we got back to Edmonton, I said to Carol, “Why don’t we pretend that we’re still on holiday?” Why can’t a person keep that carefree mindset of holiday time? Sure we all have worldly affairs to deal with, but once we attend to them, do we need to dwell on them? Do we need to fill our minds with what I have to do next, or tomorrow? Do I need to worry now and today about what I have to do tomorrow or in the future? Do we have to pollute our minds with “things I have to do?” Do we need to calculate how much money we have in our bank accounts? Do we need to worry about bills that are coming due in the future?
This is what Eckhart Tolle has in mind when he talks about living in the now. Forgetting about worldly concerns can be very hard. Some people find that they need formal meditation practice to keep their heads clear. It isn’t as easy as I may be making it sound to live on holidays all through life. Yet there is a spiritual dimension to this issue as well.
To the extent that we are obsessed with material concerns we block spiritual concerns. We are citizens of two worlds—the material world and the spiritual world. Jesus says this plainly—“Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and render unto God what is God’s.” On this plane of existence, we do have material needs to fulfill; we can’t totally ignore the material world. But at the same time, we can’t ignore the spiritual world. After we render to Caesar his requirements, we can free our minds for God’s Spirit.
Our life in the material world, and our material concerns actually dampen our sensitivity to heavenly joys. During special moments—perhaps watching a sunset, or looking up at the starry sky, or while on holiday—we may feel a peace and tranquility that is truly heavenly. But all to often, and I don’t think this has to be the case, all too often we are filling our minds with worries about worldly concerns. This doesn’t mean we are bad—it just means we are covering over the joys of the spirit. Swedenborg tells us,
A man who is in love to God and in love toward the neighbor, as long as he lives in the body does not feel manifest enjoyment from these loves and from the good affections which are from them, but only a blessedness that is hardly perceptible, because it is stored up in his interiors, and veiled by the cares of the world (HH 401).
“The world is too much with us,” says the poet Wordsworth, we are obsessed with “getting and spending.” The composer Beethoven commented on the spirituality of his music, and what was required of his listeners. He said,
well I know that God is nearer to me than to the others of my art; I associate with Him without fear, I have always recognized and understood Him, and I have no fear for my music;–it can meet no evil fate. Those who understand it must become free from all the miseries that the others drag with them.
I think that this is what Swedenborg may be speaking about. Beethoven’s lofty tones require that we forget those miseries that pull us down from heavenly blessedness. Beethoven saw his work as truly a spiritual ministry. On another occasion, he exclaimed, “There is no loftier mission than to approach the Divinity nearer than other men, and to disseminate the divine rays among mankind.” There are times when his music doesn’t make much of an impression on me, and I find that I am usually stressed and worrying about those miseries we can carry with us. Then, sometimes Beethoven’s music can lift me up out of my worldly cares and into the joy and spirituality he himself felt when he wrote.
So it may take a holiday, or a regime of meditation, or maybe just a moment to pause and take in God’s handiwork all around us in order to lift us up and out of the cares of the world. Then, we may be able to feel that almost imperceptible heavenly joy stored deep within our personalities. As soon as I made that remark to Carol, I, myself, started to fill my mind with tomorrow and bills and cares about the future. But I still think that it is possible to keep my mind as if I were on holiday every day.

Approaching God
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
January 18, 2009

Isaiah 40:1-11 Matthew 11:25-30

Most of us know the familiar passage from Isaiah we heard this morning. We hear it every Christmas season about Jesus’ advent. In fact that passage is quoted by John the Baptist in the Gospel of John. Yet this is a passage about the coming of Jehovah, or more properly pronounced, Yahweh. The reason why we don’t associate this passage with Jehovah is because of an ancient Jewish custom. God’s name, Yahweh, or Jehovah in the King James translation, was considered too holy to pronounce. So instead of saying Yahweh, the ancient Jews would say Adonai, which means “Lord.” So what the King James translators did, and most every English translation did after it, was to put LORD in all capitol letters to stand for Yahweh, or Jehovah. So at Christmas time we read about the coming of the LORD, which is easy to associate with Jesus, since we call Jesus Lord.
But how does that familiar Isaiah passage sound when we put in God’s name? How does it sound, when we realize that in Isaiah, the prophet is talking about the coming of Jehovah, or Yahweh? In Handel’s Messiah, we hear the words from this Isaiah passage, “And the glory of the LORD will be revealed” (Is. 40:5). But what we should be hearing is, “And the glory of Jehovah will be revealed.” How do we reconcile the coming of Jehovah with the coming of Jesus?
The answer to these questions is simple. But it is also radical. Swedenobrg says it in one sentence: “Jehovah God the Creator of the universe descended and assumed the Human that He might redeem and save men” (TCR 82). The birth of Jesus is the Old Testament God taking on a human form. Yahweh, or Jehovah, is Jesus’ soul and Jesus is Yahweh’s body. This idea runs throughout the Isaiah passage. We read, “A voice of one calling: In the desert prepare the way for Yahweh;” “make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God;” “You who bring good tidings to Zion . . . say to the towns of Judah, ‘Here is your God!’”; “See, the Sovereign Yahweh comes with power, . . . He tends his flock like a shepherd” (Is. 40: 3, 9, 10, 11). We naturally associate the shepherd tending his flock with Jesus, but here in Isaiah, it is clearly Yahweh who is tending the flock. The only way to reconcile the Isaiah passage is to acknowledge that the coming of Jesus is one and the same with the coming of Yahweh. Yahweh is the soul of Jesus. The birth of Jesus is Yahweh coming into the world in human form as baby Jesus.
And Isaiah 40 is not the only passage in the prophets where we have taken the coming of Yahweh with the coming of Jesus. The Revised Common Lectionary, used by the Anglican Church and many other Christian denominations, give the following Isaiah prophesies for the Advent season: Isaiah 2, 7, 9, 11, 35, 52, 62. You have probably heard most of these prophesies and I will spare you the tedium of quoting them now. All these Advent prophesies are about the coming of Yahweh, and Christians take them to be the coming of Jesus. We are left with the conclusion that the coming of Jesus is one and the same with the coming of Yahweh foretold by the prophets. It is a simple conclusion. And it is a radical conclusion.
There are multiple reasons why God incarnated in the form of Jesus Christ. Of course we all know He came to redeem and save the human race. But God also took on human form so that we can relate more fully to God. With God seen as the human Jesus, we can form a personal relationship with God. “. . . the one God who is invisible came into the world and assumed a Human, not only that He might redeem men, but also that He might become visible, and thus capable of conjunction” (TCR 786).
We cannot form a personal relationship with an invisible God. Our finite minds cannot grasp infinity. We can know it is there, but we can only form a finite idea about infinity. And God known only as infinity cannot enter our minds and become a part of our consciousness. But a Human God can enter our consciousness and can become a part of our personality. Seeing God as the risen and glorified Christ is what makes the New Church predicted by John different from all the churches that preceded it.
This New Church is the crown of all the churches that have hitherto existed on the earth, because it will worship one visible God in whom is the invisible, like the soul in the body. Thus and not otherwise can there be conjunction of God with man, because man is natural and hence thinks naturally, and the conjunction must be in his thought and thus in his love’s affection, which is the case when he thinks of God as a man. Conjunction with an invisible God is like that of the eye’s vision with the expanse of the universe, of which it sees no end; it is also like mid-ocean, which falls upon air and sea and is lost. But conjunction with a visible God, on the other hand, is like seeing a man in the air on the sea spreading forth his hands and inviting to his arms (TCR 787).
A human God can embrace His children and with His Divine hand wipe away every tear from every eye.
There are refinements and elaborations in Swedenborg concerning how to picture God. There are places where Swedenborg says that God is inside the brilliant sun of heaven which is His Divine power shining forth from His human. So when angels see God in human form it is an image, but not God Himself.
When, however, the Lord appears in heaven, which often occurs, He does not appear encompassed with a sun, but in the form of an angel, yet distinguished from angels by the Divine shining through from His face, since He is not there in person, for in person the Lord is constantly encompassed by the sun . . . (HH 121).
Then, apparently, sometimes God appears in a fiery form. “I have also seen the Lord . . . once in the midst of angels as a flame-like radiance” (HH 121). To some people, the image of a fiery radiance is a more comfortable image for God, since they think a Divine-Man is too limiting for God’s infinity. But how does this fit with Swedenborg’s claim that the New Church will see God as the Divine-Human embodying the invisible infinite God?
Yet seeing God as the risen Jesus Christ is not the whole story. What really matters are the qualities that Jesus embodies. When we enter into friendships, it is the personality traits that attract or repel us to others. So we pick friends who are compassionate, or smart, or caring, or funny. We pick friends according to their personality traits, not just their person. It is the same way with God. When we think of God, or when we pray to God, we pray to God’s essential attributes. “. . . Loving the Lord does not mean loving Him as to person, but loving good that is from Him; and loving good is willing and doing it from love (HH 15). Loving God is loving what is good and doing what is good. Loving God means every time we have the opportunity to do good we do it. So love for God is a very active process. It isn’t just imagining Jesus and projecting love onto that image. Since everything truly good is from God, every time we are involved in a good deed we are loving God.
. . . good proceeding from the Lord is a likeness of Him, since He is in it; and that they become likenesses of Him and are conjoined to Him who make good and truth to be of their life, by willing and doing them. To will is also to love to do (HH 16).
So we can say that our image of God is also seeing what is good and doing what is good. We approach God by being good. We see God when we see good and love.
For me, the only way I can conceive of God is as the loving Jesus I read about in the Gospels. Now risen, Christ is with me always—in my heart and beside me. So I approach God as both the human form of the risen Jesus Christ, and in the qualities of infinite love that shines forth from what Walt Whitman calls “the gentle God.” This is how I understand Christ’s words, “No one comes to the Father except through me” (John14:6). And that is how I take Swedenborg when he writes,
This New Church is the crown of all the churches that have hitherto existed on the earth, because it will worship one visible God in whom is the invisible, like the soul in the body. Thus and not otherwise can there be conjunction of God with man, because man is natural and hence thinks naturally, and the conjunction must be in his thought and thus in his love’s affection, which is the case when he thinks of God as a man (TCR 787).

The Music of the Ten-Stringed Lyre
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
January 11, 2009

Zechariah 8:3-23 Matthew 25:14-29

Last Sunday I talked about sin and got that out of the way. Today I have a beautiful topic to talk about. I want to talk about God’s special dwelling in the hearts of each one of us. Both the Old Testament reading and the New Testament reading point to this. In the passage from Zechariah, there is a prophesy about the remnant of dispersed Jews returning to Jerusalem. This prophesy was written after Assyria had wiped out and dispersed the entire Northern Kingdom. And then Babylon had conquered and deported the Southern Kingdom. The Jews were displaced from their homeland. The Zechariah prophesy talks about them returning home to a beautiful, prosperous, peaceful kingdom. Mount Zion will be called “The Holy Mountain.” Old and young will play in the streets of Jerusalem.
There are some important words from the Bible that we need to pay heed to. One is the word remnant. The remnant is those Jews who were dispersed throughout the near east who remained faithful to their God Yahweh. Then there is that beautiful line, “In those days ten men from all languages and nations will take firm hold of one Jew by the edge of his robe and say, ‘Let us go with you, because we have heard that God is with you’” (8:23). There is special significance in the number ten and it is no accident that the prophesy talks about ten men taking hold of the Jew’s robe. Likewise in our reading from Matthew, the servant who had ten talents was given the one talent from the servant with one. And right after the servant with ten talents is given the other one comes the phrase, “For everyone who has will be given more, and he will have an abundance” (25:29).
When Jesus says that those who have will be given more, he is not talking about monetary wealth. Remember the rich Jew who was told to sell all he had and give to the poor. That is how Jesus felt about monetary wealth. In this passage from Matthew, the servant who had ten talents has spiritual riches. The meaning is that those who have a good heart and who have a connection with God will increase in their spiritual gifts. Those who have spiritual life will be given more and more blessings. Those who have some love for God and their neighbor will be given deeper and more pure love as they develop spiritually.
In Swedenborg’s Bible interpretation, the number ten and the faithful remnant spoken of in the prophets signify a quality of our souls called “remains.” Remains are the basic truths about God we learn as children and the states of mind associated with them. Remains are feelings of love for parents, brothers and sisters, nurses and teachers that children feel. It is also the feelings of innocence that children have. All these childhood feelings of innocence and love stay with us. They are impressed upon our memory. The delightful innocence of babies fades as we grow up. But that innocence and the states of love we feel then remain in our memories. And being impressed on our memory, they influence our adult emotional and intellectual life.
Remains are . . . all the states of affection for good and truth with which a man is gifted by the Lord, from earliest infancy even to the end of life . . . The more therefore he has received of remains in the life of the body . . . the more delightful and beautiful do the rest of his states appear when they return. . . . all that is good flows in, as loving his parents, his nurses, his companions; and this from innocence. Such are the things that flow in from the Lord through the heaven of innocence and peace, which is the inmost heaven, and thus a man is imbued with them in his infancy. Afterwards, when he grows up, this good, innocent, and peaceful state of infancy recedes little by little; and so far as he is introduced into the world, he comes into its pleasures, and into desires, and thus into evils; and so far the celestial or good things of the age of infancy begin to be dispersed; but still they remain, and the states which the man afterward puts on or acquires, are tempered by them (AC 1906).
Let me tell you what I think of when I read about remains in Swedenborg. I think about church camp at Almont Michigan, which I went to all through my childhood up into my adult life. I can still picture myself as a very young child sitting on the altar in the chapel there with a group of other children. An elderly lady named Dora Pfister was our teacher then, and she loved children. Everyone called her Anti Dora. I can still see myself sitting there, with amber light filtering into the chapel from the tinted windows. One that day, Anti Dora told us that there are trees and leaves and flowers in heaven and that they are more real than the trees and leaves and flowers we see in the world. I remember asking her how they could be more real; it didn’t seem possible. I don’t remember her answer, and I didn’t understand it at the time, anyway. But the main point was that whole experience. Sitting on the chapel altar with the amber light filtering in talking about heaven with Auntie Dora. That is one of my remains. Each year I attended church camp it was like going up to heaven for a week. And I was always sad to come home because it felt like I was leaving the mountain top. Likewise I think about a teen retreat I participated in as the youth Chaplain. On the last night of the retreat I talked with a teen girl. She said she was sad. When I asked her why, she said, “Because I think I won’t feel as close to God when I go home.” That remark made me think about remains, too.
As we grow into adulthood, we become immersed in worldly interests. We have to. We need to find a job; we need to earn an income; perhaps we also need to make a name for ourself. As our ego develops—what Swedenborg calls the proprium—these remains are displaced from our consciousness and move into the inner depths of our personality—what Swedenborg calls “the inner man.” Perhaps this inner man is what modern psychology calls our unconscious.
But that it may be known what remains are—they are not only the goods and truths which a man has learned from the Word of the Lord from childhood up, and which are thus impressed on his memory, but they are also all the states springing therefrom; such as states of innocence from infancy; states of love toward parents, brothers, teachers, friends; states of charity toward the neighbor, and also of pity for the poor and needy; in a word, all the states of good and truth. These states, with the goods and truths impressed on the memory, are called remains; which are preserved in man by the Lord and are stored up, quite without his knowledge, in his internal man; and are separated entirely from the things which are of man’s proprium. . . . (AC 561).
These remains are God’s special dwelling place with us. The angels and God are connected with us through these states of love and innocence. While our childhood experiences of love and innocence are probably some of the deepest seated remains, Swedenborg tells us that we continue acquiring remains all our lives.
These states are given to man from infancy, but less by degrees as the man advances into adult age. But when a man is being reborn he then receives new remains also, besides the former, thus new life (AC 1738).
This is what Jesus means when he says, “To those who have, more shall be given.”
Swedenborg claims that everyone is gifted with remains. As we say in our faith every Sunday, God is “present to save all people, everywhere whose lives affirm the best they know.” It is easy to think our religion is the only one true faith. And we see this everywhere. We see it in this church and in other denominations. But God is so all-encompassing that He can find a way into everyone’s heart. He gifts everyone of all faiths with remains.
It is very common for those who have conceived an opinion respecting any truth of faith, to judge others that they cannot be saved, unless they believe as they do—a judgment which the Lord has forbidden (Matt. 7:1,2). On the other hand, I have learned from much experience that persons of every religion are saved, provided they have by a life of charity received remains of good and of apparent truth. . . . The life of charity is to think kindly of another, to wish well to him, and to feel in one’s self joy that others also are saved. But those have not the life of charity who wish that none should be saved but those who believe as they do (AC 2284).
I had an unforgettable experience when I was in my Ph.D. program in Virginia. I had been learning about the Hindu God Shiva. At a social function, I happened upon a group of East Indian students. I started talking about Shiva as an intellectual topic I was interested in. Then, as they started talking with me, emotions from my childhood Sunday school days started welling up in me. It dawned on me that these Hindus grew up as children learning stories about Shiva, and what struck me was that we shared similar feelings of holiness from our childhoods—even though we learned about different Gods. What began as intellectual curiosity in me became an experience of shared remains as I listened to these Hindus talk to me about their God. I stood on holy ground and treated our discussion with reverence and respect.
Let me be clear, though. I am Christian and the God I follow is Jesus Christ. All my childhood remains are associated with stories from the Bible. But in my adulthood, I believe new remains have been given me as I learn about other religions. My affection for learning and the emotions associated with the intellectual truths I acquired in grad school have opened my heart to beliefs and peoples of all faiths. I continue to discuss differences in belief with others just as much as I remain committed to my own Christian tradition. But I know in my heart that in peoples all over the world, God has a special place in the innocence and love of their childhood. And that God continues to multiply the blessings he gave in childhood all through a person’s life. “To him that has, more shall be given.” “In those days ten men from all languages and nations will take firm hold of one Jew by the edge of his robe and say, ‘Let us go with you, because we have heard that God is with you’”

One Up-manship
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
January 4, 2009

2 Samuel 15:1-12 Matthew 2:13-18

The New Year has arrived. For some of us, this means choosing resolutions for the next year. It is a time for examining ourselves and looking for areas we want to be better at. It’s a time for letting go of limiting behaviors. In this light, I’ve chosen a topic this morning in keeping with Swedenborg’s concept of repentance. That is, self-examination and choosing to let go of sins that may be blocking our reception of our love for God and for our neighbor. But don’t be alarmed—I don’t intend to spend the whole new year talking about sin. Love and joy are as much a part of the Christian experience as is sin. And, in fact, this very sermon will conclude with a discussion of mutual love, and heavenly joy and happiness. That is the nature of repentance—to the extent that we let go of spiritual baggage—sin—then we come into the love and joy of God.
Today I’ve picked a particularly nasty sin. Swedenborg claims that it runs deep within the hearts of the whole human race. He says further that it is the source of all other sins. So if we can get a handle on this sin, the rest will fall away like leaves from a fall tree. The sin I am referring to is self-love.
This is a tricky sin to talk about today. Most everyone today has been taught by the media and by psychology to love themselves. We are told that unless we love ourselves we cannot love others. I’m not exactly sure what this means. In order to distinguish between healthy self-love and destructive self-love, Swedenborg gives us some symptoms to look for. Destructive self-love shows itself by contempt for others compared with self. That phrase runs all though Swedenbrog’s theology. Along with contempt for others compared with self, is a dislike for people who don’t favor us.
They are in a love of self who despise others in comparison with themselves, and hate those who do not favor, serve, and pay a kind of worship to them; and who find a cruel enjoyment in revenge and in depriving others of honor, reputation, wealth and life (AC 2057).
There are many ways to look down on other people. We can think we are smarter than others. We can think we are richer than others. We can think we have a better job than others. We can think we are more sophisticated than others. We have a better education than others. We can think we have better taste than others. We work harder than others. We can think we have better clothes than others. Our children are better than other children—yes, your own children can be an extension of your self-image. You fill in the blanks. But the long and the short of it is that we think we are better than other people.
Along with this feeling of superiority over others comes a desire to top them. In the work place, it can show itself as a desire to advance in the office. We may want to become manager, or foreman, or supervisor. In the bad sense, we want only the title of manager and we don’t care about the work we would do as manager. In the worst case, we will tear down those who we perceive as above us, or better than us. We sabotage their position by any means. We smear their character. We look for dirt on them. We spread damaging rumors about them. We do everything we can to make them look bad and to make ourselves look good.
The most obvious example of this kind of behavior is in politics. There, we almost expect politicians to be power hungry. There is even a phrase that is used for the kind of destructive self-love I’ve been talking about. The press calls it “negative campaigning.” This is when one party finds all the dirt they can about another party and makes a public display of it. In negative campaigning the party doesn’t have a platform of its own—it doesn’t have policies or plans for bettering the state—it spends all its energy on knocking down the other party. And the sad fact is, polling shows that negative campaigning works.
So politics is a good and clear teacher of self-love in its destructive sense. But it isn’t only politicians who have this self-love. Swedenborg claims that it lies in the heart of each and every one of us.
. . . the whole of his life which he derives from his parents by inheritance, and everything which he himself superadds of his own, is of love for self and for the world—not of love to the neighbor, and still less of love to God. And inasmuch as the whole of man’s life from proprium is love for self and for the world, it is thus a life of contempt of others in comparison with himself, and of hatred and revenge against all who do not favor himself (AC 5993).
What Swedenborg is talking about here is ego. It is an exaggerated sense of our own importance compared with others. We need only ask ourselves how we feel when people don’t show us the respect we think we deserve. Or how we feel about people who we think have more than us, look better than us, drive better cars, or wear better clothes. I’ve had people resent me just because I have a Ph. D. Hatred and revenge are strong words, and I doubt if many of us would feel that extremely. But we may well bear a grudge against people who don’t show us the respect we think we deserve. We may wish to take them down a peg, which is a soft form of revenge.
It is up to each of us to ask him or herself how much we have contempt for others compared with ourselves. Is Swedenborg right when he says we have such an inclination from birth and our upbringing? If so, then we need religious practice to break up this destructive self-love. And as much as Swedenborg claims that we all suffer from destructive self-love, he also says that God works ceaselessly to break up our contempt for others. This takes the form of temptations. Temptations aren’t just competing desires like choosing between a Granola bar and a Reese’s peanut butter cup. Temptations are mortal struggles. They are disruptions in the order of our lives that break down our ego. Often they take the form of misfortune and sorrows and tragedies. As Eckhart Tolles writes,
It is precisely through the onset of old age, through loss or personal tragedy, that the spiritual dimension would traditionally come into people’s lives. This is to say, their inner purpose would emerge only as their outer purpose collapsed and the shell of ego would begin to crack open (A New World p. 285).
This is almost exactly what Swedenborg says about the breakup of our ego, or in his Latin, the proprium,
The second state is when a distinction is made between the things which are the Lord’s, and those that are man’s own. Those that are the Lord’s are called in the Word remains . . . These are stored up, and not manifested until he comes into this state; which is a state rarely attained at this day without temptation, misfortune, and sorrow, that cause the things of the body and the world, and thus of man’s proprium, to become quiescent, and as it were dead. The things of the external man are thus separated from those of the internal (AC 8).
So we are not left with our ego. We are not left with destructive self-love. I can hardly think of anyone I know who has lived a little, that hasn’t been through some of these hard knocks. And that beautiful confidence we witness in adolescents soon can become a destructive pride in young adults. So we say that youth is wasted on the young. And often we see in those of more mature years an acceptance and toleration with life and with others. As my grandmother put it, “Well, you grow up and you see that you can’t have things your way.”
This talk wouldn’t be complete without discussing the flip-side of destructive self-love. When our ego is broken up by hard knocks, we begin to learn love for our neighbor. We learn love for our neighbor when we get out of the way. Love for the neighbor is shown by a love for giving to others. It is a heartfelt desire to share our joys with others and to receive the joys others wish to share with us. Imagine a place where everyone wants to give and receive joy. Imagine a place where happiness flows from one to another in an unbroken synergy. That place is heaven. Swedenborg devotes a long passage to this dynamic in the Arcana Coelestia. He wants us all to know the nature of neighborly love just as much as he warns us against destructive self love. So while he cautions us against evil, he also gives us a vision of heavenly good.
Mutual love with those in heaven consists in loving the neighbor more than themselves. Hence the whole heaven represents one person; for all are consociated by mutual love from the Lord, and thus the blessings of all are communicated to each one, and those of each one to all. Consequently the heavenly form is such that every one is as it were a certain center, thus a center of communications, and accordingly of blessings from all; and this in accordance with all the differences of mutual love, which are innumerable. And because those who are in that love perceive the highest happiness in being able to communicate with others that which flows into them, and this from the heart, hence the communication becomes perpetual and eternal; and on this account, as the Lord’s kingdom increases, so the happiness of each one increases (AC 2057).
What I like about this passage is how each person is the center of all the blessings of heaven. All the blessings of everyone in heaven flow into you as if you were the center of it all. And like a hologram, each person is the center of it all. All the blessings of heaven flow into you and you pass it on to everyone else. We experience something like this on earth. I think of Christmas dinners, when everyone is full of the holiday spirit. At table good cheer is in everyone and everyone is talking with each other and the spirit of the room builds and builds all together. Everyone is happy and everyone wants to spread good cheer. That is what humans are capable of when we get out of the way. That is the heavenly image we all are born for. That is the place God is leading us all toward. It may be a road of misfortune and sorrow at times. But we can trust in God’s providence that wherever we are led, by whatever means, it is toward that mutual love and happiness that makes up heaven—either in this world or the next.

The Christmas Story
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
Christmas Eve, 2008

The Christmas story is about one of the most basic experiences known to man. It is a story about a mother and her baby. It is about the birth of new life into this world. And as all parents can testify to, there is always something miraculous about the birth of a baby. When a baby is born, its parents have participated with the creative energy of the universe. It is cooperation with the same creative power that made the moon and stars; that made the galaxies and planets, and that makes new life come into this world.
The Christmas story is about a helpless, innocent baby, as all babies are helpless and innocent. This innocent baby suckled at his mother’s bosom. This baby needed his mother’s care. And this baby needed his mother’s love.
The history of Christianity has been dominated by men. Church priests and magistrates in its hierarchy have traditionally been men. And even in much of Jesus’ life story, men dominate. The twelve Apostles were men, and Jesus himself was a man.
But in the Christmas story, it is all about Mary and Jesus. The Christmas story is a story about a woman and her baby. It is about the miracle that only women know—the miracle of giving birth. The Catholic Church has made Mary a saint. And while Protestants have done away with the notion of saints, there is much to be said for the privileging of Mary as a feminine, mother figure in Christianity. In a tradition dominated by men, it makes sense to me to hold up this unique birthing power that only women have. And the bond between mother and child is perhaps one of the most powerful and fundamental bonds humans know.
Joseph is, of course, part of this story. But Joseph is really only a minor character. And in all the great works of art that celebrate the Christmas story, you see Mary and Jesus in the foreground, in the center, and Joseph is standing back, looking at the Madonna and child. After Jesus’ infancy, Joseph disappears from the Gospel stories, although Mary comes back in several places—notably during the crucifixion.
Yes, the Christmas story is about a mother and her baby. But it is about something much more profound than even the miracle of birth. It is about the miracle of God’s love. It is a mystery, it is a challenge to our rationality, and it is a stumbling block to many. The Christmas story is about God coming to humanity. It is about a God whose love for us was so great that He came to us in a form we could understand. It is about God’s incarnation, and the Latin root for “incarnation” means, “in flesh”. It is about God coming in the flesh.
Although I have just spoken about the basic human experience of mother and child, there is something exceptional about this mother and child. This child was not born of a mortal father. The Gospel account tells us that the Holy One of Israel and the Power of the Most High impregnated Mary, by her consent. And in those Gospel accounts that treat of Mary, Jesus never refers to Mary by the word “mother.” He always calls her, “woman.” Although born of Mary, and although like all babies Jesus needed his mother’s care, as His life progressed Jesus grew ever more fully into the Divine Man of his origin.
Jesus was born as a helpless baby in need of his mother’s care and love. And this tells us much about God’s love. God laid down his infinite power and took on a frail human form to come to us. Because God doesn’t demand love from us, he asks it of us. And in coming to us, God did not come as an all-powerful emperor such as Caesar. God did not come in a form that would demand fear and awe. God came to us as one of us. In his human form, God came to us to invite our love. He made Himself subject to the complete human condition. And even as God incarnate, we know from the Easter story, that Jesus would be subject to the ultimate human condition of death.
So as you go home this evening and meet with your families and friends, leave with the Christmas story in mind. Keep mindful of that miraculous birth 2000 years ago. And how God’s love was so powerful that He came to us, as one of us, to bring heaven to earth in His own person. Be mindful that God is still inviting us to come to Him. Know that love can never force itself upon those it loves. And that is why God, when He came to bring His love to us, took on the vulnerable form of a helpless baby. A baby nurtured by a loving mother. That is the essence of the Christmas story: a mother’s love for her baby, and God’s love for humanity. I’ll close with a poem sent to all the Council of Ministers by Chris Laitner, President in the Swedenborgian Church of the United States and Canada. It was written by Christina Rosetti and the poem has been set to music:

Love came down at Christmas;
Love all lovely, Love divine.
Love was born at Christmas.
Stars and angels gave the sign.

Jesus’ Credibility
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
December 21, 2008

John 6:61-7:1-52

Thank you for bearing with me through that lengthy Bible reading. It all formed one story unit, so I felt I needed to go through the whole story unit. I selected this reading because of the powerful impression it made on me when I read through it. It is a passage you almost never hear. What struck me most about it is how human it makes Jesus. It shows Jesus in dialogue with his brothers. It shows him making decisions about his public appearance. It shows him trying to establish his credibility. And it shows how hard it was for people in his own age to decide on who he really was. It shows the people of his time trying to make his powerful presence fit with the prophecies they had grown up reading and believing.
When we think of the beginnings of Jesus ministry, we think of the vision given us in the synoptic Gospels—that is, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. The Mark story begins with Jesus baptism, His temptation, and then with his instant emergence in Israel as a wonder worker. The same is true of Luke’s account. Right after Jesus’ baptism, he returns to Galilee and Luke tells us that, “news about him spread through the whole countryside,” and that “everyone praised him” (4:14). Likewise in Matthew, after Jesus’ baptism and the calling of the 12 Apostles, Jesus springs into his ministry in full glory. Matthew tells us that, “Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people. News about him spread all over Syria . . . Large crowds from Galilee, the Decapolis (10 major cities in Asia Minor), Jerusalem, Judea, and the region across the Jordan followed him (4:23, 24, 25). But the story we find in John gives us a much different view of Jesus.
What was particularly striking to me in this passage from John is that Jesus had to establish his credibility. In the John account, this was a challenge. Jesus had to decide the best time for him to make a public appearance. And John’s account shows how difficult it was for the public to figure out just who this powerful man from Galilee was. It shows the crowd vacillating—some falling away some accepting Jesus—but everyone trying to figure out who He was. The public acceptance of Jesus was a much more complex process in John than we find in the Synoptics.
Jesus didn’t come with any of the right credentials. He wasn’t educated as a Pharisee or a scribe, he was a carpenter’s son. He wasn’t from Judea, which is where the Messiah was supposed to come from, so the Pharisees didn’t believe him to be either The Prophet predicted in Deuteronomy 18:18 or the Messiah. All Jesus had to establish his credibility was the power of his words. And for many, this was sufficient.
John speaks about the power of Jesus’ words and at the same time shows how his words alone were the credibility a carpenter’s son didn’t have. John writes, “The Jews were amazed and asked, ‘How did this man get such learning without having studied?” (7:13). On this all the Gospels agree. They all testify to the power of Jesus’ teachings, how profoundly His words affected the people who heard him. So Matthew writes, “the crowds were amazed at his teachings, because he taught as one who had authority, and not as the teachers of the law” (7:28-29). This statement is echoed in Mark 1:22, and Luke 4:32. In John, Jesus tells his disciples that his words are spirit and life, and it was to that spirit and life that the people responded.
Those who did believe were largely the uneducated mob, whose minds weren’t filled with teachings from Jewish scriptures—teachings that had become codified and corrupted by men’s interpretations over the centuries. John tells us that it was the crowd, not the spiritual leaders who were most taken by Jesus’ teachings, “many in the crowd put their faith in him. They said, “When the Christ comes, will he do more miraculous signs than this man?” (7:31). The educated religious leaders, that it, the Pharisees, smugly looked down on the uneducated mob who were so taken by Jesus’ words, “‘Has any of the rulers or of the Pharisees believed in him? No! But this mob that knows nothing of the law—there is a curse on them” (7:48).
Jesus didn’t have the credentials that the religious leaders themselves had, nor did this amazing man have the proper credentials that the Messiah was supposed to have. So in the eyes of the religious leaders, Jesus had no authority. Some of the people can’t figure out just who this Jesus is, and they admit that they don’t have the education to figure it out. So some rely on the conclusions of the religious leaders. The people ask, “Have the authorities really concluded he is the Christ?” (7:26) But this contradicts the way the prophesies had been interpreted, “But we know where this man is from; when the Christ comes, no one will know where he is from” (7:27). Then there was the issue of Jesus birth. The Messiah was supposed to come from David’s line, which would mean he would be from Judea. So the people again were trying to make sense out of this remarkable man, who didn’t fit their understanding of scripture. “Still others asked, ‘How can the Christ come from Galilee? Does not the Scripture say that the Christ will come from David’s family and from Bethlehem, the town where David lived?’ Thus the people were divided because of Jesus” (7:41-43). Matthew and Luke make a point of having Jesus’ family go down to Bethlehem for Jesus’ birth and then returning to Nazareth where he grew up. Also Matthew and Luke trace Jesus’ genealogy and make a point of drawing his lineage through David. But this isn’t in John, and the people knew only that Jesus came from Galilee, not Judea. The temple guards refuse to arrest Jesus because of the power of his words, even though the Pharisees ordered them to. This causes the Pharisees to chide the temple guards for being taken in by Jesus. They quote scripture to show how Jesus couldn’t be the prophet predicted in Deuteronomy. “Are you from Galilee, too? Look into it, and you will find that the Prophet does not come out of Galilee” (7:52).
Jesus’ words may have been powerful. They may have been spirit and life. But they were also controversial. And even the crowds did not know how to take him. When Jesus tells the disciples that he came down from heaven, it was too much for some to take. So John tells us that, “From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him” (6:66). In remarkable question, Jesus even shows very human doubt in his 12 apostles. He asks, “You do not want to leave too, do you?” (6:67). So John sums up how dramatically divided the crowds were about Jesus, “Thus the people were divided because of Jesus. Some wanted to seize him, but no one laid a hand on him” (7:43-44).
Then there is that fascinating discussion between Jesus and his brothers. To my knowledge, this is the only time Jesus’ brothers enter the Gospel narrative in any of the 4 Gospels. Out of this dialogue we find that Jesus carefully considered when and how to make himself known to the people. We first find out that Jesus purposely stayed away from Judea because he knew they were trying to kill him there. So often we hear that the mob didn’t seize Jesus because His time had not yet come. Here, however, we see that His time had not come because He purposely stayed away from those who wanted to kill Him. So in this case it wasn’t miraculous divine intervention that prevented Jesus from being taken, but his own prudent calculation. But as the time for the Feast of Tabernacles comes around, Jesus’ brothers appear to be baiting him. They question Jesus about his public relations policies. They tell him to go to Jerusalem for the Feast of Tabernacles. “No one who wants to become a public figure acts in secret” (7:4). What follows is a discussion between Jesus and his brothers about how best to become known to the public. John tells us that Jesus’ own brothers didn’t believe in him. So Jesus tells his brothers to go to the feast and that he would stay home. After his brothers leave, Jesus sneaks into Jerusalem alone, as John tells us, “not publicly, but in secret” (7:10). He waited until half way into the Feast and then made his first public appearance. On the last and greatest day of the feast, Jesus shouts out in a loud voice that those who come to him will have streams of living water within them. It would appear that Jesus gauged the tone of his teachings to follow the momentum of the feast. This was Jesus big entrance into Jerusalem, and also this account isn’t in the other three Gospels.
I find this chapter fascinating because it shows deliberate planning on Jesus’ part about how he would make his grand public appearance in Jerusalem, the spiritual center of the Jews. It also shows that some people fell away from Jesus on account of his teachings, yet Jesus stood true to the Gospel message He knew from on high. On this subject we have that so human question that Jesus asks his 12, “You do not want to leave me too, do you?” This chapter is also fascinating because in it we see that the Jews of Jesus’ time were trying to make sense out of Jesus. They felt the power and authority of his teachings, but Jesus the man didn’t fit their understanding of scripture. The prophesies of the Messiah didn’t fit Jesus’ credentials. We see that those most educated in Jewish religion rejected Jesus on the basis of their knowledge of scripture. And we see that Jesus was largely accepted only by the uneducated crowds, who judged Jesus by his words, not by what they had been taught by rabbis, and scribes and other religious teachers. In this John account, we find a startling testimony to just how hard it was for Jesus in the beginning to bring his New Testament to the Jews of the first century AD.

Times and Seasons
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
December 14, 2008

Amos 5:18-26 Matthew 6:22-23

The Bible is filled with nature imagery. From the very beginning of Genesis where all the world is created and named, through the Levitical sacrifices, through the imagery in the Psalms and prophets, and in many of the stories of Jesus, the Bible draws heavily on nature imagery. This is because nature is created by God and bears the mark of its creator in it. Since nature is God’s creation, we can learn all about God by looking at His creation in nature. Eckhart Tolle comments on this in his book, A New Earth, “Like the Taoist sages of ancient China, Jesus likes to draw our attention to nature because he sees a power at work in it that humans have lost touch with. It is the creative power of the universe” (268). Swedenborg echoes this concept,
In a word, all things that exist in nature, from the least to the greatest, are correspondences. That they are correspondences is because the natural with all things in it, exists and subsists from the spiritual world, and both worlds from the Divine (HH 106).
When a person understands that nature imagery is a reflection of spirituality, the Bible’s nature imagery takes on a profound level of depth. Trees are not just trees anymore. The sun and its rising in the east now have a spiritual significance. The times and seasons of the year also resonate with spiritual significance. And in Christmas season, the wintry night in which Jesus was born also has a spiritual meaning.
Our Bible readings both spoke about darkness. In Amos, the day of the Lord is compared to darkness. He writes, “That day will be darkness, not light. . . . Will not the day of the Lord be darkness, not light—pitch dark, without a ray of brightness?” I think we all recognize the day of the Lord as the day when Christ was born in Bethlehem. And we can all sense, I would imagine, that by darkness Amos is not just talking about the night time when Jesus was born. I think we can all sense that Amos is talking about spiritual darkness. Thanks to the movie Star Wars western society is now used to thinking about forces of light and forces of darkness. And we feel that Amos is talking about forces of darkness in his prophesy. It probably suggests the beginning of the Gospel of John, where we read that “The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not comprehended it.”
The short passage we heard from Matthew is like Amos. But it is a little more confusing. Jesus talks about the body’s eyes, but says that if a person’s eyes are good that his whole body will be full of light. Well we know that the lungs and stomach and liver are not full of light. So Jesus must be talking about something more than seeing. Jesus says further, that “If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!” Now we see that the light is within us. And if our interior light has become darkness, that it is great darkness. Clearly Jesus is not just talking about the eyes and seeing. He has now shifted into a discussion of the symbolism of dark and light. And if our inner light has become darkness, we are in peril. The inner light Jesus is referring to is truth. When we see the truth, our soul is full of light. However, when we deny truth—such as God’s existence—and when we love falsity, our soul is then filled with the great darkness Jesus refers to.
This symbolism is working in the time of Jesus’ birth. There is a reason why Jesus was born in the winter, and why He was born at night. And this reason relates to the meaning of light and darkness in the Bible. At the beginning of this talk, I mentioned that the Bible draws heavily on nature symbolism. I said further that nature derives from God and that studying nature can teach us about its Creator. We can do this in relation to winter. We are now in winter—as if anyone today would have missed the minus 20-some degree weather There is something in us humans that responds to the sun and its warmth. We open up emotionally, we relax and we are happy in the summer. And we dread the weather man’s reports of upcoming icy weather like we are experiencing today. In the winter it isn’t only cold. But the days grow shorter and shorter. In other words, winter isn’t just cold, it is dark. And it was into the cold, dark time of a winter’s night that Jesus was born.
Darkness and cold both have similar meanings from a spiritual perspective. Winter’s darkness and cold is due to the way the earth turns in relation to the sun. So in winter, we get less and less of the sun’s warmth and light. What is happening is that the earth is turning away from the sun. Now the spiritual resonances may be starting to shine through the imagery. If there is any nature image that stands for God, it is the sun. In ancient Egypt, the Pharaoh was considered a child of the sun, which rose over all Egypt, and the Pharaoh himself was considered a god. The warmth and light from the sun represent God’s love and wisdom. And turning away from the sun symbolizes turning away from God. When we turn from God, we enter the cold dark world of hell. Hell is nothing other than turning from love and wisdom. So night and winter symbolize a spiritual condition in which there is no love and wisdom.
When Christ came into the world, the world was in such a state. The Jewish religion then had forgotten about compassion and love, which can be found in the oldest parts of the Bible. Instead, they were concerned with sacrificial rituals and ritualistic codes of behavior. The heart of God’s Word was covered up under rites and rituals and rules of sacrifice. The Gentiles were in an equally dark condition. The Roman Empire was a testament to humanity’s cruelty and savagery. The world was spiritually in a dark, cold, place. In fact, it was in the darkest, coldest condition it had ever been in. It was in desperate need for God to come to the world, bringing His Divinity to a world estranged from it, and teaching humanity the ways of love.
So this is why Jesus came to us in the winter, at night. The spiritual destitution of the world in the First Century BC is symbolized by winter and night.
The states of the church are like . . . the times and states of the year; of which the first is spring, the second summer, the third autumn, and the fourth winter; and this last is the end of the year. . . . The good and truth with those who are of the church is thus wont to decrease; and when there is no longer any good and truth; or, as is said, when there is no longer any faith, that is, no charity, then the church has come to its old age, or its winter, or its night (AC 2905).
So Swedenborg asserts that in the time of Christ, there was no more good and truth left in the church. It had all been lost. Nothing but God’s own intervention could have set things right. The forces of darkness were choking off the influence of angels from the spiritual world. A veil between heaven and the world had been formed.
So God came into the world and brought love and wisdom to us through His own body and divine soul. God brought Godliness to the human race. Through His human form, God carved a passageway through the darkness surrounding the world and brought light to the thick darkness of the day of the Lord.
Our sensitivity to nature has been dulled by our urban lifestyle. We live amid concrete and brick buildings instead of trees, gardens, and livestock. We have overcome nature by our intelligence, which is a blessing to us here who live through Edmonton winters. We even built a beach inside a shopping mall complete with waves. But the result is that we have distanced ourselves from nature. For this reason, some of the Bible’s nature imagery may sound foreign to us. We may not feel the spiritual connection behind the nature we read about in the Bible. Meadows, lambs, sheep, harvest seasons—all these natural images represent the Source of all life, represent its Creator, God. But in Swedenborg’s theology, this lost language of nature is explained. What we lack firsthand knowledge of, we have through the medium of theology. And in his explanations of nature and its spiritual significance, Swedenborg opens up depths in the Bible that we may feel only vaguely, if at all. But today, this morning, I think we all can feel keenly what winter and night symbolize. The cold darkness into which Christ was born is not lost on us. “Will not the day of the Lord be darkness, not light—pitch dark, without a ray of brightness?” Amos states. And we remember with joy, that into that pitch dark winter, the Light has dawned.