Church of the Holy City

Feed My Sheep

Feed My Sheep
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
April 18, 2010

Revelation 5:11-14 John 21:1-19 Psalm 30

Our two Bible readings this morning represent the two great commandments of Jesus: love to the Lord and love to the neighbor. In our reading from Revelation, we have a picture of all the angels and of every creature on earth and under the earth all worshipping the Lamb. This signifies love to the Lord. In our reading from John, Jesus tells Peter to feed his sheep. This refers to our relationships with other people. In its most specific meaning, this passage refers to the Apostles who went out and taught the world the Good News about Jesus. In its widest sense, it refers to every good that each of us do to others.
All good and evil have relation to these two great commands. And both of these commands are about relationships. Love to the Lord is about our connection with God. It is about the way we let God into our lives. It is about God’s Spirit finding a home in our heart, and even in our behavior. It is about doing good to the church, to society, and to every single person in our lives. Evil is defined as anything that blocks God’s influx into our lives. The second command is love for the neighbor. Love for the neighbor is about our relationships with other people. It is about how we treat others. It is about doing good to others and wishing well to others. Evil is defined as anything that blocks a loving relationship with other people.
Both of these commands are summed up in Jesus’ words to Peter, “Feed my sheep.” We can only give to others what we have in ourselves. We can’t give what we don’t have. We feed others, or do good to them, when we have a good relationship with God. When God’s Spirit is in us, we are able to let it shine in our relations with other people.
Having God’s Spirit in us, and letting it shine in our relationships with others are the fruits of regeneration. It is spiritual rebirth that gives us these Godly gifts. It is through the process of regeneration that we are able to live in God and for God to live in us. And when God is in us, we are able to love our neighbor from a heavenly disposition.
So how does regeneration happen? In a very real sense, regeneration happens to us. It happens to us slowly over a whole lifetime, “a person can only be regenerated gradually” (TCR 586). Swedenborg compares our spiritual rebirth, or regeneration, to the same process by which we are born biologically.
In a person there is a perpetual correspondence between those things that take place naturally and those which take place spiritually, or between what takes place in the body and what takes place in the spirit. This is because a person is born spiritual as to his soul, and is clothed with what is natural, which forms his material body. When this body, therefore, is laid aside, his soul comes clothed with a spiritual body into a world where all things are spiritual, and is there associated with his like. Now since the spiritual body must be formed in the material, and is formed by means of truths and goods which flow in from the Lord through the spiritual world and which are received by a person inwardly in such things in him as are from the natural world which are called civil and moral, the character of the formation which takes place is manifest. And since, as before said, there is in a person a perpetual correspondence between what takes place naturally and what takes place spiritually, it follows that this formation is like the conception, gestation, birth, and education (TCR 583).
This means that our regeneration is a long, gradual process. Another correspondence Swedenborg uses to describe regeneration is the growth of a tree. Beginning in the soil of our self-interest and desire for ego gratification, our soul progresses into an expansive openness to everyone in the world and worship of God. It is a radical transformation. It is a huge upheaval in our priorities, and in the things we value. And like the growth of a seed into a tree, our regeneration begins with a fragment of truth that suddenly has meaning for us, or a vague intuition, or a piece of conversation we pick up in our social lives. It begins with small changes in our direction in life, and as our direction shifts slightly, we find ourselves years later in a very different place than where we begun, we may find ourselves a very different person than we were in our early years. The passions that drive us in our early life must be “subdued, subjugated, and inverted” (TCR 574). Our priorities are in a very real sense turned upside down, as we grow out of self-interest into other-interest.
And our regeneration can be said to happen to us. In some ways it is an unconscious process. We don’t feel it as it is going on. “It is a law of divine providence that a person shall not perceive or feel any of the activity of divine providence, and yet he should acknowledge providence” (TCR 175). We may see our spiritual growth only when we reflect back on our lives and compare where we are now with where we were years ago. Swedenborg writes, “He who is regenerated, . . . if he reflects upon his past life, will then find that he was led by many things of his thought and by many of his affections” (AC 5364).
But there is an active aspect to regeneration also. There is that part of our spiritual growth where we choose good and flee from evil. At times this may be a struggle. As I said above, regeneration is a radical reversal of our priorities. Denying a negative aspect of our character and changing it into a positive one can be a conscious work. It can mean struggle. And it can mean, at times, despair.
In order to consciously work on ourselves, we need to know ourselves. We need to be aware of our dark side, which Carl Jung calls “the shadow.” Indeed, we need to befriend the shadow. Unless we walk aware of our shadow, and see it in clear light, it will manifest in unconscious ways. We will suddenly lash out at someone out of nowhere. Or we will follow our unhealthy enjoyments blindly. Swedenborg tells us that there is actually a use for the evil we feel. He is emphatic about freedom. And to be regenerated we must freely choose what is good. Evil feelings provide contrast with good feelings. When we know our shadow, and when we are conscious of its harmful nature, we can see, feel, and choose what is good. By means of the contrast between evil and good, we know what we want, and we freely choose what is good. In a remarkable passage about this, Swedenborg writes,
There is cognition of the quality of good only by relation to what is less good, and by its contrariety to evil. Hence comes all that gives perception and sensation, because from this is their quality; for thus every thing pleasing is perceived and felt from the less pleasing and by means of the unpleasant; every thing beautiful, from the less beautiful and by means of the unbeautiful; and likewise every good which is of love, from the less good and by means of evil (DP 24).
This is why we need to befriend our shadow. It is a good teacher.
Sometimes it can be scary to look at our shadow. Sometimes the task of looking at our dark side can be overwhelming. We need to approach our self-examination sensibly. We all have a core of holiness that remains from our early childhood. In our early infancy God and the angels were close to us. These feelings of innocence and love for our parents and teachers remain with us. So Swedenborg calls them remains. These states of mind are continually being added upon as we go through life. We can manifest these states by prayerful living. They can be clouded by our negative tendencies and behaviors, but they are still there in us. When we look at the negative aspects of our character, we need to be reasonable. We need only focus on one or two aspects of our shadow that we want to purge, or re-channel. We can’t take on everything all at once. To try to do so, would crush our spirits and we would want to give up altogether. We have our whole lives to grow toward God, and we have the whole of eternity to continue to bring God into our hearts.
One particular aspect of our shadow that is getting in the way of our relations with God and our fellows is enough. We can compare and contrast what life is like with that defect and without it. We will come to prefer life without it. We will come more and more to live without it. And we will soon find that God has lifted us up and out of this limiting feeling or behavior. Step by step, one by one. As the blocks are eliminated, God flows into our soul ever more deeply. And as God fills us with His Holy Spirit, we will turn to our neighbor and let God’s love flow into all our interpersonal relations. As we grow in our relationship with God, we will manifest God in our relations. We will feed His sheep.