Church of the Holy City

He Shall Lead His Flock

He Shall Lead His Flock
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
May 22, 2011

Isaiah 40:1-11 John 10:1-10 Psalm 23

What I take from these Bible readings is an emphasis on the Divine Humanity of God, whom we know in the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus says that He is the gate through which we need to enter in order to be saved. He says,
The man who enters through the gate is the shepherd of his sheep. The watchman opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out . . . and his sheep follow him because they know his voice. I tell you the truth, I am the gate for the sheep. . . . I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. . . . I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full (John 10:2,4, 7, 9, 10).
Jesus is telling us that He is the one from whom we have eternal life. “I am the resurrection and the life,” Jesus says in John 11:25. Jesus Christ, as the Divine Human is a Being that we can understand and form a relationship with. It is to Jesus Christ that we pray. It is to Jesus Christ that we appeal in times of trouble. It is Jesus Christ in whom we rejoice when we feel close to God.
Jesus tells us to come to Him, not to the Father. He says, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” John 14:6. God in His infinity is beyond our comprehension. The power of the New Church is that it has the Divine Human to whom it can relate. Jesus explains His relationship to the Father. The Father is in Him as soul in body.
Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. . . . Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in me? . . . it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me (John 14:9, 10, 11).
This passage from John expresses the Swedenborgian idea of God perfectly. Jesus says that it is the Father, living in Him, who does the work. We understand God the Father to be Jesus’ soul, and Jesus Christ to be God incarnate, which means God in a body. God and human are completely merged in Jesus Christ. Jesus’ soul is the infinite Creator God and the infinite Creator God has a human form in Jesus Christ.
In Genesis, we are told that we are created in the image and likeness of God–as humans. And when God appeared to the prophets and Patriarchs of the Old Testament, He often appeared as a human. God was so human that Jacob could wrestle with Him (Genesis 32:22-30). The Elders of Israel ate a sacred feast on Mount Sinai when Moses brings them the law, and they see God. We read,
Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy elders of Israel went up and saw the God of Israel. Under His feet was something like a pavement made of sapphire, clear as the sky itself. But God did not raise his hand against these leaders of the Israelites; they saw God, and they ate and drank (Exodus 24:9-11).
Notice in this passage that God has feet.

What I think is most important in this is the idea of a Human God. For us, God’s Divine Humanity is none other than Jesus Christ. But to me, the human gods of other world religions are in keeping with our own teachings. Buddhists revere the Buddha, and other divine bodhisattvas. Bodhisattvas are Buddhas who postpone their own entrance into Nirvana in order to bring all beings to enlightenment. They have a heaven that emanates from them into which a person can be born who calls upon their name. I know of a Buddhist guru who thinks of Jesus as one such Bodhisattva. Although strictly speaking these are not gods, nevertheless they function as gods and are called upon to save their followers. In Hinduism, there are Shiva and Shakti, Vishnu, Brahma, and other deities. I suppose that a criticism could be levelled that Hinduism can degenerate into idolatry when practiced unthinkingly. But to those who penetrate to the depths of Hinduism, the human forms of God are incarnations–called Avatars–of the one great power Brahman. I affirm these images of Divine Humanity in other religions as akin to our own devotion to Jesus Christ. But to me, these gods do not form a real part in my belief system. They are not from my own culture, and I would not fully appreciate their power if I tried to adopt them for my own. No, I am a Christian, and for me, Christ is the gate keeper. For me, Christ is the way, the truth, and the life. I mention these other deities as instances of God’s Divine Human Form.
There are two ways Swedenborg comments on the Divine Humanity of God. One way is to talk about God as a person. So Swedenborg says,
God is the essential person. Throughout all the heavens, the only concept of God is a concept of a person. The reason is that heaven, overall and regionally, is in a kind of human form, and Divinity among the angels is what makes heaven. . . . It is because God is a person that all angels and spirits are perfectly formed people. . . It is common knowledge that we were created in the image and likeness of God because of Genesis 1:26, 27 and from the fact that Abraham and others saw God as a person (DLW 11).
In this understanding of God, we can picture the risen and glorified Jesus Christ as the ultimate and first person. We all have our humanity and personhood from God the First Person.
The other way Swedenborg talks about God’s Humanity is by describing God’s infinite love and wisdom. Love is God’s Being and Wisdom is the way God comes to us. So Swedenborg calls love reality and wisdom manifestation. Wisdom is the way love manifests.
In the Divine Human, reality and manifestation are both distinguishably united. . . . They are distinguishably one like love and wisdom. Love occurs only in wisdom, and wisdom only from love. So love becomes manifest when it is in wisdom (DLW 14).
In this understanding of personhood, love and wisdom are what constitute our humanity, too.
The human form is nothing else than the form of all the affections of love; beauty is its intelligence, which it procures for itself through truths received either by sight or by hearing, external or internal. These are what love disposes into the form of its affections; and these forms exist in great variety; but they all derive a likeness from their general form, which is the human form (DLW 411).
And our humanity, understood as love and wisdom, comes from God’s love and wisdom. This is because God is the First and Creative Person in whose form we are all created.
Love or the will strives unceasingly towards the human form and all things of that form. . . . From this it is clearly evident that life (which is love and the will therefrom), strives unceasingly towards the human form. And as the human form is made up of all the things there are in a person, it follows that love or the will is in a continual endeavor and effort towards the human form, because God is a Person, and Divine Love and Divine Wisdom is His life, and from His life is everything of life (DLW 400).
This discussion of personhood may be a little abstract. But when we think about it, we find that all we are as people are what we love and the intelligence to bring that love into being. Love and wisdom are not just abstract ideas. Love has a reality and wisdom also has a reality. And lest we get too abstract, Swedenborg brings these ideas into actual bodily form. Our love and wisdom first begin to activate the two hemispheres of our brain. Then the brain acts into the lower reaches of our body through nerves that spread all through our bodies. So our whole body responds to what we love and our understanding of how to bring that love into action. So even in his somewhat abstract discussion of love and wisdom, Swedenborg anchors his discussion to the body.
Reality and its manifestation are distinguishably one in the Divine Human the way soul and body are. A soul does not occur without its body, nor a body without its soul. The divine soul of the Divine Human is what we mean by reality, and the divine body of the Divine Human is what we mean by the divine manifestation (DLW 14).
This is how Swedenborg considers the Divine Humanity of the risen and glorified Jesus Christ. And God is in Jesus Christ as a soul is in the body. “It therefore stands to reason that God is a person and in this way is God manifest” (DLW 16).
We can speculate about other forms of God. Some like to think of God as pure energy. Others see God as Nature. But I think that Biblically, and in Swedenborg’s theology, we are taught to see God in the form of Jesus Christ. Throughout His life on earth, God and Man became totally united in Jesus so that Man became fully God and God became fully Man. Jesus tells us, “Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me” (John 14:11). Jesus is the gate through which we are to enter when we approach God. Jesus tells us, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” John 14:6. To some, this is called anthropomorphism, which is a big word for making God into a human. But those who say that, fail to reflect on the truth that we are human because God is human first.