Church of the Holy City

Times and Seasons

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.