Church of the Holy City

God-Human Relations

God-Human Relations
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
May 5, 2013

Exodus 33:7-11 John 15:9-20 Psalm 98

Our Bible readings this morning bring up the topic of God-human relations. In our reading from Exodus, God speaks to Moses “face to face, as a man speaks with his friend.” While Moses speaks to God as to a friend, Jesus tells us that we are actually His friends,
You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you (John 15:14-15).
There is a difference in the way God was perceived between Moses and Jesus. God appeared as a pillar of cloud to the Israelites. However, Jesus is God in Human form. Furthermore, the Israelites did not want to approach God directly. They feared God’s awesome power, and asked Moses to act as a intermediary between God and them.
When the people saw the thunder and lightning and heard the trumpet and saw the mountain smoke, they trembled with fear. They stayed at a distance and said to Moses, “Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die. . . . The people remained at a distance, while Moses approached the thick darkness where God was (Exodus 20:18-19, 21).
On the other hand, Jesus’ disciples spoke to Jesus person-to-person as friends.
In fact, according to Swedenborg, seeing God as a Human is what distinguishes the New Church from all the churches that came before. Before God’s advent, God was invisible. But with the birth of Jesus, God appears in Human form. Swedenborg calls the New Church the crown of all the churches that came before because of that very reason: we see God in visible Human form, in which the invisible Infinite God dwells, as soul in body.
This New Church is the crown of all the churches which have hitherto existed on earth, because it will worship one visible God in whom is the invisible, like the soul in the body (TCR 787).
Swedenborg claims that our minds are incapable of seeing Jehovah God as God is in His infinity. We need the Human Jesus for conjunction:
In the Word it is read that Jehovah God dwells in light inaccessible; who then could go to Him, unless He were to dwell in light inaccessible? that is, if He did not descend and assume the Human, and become in this the Light of the world (John i:9; xii. 46). Who cannot see that to go the Jehovah the Father, in His light is as impossible as for one to take the wings of the morning, and by means of them to fly to the sun? (TCR 176).
For Swedenborg, it is crucial that God appear as a Human. He teaches that we can be united in a love relationship only with a Human God. We are unable to picture an infinite God. And if we have no mental image of God, then God does not become a part of our mind and thus not of our heart.
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 there is no end; it is also like vision in 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 out his hands and inviting into his arms (TCR 787).
Some people I know disagree with this doctrine. Some see God in plants and the created order. Others have told me that they see God in the unconditional love their dog has for them. Others, simply cannot wrap their minds around the idea that the infinite God can dwell in a Human body.
For me, seeing God as the all-loving Jesus works. Seeing God as a Human does give me a God I can love and relate to. And I like Swedenborg’s image: “a man in the air on the sea, spreading out his hands and inviting into his arms.” Remember, in Isaiah 25 and in Revelation 21, it is said that God will wipe away the tears from all faces. Wouldn’t God need a Human form to perform this tender act?
Furthermore, the idea of a Human God makes it possible for us to approach God directly, immediately, face-to-face. This is what our church teaches. We hold that every person can come to God directly, without any intermediary. Recall our story from Exodus. The children of Israel wanted Moses to act as an intermediary between them and God. This reminds me of some churches today. In some churches, the priest is seen as an intermediary between God and the congregation. But we teach that everyone has a direct connection with God. We do not need to go through a priest, or a saint, or angels, or any other intermediary. “Conjunction with the Lord is not given to any but those who approach Him immediately” (AR 883). God, in His Divine Humanity is intimately present with each and every one of us. That is one reason why God came to earth at all.
Since His coming He is present with people of the church immediately; for in the world He put on also the Divine natural, in which He is present with people (TCR 109).
Through the Human body that God took on in Jesus Christ, God is actually physically present with humans on earth and in the heavens. He has what Swedenborg calls the “natural” degree. The natural degree is that aspect of our soul that lives on earth. It is also the outermost level of our souls when we transition to heaven. God now has that part of His soul, since He took on a Human body in Jesus Christ. And when Jesus rose from the dead, He rose body and soul, so that nothing was left in the tomb. To prove His natural reality, Jesus ate a fish in the presence of His apostles when He appeared to them after His crucifixion.
The glorification of the Lord is the glorification of His Human which He assumed in the world, and the glorified Human of the Lord is the Divine Natural. That it is so is evident from this, that the Lord rose from the sepulchre with His whole Body which He had in the world; nor did He leave any thing in the sepulchre; consequently, that He took thence with Him the Human Natural itself, from the firsts to the lasts of it; wherefore He said to the disciples after the resurrection, when they supposed that they saw a spirit, “Behold my hands and My feet, that it is I Myself; handle Me, and see; for a spirit has not flesh and bones as you see Me have” (Luke xxiv. 37, 39). From this it is manifest that His natural body by glorification was made Divine (TCR 109).
So for us, God and Human are One. And in God’s Divine Humanity, we can approach God without any intermediary. And seeing God as the loving, gentle Jesus Christ, we can form a relationship of love. As the hymn goes that we sung earlier this morning, “Jesus is my best of friends.”

PRAYER

Lord, we give you thanks for coming to earth as a man, in a form that we mortals can see, understand, and love. Although God incarnate, you have called us friends. You put off your awesome powers and infinity and humbled yourself to the human condition. You even experienced the ultimate human fate of death. And yet, in your humanity, you filled yourself with the divinity of your origins, and God and Man became one. May we not seek any other way to call to you, than in your Divine Humanity. And in your Divine Humanity, we love you–person to person. You are no longer an invisible, unknowable power, but a person–the true and original person–a person who loves us, and whom we love, our friend.