Church of the Holy City

Lessons in Affliction

Lessons in Affliction
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
October 27, 2013

Jeremiah 31:7-14 Mark 10:46-52 Psalm 34

In our passage from Jeremiah, a time is foreseen when the Israelites would return home after the Babylonian captivity. During Jeremiah’s time, Babylon conquered Judah and took the Israelites captive to a land far away to the north. It was a terrible time for Israel. The Promised Land–the land promised to Abraham way back in Israel’s beginnings–was now in the hands of foreigners. The Promised Land had been taken away, no longer the home for God’s people. Despite the horror of the present, Jeremiah prophesies that the captivity in Babylon will not last forever. He counsels the Israelites to submit to Babylon for a time, because in the long run they will be released. The passage we heard this morning looks forward to that time of joy, when the Israelites will return to their homeland.
In this message are words of hope. This reading also says something very important regarding spiritual life. That is, religious people will go through periods of suffering. The Babylonian captivity is a symbol of the trials and sorrows that are part of every life, including spiritual life. But this message is also one of hope. On the verge of being captive in Babylon, Jeremiah sings a song of joy, dancing, and gladness. He sings of a renewed land full of grain, new wine, oil, flocks, and herds–symbols of abundance for an agricultural society. And we learn that in every time of sorrow and trial, new life emerges and deeper joy is felt.
The Psalmist sings of a similar theme. He tells us that we will find trouble and distress in this life, even if we are religious people. But the Psalmist tells us also that God is near us in our times of sorrow:
Many are the afflictions of the righteous;
The LORD is near to the brokenhearted,
and saves the crushed in spirit.
But even as the Psalmist tells us that we will experience afflictions, he also promises that God will ultimately deliver us from them:
Many are the afflictions of the righteous
but the LORD delivers him out of them all.
When the righteous cry for help, the LORD hears,
and delivers them out of all their troubles.
I call attention to these issues because some people believe that if a person is Godly, they will be saved from troubles. Some even think that they will not get sick. There are indeed passages in the Bible that support that belief. In Deuteronomy 28 there is a long list of blessings that will come to you if you obey God. Among the blessings that are promised are good crops, many children, many livestock, defeat of your enemies, and wealth. After these blessings, Deuteronomy tells us that curses follow upon disobedience. Some of the curses are confusion and rebuke in everything you set your hand to, sudden ruin, plague and disease, scorching heat and drought, blight and mildew, defeat before your enemies, blindness, madness, oppression and robbery of your goods. I think that the list of curses is longer than the list of blessings. Passages like this one make a person think that if they are good, blessings will fill their life and if they are bad then curses will plague them. This makes a person wonder what went wrong when bad things happen to good people, and also people wonder what they did wrong when bad things happen to them.
This belief system works throughout the book of Job. All manner of calamity befalls Job, although Job is the most righteous person on earth. All of his friends come by and ask Job what he has done wrong to bring these calamities upon himself. They also tell him to repent of his wrongdoing and his condition will improve. All through the book, Job protests to his friends that he has done nothing wrong. Job is the clearest example that bad things happen to good people.
This church teaches that good can come even from hard times. In fact, we are told that sometimes hard times can motivate us to change and find a better way. I think that often we don’t change our lives until pain forces us to. It is easy for us to get complacent and satisfied and to forget that we have growing edges. It is often trials and distress that breaks up our complacency and ego and lifts our consciousness to spiritual matters. In fact, Swedenborg talks about trials as a step in our spiritual growth. He speaks of our memory of spiritual treasures called remains. These are childhood feelings about God, and lessons that we may have learned from Sunday School. They are moments when we feel a particularly close relationship with God. These remains can be buried deep within our minds as affairs of this life cover them over. They become manifest when misfortune and struggles break down our worldly interests and we turn our thinking to heavenly matters.
The second state is when a distinction is made between the things that are the Lord’s and those that are a person’s own. Those that are the Lord’s are called in the Word remains; and here are especially knowledges of faith, which have been learned from infancy. 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 . . . to become quiescent, and as it were dead (AC 8).
In a later stage of spiritual development, trials and temptations are motivators for a person. Distress motivates a person to do spiritual good and to speak spiritual truth.
The fourth state is when a person is affected with love, and enlightened by faith. He talked indeed piously before, and brought forth things that were good, but from a state of temptation and distress, not from faith and charity (AC 10).
Struggles and distress can cause us to break old habits and ways of acting and thinking that need to be amended. Struggle and distress can cause us to see things spiritually and from a world-view that is God-centered. Struggle and distress can bring out the best in us.
There are a couple ideas that need to be addressed in all this. In our Bible reading from Jeremiah, there is a line that goes, “He who scattered Israel will gather them” (Jeremiah 31:10). This line give one the impression that God caused the suffering to come on Israel. It reminds me of the line we say in the Lord’s Prayer, “Lead us not into temptation”–as if God leads us into temptation. But God never leads us into temptation and God never punishes, condemns, or causes hardships to befall anyone. God only blesses and does good to us.
In many cases, it is we ourselves who lead ourselves into temptation. It is when we follow the promptings of our lower nature that we find ourselves unhappy and distant from God. When we allow our baser instincts to drive us, we are frustrated, pent up, and unsatisfied. For our lower nature wants and wants and wants. There is no end to the cravings of our egos and our lusts for wealth. We will never have enough control over others and enough money if these are our driving motivations. These drives are what lead us into temptation. These are the drives that make us troubled and unhappy.
God always seeks to lift us out of the drives and cravings of our lower nature. We bring ourselves distress, but God brings us relief. When we follow God’s voice and try to retrace Jesus’ footsteps, we are peaceful and untroubled. But most of us live a conflicted life in which our lower nature and God’s peace strive in our souls. So the reading from Jeremiah has powerful symbolic value to us. Our lower nature may lead us into the captivity of lusts and unsatisfying cravings. But God will always be there with hope and the promise of deliverance. Although we may lead ourselves into temptation, we have the vision of joy, dancing, and fulfillment after our conflict is over.
There is a final note I need to make in all this. What I said about us leading ourselves into distress does not apply to medical sickness. Some people think that there is a correlation between sickness and a person’s spiritual condition. That is not true. People do not get sick because they have lapsed somehow in their spiritual program. People get sick because there are bacteria and viruses and germs all around us. Not everything that happens in this world has a direct spiritual cause. Some things happen from strictly natural, or biological causes.
When our trials, however, are of a spiritual origin, usually we come away from our trials with a better idea of how to live wisely. We come away from our trials with our hearts closer to God. These things will come to pass if we learn from adversity. As the great Swedenborgian poet Edwin Markham writes:
Only the soul that knows the mighty grief
Can know the mighty rapture. Sorrows come
To stretch out spaces in the heart for joy

PRAYER

Lord, you have taught us that many are the afflictions of the righteous. Yet you have also taught us that you deliver us from our afflictions if we but call to you. We know that life can present us with troubles and difficulties. Even the life of the most noble believer has distress and toil. We are not exempt from suffering just because we are followers of Christ. Yet in all our troubles, we can find a way to grow and learn. Our sorrows open our hearts for greater love and compassion. Though times are sometimes hard, they are not without lessons to be learned. And ever bad situation can be turned to spiritual good. Thank you, Lord, for leading us out of trouble and temptation and leading us always upward to life with you.

And lord, we ask that you watch over those who are struggling and enduring hardship, be it sickness, poverty, or national unrest. Send your peaceful spirit to turmoil. Send the power of your healing love to those who are sick. We know on faith that in every trying situation, good can come. May we find the good in trouble, and healing where there is sickness.

Thank you, Lord, for your gift of life. Thank you for another day. May we treasure this day and this moment as the heavenly gift that it is. May we look only for your will for us, and may we find the power to carry out that will.