Church of the Holy City

Our Spiritual Home

Our Spiritual Home
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
April 19, 2009

Genesis 12:1-8 Matthew 2:13-23

I’ve just returned from a trip to the US. The occasion for my travel was a seminar in which ministers from the Mid-West region gathered together to share thoughts on ministry. I found it a stimulating seminar and very helpful. I was able to ask questions and hear insights on effective ministry from ministers who have served for much longer than myself.
After being in Canada for so long, I had the strange feeling of re-accustoming myself to my homeland. I now feel like a citizen of two nations—Canada and the US—and I feel better for living in both worlds. Even though Canada is right on the US border, there are some real differences in the cultures of the two nations. This is only to be expected about travel over great distances. Even within just the US, traveling across several states brings differences in culture. Fortunately for me, here in Canada I have Carol who can help me to present myself in a proper Canadian way. One amusing way she helps me is when I feel like speaking out when I’m upset with some experience here—be it poor service over the phone, or in a restaurant, or with the airlines. Canadians are more polite than I’m used to, and in the US it’s not at all unusual for someone to speak their mind when they’re dissatisfied. We have a saying between us about this. We call it “going American.” So when I want to take someone to task, I tell Carol, “I’m going to go all American on that guy.” She usually disassociates herself from me when I go American on someone. That TV show Corner Gas also had an episode on this. An American is visiting in Canada, and his Canadian friends are trying to help him fit in. Well he says something harsh to someone and his friends tell him he has to say he’s sorry. The American says, “Why do I have to say I’m sorry? I’m not sorry!” To which his Canadian friends say, “You don’t have to be sorry, you just have to say you’re sorry.” “Why,” the American asks. “It’s the Canadian way,” is the response.
So I picked today’s Bible readings with the idea of changing homes in mind. In our Old Testament reading we have Abram moving from Mesopotamia to Canaan. And in the New Testament reading we have Jesus and his family moving from Israel to Egypt. About Abram’s move from Mesopotamia, God tells him that he shall be a stranger in a strange land. In Canaan, Abram found different Gods and different peoples. The foreign gods that Abram encountered were associated with places such as mountains and wells. There is El Bethel, who was worshipped at Luz, El Elyon, who was worshipped at Jerusalem, El Olam, at Beer-sheba, and other gods associated with holy places. But what is striking for religion at this time is that Abram’s God traveled with him even on that great migration from Mesopotamia to Canaan. The God of the Patriarchs was not tied down to a specific place. The relocation of Jesus’ family after His birth was also a major upheaval. To move from the small town of Nazareth to the great empire of Egypt would have been a wondrous and also intimidating experience. There were Jewish communities in Egypt, so Jesus’ family would at least have some Jewish culture around them in Egypt. But there were also those huge statues and temples to the Egyptian gods and goddesses, as well as monuments to the Greek pantheon which had conquered Egypt in the time of Christ. Egypt would have felt like home, as he grew up there. We can only guess at how much of the Greek and Egyptian wisdom Jesus learned in Egypt. We only know that He astounded the teachers in the temple at the age of 12 with His wisdom.
There are advantages and disadvantages in moving from one place to another. The great advantage of moving from place to place is that one can shed ideas and beliefs that are only products of a locality. Then there are new ideas and beliefs to learn from new environments. Staying only in one place can be limiting. When I moved from Detroit to Boston, I experienced a whole new world. People acted differently, education had a high value in Boston, which it didn’t have in Detroit, and I gained an independence in Boston which was far removed from my family. But the disadvantages can be a loss of feelings of home and family. I envy people who still maintain friendships with people that they grew up with, as is the case with my parents. And I think that the place in which a person grows up will always have a feeling of home. When I drive down the roads of Detroit, it still feels like home—even after 20 years away. And I still root for the Detroit teams: the Red Wings, the Pistons, the Tigers, and unfortunately for me, the Lions, who have yet to win a Superbowl.
As we grow older in life, we are on a spiritual journey like that of Abram. We are gradually growing up spiritually as we grow older naturally. We are leaving one state of mind for another. We are exchanging early affections for more spiritually mature ones. Like a snake, we shed old skin for new skin. And as with travel, these changes are not easy. When we move from one place to another, we feel a good deal of stress and anxiety as everything which we knew and took for granted is lost; and everything we now encounter is unfamiliar. The case is similar with spiritual changes. We are actually exchanging old feelings and perceptions for new ones. We feel anxiety when our former pleasures are left behind and also we feel anxiety when from a higher place we look back on where we were, and regret our lower condition.
While man is being regenerated and conjunction is being effected of the good of the internal man with the truths of the external, a commotion takes place among the truths, for then they undergo a different arrangement. . . . The commotion then made, manifests itself by an anxiety arising from the change of the former state, namely, from a privation of the enjoyment which had been in that state. This commotion also manifests itself by anxiety concerning the past life . . . (AC 5881).
Swedenborg describes this process in another place. Our growth is from an interest in the world and self out of which we journey into an interest in the neighbor and God. Make no mistake, this change is real and it affects our goals in life and our enjoyments. Such a change is not comfortable.’
. . . When a man is being purified from those lusts [self and the world], as is the case when he is being regenerated, he is in pain and anxiety, and it is the lusts which are then being wiped away, that are pained and cause anxiety (AC 4496).
While we are undergoing spiritual rebirth, and we are exchanging one emotional complex for another, we are forming a spiritual home. We don’t know it while we are in the material world, but our souls are alive in the spiritual world. We are forming company with spirits and angels who are in similar emotions as we are. The emotions that we cultivate will determine our communities in the next life. Swedenborg tells us that in the next life, we will find our way to others who share a like emotional state as our own. We will feel at home with them, because on earth we had been cultivating emotions like theirs. “Like are brought as of themselves to their like; for with their like they are as with their own and as at home, but with others they are as with strangers and abroad” (HH 44).
We feel at home with surroundings that are familiar to us. When I cam back from the US, I sat in my favorite chair and scanned the walls, looking at my favorite works of art that were hanging there, and I felt like I was home. Our best friends are friends who have been with us over the years, through different experiences. When we come to our spiritual homes in the next life, we will meet with people whom we seem to have known all our lives. This is because they are in a like love to us.
All who are in similar good also know one another, just as men in the world do their kinsmen, their near relations, and their friends, though they have never before seen them . . . This has sometimes been given me to see, when I was in the spirit, . . . and so in company with angels. Then some of them seemed as if known from childhood, but others as if not known at all. They whom I seemed to have known from childhood, were those who were in a state similar to that of my spirit; but they who seemed unknown to me, were in dissimilar state (HH 46).
I think that it is an important thought to keep in mind, that with the actions and intentions of our day to day lives, we are forming our homes in the next life. But of one thing we can be sure—it will feel like home.