From leewoof@leewoof.net Mon Jan 5 06:51:56 2004 From: leewoof@leewoof.net (Lee Woofenden) Date: Sun, 04 Jan 2004 22:51:56 -0800 Subject: [Sermons] "The Infant Lord," by the Rev. Lee Woofenden Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20040104225105.0270a000@mail.leewoof.net> The Infant Lord By the Rev. Lee Woofenden Bridgewater, Massachusetts, January 4, 2004 Readings: Genesis 12:1-7: The call of Abram The Lord had said to Abram, "Leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you." So Abram left, as the Lord had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he set out from Haran. He took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated and the souls they had acquired in Haran, and they set out for the land of Canaan, and they arrived there. Abram traveled through the land as far as the site of the great tree of Moreh at Shechem. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. The Lord appeared to Abram and said, "To your offspring I will give this land." So he built an altar there to the Lord, who appeared to him. Luke 2:21-32: Jesus presented in the Temple On the eighth day, when it was time to circumcise him, he was named Jesus, the name the angel had given him before he had been conceived. When the time of their purification according to the Law of Moses had been completed, Joseph and Mary took him to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord (as it is written in the Law of the Lord, "Every firstborn male is to be consecrated to the Lord"), and to offer a sacrifice in keeping with what is said in the Law of the Lord: "a pair of doves or two young pigeons." Now there was a man in Jerusalem called Simeon, who was righteous and devout. He was waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him. It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not die before he had seen the Lord's Christ. Moved by the Spirit, he went into the temple courts. When the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him what the custom of the Law required, Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying: "Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you now dismiss your servant in peace. For my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the sight of all people, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel." Arcana Coelestia #1438: The Lord's early life "And they came into the land of Canaan" means that the Lord arrived at the heavenly things of love. This is clear from what was I have just explained about the land of Canaan. Here the Lord's early life is described, from birth to childhood; during this time he arrived at the heavenly things of love. The heavenly things of love are the core realities; everything else comes from them. He was filled heavenly things first of all, since from these, as from its seed, everything else was then made fruitful. With him the seed itself was heavenly, for he was born from Jehovah, and therefore he was the only one who has ever had that seed within himself. Sermon: Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you now dismiss your servant in peace. For my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the sight of all people, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel. (Luke 2:29-32) These words, usually in a more traditional translation, have found their way into the closing section of many worship services. Yet though Simeon, who spoke them, was close to his departure from this world, he was speaking in celebration of a new beginning--in fact, of the most wonderful new beginning that has ever happened: the birth of the Lord into the world. Our Gospel reading tells first of the naming of Jesus at his circumcision when he was a week old, and then of his presentation in the Temple at the completion of another thirty-three days, which was the prescribed period for ritual purification of a woman after the birth of a son. So at the time of his presentation in the temple, Jesus was forty days old. When his parents brought him to the temple, a devout man named Simeon was also inwardly directed, by the spirit of the Lord, to come to the temple. There, he took the infant Jesus in his arms, and praised the Lord, saying of the child, "My eyes have seen your salvation." This was the meaning of the name "Jesus" that the child had been given according to the instruction of the angel, as we read in the Gospel of Matthew: "You shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins" (Matthew 1:21). "My eyes have seen your salvation." How could Simeon say this of a baby less than two months old? How could this baby be the salvation not only to the Jews, but to the Gentiles as well--meaning the Savior of all people? The spirit of God showed Simeon what was already taking place in this new life. For as we have once again affirmed in the opening sermons of this series, this was no ordinary birth, and no ordinary baby. In this baby there was no human soul, but rather, the soul of God himself residing in a child born of a human mother. For nearly two millennia, the inner life of that child, and the man he grew to be, has been largely swathed in mystery. We get a few brief glimpses in the Gospels of the intense emotions and deep struggles that the Lord went through. But these are hardly enough to build anything like a complete picture of what was happening within the Lord during his life on earth. In fact, the Gospels give practically no information at all about the vast bulk of the Lord's life on earth. We are told how he was born and spent some time in Egypt with his parents during his infancy. Then a decade is passed by in silence, and we are given one brief story of the Lord at twelve years of age. After that, nearly two decades goes by in silence, before we see the Lord beginning his public ministry at the age of thirty. What happened in the intervening years? Can we ever know anything about the Lord during the bulk of his life? The outward details of the Lord's life will forever remain a mystery. Outwardly, he was an ordinary boy from a poor family, and no one would have taken notice or recorded such a life. It was only when he began his public ministry, and began to stand out from the crowd, that anyone took notice, and that the story of his life moves out of the shadows and into the light. However, his inner life, though it goes far beyond our finite, human ability to grasp, is no longer the mystery it once was, thanks to the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg. In his great work _Arcana Coelestia (Secrets of Heaven)_, Swedenborg gives us an extensive series on the Lord's inner process of "glorification," or of becoming fully united with the Divine Soul from which he came. This series starts with the call of Abram in Genesis 12, and continues as a thread through Swedenborg's explanations of all the rest of the book of Genesis, covering the lives of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph. This is why I have chosen the story of the call of Abram as our Old Testament reading. As our series on the inner life of the Lord progresses, we will follow key stories from the rest of Genesis, relating them both to the New Testament stories of the Lord's life and to their deepest, heavenly or "celestial" meaning that tells us of the Lord's inner experience while he was here on earth. Even Swedenborg's explanation of the Lord's inner state in his tiniest infancy is sketchy. In explaining the first verse of Genesis 12 he tells us: Because the Lord is the subject here, these words contain more secrets than anyone can possibly conceive and explain. For the deeper meaning here speaks of the Lord's first state after his birth. Because that state is a very deep secret, any understandable explanation of it is practically impossible. Let it be said simply that he was like any other human being, except that he was conceived from Jehovah, yet born of a woman who was a virgin, and by birth from that virgin he took on all the weaknesses that are common to all. These weaknesses are physical, and are referred to in this verse in that he was to depart from them so that heavenly and spiritual things might be brought into view for him. . . . A further secret is that the Lord's human side also became divine. In him alone there was a correspondence of all things of the body with the Divine. This was a most perfect, or infinitely perfect, correspondence, and from it there resulted a union of physical things with divine heavenly things, and of sensory things with divine spiritual things. Thus he became the perfect human being, and the only human being. (_Arcana Coelestia_ #1414) In the highest, heavenly meaning of the call of Abram in Genesis 12, we have a picture of the Lord, who was born from God through a human mother, being called away from the merely physical and material side of his nature that came from his mother, toward the heavenly and divine things from which his deeper nature came. Now, I would venture to say that none of us ordinary mortals is aware of any divine promptings while we are still babes in arms. We are aware, without conscious thought, of the warmth of our mother's body, and of less warmth when we are separated from human contact; we are aware of taking in nourishment and eliminating waste; we are aware of comfort and discomfort; and we are gradually learning to use our eyes and distinguish things. The infant Jesus was aware of all of these things, too. Physically speaking, he was a human baby like any other human baby, and went through all the experiences and phases that we do at that early time of our lives. Yet unlike any other baby, the Lord had God as his inner soul, his inner being. So right from birth he experienced everything at a far deeper level, and with far more clarity, than any of us does. At a time when the center of our lives is the warmth of our mother, Jesus was already beginning to feel the warmth of God's infinite love welling up from within, and calling him toward higher things than we will ever know or comprehend. A little later in _Arcana Coelestia_ we read: The Lord's ability to learn went beyond that of any other person. Unlike others he learned heavenly things before spiritual ones. (_Arcana Coelestia_ #1464) In Swedenborg's way of speaking, "heavenly" things, when they are compared to "spiritual" ones, refer to the things of the heart--to love--compared to the things of the head--to truth. So what he is saying here is that the Lord became aware of and learned things in his heart first, and in his head only afterwards. This is the reverse of what ordinarily happens with us. Generally speaking, we first learn spiritual things in our head, through Sunday School, Bible reading, and hearing religious teaching; only later do we take them to heart and make them a part of our lives. This is because we are born basically self-centered--focused primarily on our own comfort and well-being--and our hearts tend toward the things that support our own comfort. We have to be trained and instructed from outside to go in a higher direction: toward loving the Lord and loving our fellow human beings more than we love ourselves. But for Jesus, the Lord's love was not outside of him; it was within him, in his very soul. And he felt those promptings right from birth--even though a conscious, intellectual awareness of them still took time to develop. This process of moving from first awareness to a clear mental grasp of the deeper call is pictured by the journeys of Abram. It is often stated mistakenly in Bible commentaries and Sunday School materials that Abram was called from Ur of the Chaldees, in the land of Babylonia. But in fact, by the time Abram received his call, his father Terah had already taken him and his family, along with his nephew Lot, from Ur to Haran, which was located halfway to Canaan (the Holy Land) along the Fertile Crescent in ancient Mesopotamia. This story is told in the last few verses of Genesis 11, just before our Old Testament reading. Spiritually speaking, the move from Ur to Haran represents our early travels from being focused entirely on ourselves and our own comforts (Babylon represents self-love) to having some awareness of others and their feelings and needs (Haran represents natural, outward goodness). This happens even before we have any conscious promptings toward spiritual life--represented by the Lord's call to Abram. There is no mention of the Lord calling Terah to pick up his family and move from Ur to Haran. He simply does it. And our earliest inner development begins before we have any conscious awareness of God. The Lord, also, had already traveled away from an exclusive self-awareness and focus on his own sensations, comforts, and discomforts by the time he became consciously aware of the Divine that was present within himself. He was already aware of others around him, and that his own comfort and pleasure was not to be the primary focus of his life. As Genesis 12:4 makes clear, Abram was called, not from Ur, but from Haran. What takes place in Genesis 12 is the first conscious call of God to leave behind even the material things of outward goodness--enjoying the pleasures of this life and the companionship of friends and family--as the main focus in life. For us, it is the time we first become aware that God is calling us to higher, spiritual things; that the rewards and satisfactions of this life are not enough; that we must begin living, not according to human standards, but according to God's higher plan for our lives. For Jesus, this call was an even higher and deeper one. It was a call to awareness that he was not only to live a good outward life, represented by Haran, but that he had a far greater calling and mission in life. As such, it was a call from human obscurity to divine clarity. Swedenborg tells us that this call was already taking place in Jesus in his very earliest years, at the time he was moving from infancy to childhood. Like everything that happened within the Lord, this call did not originate in intellectual considerations. Once again, from the _Arcana_, "The Lord's ability to learn went beyond that of any other person. Unlike others he learned heavenly things before spiritual ones." In other words, everything that entered the Lord's higher conscious awareness came from love. And the love that the Lord was being called by was the same love that brought him into the world: it was the divine love that prompted him to have mercy on a dark and suffering world, to come to us, and to save us from the evil that had us it its clutches. Yes, even from his earliest childhood, practically from the time he was a mere babe in arms, the Lord was feeling the first promptings of his divine mission. He was feeling the first callings of infinite love from within, calling him forward to his life's work: saving us all from the power of evil and hell, which we would never be able to resist or overcome on our own. This is why Simeon could say, when Jesus was only forty days old, "For my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the sight of all people, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel." Amen. ____________________ These sermons are a ministry of the Bridgewater New Jerusalem Church. If you wish to support the church that sponsors them, please send your contribution to: New Jerusalem Church 88 Central Square Bridgewater, MA 02324 To make a donation or monthly pledge via PayPal with your credit card, or from your bank account, please go to: http://www.leewoof.net/ministry/churchdonationform.html Thank you! Church web site: http://www.ForMinistry.com/02324NJC Denominational web site: http://www.swedenborg.org To learn about and discuss Swedenborgian ideas on Beliefnet, go to: http://www.beliefnet.com/boards/boards_main.AllCategories.asp?Category=132 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From leewoof@leewoof.net Sun Jan 25 02:00:01 2004 From: leewoof@leewoof.net (Lee Woofenden) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 21:00:01 -0500 Subject: [Sermons] "A Child of Revelation," by the Rev. Lee Woofenden Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20040124205845.02b1f890@mail.leewoof.net> A Child of Revelation By the Rev. Lee Woofenden Bridgewater, Massachusetts, January 11, 2004 Readings: Genesis 12:6-9: Abram's Journey in Canaan Abram traveled through the land as far as Shechem, to the oak grove of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. The Lord appeared to Abram and said, "To your offspring I will give this land." So he built an altar there to the Lord, who appeared to him. From there he went on toward the mountains east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. There he built an altar to the Lord and called on the name of the Lord. Then Abram set out, and continued traveling toward the south. Luke 2:33-40: Simeon and Anna prophesy of Jesus The child's father and mother marveled at what was said about him. Then Simeon blessed them and said to Mary, his mother: "This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too." There was also a prophetess, Anna, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was very old; she had lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, and was a widow of about eighty-four years. She never left the temple, but worshipped night and day, fasting and praying. Coming up to them at that very moment, she gave thanks to God and spoke about the child to all who were looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem. When Joseph and Mary had done everything required by the Law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee to their own town of Nazareth. And the child grew and became strong; he was filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon him. Arcana Coelestia #1458.5: The Lord's inner light "Abram set out, and continued traveling toward the south" symbolizes the Lord's progress into goodness and truth, and thus into a state of inner enlightenment. Religious knowledge is what opens up the path to seeing heavenly and spiritual things. By means of that knowledge, a path is opened up from the inner self to the outer self, in which there are receiving vessels--as many vessels as there are good and true religious ideas. Heavenly things flow into these as into their own special vessels. Sermon: This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. (Luke 2:34-35) "The thoughts of many hearts will be revealed." I have been thinking lately that in this generally Christian culture, Jesus is something of a touchstone or a litmus test as to where people are spiritually. Not that we can judge where anyone else is spiritually, but we can perhaps surmise something of their mental or inner state by their reaction to who Jesus was. The same thing goes for our own inner state. There are many different opinions in our culture, our country, and our world about who Jesus was. Do people accept Jesus? Do they accept him as their Lord and Savior? If so, that tells something about their spiritual state. Do people accept him as a great prophet? That also tells something. Do people reject Jesus? And if they do reject Jesus, why do they? Is it because they had a bad experience of Jesus growing up in Sunday School and church, and therefore they reject him? Or do they reject the Lord because they are unwilling to have their lives reformed by that influence? Some people are too skeptical; they can't accept anything that doesn't accord with "hard reason." Therefore they reject any possibility that Jesus could be divine. In their view, he was an ordinary human being. And some people are simply indifferent to Jesus. They really don't care, and don't pay any attention to Jesus at all. This also tells something about their spiritual state. Of course, for people from non-Christian cultures it is different. But in a Christian culture, our response to Jesus--who he was, how he affects us--says a lot about our spiritual state. So "the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed." The thoughts of many hearts are revealed in our response to the Lord Jesus Christ--to the God of our religion. The thoughts of our hearts being revealed is a process of revelation--of showing what is within us, and bringing it out. Jesus also went through that process of revelation. Remember: he was born as a human being. He was born as a baby. He went through all of the stages that we go through. And he became the divine pattern for our own spiritual growth. This process of revelation is the meaning of the "travels" that are mentioned in our Old Testament reading. In our series on the inner life of Jesus, we are following the Gospel story, but also following the story of Genesis: of Abram and his travels, of Isaac and Jacob, of Joseph. These tell the inner life of Jesus. And as we deal with the story of the call of Abram and his journey to Canaan, we are still speaking of the infancy and young childhood of Jesus. Jesus began, as we all do, being aware only of his own feelings and needs. When we are first born, and when we are in our infancy, we aren't thinking of the people around us. In fact, we are not really thinking at all; we are simply feeling. And we are feeling our own wants and needs; our own pains and pleasures. As a baby, Jesus started there as well. This is symbolized by Abram starting in Ur of the Chaldees, which is in Babylonia. And Babylonia represents the love of self, or being wrapped up in ourselves. That is where we all start. We are wrapped up in our own feelings. It is only gradually that we begin moving away from that state of being. At that stage of our lives we do not move by any conscious choice. It is simply by the natural growth of our mind and through experience of the world around us that we move to a state represented by Haran, at the top of the Fertile Crescent, where Terah took Abram and his family, and Abram's nephew Lot. Haran represents a general awareness of the wants and needs of others. It represent "outward, natural goodness." At this stage of our psychological growth, we recognize that other people have needs just as we do, and we try to be good people and help them out. As we grow out of our state of infancy and into childhood, we begin to be aware that we have parents, that we have brothers and sisters, or other children, around us, and that we have to take their wants and feelings and needs into account as well as our own. This is not particularly virtuous in us; it is simply the way we develop as human beings. Jesus developed in this way as well. He became aware of the world around him, of the people around him, of his parents, of the other children, of other adults. He became aware that these people have wants and needs. And of course, he became aware if this much more quickly and deeply than we do as finite human beings. So Jesus traveled first from Ur, from that self-absorption of infancy, to Haran--to an awareness of others around him. Then he received a call, which we talked about last time. That call was the first dawning into conscious awareness of an understanding that he had a deeper mission; that he couldn't just coast along in life; that he was sent here to accomplish something. There is also a point in our lives when we realize, "My life isn't here just to live it. God put me here for a purpose. God had something in mind for me. And I am meant to discover that purpose and follow it, and to do God's work here on earth." For us as human beings, that purpose may involve some talent that God put in us that makes us able to serve others in our own unique way. In the case of the Lord, it was a far bigger and broader: it was the salvation of the entire human race. We spoke about this last time when we covered the Lord's calling, and what he was sent to do. When he received that call, he became consciously aware almost from infancy, perhaps when he was a toddler, that he had a divine mission. It was far beyond anything that we go through at that time of our lives. And at that point he began "traveling." When we read in the Bible that Abram traveled to the land of Canaan and went to Shechem, the Oak Grove at Moreh, to Bethel and Ai, and then to the South, it may seem to be just a lot of geography, and not particularly inspired. But when we start reading Swedenborg's explanations of these things, we realize that every single one of these places is significant. These are the travels of the Lord's soul--and of our soul--in the spiritual landscape. We have different "places" within us, and they correspond to geographical places. Each one of the places where Abram stopped on his journey represents a different state of consciousness that the Lord went through at the highest level, and that we go through at a lower level. Let's spend a few minutes going through some of the places that Abram visited, and getting a taste of their meanings. When Abram left Haran, he went to the land of Canaan. The land of Canaan, in comparison to the other lands around it, especially represents our spiritual life. So when we travel to the land of Canaan, we are traveling out of merely worldly living. When we "travel to Canaan" we are not going to live for money; we are not going to live for power; we are not going to live for pleasure. We are not going to live for any of the things that the world gives us. We can still enjoy these things. But they will no longer be our purpose, our focus, in life. The land of Canaan means living from deeper, spiritual principles. These will be the motivating force in our lives from now on. So the first thing to understand generally is that Jesus went to the land of Canaan. He had a divine call to a higher, spiritual mission. But within the land of Canaan there are many different places. There are cities and towns, there are mountains and hills and valleys. Within our spiritual life there are different states of being, and there are ups and downs. Jesus began to progress through these as he became more and more aware of his spiritual and divine calling. The first place Abram stopped in the land of Canaan was Shechem. Although it was located fairly centrally in the land, one of the regular travel routes went across the Jordan opposite Shechem, so that it was one of the first towns that people who followed that route came to in Canaan itself. Because of this, Shechem represents an introductory state. In Jesus especially, it means becoming aware of the love that is within. We sometimes think spiritual things are a matter of learning in the head: that if we study and learn the teachings of the church, we are spiritual people. But that is not what it means to be spiritual. The teachings can an entryway--and in that sense they are represented by the river Jordan. We do need to learn them, and "cross over" them. But once we become aware of the teachings, we also become aware of the calling of love from within. We become aware that religion is not just an intellectual thing. No, it is God calling to us in our hearts. "The thoughts of many _hearts_ will be revealed." We realize that spiritual living is about learning to love. Shechem is our first inkling that spirituality is not just an intellectual thing; that our hearts must open up. Jesus recognized and felt this at a very deep level. Last time we mentioned how everything Jesus learned and did came first from love. It would be nice if that were always true of us human beings, but we take a bit longer to catch on! Abram came to Shechem, and "to the oak grove at Moreh." Trees, in general, represent thoughts, ideas, and principles. Once Jesus had gotten this sense of love, he then perceived and understood things from love. And here I would like to say a few things about learning and intuition. All of us have gone through some sort of schooling or learning process, of picking things up from the outside. Many people think they are very smart if they know a lot of things, if they can quote texts and rattle off the laws of physics or psychology or theology. But there is another kind of knowing that we call "intuition." Those who trust only in "hard" knowing of "facts" may think of intuition as being just a matter of unreliable hunches. But intuition is what Swedenborg would call "perception." It involves knowing, not from the outside through our senses, but from the heart. And it is also the experience of knowing that something is true (or false) the moment we hear it. When we are living from the heart, we begin to get these inner perceptions. They often have to do with other people's inner state. We may have spent years studying psychology, and think we can analyze people; but someone who can feel with the heart where the other person is mentally and emotionally has a greater perception and a greater ability to help the other person than someone with all the psychology degrees in the world. That is the power of perception. We know from within; we can see from within. And we make both a heart connection and a head connection. The oak grove at Moreh, near Shechem, means this knowing from the heart. We see this in Jesus throughout his ministry. He could approach people, see them, talk to them, and know exactly what was in their heart. He didn't have to study their history. He just knew from being in their presence, from hearing them speak, from perceiving their spirit. Even at an early age he was gaining this heart perception of others' inner states--a perception that would serve him well later on. This is something for us to aspire to as well. Of course, our spiritual journey is not all sweetness and light. There is that cryptic little phrase, "At that time the Canaanites were in the land." Who were the Canaanites? The Canaanites were the people then inhabiting the land, who became the enemies of the Israelites when they moved into the Holy Land. "The Canaanites were in the land." Abram was merely sojourning there at that time. He did not possess the land; the Canaanites did. The Canaanites represent everything that is already "inhabiting" our spirit that we are going to have to overcome. When we first turn toward spiritual living, we may think everything is going to be terrific from then on. But in fact, our struggles have just begun. We do get a wonderful sense of God's presence. But then we realize, "I have a lot of enemies within me: I have a lot of selfishness in me; I have a lot of materialism in me. I think of myself first. I tend to ignore others." And so on. We each have our own "Canaanites in the land." And we realize that we have a lot of work to do. "The Canaanites were in the land." It's a tiny little phrase, but it says so much! It says that we have many inner obstacles to overcome. Swedenborg calls these inner enemies our hereditary evil. In Jesus, it was what he got from his mother. His mother was an ordinary human being like anyone else. She had faults like anyone else, and she passed on to Jesus our human faults and shortcomings--or rather, she passed on _tendencies_ toward them. These were in him. He knew that he had to struggle against them. They are in us as well, and we have a spiritual struggle ahead of us. That is all expressed in the little phrase, "At that time the Canaanites were in the land." Abram then goes to mountains east of Bethel. And Jesus continues, spiritually, toward the heavenly things of love. The name "Bethel" means "house of God." Bethel was where Jacob saw the stairway going up to heaven, and said, "This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven" (Genesis 28:17). So Bethel represents the heavenly side of things, while Ai represents the more worldly side of things. Jesus was caught--and we are caught--between this new spiritual life, in which we wish to live from deeper principles, and the worldly principles that we have been living by so far. We are between Bethel and Ai, between heaven and the world, and we are struggling: the Canaanite is in the land. We realize that we need greater enlightenment. This is the message of the key phrase in our reading from Genesis on the development that was taking place within the Lord: "Then Abram set out, and continued traveling toward the south." In the Bible, directions have meaning. East and west represent closeness to the Lord and distance from the Lord. East is where the sun rises. It represents closeness to the Lord, and especially to God's love. The west is being more distant from the Lord and from love. South is toward the equator, toward the brightness of noon. North is away from the equator, toward the darkness. Traveling toward the south, then, represents the Lord realizing that he needed to gain more enlightenment. The south means learning and gaining understanding. Jesus began to move into the next phase that we go through in childhood. There is a time in our young lives when we stop acting simply from our feelings and impulses, and begin consciously learning things. For us, this happens at about four or five years old. Our society recognizes that this is a time to begin giving children intellectual content. It is time when children begin to focus consciously on learning things. Jesus, also, knew that he needed to learn. His development parallels ours. But I said that backwards. Our development parallels his. And there was a time when he realized that he needed to "travel to the south." He needed to study and learn. And he spent a great deal of his childhood doing exactly that. Next time, as we look at the story of Jesus in the Temple as a twelve-year-old boy, we will recognize that he was learning throughout his childhood, just as we learn--only far more quickly, far more fully, and far more deeply. God shows us this divine pattern. The inner life of Jesus is all contained within the Bible. And it moves at this point from infancy into childhood; from a state of the heart to a state of the mind. We also follow this pattern spiritually. We follow it as children; and we follow it as adults when we take our first conscious steps toward spiritual living, and realize, "I know nothing about spiritual living. I need to learn about it. I need to read books, go to Bible studies, hear sermons, do something to enlighten myself, so that I can see and understand what this spiritual path is that I am called to follow." This is traveling toward the south. In Jesus, "the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed." Our hearts will be revealed as we learn the spiritual truth that can form vessels for God's presence in us. Amen. ____________________ These sermons are a ministry of the Bridgewater New Jerusalem Church. If you wish to support the church that sponsors them, please send your contribution to: New Jerusalem Church 88 Central Square Bridgewater, MA 02324 To make a donation or monthly pledge via PayPal with your credit card, or from your bank account, please go to: http://www.leewoof.net/ministry/churchdonationform.html Thank you! Church web site: http://www.ForMinistry.com/02324NJC Denominational web site: http://www.swedenborg.org To learn about and discuss Swedenborgian ideas on Beliefnet, go to: http://www.beliefnet.com/boards/boards_main.AllCategories.asp?Category=132 From leewoof@leewoof.net Sun Jan 25 02:15:21 2004 From: leewoof@leewoof.net (Lee Woofenden) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 21:15:21 -0500 Subject: [Sermons] "And Jesus Grew in Wisdom," by the Rev. Lee Woofenden Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20040124211437.02561520@mail.leewoof.net> And Jesus Grew in Wisdom By the Rev. Lee Woofenden Bridgewater, Massachusetts, January 18, 2004 Readings: Genesis 12:10-20: Abram in Egypt Now there was a famine in the land, and Abram went down to Egypt to live there for a while because the famine was severe. As he was about to enter Egypt, he said to his wife Sarai, "I know what a beautiful woman you are. When the Egyptians see you, they will say, 'This is his wife.' Then they will kill me but will let you live. Say you are my sister, so that I will be treated well for your sake and my life will be spared because of you." When Abram came to Egypt, the Egyptians saw that she was a very beautiful woman. And when Pharaoh's officials saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh, and she was taken into his palace. He treated Abram well for her sake, and Abram acquired sheep and cattle, male and female donkeys, menservants and maidservants, and camels. But the Lord inflicted serious diseases on Pharaoh and his household because of Abram's wife Sarai. So Pharaoh summoned Abram. "What have you done to me?" he said. "Why didn't you tell me she was your wife? Why did you say, 'She is my sister,' so that I took her to be my wife? Now then, here is your wife. Take her and go!" Then Pharaoh gave orders about Abram to his men, and they sent him on his way, with his wife and everything he had. Luke 2:40-52: The Boy Jesus at the Temple And the child grew and became strong; he was filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon him. And every year Jesus' parents went to Jerusalem for the feast of the Passover. When he was twelve years old they went up to the feast, according to the custom. After the feast was over, while his parents were returning home, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but they were unaware of it. Thinking he was in their company, they traveled on for a day. Then they began looking for him among their relatives and friends. When they did not find him, they went back to Jerusalem to look for him. After three days they found him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers. When his parents saw him, they were astonished. His mother said to him, "Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you." "Why were you searching for me?" he asked. "Didn't you know that I had to be doing my Father's work?" But they did not understand what he was saying to them. Then he went down to Nazareth with them and was obedient to them. But his mother treasured all these things in her heart. And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in divine and human favor. Arcana Coelestia #1461: The Lord learned from the Scriptures During his childhood, the Lord wished to take in no other religious knowledge than what was found in the Word of God. And the Word was opened up to him from Jehovah himself, his Father, with whom he would be united and become one. That wish was even stronger because nothing is said in the Word that does not relate at its deepest level to God, and that did not originally come from him. Sermon: After three days they found him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers. (Luke 2:46-47) Our Gospel story this morning, of Jesus as a boy at the Temple, is the only story we have of Jesus' childhood. Even the story of his birth is told only in Mark and Luke. And none of the other Gospels besides Luke have any stories of his childhood at all. We do get a few hints of what he was doing as he grew up. There is a reference in Mark (6:3) to Jesus being a carpenter. In the parallel passage in Matthew (13:55), it is Joseph who is the carpenter. So apparently he learned his adoptive father's trade--which would have been very common for boys of that era. It appears that outwardly, Jesus was for the most part a fairly unremarkable craftsman, living like other boys and men of his time. If this were not so, more stories of Jesus childhood would have survived. Apparently what we have in the two birth stories and this one little vignette of Jesus at the age of twelve are the only stories of the Lord's young life that were remarkable enough to have survived in people's memories to be recorded later. The rest of our stories of Jesus all come from the three intense years of his public ministry, which began when he was about thirty years old (Luke 3:23), and lasted only three years, until he was crucified. What all of this silence about the Lord's upbringing, youth, and early adulthood suggests is that outwardly, Jesus' life was not much different than anyone else's. But the few hints and glimpses we do get tell us that within that unremarkable outward life, there was intense learning and growth going on in Jesus' spirit. The story of Jesus as a boy in the Temple is bracketed by two statements that speak of this inner growth, and its outer effects: And the child grew and became strong; he was filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon him. (Luke 2:40) And at the end of the story: And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in divine and human favor. (Luke 2:52) This inner growth in wisdom and stature is shown in our Gospel reading for today, as well as in the Lord's public ministry, where he drew on all those years of study, learning, enlightenment, and spiritual growth to do his work of teaching, preaching, and healing. Today's story also tells us something else: at the age of twelve, Jesus already had a very clear sense that he had come from God, and that his work in life was to be the work of God. When Mary said to him, "Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you," he reminded her of who his real father was: "Didn't you know that I had to be doing my Father's work?" Even while learning the trade of carpentry, he was learning his true calling. Still, the New Testament gives us only a very slim basis for any conclusions about the inner life of Jesus as he grew up. So we turn once again to the Old Testament, and Swedenborg's interpretation of it, to gain more insight. And when it comes to the Lord's process of learning and growth in knowledge, intelligence, and wisdom, the story is told spiritually in the account of Abram's stay in Egypt. Let's unpack some of the meaning of our Old Testament story. When the story begins, Abram is living in the southern part of the Holy Land. As I mentioned last week, the Holy Land represents the spiritual side of our life. And as I also mentioned, Jesus in his infancy and early childhood was already feeling the promptings of spiritual and divine life within him. He had already felt God calling him, and in following that call, had traveled inwardly from a life focused on the outward things of this world and its society to a life focused on the deeper things of the spirit. But it says, "There was a famine in the land." Physically speaking, famines are a lack of food, usually brought about by a lack of water causing crops to fail. Spiritual famines are a lack of "food" to nourish the mind and heart. In other words, they are a lack of knowledge, understanding, and in some cases, a lack of goodness and love. Here, though, the famine is a famine of the mind. As this famine arrives within the Lord, he has already reached some level of spiritual awareness; he is already living in the Holy Land. And he has been traveling toward the south--toward a state of greater conscious enlightenment. Yet he feels the pinch of famine: he realizes that he does not have the deeper, religious knowledge that he wants and needs to continue on his spiritual path. He is famished for want of inner nourishment: for want of the basic facts of spiritual life. And he hungers for that knowledge so much that he leaves the Holy Land of life focused on spiritual things, and spends time in Egypt, which was the region's granary, and which therefore represents our states of knowledge and learning. We have a similar experience, both as children and at the beginning of our spiritual life. As children, after our earliest years in which we are driven largely by promptings from within and responses to what happens around us, our conscious, thinking mind begins to wake up, and we hunger for knowledge. We want to know about everything around us. We begin asking anyone who will answer, "What's that?" "How does this work?" "Why does it do that?" "Why does so-and-so do such-and-such?" "What does this mean?" As children, our minds are like sponges, soaking up all the knowledge and experience we can get. We go through a similar phase when we take our first conscious steps toward spiritual living. Having decided that we wish to refocus our lives from outward accomplishments and pleasures to inward goals and spiritual growth, we quickly realize how little we know about the worlds of spirit. And why _would_ we know about the inner life? Up to that point we had been pursuing the world and its knowledge. So we feel "a famine not for food, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord" (Amos 8:11). In these early times in our conscious spiritual life we eagerly seek out religious insight and inner knowledge. We read the Bible and other spiritual books; we attend lectures, services, and workshops; we seek out sources of deeper knowledge and insight to feed our hunger. We eagerly soak up every spiritual fact that we can get our hands on. We are almost childlike in our ability to absorb new knowledge about this vast new field of experience. And so we go to our Egypt, our spiritual granary. And if our path is a Christian one, that granary is especially the Word of God--the Old and New Testaments--where God has stored up an infinite supply of spiritual nourishment for us. When we start out as new Christians, we want to learn all about the life and teachings of Jesus. We want to know also the stories and teachings of the Old Testament, which tell us of our spiritual origins and the events and battles of our long spiritual journey toward enlightenment and love. Jesus as a young child felt this famine, this desire for "hearing the words of the Lord," very intensely. And so, amid the usual routines of daily life, he applied himself to the study of the Hebrew Scriptures, where the Lord spoke to the people of his culture, giving them the water and the bread of spiritual life. And by the age of twelve, he had already gained such understanding and wisdom that when he was sitting among the teachers in the temple courts, both listening and asking questions, "everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers." However, it was not necessarily a smooth road getting from "understanding and answers" to true inner wisdom. Once Abram reaches Egypt, we have the strange story of his saying that his wife Sarai was his sister. (And she was, in fact, his half-sister, as we learn in a parallel story in Genesis 20.) Abram, fearful that the Egyptians would kill him for his beautiful (though over sixty-five-year-old!) wife Sarai, has her tell them that she is his sister. And they do, in fact, take her for Pharaoh, while making Abram rich in "sheep and cattle, male and female donkeys, menservants and maidservants, and camels" for her sake. What can this possibly mean? How can this story of deception and subterfuge tell us anything good about our spiritual life, let alone the inner life of the Lord--who was supposed to be the perfect human being? One of the fascinating aspects of the Bible's spiritual meaning is that it often tells a story very different--even opposite--from the literal meaning. Whenever the Bible mention's "God's wrath," for example, Swedenborg interprets it instead as God's love, which human evil is opposed to, and therefore is experienced as wrath by those engaged in evil. However, in the case of Sarai as Abram's wife and his sister, the spiritual meaning is not all that different from the literal, though of course, it is on the level of the mind instead of the level of the body. In the Bible, men usually correspond to truth and understanding, while women correspond to love and motivation. However, when they are specifically presented as husband and wife, the meaning often reverses, and the husband stands for love, while the wife stands for truth and understanding. This reversal is based on a vital fact of Swedenborg's gender map that is often overlooked or passed by in silence. Though outwardly intellect predominates in men, and feeling in women, inwardly this is reversed. Men, who are outwardly truth, are inwardly love. And we find, as we study the lives of the men who were great physical and mental adventurers, that within the physical skills and intellectual achievements, there is a driving desire, a motivating force of love, pushing them along to their great achievements. Meanwhile women, who are outwardly love, are inwardly truth. Outwardly women are much better than men at treading he maze of human relationships, forming close and warm friendships, and focusing on human feelings and the human heart. Yet this comes from an inner insight into the patterns of human and spiritual existence that men rarely attain to. And so, like the ancient Eastern symbol of yin and yang, the love that outwardly characterizes woman is the driving force within men, while the truth that men show outwardly is embedded deep within woman. So here, in the story of Abram and Sarai, we find that Abram represents, in the Lord, the heavenly and divine love he felt deep within himself--the divine love that was his inner self--while Sarai represents the knowledge and understanding that was growing and developing in his conscious, thinking mind. This was the contest taking place within the heart and mind of Jesus as he grew up, and that also takes place within us as we begin our spiritual life: Will all our wonderful new spiritual insight be a matter of mere intellectual knowledge, beautiful to contemplate, and a pleasure to claim as our own--but barren? Will our "Sarai" of spiritual understanding become Pharaoh's wife? In other words, will all the spiritual facts and understanding that we eagerly soak in when we first commit ourselves to a spiritual path become mere knowledge to adorn our minds and give us the pleasure of intelligence, without producing any fruits? Or will our inner "Sarai," our understanding of spiritual reality, remain married to our "Abram": the inner, heavenly love that it properly belongs with? As a young boy, Jesus felt the allure of being a brilliant intellect and highly praised teacher. If he was already astounding the learned teachers of the Law at twelve, what dazzling heights of intellectual achievement could he have attained as a lifelong academic? But that would have diverted him off his path, just as it does for us when we get side-tracked into mere learning. We are not given spiritual insight to be dazzled by its beauty, and by our own brilliance. The Lord satisfies our hunger for understanding so that we may move beyond spiritual barrenness to rich fruitfulness. When we have been enriched by deeper insights, it is time to return to our true calling of showing God's love every day. Amen. ____________________ These sermons are a ministry of the Bridgewater New Jerusalem Church. If you wish to support the church that sponsors them, please send your contribution to: New Jerusalem Church 88 Central Square Bridgewater, MA 02324 To make a donation or monthly pledge via PayPal with your credit card, or from your bank account, please go to: http://www.leewoof.net/ministry/churchdonationform.html Thank you! Church web site: http://www.ForMinistry.com/02324NJC Denominational web site: http://www.swedenborg.org To learn about and discuss Swedenborgian ideas on Beliefnet, go to: http://www.beliefnet.com/boards/boards_main.AllCategories.asp?Category=132 From leewoof@leewoof.net Sun Feb 1 00:40:16 2004 From: leewoof@leewoof.net (Lee Woofenden) Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2004 19:40:16 -0500 Subject: [Sermons] "Water and Spirit," by the Rev. Lee Woofenden Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20040131193922.02a94010@mail.leewoof.net> Water and Spirit By the Rev. Lee Woofenden Bridgewater, Massachusetts, January 25, 2004 Readings: Genesis 13: Abram and Lot separate So Abram went up from Egypt into the South, with his wife and everything he had, and Lot went with him. Abram had become very wealthy in livestock and in silver and gold. From the South he went from place to place until he came to Bethel, to the place between Bethel and Ai where his tent had been earlier and where he had first built an altar. There Abram called on the name of the Lord. Now Lot, who was moving about with Abram, also had flocks and herds and tents. But the land could not support them while they stayed together, for their possessions were so great that they were not able to stay together. And quarrelling arose between Abram's herdsmen and the herdsmen of Lot. The Canaanites and Perizzites were also living in the land at that time. So Abram said to Lot, "Let's not have any quarrelling between you and me, or between your herdsmen and mine, for we are brothers. Is not the whole land before you? Let's part company. If you go to the left, I'll go to the right; if you go to the right, I'll go to the left." Lot looked up and saw that the whole plain of the Jordan was well watered, like the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt, towards Zoar. (This was before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.) So Lot chose for himself the whole plain of the Jordan and set out towards the east. The two men parted company: Abram lived in the land of Canaan, while Lot lived among the cities of the plain and pitched his tents near Sodom. Now the people of Sodom were wicked and were sinning greatly against the Lord. The Lord said to Abram after Lot had parted from him, "Lift up your eyes from where you are and look north and south, east and west. All the land that you see I will give to you and your offspring forever. I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth, so that if anyone could count the dust, then your offspring could be counted. Go, walk through the length and breadth of the land, for I am giving it to you." So Abram moved his tents and went to live near the great trees of Mamre at Hebron, where he built an altar to the Lord. Matthew 3:11, 13-17: The baptism of Jesus "I baptize you with water for repentance. But after me will come one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not fit to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire." . . . Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to be baptized by John. But John tried to deter him, saying, "I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?" Jesus replied, "Let it be so now; it is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness." Then John consented. As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, "This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased." Arcana Coelestia #1586: A well-watered land "The whole plain was well-watered" means that good and true things could grow there. Sermon: "I baptize you with water for repentance. But after me will come one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not fit to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire." (Matthew 3:11) As we follow both the Old Testament story of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the New Testament story of Jesus as an infant, a young boy, and a man, we find that they are parallel stories. They are, in fact, telling the same story. We know from the Lord's conversation with the two disciples on the road to Emmaus after his resurrection that the entire Word as it is found in the Old Testament is speaking, at a deeper level, of the Lord. It says in Luke 24:27: And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself. And a little later in the same chapter, in Luke 24:44, 45, we read: He said to them, "This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms." Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures. Now, if there were no deeper meaning, there would be no need for the Lord to "open their minds." But he did open their minds, and it was to see how the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms spoke of himself. So here we are, along the road to Emmaus, in the new Christian era, having our minds opened to what is written in the Scriptures concerning the Lord. We last saw Abram living in the Holy Land two sermons ago in the first part of Genesis chapter 12. There, God called Abram to leave his family's home and move to the land of Canaan. This, as we have already discovered, symbolizes the Lord's inner journeys--and ours as well--from a stage of being concerned mostly with outward, worldly things to a state of being concerned primarily with deeper, spiritual things. Yet spiritually speaking, even in the land of Canaan there was a tension between the inner and the outer--between the world and heaven. This, you may recall, is symbolized in the text by Abram pitching his tent between Bethel, "the house of God," meaning heaven, and Ai, representing our material-world interests. So as the Lord set out on his spiritual journey in his earliest childhood, he felt the tension between the attractions and pleasures of this world on the one side, and the deeper callings and aspirations toward heaven and God on the other. Last time we spoke of how this struggle within himself led the Lord to move "toward the South"--meaning toward the greater light of learning and understanding. And since that "South" is in Canaan--the Holy Land--it symbolizes learning and understanding on the spiritual side of life. Yet Abram didn't stop there. There was a famine in the land. Feeling the pinch of hunger, Abram took his family to Egypt, where there were stores of food unaffected by the rainfall that determined crops everywhere else. Egypt, the granary of the region, also represented learning and knowledge, but on the level of facts and intellectual curiosity rather than of deeper understanding and wisdom. And just as we need to strengthen our minds with a broad array of knowledge to be well-equipped for both material and spiritual life, so Jesus, as a young boy, needed to gain an inner wealth of knowledge--especially the knowledge of the Scriptures and of the spiritual laws that govern the universe and the world of humanity. As we move from chapter twelve to chapter thirteen in Genesis, we find Abram returning from his stay in Egypt to the South of Canaan. And we are told in Genesis 13:2 that he "had become very wealthy in livestock and in silver and gold." Here we have a picture of the Lord as a boy moving inwardly from a stage of learning largely for the fascination of learning and knowing, represented by Egypt, back to the deeper, spiritual understanding and wisdom that he had first sought when he metaphorically moved from Haran to Canaan. He was now wealthy in spiritual and heavenly truth and goodness, represented by the cattle, silver, and gold that he had acquired in Egypt--meaning in his stage of childhood curiosity, study, and learning. In other words, Jesus, in his boyhood, was moving into a stage that we generally arrive at in our young adulthood at best. For us, our "Egypt" stage goes through our whole time of schooling, which, in this culture, generally stretches from the time we are about five years old up to anywhere from our late teens to our mid to late twenties, depending on how long we stay in school. All of these years are years in which our primary focus is on equipping ourselves with the knowledge we will need in order to get along in this world, and to follow the career or life path that we are interested in. Yet as long as we are in school, the knowledge we are gaining remains largely theoretical. It is a collection of facts that we file away for future use, or simply "drink in" from our curiosity to learn and know as much as we can. We are metaphorically "sojourning in Egypt"; temporarily staying in the "land of learning." There, if we apply ourselves to our studies, we do become "rich" in knowledge and understanding, and in many other good things that will support and sustain us as we move on in life. But mere knowledge is not enough. If we stayed in school all of our lives, not only would it get tedious for most of us, but all the intellectual riches that we were storing up for ourselves would never be put to use. We do need to move out of our youthful phase of focusing primarily on learning, and into an adult phase of putting our knowledge to work in useful service to others. For us, this happens as we move out of school and into the working world. And though we still have a long way to go before our primary focus is on heavenly and spiritual things, the very fact of putting our knowledge to work in useful employments involves moving from the theoretical to the real. We are moving from Egypt to Canaan, from mere learning to the "heaven" of using what we have learned to serve our fellow human beings. In the Gospel stories, we do not have a continuous account of the Lord's childhood and youth. In fact, as I've said before, after the stories of the Lord's birth and infancy, we have only one story of Jesus at the Temple as a twelve-year-old boy, and then nothing more until he began his public ministry at the age of thirty. Yet even in the story of the beginning of his public ministry, we gain some hints as to what was happening within him spiritually during the years of his youth and young adulthood. In the account of the Lord's baptism in the Gospel of Matthew, we read, "I baptize you with water for repentance. But after me will come one who is more powerful than I. . . . He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire." Here, John the Baptist contrasts his water baptism with the Lord's baptism with the Spirit, and with fire. If we focus for now on the contrast between baptism with water and baptism with the spirit, we find that there is a tension precisely parallel to the one that comes into our Old Testament story between Abram and Lot. Because, Swedenborg tells us, the baptism of water involves our outward actions, whereas the baptism of the spirit involves our inner, spiritual self. In Genesis 13, Abram returned to Canaan, together with his nephew Lot, and their families and possessions. But now that they were wealthy and had large flocks, we find that the land where they had formerly lived together in peace and harmony was no longer large enough to support both families. And so "quarreling arose between Abram's herdsmen and the herdsmen of Lot." Spiritually, Lot represents the same thing that "water" does in our New Testament reading. He represents the knowledge of material and worldly things, and our outward, natural-world life in general. Abram is the "spirit" side of things. He represents our deeper aspirations--our sense of God calling us to a higher mission in life. Especially in the Lord's life, both of these had become very wealthy. We know that he learned the trade of carpentry, and that he was able to get along in this world. We also know that he studied and learned the Scriptures very deeply--so much so that at the age of twelve his understanding and his answers amazed the learned men at the Temple, along with everyone else who heard him speak. Equipped with both material and spiritual learning, he returned to the task that God (his divine soul) had called him to. He returned from Egypt to Canaan, wealthy in spiritual cattle, silver, and gold. Yet his lower, material self, represented by Lot, also came back with him, and "also had flocks and herds and tents." And once again, the two families moved to the place between Bethel and Ai where Abram had pitched his tent earlier. Figuratively speaking, once again the Lord was caught between his higher, heavenly calling, represented by Bethel, and the attractions of worldly success, represented by Ai. There was conflict between Abram and Lot--between the things of the spirit and the things of the world. Isn't this what happens in us also as we move out of our long stage of study and learning in school, and into the working world? Even if we were brought up through Sunday School and Church, and were taught the Bible and the principles of spiritual living, we still find the pleasures of this world very attractive. Of course, there are great satisfactions to be had by following a spiritual course. But the world also offers many pleasures and satisfactions. Not only are there the purely bodily pleasures such as eating and physical activity and sexual expression, there are also the pleasures of friends and family, social events, music, movies, parties, and, of course, the pleasure of making money and using it to gain not only houses, cars, clothes, electronics, and other possessions, but also the status, power, and position that this world gives to those who are wealthier than others. This world gives us plenty of things to strive after, no matter what our personality may be. As I have said many times before, there is nothing wrong with enjoying the pleasures of this world. God gave us bodies and minds with many amazing capabilities, with the intention that we would use and enjoy them. However, as in the story of Abram and Lot, tension can arise when our lower self--our physical body and our worldly knowledge and capabilities--comes into tension with our higher, spiritual self. It doesn't take us long in life to realize that both the pleasures and the demands of this world are constant--and they will take up all of our time, energy, and attention if we allow them to. Though our physical and mental capabilities are meant to serve the will of our deeper self, much more often, like Lot's herdsmen quarreling with those of Abram, our experience is that our involvement it work and family, sports and social events tends to push our spiritual self to the side, and deny it any room. And so, in the metaphor of Genesis 13, there is quarreling between our lower self and our higher self. Which will we follow? In the story, Lot took the lowlands, in the southern plains, near Sodom and Gomorrah, which were later destroyed by the Lord for their wickedness. Meanwhile, Abram chose the higher ground, where God gave him a vision of the entire land of Canaan, which would one day belong to his descendants. Jesus did keep one foot in the material world and one in the spiritual world. And we can do the same. As long as we keep things in their proper place and perspective, we can be baptized both with the water of a good outward life and with the spirit of a deeper, spiritual life, which will also give us the "fire" of love to keep our souls warm and moving. Amen. ____________________ These sermons are a ministry of the Bridgewater New Jerusalem Church. If you wish to support the church that sponsors them, please send your contribution to: New Jerusalem Church 88 Central Square Bridgewater, MA 02324 To make a donation or monthly pledge via PayPal with your credit card, or from your bank account, please go to: http://www.leewoof.net/ministry/churchdonationform.html Thank you! Church web site: http://www.ForMinistry.com/02324NJC Denominational web site: http://www.swedenborg.org To learn about and discuss Swedenborgian ideas on Beliefnet, go to: http://www.beliefnet.com/boards/boards_main.AllCategories.asp?Category=132 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From leewoof@leewoof.net Sun Feb 1 20:51:17 2004 From: leewoof@leewoof.net (Lee Woofenden) Date: Sun, 01 Feb 2004 15:51:17 -0500 Subject: [Sermons] "Desert Warfare," by the Rev. Lee Woofenden Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20040201155013.03d40dc0@mail.leewoof.net> Desert Warfare By the Rev. Lee Woofenden Bridgewater, Massachusetts, February 1, 2004 Readings: Genesis 14:1-20: The battle of the nine kings In the days of Amraphel king of Shinar, Arioch king of Ellasar, Kedorlaomer king of Elam, and Tidal king of Goiim, these kings made war with Bera king of Sodom, Birsha king of Gomorrah, Shinab king of Admah, Shemeber king of Zeboiim, and the king of Bela (that is, Zoar). All these joined forces in the Valley of Siddim (that is, the Dead Sea). Twelve years they had served Kedorlaomer, but in the thirteenth year they rebelled. In the fourteenth year Kedorlaomer and the kings who were with him came and subdued the Rephaim in Ashteroth Karnaim, the Zuzim in Ham, the Emim in Shaveh Kiriathaim, and the Horites in the hill country of Seir as far as El Paran on the edge of the desert; then they turned back and came to Enmishpat (that is, Kadesh), and subdued all the country of the Amalekites, and also the Amorites who lived in Hazazoth Tamar. Then the king of Sodom, the king of Gomorrah, the king of Admah, the king of Zeboiim, and the king of Bela (that is, Zoar) went out, and they joined battle in the Valley of Siddim with Kedorlaomer king of Elam, and Tidal king of Goiim, Amraphel king of Shinar, and Arioch king of Ellasar, four kings against five. Now the Valley of Siddim was full of tar pits; and as the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fled, some fell into them, and the rest fled to the hill country. So the enemy took all the goods of Sodom and Gomorrah, and all their provisions, and went their way; they also took Lot, the son of Abram's brother, who lived in Sodom, and his goods, and departed. One who had escaped came and reported this to Abram the Hebrew. Now Abram was living near the great trees of Mamre the Amorite, a brother of Eshcol and Aner, all of whom were allied with Abram. When Abram heard that his relative had been taken captive, he called out the trained men born in his household and went in pursuit as far as Dan. During the night Abram divided his men to attack them and he routed them, pursuing them as far as Hobah, north of Damascus. He recovered all the goods and brought back his relative Lot and his possessions, together with the women and the other people. After Abram returned from defeating Kedorlaomer and the kings allied with him, the king of Sodom came out to meet him in the Valley of Shaveh (that is, the King's Valley). Then Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine. He was priest of God Most High, and he blessed Abram, saying, "Blessed be Abram by God Most High, Creator of heaven and earth. And blessed be God Most High, who delivered your enemies into your hand." Then Abram gave him a tenth of everything. Matthew 4:1-11: Jesus tempted in the desert Then Jesus was led by the spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. After fasting for forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. The tempter came to him and said, "If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread." Jesus answered, "It is written: 'One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.'" Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. "If you are the Son of God," he said, "throw yourself down. For it is written: 'He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.'" Jesus answered him, "It is also written: 'Do not put the Lord your God to the test.'" Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain, showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor, and said to him, "All this I will give you if you bow down and worship me." Jesus replied, "Away from me, Satan! For it is written: 'Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.'" Then the devil left him, and angels came and took care of him. Arcana Coelestia #1659.3: Wars symbolize temptations In the most ancient times many things were represented by wars, which people called "The Wars of Jehovah." These meant nothing but the conflicts fought by the Church and by those who belonged to the Church. In other words, they symbolized their temptations, which are nothing but battles and wars against the evils present within themselves and so against the devil's crew, who stir up evil things and try to destroy the Church and those who belong to the Church. Sermon: Then Jesus was led by the spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. (Matthew 4:1) Among the various terrains in which wars can be fought, the desert is one of the most severe and unforgiving. Intense heat; choking dust; parching dryness; sand in which both humans and machines get bogged down; rocks and boulders strewn everywhere; it is a harsh, unforgiving landscape that gives none of the comforts of more hospitable environments. As the Germans discovered in their North African campaign in World War II, the desert is merciless to those who are unprepared for its rigors--and even those who are prepared must fight the onslaughts of the desert itself while fighting their human enemies. This harsh, arid desert environment is precisely where Jesus fought the first of his temptations recorded in the Gospel story. It was right after he was baptized in the cooling waters of the Jordan that the spirit led him into the desert. We read that he fasted forty days and forty nights--and the number forty, especially when it is mentioned together with fasting, corresponds to temptation. The Children of Israel wandered forty years in the desert before they could enter the Holy Land. And Moses twice fasted forty days and forty nights on Mt. Sinai when receiving the Ten Commandments and all the accompanying laws. After Jesus had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was tempted by the devil. And in the three temptations recounted, we have a summary of all of the Lord's temptations, on all three levels: in his outward actions, in his thoughts, and in his heart: * Turning stones into bread would be taking mere correctness in outward behavior and believing that this made him truly good, kind, loving, and spiritual. His verbal battles with the Pharisees throughout his ministry were often over this very issue. * Throwing himself down from the pinnacle of the temple would be thinking that because he knew the teachings of the church thoroughly (symbolized by the temple and its pinnacle), he did not actually need to live by those teachings, but whatever he did, he would be rescued by God and heaven. * Bowing down and worshiping the devil in return for the kingdoms of the world and their splendor would be allowing his heart to be ruled by a desire for power and glory among humans rather than by a love of doing the saving work that he had come to do. Notice that each time the devil tempted him, even when the devil himself quoted Scripture, Jesus answered with a Scripture from the Law of Moses. In this way he showed us by example that it is by the power of "every word that comes from the mouth of God" that we can resist temptation and gain spiritual life. Turning to our story from Genesis, we find from Swedenborg's interpretation of this very first battle of the Bible--the battle of the nine kings, four against five, in the Valley of Siddim--that the Lord's early temptations were fought more on his outward levels than deep within. These first temptations of the Lord took place, not when he was an adult, but when he was a young boy. In this, too, he was different from every mortal human being. Although we do have struggles as we grow up, we face genuine spiritual temptation only when we have reached adulthood, and are able to make the ultimate choices for ourselves. Yet with that adjustment, the overall process of temptation that we go through parallels what the Lord went through. We first struggle to clean up our outward thoughts and behavior, and then, as we prevail in those temptations, we move deeper and deeper within, eventually facing the darkest corners of our inner hearts and minds, and struggling in agony against our own weakness, doubt, and despair. These agonies of inner temptation are shown in Christ's life right toward the end, in his agonies in the garden of Gethsemane before he was crucified. But here in Genesis the temptations are the earlier ones, before we face the full depth of the evil and falsity within us. These come when we are first "cleaning up our act," so to speak. They come when we are carrying out our first commitment to live in the Lord's way instead of our own way. When we do this, we tend to do so from a sense that we are pretty good and pretty strong for being able to overcome the faults in our behavior and character. We have not yet learned through hard experience that if we fight from our own strength, we will go down in defeat. We have not yet learned that the moment we start facing our more deep-seated evils, we are entirely at their mercy unless we recognize that we can overcome them only from the Lord's power, and not from our own. And so, in our story from Genesis, we find four kings from Babylonia--a foreign power--engaging in a spectacularly successful campaign of subduing various cities and nations in Canaan that the Children of Israel would later face as enemies in its own conquest of the Holy Land. Spiritually, in our early battles the Lord allows us to think that we can conquer our wrong ways of thinking, feeling, and acting by our own strength. The Lord allows us to fight from Babylonian strength--the strength of taking credit for our own actions--because in those early stages of spiritual growth, if we didn't have some sense of pride and self-worth in our battles and our successes, we would probably not engage in them at all. Gaining a sense of self-worth provides a powerful motivational engine that enables us to engage in a successful campaign, as young adults, to move beyond our youthful waywardness, get our lives on track, and begin living in a constructive and responsible way. The popular "self-esteem" movement may not be the ultimate way of spiritual life, but it does give many people their first sense that their lives are worth something, and that they should fight the good fight and make something of themselves. Like the Babylonians, it gets the job done. Though we have been talking about our human struggles, the same dynamic was going on in the Lord's young life, too. Though even as a young boy he did have a sense of his higher calling, he had still not experienced the full depths of his divinity. And so, when he first began to engage in inner battle against his spiritual enemies, he believed that it was his lower, human side that was doing the fighting, not realizing that the power came from his divine soul. In Jesus, too, the Babylonians got the first victory. And yet, when we do get the job done from a sense of "self-esteem," or in theological terminology, from a sense of our own "merit," we can find our lives quickly taken captive by the Babylonians. We read that since Lot was living in Sodom, one of the conquered cities, he and his family and possessions were carried off by the four victorious kings. Lot, as we learned earlier, represents our outward life. And when we have "cleaned up our act" and started living in a more virtuous way than before, we can easily get carried away by the pride in our own accomplishments that is represented by Shinar--or Babylon. This is when Abram comes to Lot's rescue. Abram, in contrast to Lot, represents our inner, spiritual life. When we find ourselves getting carried away by our own pride and sense of superiority over others because we are so much better and more spiritual than they are, we do need to be rescued--from ourselves! That is when Abram, our deeper and more thoughtful side, can step in and remind us that on our own, we will get carried away just when we feel we have gotten the victory. Our deeper, spiritual self reminds us that it is by the Lord's strength, and not our own, that we gain the victory. It is remarkable that Abram, with only 318 trained warriors, gained a great victory over four powerful kings who had just swept through the land conquering everyone in their path. The Lord does not conquer by strength of numbers or by pride. The Lord conquers through our trust in his power. And once we realize that on our own we are actually very weak when facing our enemies, then the Lord can come through our weakness and give us a true, inner victory. This leaves us, not with a sense of pride in ourselves, but with a sense of humble thankfulness to the Lord, who has fought and won the battle for us. Turning again to the Lord's temptation battles, his first sense that he had gained the victory from his outer, human side gave way to a realization that it was the Divine Being within who was doing the fighting, and who gave the victory. This, too, was part of his process of "glorification"--of uniting his human side with his divine side, and becoming completely one on all levels: divine, spiritual, and natural. Each time Jesus fought and overcame the evil tendencies that he had inherited from his mother, and that pressed in on him from the human society around him, he realized more fully the presence of his divine soul dwelling within him. As he overcame and destroyed all the evil and falsity that blocked the inner pathways, his soul was opened up to God the Father, from whom he came. This opening up went deeper and deeper, until by the end of his life on earth, at the time of his resurrection, there was no longer any barrier, nor even the thinnest veil, between his human side and his divine side. He had become completely one with the Father. This is why we know him today as the Lord God Jesus Christ. All of these teachings feed our minds with an understanding of the Lord's temptations and our own. Now let's turn to the heart side of things. Because our battles in the desert are not merely battles of the head; they are struggles over who will own our heart. I would venture to say that each one of us has felt the inner anguish of struggle and temptation within our souls. Some of us may be struggling with issues of destructive outward behaviors. Some of us may be struggling with faulty beliefs and attitudes that cause us to veer off course, saying and doing things that seem to bring pain and brokenness rather than joy and deeper relationship with others. And some of us may be struggling with fundamental issues about whether we really care, whether we are really worth anything, whether we should just give up, give in, and not even bother struggling onward anymore. All of these temptations bring us into our own spiritual desert. No matter where we are on our path of spiritual rebirth, the struggles we face are struggles for our mind, our heart, our soul. And the farther along we go, the more desperate the battles become. We may feel that instead of getting better, we are getting worse. As new parts of ourselves open up, we see new layers of ugliness, muck, and mire within our thoughts and feelings that we had never realized were there. We see more clearly than ever before our own self-centeredness, our disregard of others' needs, our desire for our own pleasure and control, and realize that these have been driving us all along. As these painful self-revelations come to us, we find ourselves sinking into the tar pits of self-pity, hopelessness, weariness, and despair. And we feel that we are all alone. We feel that we are abandoned; that no one understands; that even God is not there for us. We may cry out within our souls, as Jesus did on the cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:46; Psalm 22:1). It is precisely when we have reached the point of despair that we are finally ready for the Lord to come into our lives in a new way. It is precisely when we realize that on our own, by ourselves, we are lost, that the Lord is able to show us that there is a higher power, a divine power, that is more than equal to every struggle we face. It is then that we realize, like the Apostle, that "because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted" (Hebrews 2:18). Jesus has fought every evil; Jesus has struggled against every wrong; Jesus has experienced the deepest and bitterest desert warfare of the soul, and has come out of it victorious. On our own, we would succumb to the blasting heat, the choking dust, the terrible drought, the harsh sand and rocks of inner conflict. But the Lord has fought the desert battle, and has won it. And he will rescue each one of us, if we will turn to him and trust in him. Amen. ____________________ These sermons are a ministry of the Bridgewater New Jerusalem Church. If you wish to support the church that sponsors them, please send your contribution to: New Jerusalem Church 88 Central Square Bridgewater, MA 02324 To make a donation or monthly pledge via PayPal with your credit card, or from your bank account, please go to: http://www.leewoof.net/ministry/churchdonationform.html Thank you! Church web site: http://www.ForMinistry.com/02324NJC Denominational web site: http://www.swedenborg.org To learn about and discuss Swedenborgian ideas on Beliefnet, go to: http://www.beliefnet.com/boards/boards_main.AllCategories.asp?Category=132 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From leewoof@leewoof.net Fri Feb 20 00:19:34 2004 From: leewoof@leewoof.net (Lee Woofenden) Date: Thu, 19 Feb 2004 19:19:34 -0500 Subject: [Sermons] "A Promise and a Mission," by the Rev. Lee Woofenden Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20040219191846.02a62bd8@mail.leewoof.net> A Promise and a Mission By the Rev. Lee Woofenden Bridgewater, Massachusetts, February 15, 2004 Readings: Genesis 15:1-6: God's Promise to Abram After this, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision: "Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward." But Abram said, "O Sovereign Lord, what can you give me since I remain childless, and the one who will inherit my estate is Eliezer of Damascus?" And Abram said, "You have given me no children; so a servant in my household will be my heir." Then the word of the Lord came to him: "This man will not be your heir, but a son coming from your own body will be your heir." He took him outside and said, "Look up at the heavens and count the stars--if indeed you can count them." Then he said to him, "So shall your offspring be." Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness. Luke 4:14-21: A prophecy of a mission Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread through the whole countryside. He taught in their synagogues, and everyone praised him. He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. And he stood up to read. The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written: "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him, and he began by saying to them, "Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing." Arcana Coelestia #1812: The Lord fought and won from love While he lived in the world, the Lord was continually engaged in temptation battles, and was always victorious. "Believing in the Lord" here means that the Lord was filled time after time with the deepest confidence and faith that, because he was fighting for the salvation of the whole human race out of pure love, he could not possibly fail to be victorious. . . . In all his temptation battles, the Lord never fought out of self-love, or for his own sake, but for all people throughout the universe. He did not fight to become the greatest in heaven, for that is contrary to divine love; nor even so that he could become the least. He fought solely so that all others might become something, and be saved. Sermon: "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." (Luke 4:18-19, quoted from Isaiah 61:1-2) In our Gospel story last time we followed Jesus, after he was baptized, into the desert--where he was tempted by the devil. The story of those temptations was also told in the spiritual meaning of the first battle recorded in the Bible, in Genesis 14. Temptation is a battle--and if the temptation is severe, it is a battle in which we are not sure if we are winning or losing. This is how we feel when we are experiencing the spiritual struggles of temptation. And this is how the Lord felt as he came out of his first temptations in his boyhood. In both our Old and New Testament readings today, we begin to see a promise of the fruits of those temptations, and to gain some assurance that the battle will, indeed, be won. Our reading from Genesis offers a promise of rich spiritual fruitfulness, and our New Testament reading speaks of the fulfillment in that promise in the Lord's work of loving and saving each one of us, and all of humanity together. After Abram's successful battle against the four previously victorious kings, and his rescue of his nephew Lot, the Lord came to Abram in a vision. Abram must have known that it was the Lord who gave him the victory over those powerful kings with his small band of three hundred eighteen fighting men. And now the Lord assures Abram that he is indeed with him, both protecting him from his enemies and blessing him with divine riches: "Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward." In Jesus' life, this is a picture of his awareness, after his lonely desert struggles, that God, his divine Father and his own inner soul, has been with him, giving him the strength of spirit to fight and win those battles against the evil, falsity, and despair that sought to drag him down. And it is a picture of his assurance that his struggles would be rewarded--that his efforts would bear human fruit as people heard and heeded his message. We have a similar experience after we have been through a bout of severe inner struggle and temptation. Often when we are in the middle of these struggles, we feel as if we are all alone, fighting the battle from our own strength. When Abram gathered his men and fought against those four kings, there is no mention of God going with him. He simply went and did what he had to do. Often it is not during, but after the battle that we get a sense of the Lord's presence with us, protecting us throughout our struggle--even when we are not aware of that divine protection--and then blessing us with spiritual rewards. For Abram, though, the one "reward" that he wanted most was missing: he had no children, and thus no heir. As he said to the Lord after hearing those comforting, sustaining words in the vision, he had no one but a foreign servant to pass his wealth on to. This made the Lord's earlier promise to make him into a great nation sound rather hollow. How could he become a great nation if he didn't have a single child to carry on his lineage? In the deeper meaning, children represent new love and new insights that are born in us as we grow spiritually. One way of looking at Abram's lament that he is childless is that it represents a time when our life has gone stale. "There is nothing new under the sun," we might say (Ecclesiastes 1:9). Everything we are doing, thinking, feeling seems old, repetitive, and boring. We are just going around in circles. We are stuck in a too-familiar, dreary routine, and our life is not going anywhere. If we aspire to spiritual growth, to becoming a new, more loving, more thoughtful person, we may be feeling that our life will never change; that we will still be the same old thoughtless, self-centered, and, we think, worthless person that we have been all along. This is the devil's voice still ringing in our ears from our time of struggle and temptation. I recall feeling that way back when I was still living on the west coast. I had been doing the same kind of work for a number of years, and though it had been fulfilling and rewarding at first, it was beginning to get old. I didn't see my way forward, and began to imagine myself ten or twenty years later still doing the same old thing. In other words, inwardly, I felt I was "childless"--that there was no new inspiration, no new insight, no new love, no sense of a future in my life. For the Lord, in his early life here on earth, this sense of childlessness did not have to do with his own state of being. As Swedenborg tells us in our reading from Arcana Coelestia, the Lord was not concerned with his own greatness or smallness, his own happiness or sadness. Unlike us, he was motivated by pure love for humanity as a whole, and for every single person that ever had lived, was living, and would live in the future. He had come to save his people--all people; and even in his childhood and early youth, it was this burning love for human beings that moved him. It was also this warm and burning love for all people that gave him his greatest sadness when he looked at the human society all around him, and saw how far people were (and still are!) from the spiritual blessings, rewards, and great joy of living in the way God created us to live. What he saw, instead, was people focused entirely on material rewards and selfish pleasures. He saw people scrabbling after mere food and clothing; people devoting their lives to piling up material wealth that would be gone from their grasp the moment they died. He saw people lording it over others, laying heavy burdens on them, fighting and killing one another from an insane lust for power and glory. In other words, he saw exactly what we still see in the world all around us: people living for this word and its pleasures, heedless of the fact that all our accomplishments here are temporary, and will soon pass when the winds of change and death blow over them. He saw people building up treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and thieves break in and steal, instead of building up treasures in heaven, where no thieves, and not even the ravages of time, can touch them, let alone take them away. He saw people squandering their lives running after temporary pleasures, and forfeiting the eternal joys that could be theirs--ours!--if we would only turn our lives toward God. He saw the misery we were--and are!--building up for ourselves in our blindness. He longed to give us the deeper treasures and rewards that come only from putting God first in our lives, and devoting our days to loving and serving one another. And what he saw not only made him heartsick, but gave him a sinking feeling that his work here on earth would be in vain; that no one would listen; that no one would hear the message and turn to him so that he could heal them of their spiritual blindness and sorrow. Jesus felt the terrible emptiness, the spiritual "childlessness" of thinking that there would be no one to love--no one who would accept his love. He felt that he would have no family, no spiritual children to love and care for, to comfort and share feelings with, to share his guiding, healing wisdom with. As Jesus felt that deep love for all of humanity welling up within him, as he looked around himself and felt compassion, love, and yearning for every person that he saw around him every day, he wondered--and doubted--whether he would ever have the joy of sharing that love with people who would willingly receive it, so that he could bless their lives with deep inner peace and joy. This was the Lord's mission here on earth. This was what he came here to do. In his hometown of Nazareth, he read this mission from the book of Isaiah to the people in the synagogue: The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. And in the deeper meaning our story from Genesis, God gave him the assurance that he would accomplish this mission of love and mercy: He took him outside and said, "Look up at the heavens and count the stars--if indeed you can count them." Then he said to him, "So shall your offspring be." Amid his doubt, Jesus heard the divine voice from within assuring him that not just a few, but millions and billions of people--as many as the stars in the sky--would indeed hear his voice, accept his love, be guided by his wisdom. He received the assurance that his life and his struggles were not in vain. That he would find willing human hearts, and that he would be able to bless them with inner peace and eternal joy. And he said, in our Gospel reading, "Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing." He knew within himself that day that the ancient prophecy of his mission on earth was being fulfilled. Even as he began his ministry, he was preaching to the poor in spirit, giving them the healing knowledge of eternal truth. He was freeing broken human beings from the prison of devoting their lives to money, physical pleasures, and personal power and fame. He was giving spiritual sight to human eyes blinded by the glare of this world. He was bringing forgiveness to those oppressed by their sins and their guilt. He was preaching the good news of the Lord's favor: of the coming of his kingdom; of his own presence among them. And notice that Jesus did not say, "This scripture will be fulfilled." He said "Today this scripture is fulfilled." Jesus had a mission to love and save every human being who was willing to turn to him and be saved. And he was not waiting until some future time to do that saving work. He was doing it right then! Every day! Continually! And he is still fulfilling that Scripture every day in our hearing. He is still coming to people every moment, coming to us every moment, lifting us out of our spiritual and emotional poverty, blindness, and oppression, and proclaiming his grace and favor upon us. He is still blessing us--and others throughout the world, and even throughout all the universe--with kindness, enlightenment, forgiveness, mercy, love, and joy. Each of us was put on this earth to accomplish a mission as well. Ours is not the universal mission of love for all of humanity that Jesus felt within his soul. Ours is far smaller, and limited to our own sphere of activity. For me, when I was living on the west coast, as I made my living through manual labor, arts and crafts, and various odd jobs, I realized that my mission in life was still the same one that I had felt as a young boy. The Lord had put me on this earth to minister to people's spiritual needs, and it was high time I got going on that mission! So I changed course, and redirected my life toward that goal and that mission. And that is why I am standing before you today. Each of you also has a mission in life. Some of you may have a clear sense of what your mission is. Others may still be searching. We are all on a journey, and each of us takes a different path. Each of us has been blessed by the Lord with a different personality, different talents, and different experiences in life. Each of us was created for some special purpose, and each of us must search that out for ourselves--and follow it as we find it. Still, even though we all have different journeys and different destinations in heaven, there is one common destination that we are all moving toward. And if we are willing to move toward that destination, we can add to the Lord's joy, and to the fulfillment of the Lord's mission. We can do this by focusing our lives first on the one thing that really matters, no matter what our particular mission in life may be. That one thing is putting God's love first in our lives. Because our real destination is none other than the Lord our God, who is at the center of the universe, and is reaching out to each one of us, wanting us to become one of the "stars" in the heavenly kingdom. If we respond to that divine voice from within, we will not only be carrying out our own mission in life, but fulfilling the promise that came to Jesus as a young boy. We will be reborn as the Lord's spiritual children, and will add one more star to the heavens. Amen. ____________________ These sermons are a ministry of the Bridgewater New Jerusalem Church. If you wish to support the church that sponsors them, please send your contribution to: New Jerusalem Church 88 Central Square Bridgewater, MA 02324 To make a donation or monthly pledge via PayPal with your credit card, or from your bank account, please go to: http://www.leewoof.net/ministry/churchdonationform.html Thank you! Church web site: http://www.ForMinistry.com/02324NJC Denominational web site: http://www.swedenborg.org To learn about and discuss Swedenborgian ideas on Beliefnet, go to: http://www.beliefnet.com/boards/boards_main.AllCategories.asp?Category=132 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From leewoof@leewoof.net Sun Feb 22 22:52:43 2004 From: leewoof@leewoof.net (Lee Woofenden) Date: Sun, 22 Feb 2004 17:52:43 -0500 Subject: [Sermons] "Darkness at Home," by the Rev. Lee Woofenden Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20040222175121.03577298@mail.leewoof.net> Darkness at Home By the Rev. Lee Woofenden Bridgewater, Massachusetts, February 22, 2004 Readings: Genesis 15:7-21: A Covenant and a Prophecy He also said to him, "I am the Lord, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to take possession of it." But Abram said, "O Sovereign Lord, how can I know that I shall gain possession of it?" So the Lord said to him, "Bring me a heifer, a goat and a ram, each three years old, along with a dove and a young pigeon." Abram brought all these to him, cut them in two and arranged the halves opposite each other; the birds, however, he did not cut in half. Then birds of prey came down on the carcasses, but Abram drove them away. As the sun was setting, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and a thick and dreadful darkness came over him. Then the Lord said to him, "Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and ill-treated four hundred years. But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterwards they will come out with great possessions. You, however, will go to your fathers in peace and be buried at a good old age. In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure." When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking brazier with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces. On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram and said, "To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates--the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites, and Jebusites." Luke 4:22-30: Jesus rejected in his home town All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips. "Isn't this Joseph's son?" they asked. Jesus said to them, "Surely you will quote this proverb to me: 'Physician, heal yourself! Do here in your home town what we have heard that you did in Capernaum.'" "I tell you the truth," he continued, "no prophet is accepted in his home town. I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah's time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed--only Naaman the Syrian." All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. They got up, drove him out of the town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him down the cliff. But he walked right through the crowd and went on his way. Arcana Coelestia #1837: Sunset in the church "The sunset" is the last stage in the Church, which is called "the end," when there is no longer any kindness. The Lord's Church is compared to the times of day, its earliest time being compared to sunrise, or dawn and morning, and its final period to sundown, or evening and the shadows that fall then; for there is indeed a similarity between the two. In the same way, the Church is compared to the seasons of the year, its earliest time being compared to spring when everything is flowering, while the time next to the last is compared to autumn when everything starts to die off. The Church is also compared to metals: its first stage is called golden, its last is said to be of iron and clay. . . . So "the sun was setting" means the time and the stage just before the close, for the sun had not yet gone down. The following verses refer to the state of the Church when the sun had gone down, at which point thick darkness descended, and a smoking brazier and a flaming torch passed between the pieces. Sermon: As the sun was setting, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and a thick and dreadful darkness came over him. (Genesis 15:12) Sometimes even when we're doing the right thing, and going the right direction, things get worse instead of better. And in our most difficult times, that "worse" is not because of bad things happening "out there" in the big bad world, but because of things happening right where we live. Sometimes in the place where we most want light and comfort--our own home--we find darkness and brokenness instead. These are the times when we are most severely tested. And that testing--these temptations--can go on for years. Both Abram and Jesus faced that kind of trial and temptation. Their struggles are pictured in our Bible readings. And as we have been discovering, the outward trials that Abram faced also give us a symbolic, or correspondential picture of the far deeper trials that the Lord faced while he was here on earth. Among the many stories of covenant in the Bible, the story of God's covenant with Abram in Genesis 15 is among the strangest to our modern ears. The famed voodoo rituals of sacrificing chickens have nothing on this story! Animals are cut in half and arranged with their halves opposite each other, and Abram has to drive the birds of prey away from their carcasses. It's all so gruesome! And it reminds us that this was an ancient, and in many ways primitive, culture in which the Lord was appearing. Today, rituals of animal sacrifice are the stuff of tabloids. To Abram, sacrifices were as ordinary as going to church is for us. Yet even for Abram, this particular ritual was not a pleasant one. Slaughtering animals was all in a day's work. But driving away birds of prey was not. And as darkness fell on the land, a nightmarish vision took hold of him: "Abram fell into a deep sleep, and a thick and dreadful darkness came over him," and then "when the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking brazier with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces." What all of this is pointing to is that making a covenant with God, while it offers a tremendous promise for the future, can be a very difficult and even disturbing experience in the present. Remember that Abram was at that time "a stranger in a strange land," to use Moses' autobiographical phrase (Exodus 2:21; 18:3). It would be many generations before the wonderful promises God made to Abram here would come to fruition, and his countless descendants would not only live in this land, but be sovereign there, and consider it their homeland. At this time, it was still "the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites, and Jebusites." And Abram himself was a foreigner living among these settled nations. In Genesis 15, God renews his covenant with Abram, and strengthens his earlier promise to Abram that he would become a great nation, telling him that he will give to his descendants this land, in which he was now a foreigner. Yet God also said that before this happened, his descendants would be enslaved in a foreign country, where they would suffer and be abused. In other words, God made Abram a wonderful promise, but also told him that in order to enjoy that promise, he and his descendants would have to suffer many harsh things for many years. Isn't it often the same for us when we listen to God's voice, and set out in a new direction in life? We would never make a change if it weren't for the promise of a better life on one level or another. But if we knew from the beginning everything we would go through to get there, I suspect most of us would never even start out on the path. We would just stay right where we were, in our flat and uninspired lives. Yet just as God told Abram in general terms the struggles his descendants would go through, so the Lord does give us some inkling, as we move forward on our new spiritual path, of the struggles that lie ahead for us. The moment we start trying to change our lives for the better, we begin to become aware of all the foreign and hostile nations that inhabit our own mind and heart. We become aware of our wrongheaded ideas, our less than noble desires, all the excuses we make up to justify our own self-centeredness and lack of concern for others, and even our own depressive and self-defeating ways of thinking, which hold us down. These things, and more, are represented by all those nations that inhabited the land where Abram was a mere stranger. These wrong ideas, attitudes, and desires are not somewhere "out there," so that we can point the finger and consider the problem solved. No, they are right in our own home; they are right inside of us. And they are often manifested in darkness and coldness right in our own household, among our own family. The warm and loving home that we wish we could come home to is not the home that we actually have. Where there should be a fire in the hearth, there are instead burnt out ashes. This was certainly the experience Jesus had when he went to his home town of Nazareth. Not long before, he had started his public ministry. By the time he headed to his home town, he had already begun to show his power. And at first, things seemed fine for him in Nazareth. As we heard last time, Jesus went to the synagogue and read a prophecy from the prophet Isaiah; and people were hanging on his every word as he said, "Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing" (Luke 4:21). Yet he knew that they were listening raptly not to be taught by him, but to test him and discount him. He was a hometown boy. How good could he be? And reading this attitude with pinpoint precision, Jesus named it--and thus brought their fury down upon himself. "No prophet is accepted in his home town," Jesus told them, and proceeded to illustrate this with stories of two of their own prophets, who gave their healing and sustaining blessings, not to Israelites, where their reception was cool, but to foreigners, who were more receptive to their message. When the people of Nazareth heard this, they proved just how accurate Jesus' reading was of them was. Instead of admitting their own skepticism and the accuracy of his portrayal of it, they drove him out of town, intending to kill him by throwing him off the cliff at the edge of the hill on which the town was built. But in some mysterious way, he managed to thwart their wrath: "he walked right through the crowd and went on his way." I can think of a few times when the ability to walk right through a hostile crowd might have been useful! But think of the experience Jesus was having. He had already begun to achieve some initial success and recognition in his divine calling. And he went to his home town, where he would be among his family and friends and all the familiar faces from his youth. There, instead of getting a warm reception, he encountered faces that were walls of skepticism and disbelief--which quickly changed into murderous fury. And this was right in the synagogue! Even this story of Jesus' own experience of rejection in his home town has its deeper tale to tell. Because for Jesus, who was God himself in the flesh, the whole earth, and all of its nations and peoples, was his "home town." He came to those whom he himself had created, and instead of getting a warm welcome, nearly all of them rejected him. The earth was his, and the fullness thereof, and yet where there should have been light and warmth and love for their Creator, he found blindness, skepticism, coldness, hatred, and a desire to snuff out his presence from among them. And these were the people he had come to save. Not long before, Jesus had experienced the inner comfort and joy, at his baptism, of having the Spirit of God descend on him like a dove, and hearing God's own voice speaking words of love. But immediately afterwards, he had undergone forty days and nights of fasting in the desert. Then at the end of those forty days he was tempted severely by the devil--and came through those temptations victorious. Abram heard the promise from God's own lips, but was still engulfed in a nightmare, and was told that it would be generations before that promise was fulfilled. And on a deeper level, Jesus, having just heard the divine promise, was plunged even more starkly by contrast into the coldness and hostility of those who should have been his family and friends. These, of all people, were the ones that on a personal level, he would most love to reach out to, and find openness. But they, of all people, were the most resistant. And he found that he no longer had a home in Nazareth. He saw the darkness in his home town. So in the end, he walked right through that crowd, and went on his way. At various times in our lives, we are faced with the same darkness at home. It may be a coldness in our literal household, among our family members. And this is one of the most painful ordeals that any of us can face: longing for warmth and comfort at home, and finding only coldness and emptiness. But perhaps the real coldness and emptiness is in our own hearts. Perhaps we have been looking for home in the wrong place. As long as we are here on earth, we are all strangers in a strange land; we are all foreigners sojourning in a place that is not our true home. Perhaps the times of dark emptiness that we experience in our homes and in our own hearts are God's messages to us, beckoning us forward, through struggle, to our true home. Amen. ____________________ These sermons are a ministry of the Bridgewater New Jerusalem Church. If you wish to support the church that sponsors them, please send your contribution to: New Jerusalem Church 88 Central Square Bridgewater, MA 02324 To make a donation or monthly pledge via PayPal with your credit card, or from your bank account, please go to: http://www.leewoof.net/ministry/churchdonationform.html Thank you! Church web site: http://www.ForMinistry.com/02324NJC Denominational web site: http://www.swedenborg.org To learn about and discuss Swedenborgian ideas on Beliefnet, go to: http://www.beliefnet.com/boards/boards_main.AllCategories.asp?Category=132 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From leewoof@leewoof.net Sat Mar 6 21:07:24 2004 From: leewoof@leewoof.net (Lee Woofenden) Date: Sat, 06 Mar 2004 16:07:24 -0500 Subject: [Sermons] A "Critical" Question, by the Rev. Lee Woofenden Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20040306160519.0340d7f0@mail.leewoof.net> A "Critical" Question By the Rev. Lee Woofenden Bridgewater, Massachusetts, February 29, 2004 Readings: Genesis 16: Hagar and Ishmael Now Sarai, Abram's wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian maidservant named Hagar; so she said to Abram, "The Lord has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my maidservant; perhaps I can build a family through her." Abram agreed to what Sarai said. So after Abram had been living in Canaan ten years, Sarai his wife took her Egyptian maidservant Hagar and gave her to her husband to be his wife. He slept with Hagar, and she conceived. When she knew she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress. Then Sarai said to Abram, "You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering. I put my servant in your arms, and now that she knows she is pregnant, she despises me. May the Lord judge between you and me." "Your servant is in your hands," Abram said. "Do with her whatever you think best." Then Sarai mistreated Hagar; so she fled from her. The angel of the Lord found Hagar near a spring in the desert; it was the spring that is beside the road to Shur. And he said, "Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?" "I'm running away from my mistress Sarai," she answered. Then the angel of the Lord told her, "Go back to your mistress and submit to her." The angel added, "I will so increase your descendants that they will be too numerous to count." The angel of the Lord also said to her: "You are now with child and you will have a son. You shall name him Ishmael, for the Lord has heard of your misery. He will be a wild donkey of a man; his hand will be against everyone and everyone's hand against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers." She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her: "You are the God who sees me," for she said, "I have now looked toward the One who sees me." That is why the well was called Beer Lahai Roi; it is still there, between Kadesh and Bered. So Hagar bore Abram a son, and Abram gave the name Ishmael to the son she had borne. Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore him Ishmael. Luke 4:31-37: Jesus drives out an evil spirit Then he went down to Capernaum, a town in Galilee, and on the Sabbath began to teach the people. They were amazed at his teaching, because his message had authority. In the synagogue there was a man possessed by a demon, an unclean spirit. He cried out at the top of his voice, "Ha! What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are: the Holy One of God!" "Be quiet!" Jesus said sternly. "Come out of him!" Then the demon threw the man down before them all and came out without injuring him. All the people were amazed and said to each other, "What is this teaching? With authority and power he gives orders to unclean spirits and they come out!" And the news about him spread throughout the surrounding area. Arcana Coelestia #1949.2: The critical nature of truth alone If our rationality consists in truth alone, even if it is religious truth, and does not at the same time consist in the good of kindness . . . we are quick to find fault, make no allowances, are against all, regard everyone as being in error, are instantly prepared to rebuke, chasten, and punish, show no pity, and do not apply ourselves nor make any effort to redirect people's thinking--for we view everything from the standpoint of truth, and nothing from the standpoint of goodness. In short, we are harsh people. The one thing that can soften our harshness is the good of kindness. Good is the soul of truth, and when goodness draws near and implants itself in truth, the truth becomes so different that it can hardly be recognized. Sermon: The angel of the Lord said to Hagar: "You are now with child and you will have a son. You shall name him Ishmael, for the Lord has heard of your misery. He will be a wild donkey of a man; his hand will be against everyone and everyone's hand against him, and he will live in hostility towards all his brothers." (Genesis 16:11-12) What's a future Patriarch to do? Eighty-five years old, with a wife long past childbearing age, and no children to serve as his heirs! Abram's wife Sarai had an idea: Hagar, her female slave, was still young. She could bear children in Sarai's place. These children would be considered to be Sarai's children, so that Sarai could "build a family through" Hagar. Abram had no better idea, so he consented to his wife's plan, slept with Hagar, and she became pregnant from the union. Now, in those days, a woman's worth was measured largely by the sons she bore for her husband. So as soon as she had conceived and was pregnant, Hagar, though she was a slave, began to look down upon Sarai, her mistress. This was unbearable to Sarai, who already bore the shame of being childless, and could not brook the further shame of being held in contempt by her own slave woman. She promptly blamed Abram for her troubles--even though this whole plan was hers in the first place. But Abram was nobody's fool; he knew better than to argue with his wife and attempt to point out the injustice and irrationality of her accusations against him. Instead, he put the power in her hands to deal with Hagar as she saw fit. This must have been difficult and painful for him to do, since Hagar was now to be the mother of his first child, and he must have felt protective of her for that reason. Yet in yielding discretion to Sarai in this matter, he also wisely avoided driving a wedge between himself and his wife--a wedge that could have torn apart his household. Ironically, Ishmael, the son born of his union with Hagar, turned out to be of a very different spirit than the wise and forbearing Abram. His character is described by the angel who spoke to Hagar in the desert after she had fled from the harsh treatment she suffered at the hands of Sarai. Here is how the angel described the character of the son to be born of her: "He will be a wild donkey of a man; his hand will be against everyone and everyone's hand against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers." Abram looked at things from a higher vantage point, and chose to use thoughtfulness and restraint in his dealings with his family. Ishmael, his firstborn son by Hagar, would look at things from a lower "me against the world" attitude, in which he considered himself to be right, and everyone else to be wrong. And so he would "live in hostility toward all his brothers." This provides the key to the spiritual meanings involved in the story of Hagar and Ishmael. It's all about the perspective from which we view things, and the way we use our intellectual and rational capacities in our relationships with others. As I already mentioned, Abram was nobody's fool. He showed himself a shrewd character, able to make pragmatic choices to save his own skin and advance his own interests and position. He could also be a courageous fighter when necessary, as shown in the story of his heroic rescue of his nephew Lot from the armies of the Babylonian kings. Yet he was also able and willing to deal with others in a reasonable, respectful, and mutually beneficial way. We find him having many contacts with the various peoples inhabiting the land in which he lived, and generally getting along with them peaceably. Abram represents a wise love coming from within us. This wise love is also the Lord's presence within us. In the life of the Lord Jesus, Abram is his own inner divine self. Abram was the divine love that carried his life forward, and Sarai was the divine wisdom that guided its course. Ishmael, on the other hand, was a "wild donkey of a man." His mother was Hagar, an Egyptian. And as we have discovered before, Egypt in general represents outward, worldly learning, and looking at things from the perspective of sensory data and the things we learn from experience in the world around us. If Abram is our inner dictate, Hagar, the Egyptian, is what our senses tell us. These are often very different. Our inner dictate tells us that the Lord is everything, that goodness, truth, spirit, and compassion are the most important things. But our senses tell us that personal power, reputation, money, praise, possessions, and pleasure are the most important things. And our worldly nature tells us that we ourselves are the most important thing in this world, and that we see things more clearly and understand things more accurately than anyone else. Not only that, when we think from what our senses tell us, and from "just the facts," or "truth" alone, without the inner compassion and enlightenment that softens us, we become just as Swedenborg describes in our reading from _Arcana Coelestia_: We are quick to find fault, make no allowances, are against all, regard everyone as being in error, are instantly prepared to rebuke, chasten, and punish, show no pity, and do not apply ourselves nor make any effort to redirect people's thinking--for we view everything from the standpoint of truth, and nothing from the standpoint of goodness. In short, we are harsh people. This is the character of Ishmael: a wild donkey of a man who lived in hostility toward all his brothers. I suspect we have all encountered such people--and some of us may have gotten caught up in that sort of attitude ourselves. In fact, as teenagers we humans are famous for thinking we have all the answers, and that everyone else is stupid compared to ourselves. It can be quite remarkable to experience the consummate lawyerly skill of teenagers seeking to justify their own position and portray any other possible way of seeing things as utterly crazy and foolish. And of course, those who think differently than they do must be crazy! But this attitude is in no way confined to teenagers. We adults are also quite capable of being sure that we are right and everyone else is wrong. It is our natural inclination. It is the Ishmael in us--the firstborn fruit of our spirit in an early, immature style of rationality that desires to seek out and discover what is right, but still thinks it can do so based on how things appear outwardly rather than on the Lord's deeper dictates coming from within. This can also manifest itself when we first become religious--when we make our first conscious commitment and effort to change our lives for the better according to the teachings of our church. One of our natural inclinations at that time is to start comparing ourselves to others who have not made the same commitment we have made, and to condemn and criticize them in comparison to ourselves. Psychologically speaking, it is really our own remaining bad attitudes and inclinations that we are condemning; but we don't realize that. We think we're pretty good for having made that commitment to turn over a new leaf, and that everyone else who hasn't done so is distinctly second-class. And so we can become just as Swedenborg and the angel of the Lord describe us in that state: self-righteous, critical and condemnatory towards everyone around us, with our hand against everyone and everyone's hand against us. It is a lonely, "desert" kind of a state to be in--and the desert to which Hagar fled from her mistress was an emotional desert as well as a physical one. The Lord Jesus, as a young boy, felt the pull of the "wild donkey" type of rationality within himself. After all, he, of all people, had a right to be critical of others. He had far deeper insight than any of us into both the true nature of things, and into the true character of the people around him. And he himself had never committed any sin. It would have been easy for him to take the self-righteous, critical "Ishmael" path, blasting away at everyone around him just because he could. And later in his life he did at times draw on the Ishmael in him, when lambasting the scribes and Pharisees for their hypocrisy. Yet he saw far earlier than any of us do that no matter how clear-sighted he was, and no matter how accurately he saw the real character of those around him, without love and compassion, this meant nothing. At times, harsh criticism of others may be necessary when nothing else will get through. But even then, to be truly effective, it must be done from an underlying compassion that hopes for the person to genuinely change from the heart, and to become better and happier as a result. Our New Testament story gives a brief vignette of the approach Jesus took to others. When he saw the man possessed by a demon, he could have taken the course that most of the people and their religious leaders took in those days. He could have assumed that the reason that man was possessed by a demon was that he had sinned, and therefore deserved everything he got. He could have passed on by, turning a cold shoulder to one who was so obviously not deserving of his respect and his healing powers. But that is not what he did. Instead, he had compassion on the man, and confronted the demon who possessed him. His words to the demon were stern, but in his heart was a warm and burning love for the poor soul who, for whatever reason, was in the grip of evil, pain, and sorrow. It was from the power and authority of that deep underlying love that the Lord could command the evil spirit to leave the man, and the spirit had to obey. We face a similar choice in our own dealings with people. Will we yield to the Ishmael impulse to accuse and criticize? Or will we listen to the deeper promptings of love, calling on us to have compassion on others, and do what we can to alleviate their suffering and help them along a path toward goodness? ____________________ These sermons are a ministry of the Bridgewater New Jerusalem Church. If you wish to support the church that sponsors them, please send your contribution to: New Jerusalem Church 88 Central Square Bridgewater, MA 02324 To make a donation or monthly pledge via PayPal with your credit card, or from your bank account, please go to: http://www.leewoof.net/ministry/churchdonationform.html Thank you! Church web site: http://www.ForMinistry.com/02324NJC Denominational web site: http://www.swedenborg.org To learn about and discuss Swedenborgian ideas on Beliefnet, go to: http://www.beliefnet.com/boards/boards_main.AllCategories.asp?Category=132 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From leewoof@leewoof.net Thu Apr 1 18:08:38 2004 From: leewoof@leewoof.net (Lee Woofenden) Date: Thu, 01 Apr 2004 13:08:38 -0500 Subject: [Sermons] "Communing with God," by the Rev. Lee Woofenden Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20040401130751.02f2f088@mail.leewoof.net> Communing with God By the Rev. Lee Woofenden Bridgewater, Massachusetts, March 28, 2004 Readings: Genesis 18:1-15: The Lord appears to Abraham The Lord appeared to Abraham near the oak trees of Mamre while he was sitting at the entrance to his tent in the heat of the day. Abraham looked up and saw three men standing nearby. When he saw them, he hurried from the entrance of his tent to meet them, and bowed low to the ground. He said, "If I have found favor in your eyes, my Lord, do not pass your servant by. Let a little water be brought, and then you may all wash your feet and rest under this tree. Let me get you something to eat, so you can be refreshed and then go on your way--for this is why you have come to your servant." "Very well," they answered, "do as you say." So Abraham hurried into the tent to Sarah. "Quick," he said, "get three seahs of fine flour and knead it, and bake some bread." Then he ran to the herd and selected a choice, tender calf and gave it to a servant, who hurried to prepare it. He then brought some curds and milk, and the calf that had been prepared, and set these before them. While they ate, he stood near them under a tree. "Where is your wife Sarah?" they asked him. "There, in the tent," he said. Then he said, "I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife will have a son." Now Sarah was listening at the entrance to the tent, which was behind him. Abraham and Sarah were already old and well advanced in years, and Sarah was past the age of childbearing. So Sarah laughed to herself as she thought, "After I am worn out and my master is old, will I now have this pleasure?" Then the Lord said to Abraham, "Why did Sarah laugh and say, 'Will I really have a child, now that I am old?' Is anything too hard for the Lord? I will return to you at the appointed time next year, and Sarah will have a son." Sarah was afraid, so she lied and said, "I did not laugh." But he said, "Yes, you did laugh." Mark 1:35-39: Jesus prays in a solitary place Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house, and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed. Simon and his companions went to look for him, and when they found him, they said to him, "Everyone is looking for you!" Jesus replied, "Let us go somewhere else--to the nearby villages--so that I can preach there also. That is why I have come." So he traveled throughout Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and driving out demons. Arcana Coelestia #2165.5: The meaning of bread "Bread" is the Lord; so it dwells within the heavenly things of love that belong to the Lord. The Lord is heavenly reality itself because he is love itself, meaning he is mercy itself. So "bread" also means everything heavenly. In other words, "bread" means all the love and kindness in us, since these come from the Lord. If we have no love and kindness in us, we do not have the Lord in us, and we are not blessed with the kind of goodness and happiness that is symbolized by "bread" in the inner meaning. Arcana Coelestia #2187: The meaning of eating "Eating" means communicating, and also being joined together. This is clear from the Bible. The command in Leviticus 6:16, 17 that Aaron, his sons the Levites, and the people were to eat the consecrated elements of the sacrifices in a holy place meant nothing but communication, joining together, and making it our own. These consecrated things symbolize heavenly and spiritual food. So the commandment refers to making that kind of food our own by eating it. Sermon: He said, "If I have found favor in your eyes, my Lord, do not pass your servant by. Let a little water be brought, and then you may all wash your feet and rest under this tree. Let me get you something to eat, so you can be refreshed and then go on your way--for this is why you have come to your servant." (Genesis 18:3-5) Next Sunday is Palm Sunday. As is our tradition, we will celebrate the Holy Supper as part of our commemoration of the events of Holy Week--especially the Last Supper, which the Lord ate with his disciples just before he was crucified. However, as it turns out in the course of our series on the inner life of Jesus, our reading from Genesis gives us a perfect opportunity to get a jump on things and talk about "communing with God" this week. This will also leave the field open next week to speak of the events surrounding Palm Sunday. If you had a sense of d?j? vu as you listened to our reading for Genesis, it is for a good reason: In chapter seventeen of Genesis, God had already come to Abram (then renamed Abraham) and predicted that his wife Sarai (renamed Sarah) would have a son in her old age. The first time around, it was Abraham who laughed, rather than Sarah, to think that he would have a son at the age of a hundred, and his wife at the age of ninety. And it was from this laughter that Isaac got his name: in Hebrew, "Isaac" means "laughter." Now in chapter eighteen, God appears to Abraham again to deliver the same message, but this time with Sarah listening in. Some Biblical scholars might say that, similar to the two different Creation stories in Genesis chapters one and two, God appeared to Abraham only once, but two different versions of the event were passed down through oral history--and when it came time to write it down, the ancient scribes preserved both versions in the narrative. Others would say that the narrative describes events as they happened, and that if two stories of God appearing to Abraham are told, it is because God delivered the message twice. I am quite content to leave that debate to the Biblical scholars. Whatever may have happened in southern Palestine four thousand years ago, the stories in the Bible are given, not to us not to tell us about ancient family history, but to tell us about the Lord, and about our own spiritual growth and journey. And as we look with a spiritual eye at these two stories, we find that they are not merely repetitious, but that each has its own distinct story to tell--and one builds upon the other. The key is in what happens surrounding God's message about the birth of Isaac. In chapter seventeen, that message is placed in the matrix of God establishing the covenant of circumcision with Abraham, his household, and his descendants. In chapter eighteen, however, the message is delivered in the context of a meal: Abraham receives the Lord in the guise of three visitors, and serves his honored guests a meal. It is during this meal that the Lord, through (as Swedenborg says) three angels filled with the Lord's presence, delivers the message of the miraculous birth of Isaac, while Sarah, the elderly mother-to-be, listens, laughing, in the door of the tent behind them. In short, the first prediction of Isaac's birth is accompanied by circumcision, and the second by a sacred meal. This may ring vague bells for some of you. Let me make those bells ring louder and more distinctly. Circumcision, as I mentioned two weeks ago, was considered a ritual of purification. In fact, it came to represent all the rituals of purification commanded to the Israelites in the Old Testament. In the New Testament is frequently used that way, especially by the Apostle Paul. As Christians, we no longer are required by our religion to practice circumcision. However, the Lord gave us a ritual that we do practice to represent all the rituals of purification commanded in the Old Testament. That ritual is the Sacrament of Baptism. The water of baptism is symbolic of God's truth, which, when we accept it into our lives, cleanses us from the dirt and grime of all our false selfish and materialistic ways of thinking. So in a Christian context, the first announcement of Isaac's birth can be thought of as related to the Sacrament of Baptism: our initiation into a spiritual life. Now the bells should be ringing loud and clear about the second announcement. As the three visitors sat down to the meal that Abraham and Sarah served them, they shared with Abraham and his household the same thing that we share with the Lord each time we celebrate the Holy Supper. Having been ritually cleansed through the covenant of circumcision, Abraham's family was now ready to commune with God around the table of divine love and wisdom, represented in its various aspects by the bread and butter, milk and meat that Abraham set before his guests. It was the same for the Lord Jesus as he moved toward full union with the Divine Being from whom he had come. Jesus, too, had to first go through a process of cleansing, represented by circumcision in the Old Testament, and baptism in the new, before he could experience the sacred meal of inner union with his own divine soul. You see, though Jesus was born sinless and remained sinless, he was not born spotless from an immaculately conceived mother, as held in traditional Catholic doctrine. To the contrary, Jesus was born with all the evil tendencies from his mother that we inherit from our parents. And like us, he had to fight against those evil tendencies and overcome them in order to achieve union with his divine Father. Evil is like filthy waste clogging the arteries through which God's love and wisdom would flow to us. As long as our hearts and minds are filled with selfish, materialistic thoughts and feelings, there is no room for God to squeeze through and fill our lives with heavenly and spiritual thoughts and feelings. We must first clear away the blockages within our own mind and heart. And as we do, the Lord will flow into us more and more strongly. Jesus faced the same obstacles to the Divine presence in him. He, too, had to fight against and overcome all the evil tendencies that he inherited from his human mother, and that pressed in on him both from the human society around him and from the spiritual realm that influenced him--as it influences us--from within. It was only by going through this spiritual "ritual of purification" that the promise of Isaac's birth--of new spiritual birth and growth--could be delivered and brought to fruition in the Lord's life. And so, in the Bible story, the covenant of circumcision had to come before the sacred sharing of food of holy communion with God. And Jesus yearned intensely for that communion with the Divine! In our brief New Testament reading, we find Jesus rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, to pray in a solitary place. He sought out a place where he could be alone with God--away, for a time, from the press of human needs that constantly swirled around him. Even as he went about an active life of preaching, teaching, and healing the people, he longed for an inner connection and union with his own divine soul. And he regularly took solitary time for himself in order to seek out and experience that soul-renewing communion. In Genesis 18, Abraham's eagerness to welcome, honor, and serve his divine guests tells the whole story of the Lord's deep desire for communion with God. We read that Abraham was "near the oak trees of Mamre" when the Lord appeared to him. Being among trees, spiritually, is being among our lofty thoughts--the principles of good living that we have developed through long experience and growth. So the Lord, too, was in a deeply reflective mood when he sought out this communion with God. Abraham was also "sitting at the entrance to his tent"--representing a sense of sacredness, as expressed by the Jewish Tabernacle: a tent built for the worship of God. And so Jesus, too, was feeling a sense of the sacred presence of the Divine. And finally, we are told that this took place "in the heat of the day." Heat, or warmth, represents love. So Jesus was not in a coldly intellectual state of contemplation. Rather, he felt the warm burning of love in his heart. This love prompted him not only to desire union with his own inner divine soul, but also to seek communion with the sea of human beings around him. Notice that in our reading from the Gospel of Mark, as soon as Simon Peter and his companions roused him from his prayer, Jesus immediately expressed a desire to go to the nearby villages where he had not been yet, and to preach there as well. He then "traveled throughout Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and driving out demons." This is a crucial point both in the Lord's life and in our own spiritual life. While we may approach and even touch God with our minds as we sit in prayer and contemplation of the divine nature, we are never truly united with God until our heart is filled with love both for God and for our fellow human beings. We never feel true communion with God until God's love has found a place in our heart--and from that love, we go out into the world to love and serve the people around us. The scholar, the philosopher, the theologian, even the sage, does not commune with God through lofty thoughts. There is no intellectual pathway to union with God. Rather, you and I and all the philosophers, theologians, and sages the world has ever known have the same access to the Lord. And that access comes when we open up our hearts to God's love, and feel the same mercy and compassion for our neighbors here on earth that the Lord feels for each one of us. Yes, just as Abraham saw the three visitors "in the heat of the day," Jesus became aware the Divine presence with him when his heart was filled with love. And notice that there is no mention of those visitors traveling to where Abraham was. It simply says Abraham "looked up and saw three men standing nearby." This is the same thing that happens to us when we spiritually "look up"--when we lift our thoughts above the cares and concerns of this world, and direct our minds toward heaven, and toward God. When we finally look up, we notice that the Lord is standing right there with us. Perhaps those three men had been standing there for months or years, just waiting for Abraham to "look up." Perhaps the Lord is standing right next to each one of us, right now, just waiting for us to lift up our minds, to open our spiritual eyes and notice his presence. Perhaps, once we feel that deep yearning in our heart for communion with the Lord, we will find that he has been there all along, just waiting for us to notice, to welcome him in, and to share a spiritual meal with him. The Lord Jesus desired this communion with God more deeply than any of us ever has or will. Our minds tend to be scattered and divided. We are concerned about so many things here on earth. Just getting along each day, and making sure we have a roof over our heads and food on our tables can sometimes feel like an all-consuming task. And so we fritter away much of our life chasing after material things that will be gone and forgotten almost as soon as we acquire them. Jesus saw more deeply than we do the fleeting and temporary nature of everything here on earth. He saw more clearly than we the deeper and more substantial spiritual realities that will not wither, fade, and disappear, but will last to eternity. And he knew that the deepest and most substantial reality is God himself: the Infinite Divine Love and Wisdom from which everything else in the universe comes. He intensely desired to know that Love and Wisdom; to be that Love and Wisdom. Each one of us can know that Love and Wisdom as well. Each one of us can find that communion with God that is the only true rest and peace of our soul. Each one of us can open our hearts and minds, and share in the sacred meal of God's love and wisdom. Amen. ____________________ These sermons are a ministry of the Bridgewater New Jerusalem Church. If you wish to support the church that sponsors them, please send your contribution to: New Jerusalem Church 88 Central Square Bridgewater, MA 02324 To make a donation or monthly pledge via PayPal with your credit card, or from your bank account, please go to: http://www.leewoof.net/ministry/churchdonationform.html Thank you! Church web site: http://www.ForMinistry.com/02324NJC Denominational web site: http://www.swedenborg.org To learn about and discuss Swedenborgian ideas on Beliefnet, go to: http://www.beliefnet.com/boards/boards_main.AllCategories.asp?Category=132 From leewoof@leewoof.net Tue Apr 6 04:21:46 2004 From: leewoof@leewoof.net (Lee Woofenden) Date: Tue, 06 Apr 2004 00:21:46 -0400 Subject: [Sermons] "The Inner Passion of the Christ, " by the Rev. Lee Woofenden Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20040406002101.02e82b18@mail.leewoof.net> The Inner Passion of the Christ By the Rev. Lee Woofenden Bridgewater, Massachusetts, April 4, 2004 Readings: Isaiah 53: By his wounds we are healed Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by mortals, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom others hide their faces he was despised, and we held him of no account. Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. By oppression and judgment he was taken away. Yet who of his generation considered that he was cut off from the land of the living for the transgression of my people, to whom the blow was due? He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth. Yet it was the Lord's will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though you make his life a guilt offering, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand. After the suffering of his soul, he will see and be satisfied; by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities. Therefore I will give him a portion among the great, and he will divide the spoils with the strong, because he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors. For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors. Mark 15:22-39: The crucifixion of Jesus They brought Jesus to the place called Golgotha (which means The Place of the Skull). Then they offered him wine mixed with myrrh, but he did not take it. And they crucified him. Dividing up his clothes, they cast lots to see what each would get. It was the third hour when they crucified him. The written notice of the charge against him read: THE KING OF THE JEWS. They crucified two robbers with him, one on his right and one on his left. And the scripture was fulfilled which says, "He was counted with the lawless ones" Those who passed by hurled insults at him, shaking their heads and saying, "So! You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, come down from the cross and save yourself!" In the same way the chief priests and the teachers of the law mocked him among themselves. "He saved others," they said, "but he can't save himself! Let this Christ, this King of Israel, come down now from the cross, that we may see and believe." Those crucified with him also heaped insults on him. At the sixth hour darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?"--which means, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" When some of those standing near heard this, they said, "Listen, he's calling Elijah." One man ran, filled a sponge with wine vinegar, put it on a stick, and offered it to Jesus to drink. "Now leave him alone. Let's see if Elijah comes to take him down," he said. With a loud cry, Jesus breathed his last. The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. And when the centurion, who stood there in front of Jesus, heard his cry and saw how he died, he said, "Surely this man was the Son of God!" Arcana Coelestia #4735.9: The Lord's passion The Christian Church of today knows nothing else but that "the blood of the Lamb" means the Lord's passion. For it believes that people are saved solely through the Lord's passion, and that it was to endure this that he was sent into the world. This belief may be enough for simple people who cannot grasp deeper secrets. Yet the Lord's passion was actually the last stage of his temptation, by which he fully glorified his humanity (Luke 24:26; John 12:23, 27, 28; 13:31, 32; 17:1, 4, 5). And "the blood of the Lamb" is the same as the divine truth, or that which is holy flowing from his Divine Human; so it is the same as "the blood of the covenant." Sermon: He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. (Isaiah 53:5) Well, I've finally gone and done it. I finally went to see Mel's Movie: "The Passion of the Christ." I figured that if I was going to do it, I'd better do it before Palm Sunday and Holy Week. I must admit, I have been avoiding this movie. You have probably read the reviews, and some of you may have seen it. Just as the reviews say, it is a relentless bloodbath. It's a very difficult movie to sit through. The scenes focus on the physical suffering. And I think that is why, at the end of the movie, I felt unsatisfied. Yes, it was a portrayal of the brutality that took place in those days. And I don't doubt that there were floggings just as brutal as the one depicted in the movie. Yet it seemed that the main point of the movie was to show the brutality, the suffering, and the physical pain. There were brief flashbacks of Jesus' life and message--and long, drawn-out scenes of physical torture. The whipping scene was certainly the longest and most explicit I have ever seen in any movie. And the scene of Jesus bearing his cross from the city of Jerusalem out to Golgotha seemed to take up about half the movie! It just kept going and going, with Jesus being brutalized the whole way. Yes, it was a very difficult movie to sit through. And it left me unsatisfied. It seemed to focus on the outer suffering--which was, indeed, real--to the neglect of the inner suffering that was taking place within Jesus, and that he struggled with throughout his life. So my theme for this morning is "The Inner Passion of the Christ." This movie was touted beforehand as an accurate portrayal of the Gospel story of Christ's last twelve hours. To some extent, it was. But it did take liberties. And it certainly was an interpretation, just as every other movie about Jesus is an interpretation. In particular, this movie draws on traditional Christian theology, which says that the Lord's suffering was necessary in order to pay the price for our sins. That price had to be paid in order to satisfy the wrath, or the justice, of God the Father. "All we, like sheep, have gone astray" (Isaiah 53:6). And God the Father is angry with us because we have sinned. Or God the Father has a "perfect sense of justice," which must be satisfied. Someone had to pay the price for our sins. And that someone had to be Jesus Christ--God's own Son. In this view, our salvation is in each drop of Christ's blood. And in the movie, there was plenty of it! From the perspective of the movie's director, Christ's blood was the salvation of our souls. So the blood and gore become the focus of the movie. This idea of salvation strikes me as similar to the idea that the police must put someone away for every murder, even if they get the wrong man. Someone has to pay for the life that was taken! Or it is similar to our country's response to the attacks of September 11, 2001. Someone had to pay for it! Even if we were not quite sure who did it, or couldn't quite get at them, we had to punish someone for what was done to us. And the punishment had to be big! It is the same in the traditional Christian view of God the Father's attitude toward Christ's suffering. Someone had suffer for the sins that we humans committed! And if we weak and limited humans couldn't suffer enough to pay the price, then God's Son Jesus would do it for us. From our church's perspective, this view of God's nature is based on an interpretation of the Bible that is comes from physical-mindedness rather than from spiritual understanding. I cannot accept such a view of God. And I presume, since you are here in this church, that you cannot accept it either. Emanuel Swedenborg, the great theologian of our church, utterly rejected this vindictive view of God. One of his most potent expressions of this is in _True Christian Religion_ #132. I would like to read part of it to you. Swedenborg had a flair for the dramatic at times, and I found this passage quite compelling. He introduces the subject by saying: It is a fundamental error on the part of the Christian Church to believe that the passion on the cross was the real act of redemption. That error, together with the erroneous belief in three divine persons existing from eternity, has so corrupted the whole Christian Church that there is not a scrap of spirituality left in it. This is what brought home to me the realization that this movie is all about the physical; it is not about the spiritual at all. A vast number of Christians focus on the physical side of things rather than on the spiritual--which is the true meaning and reality of the crucifixion. Now let's see what Swedenborg has to say about the traditional Christian view of the Atonement and the Passion of Christ. It is good to keep in mind that this was written over two hundred years ago. Some parts of Christianity have moved beyond what he writes here. Other parts of Christianity, though, are still stuck right where he describes them. He says: Is there any subject that does more to fill and pack the books of orthodox theology today, or is taught and driven home more zealously in colleges, and is more often preached and ranted about in pulpits, than the belief that God the Father, in his anger with the human race, not only drove it away from him, but actually placed it under the ban of universal damnation, thus excommunicating it? But because he is gracious, he persuaded or forced his own Son to come down and take upon himself the sentence of damnation, so as to appease his Father's anger--and it is only in this way that he is able to look upon human beings with any favor? They add that this was accomplished by the Son, who, in order to take upon himself the damnation of the human race, allowed himself to be flogged by the Jews, have his face spat upon, and then be crucified as "accursed in the sight of God" (Deuteronomy 21:23). The Father was propitiated when this had been done, and through his love for his Son revoked the damnation--but only for those for whom the Son interceded, so that he became in perpetuity a Mediator with his Father. These and similar phrases ring through our churches today, re-echoing from the walls like the echoes in woodlands, and filling the ears of all listeners. But is there anyone whose rationality is enlightened and made whole by reading the Bible who cannot see that God is mercy and compassion itself, since he is love itself and good itself, and these qualities are his essence? And that it is therefore a contradiction to say that mercy itself or good itself could look upon humans in anger, and pass a sentence of damnation on them, and still remain what he is in his divine essence? Such actions can hardly be attributed to upright people, but rather to evil people; nor to angels of heaven, but rather to spirits from hell. So it is an unspeakable crime to attribute such acts to God. This is Swedenborg's Bible-based perspective on the traditional Christian view of the Atonement. He is saying, in essence: How could God, who is love (1 John 4:8, 16), feel anything but love for the human race? How could God feel wrath toward us, and want us punished? How could God want his own Son Jesus to suffer for our sins, as is taught in traditional Christianity? These are not things that good people feel and do. If we are truly upright, we do not wish evil upon our enemies. Rather, if someone has done wrong to us, we wish that they would reform. We don't desire punishment for those who have hurt us, and we don't feel vindictive toward them. Rather, if we truly have God's love in our heart, we wish for reconciliation; we wish for "atonement," to use the Christian term. So to attribute anger, wrath, and harsh justice to God is a terrible insult upon the nature of the Divine. In our church, we do not believe in the kind of theology that says that the physical suffering of Jesus Christ would satisfy the anger, wrath, and justice of God. We don't believe that. And if we look at the story of the crucifixion, we find that it was not God who punished Jesus. It was the evil people of his day who punished Jesus. It was human beings who punished Jesus. And God, I believe, was standing by in mercy, weeping at what was taking place. For Jesus Christ himself, though the physical pain was certainly terrible to bear, the inner pain was far greater. The inner pain was this: The whole reason that the Lord came to this earth was to reach out to people in love, and to show people the truth. And what he got from most of the people was rejection and insults and murderous hatred toward the truth, goodness, and love that he was bringing to them. That was what he met on this earth. The greatest passion of Christ was not the physical suffering. It was knowing that people were digging their own graves by rejecting the love and the goodness and the truth that the Lord brought to them. It was knowing that people were making a life of hell for themselves, and shutting themselves out of the heaven that the Lord longs to give us. Christ's suffering was not for his own sake. He could take the physical and emotional pain. He knew that he had a connection with his divine Father. And he looked out and felt a terrible pity and compassion for the people. When he came to the city of Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, he wept over it (Luke 19:41). Later, while he was teaching the people in the Temple, he said, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing" (Matthew 23:37). It was out of pure mercy and love that God came to us as Jesus. He came because he wanted to reach out to us. And the passion of the Christ was knowing that so many would reject that love--that so many were rejecting that love, and expressing their rejection through the insults and abuse and torture and death that they heaped upon him. That was the inner passion of the Christ. It was the pain of knowing that so many would choose eternal pain and death over eternal life and joy. Today, the Lord has the same struggle in our world. The Lord has the same struggle with those who would reject the higher way--the way of love and mercy and truth and justice--and would instead grasp for their own pleasure and power. The Lord has the same struggle and passion in our world that he did two thousand years ago. He has the same struggle and the same passion in each one of us as well. Jesus is struggling in every one of us. He is struggling in our own souls to bring us out of our way of selfishness, out of the way of thinking only of our own pleasure, out of our false materialism, and into the true and deep love that he wishes to give us. He is struggling within us to save each one of us, to bring us toward the good. And he is doing this, not for the sake of his own pleasure and glory, but because he loves us, and he wants us to be happy. He wants us to be fulfilled and satisfied. He wants us to have the same joy and love that he feels for us. This is his passion within us today. This is his passion in our world today. It is a passion to save the entire human race. It is a passion to save each one of us. It is a passion to save you. It is a passion to save me. This is the inner passion of Christ. I believe that this is what he was thinking of when he was hanging on the cross. He was not thinking of the physical pain. He was thinking of all those who would come to him because he was lifted up in that way. He had said to his disciples, "When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself" (John 12:32). And we can see in his struggles and his suffering the true nature of God's love for us: that God would come to us from his place of complete bliss at the center of the universe, come to us out here in this cold and dark world, and suffer all those things purely to show us what God's love is truly all about. That was his struggle; that was his mission; that was why he was willing to suffer and die for us. He wanted us to know that he, that God, will do anything for us. God will suffer for us. God will die for us in order to show us what true divine love is. That is the message. That is the passion. That is the powerful and comforting assurance that God gives us today. God is there for us. And there is nothing we can do, there is no insult we can heap upon our Lord, there is no type of abandonment we can commit against our Lord that will cause him to turn away from us. No matter what we may have done, no matter how bad we may think we are, Jesus loves us; God loves us. And God is reaching out to us, asking us to turn toward him, to accept him into our lives, and to live in the love that is Jesus Christ. Amen. ____________________ These sermons are a ministry of the Bridgewater New Jerusalem Church. If you wish to support the church that sponsors them, please send your contribution to: New Jerusalem Church 88 Central Square Bridgewater, MA 02324 To make a donation or monthly pledge via PayPal with your credit card, or from your bank account, please go to: http://www.leewoof.net/ministry/churchdonationform.html Thank you! Church web site: http://www.ForMinistry.com/02324NJC Denominational web site: http://www.swedenborg.org To learn about and discuss Swedenborgian ideas on Beliefnet, go to: http://www.beliefnet.com/boards/boards_main.AllCategories.asp?Category=132 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From leewoof@leewoof.net Tue Apr 6 04:38:30 2004 From: leewoof@leewoof.net (Lee Woofenden) Date: Tue, 06 Apr 2004 00:38:30 -0400 Subject: [Sermons] "A Covenant with God," by the Rev. Lee Woofenden Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20040406003741.03244278@mail.leewoof.net> A Covenant with God By the Rev. Lee Woofenden Bridgewater, Massachusetts, March 14, 2004 Readings: Genesis 17:1-10: God's covenant with Abraham When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to him and said, "I am God Almighty; walk before me and be blameless. I will confirm my covenant between me and you, and will greatly increase your numbers." Abram fell face down, and God said to him, "As for me, this is my covenant with you: You will be the father of many nations. No longer will you be called Abram; your name will be Abraham, for I have made you a father of many nations. I will make you very fruitful; I will make nations of you, and kings will come from you. I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you. The whole land of Canaan, where you are now a foreigner, I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you; and I will be their God." Then God said to Abraham, "As for you, you must keep my covenant, you and your descendants after you for the generations to come. This is my covenant with you and your descendants after you, the covenant you are to keep: Every male among you shall be circumcised." Mark 1:14-20: Jesus calls his first disciples After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. "The time has come," he said. "The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!" As Jesus walked beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. "Come, follow me," Jesus said, "and I will make you fish for people." At once they left their nets and followed him. When he had gone a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John in a boat, preparing their nets. Immediately he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men and followed him. Arcana Coelestia #1990.3: God's human presence with people the Infinite Being, which is Jehovah, could not possibly be manifested to people except through the Human Essence, that is, through the Lord, and so has not been manifested to anyone except the Lord alone. So that he could be present with and be joined to mankind, after mankind had removed itself entirely from the Divine and had immersed itself in foul desires and so in merely bodily and earthly things, he adopted the Human Essence itself by being born. He did so in order that the Infinite Divine could be joined to humanity even though humanity was so remote. Sermon: Then God said to Abraham, "As for you, you must keep my covenant, you and your descendants after you for the generations to come." (Genesis 17:9) One of the things I really love about the Swedenborgian Church's view of the Bible is that it does several wonderful things at once: It harmonizes the Old and New Testaments so that instead of saying different things, they converge on the same thing. It shows us how every story in the Bible is really a story also about the Lord's inner life--what he did inwardly while he was here on earth. And it also shows how the very same stories that are about the Lord's life are also about our inner life, so that the Lord's life becomes the pattern for ours. Today's two stories are a particularly good example of how the Swedenborgian Church's view of the Bible harmonizes the Old and New Testaments. If you look at them outwardly, they seem to be about two entirely different things. One is about God making a covenant of circumcision with Abram, and changing his name to Abraham. The other is about the Lord Jesus beginning to preach, saying, "The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news," and also calling his first disciples. These stories seem to be about two entirely different things. But if we look deeper they are really both about the same thing. They are both about our relationship with God, and what we must do in order to have a good relationship with God. They are also about our relationships with one another, which depend on our relationship with God. To see this more clearly, let's look at the meaning of the word "covenant." A covenant is an agreement. In modern business terms, we would call it a "contract." A business contract is a signed agreement between two parties. One party agrees to do something, and the other party agrees to do something in return. Usually, one party pays the other money in order to have the other provide products or services that the first party wants. For example, when we get a job, we may sign a contract with our employer. The employer offers to pay us a certain amount of money in return for particular work that we will do for the employer. A contract is a binding relationship between two people, or between a person and an organization, or between two organizations. And even though a contract is words on paper, and is usually about money, work, and products, it is really about a relationship between the two parties who sign the contract. When we sign a contract or form a relationship with someone there are criteria that must be met for that contract or relationship to take place. There are some people and organizations that we would sign a contract with, and others that we wouldn't. The same is true of friendships. Whether or not we are aware of it, we have criteria that we use to evaluate people in order to decide whether we think this friendship will work out. One of the criteria is that there must be common interests. If we have nothing in common, what is there to bring us together? If, for example, we like to play golf and they don't, or they are in real estate and we aren't, why would we get together with them? And why would we sign a business contract with someone if there were no common interest? For example, we may want to hire someone to do a certain kind of work, and someone may want to do that work for the money we are paying. That is a common interest. We form relationships and sign contracts with people who have common interests. We also generally sign contracts and make relationships with people who aren't antagonistic to us. If we know that someone is going fight against us, it is unlikely that we will form a relationship with that person. Of course, we might do so anyway for some greater purpose. But generally we don't form relationships with people that we know are hostile toward us. We form relationships and sign contracts with people who will work with us on a reasonable and friendly basis. And finally, we sign contracts with people or institutions that we think we can trust--that we believe will fulfill their side of the deal. If one side or the other does not fulfill the contract, that breaks both the contract and the trust, and it is very unlikely that another contract will be forthcoming. It is the same with relationships. If we form a friendship with someone and build up a certain amount of trust, and then one of us violates that trust, it is very difficult to rebuild that relationship. Trust is an essential part of any relationship. To sum up: We form relationships with people who have common interests. We form relationships with people who aren't antagonistic to us--or to put it in a positive way, with people who some level of care and thoughtfulness for us. And we form relationships with people whom we feel we can trust to hold up their side of the relationship. When a covenant relationship is fulfilled, everyone wins. Everyone is richer in one way or another. In business contracts, the ones paying the money get valuable goods or services that they want. The ones providing the goods or services get paid money for them--and ideally, they also get to do satisfying and meaningful work. Everyone gains from a contract that is fulfilled. It is the same with a relationship: everyone involved gains from the relationship. Everyone becomes spiritually and emotionally, if not financially, richer from it. Now we can see how our two Bible stories are talking about the same thing. They are both about covenant: about God's relationship with us, and our relationship with God. In Genesis 17, God's side of the covenant is a promise to give Abram and his descendants the land of Canaan. Abram's side is that all the males in his clan, and their descendants, will be circumcised. This seems like an odd arrangement. Yet the underlying meaning of their agreeing to be circumcised was a willingness to turn their lives over to God, and follow his commandments. In other places, God says that Abram and his clan must follow God's laws as part of the covenant; but spiritually speaking, it is the same thing. In our New Testament reading, the Lord is also making a covenant with the disciples. "Disciple" means "learner" or "student." In the story, the Lord calls certain people to be his disciples, and says, in essence, "I will be your master and friend; in return, you must leave your former occupations and follow me." He says to Andrew and Peter, to James and John: "Leave your fishing and your nets, follow me, and I will make you fish for people." If they follow him, he will give them a new task, a new mission in life. This is a relationship. If we look at it this way, these two stories from the Old and New Testaments are about one and the same thing. They are about God's relationship with us: what God will do for us, and what we must do for God in return. God is promising us the land of Canaan, and he is promising us a relationship with himself. These two are the same! Spiritually speaking, Canaan is heaven--and heaven is relationship. It is loving relationship with the Lord, and loving relationship with other angels in the heavenly community. Heaven is all about community and relationship, both with one another and with God. God gives us this promise. He tells us: If you will follow me (that's our side of the covenant), I will give you peace and joy in relationship and community. I will give you a fulfilling and happy life in friendship with others. I will also give you a sense of mission in life. You will know why you are here; you will know what you love to do; and you will be able to do it, and fulfill your deepest desires. God requires something of us in this covenantal relationship. It is expressed in the Old Testament by circumcision. In the New Testament, it is expressed in the words preached by the Lord: "Repent, and believe the good news." Circumcision was considered by the ancient Hebrews to be a ritual of cleansing. So in commanding circumcision, God was commanding them to cleanse themselves. God gave it as a physical ritual to represent the spiritual cleansing that we must do in our lives. Spiritually, we must cleanse ourselves by putting away the wrong that is in us. To use the New Testament term, we must repent. Circumcision is a physical ritual that symbolizes our repentance: our willingness to give up our old bad habits and bad feelings, our wrong ways of thinking, and our faulty self-justifications. We must give up these unclean parts of ourselves, just as in circumcision males gave up a part of their bodies that was considered ritually unclean in those ancient times. Circumcision in the Old Testament is expressed by repentance in the New Testament. The two mean the same thing. Now let's look at God's covenant with us. Consider the money in a contract. God generally doesn't give us money--at least, not directly. But God does give us spiritual currency. In Bible times, gold was the primary currency; and gold is a symbol of love. So God pays us in love: God's love and love for one another. This is the promise God gives us: God will give us love, and along with it understanding of the issues that we struggle with. And God requires something of us if we are to receive that spiritual currency. God requires that we use his love to love and serve one another. This also means using the love and understanding that God gives us to root out everything that blocks us from treating others well and serving them out of love. In other words, we must repent, and be spiritually circumcised. This is our part of the covenant that God wants to make with us. When we make this covenant with God, we not only build our relationship with God, but we also improve our relationships with one another. Only when we follow God's way of love can we have truly loving and healthy relationships with one another. And God promises this not only to "Abraham"--to us individually; he also promises it to all of Abraham's "descendants." Who are our spiritual descendants? We can think of them as all the people we benefit when we feel God's love, and commit ourselves the way of truth, justice, and service. We then radiate God's love and truth out from the center within us. There is tremendous fruitfulness and outreach when we touch others with the love and understanding that God has given us! This is an expanding covenant that extends to all the people we are in contact with, now and in the future. God says to Abraham that it will be an "everlasting covenant." As we have been learning in this series, every story in the Bible is not only about our relationships with God and one another; it is also about the relationships within the Lord himself. Let's look at our reading from the Arcana Coelestia to get some insight into this. It is quite a mind-bending reading, isn't it! What is it talking about? For our part, we know that we have both an outer self and an inner self. We have an outer self with loves and desires of a lower order: we enjoy the pleasures of this world; we like people to praise us; we like to have fun. All of these outward things are part of us--and they will lead us astray if we focus on them too much. If we like eating too much, it can lead us astray. If we like friends too much, and are indiscriminate about it, this can also lead us astray. Yet if we look deeper, we also have an inner self. And in our inner self we have a conscience that guides us to higher ways of living. The Lord had these two sides also. He had an outer self: he had a human mother, who gave him all the weaknesses that we inherit from our parents. He also had an inner self: he had no human father, but a divine Father. He had the Divine itself within him. And just as we go back and forth between our higher and lower natures, sometimes following the lower way and sometimes the higher way, Jesus also went back and forth between his two natures, sometimes being more conscious of his lower nature, and sometimes more conscious of his higher nature. Yet his goal was to completely unite the human and divine natures within him. His goal was to have the Divine fill him from top to bottom--all the way from his innermost soul to his outermost self. He struggled to make a "covenant" between his inner self and his outer self. And by the end of his life, we believe that he had fully united his human side with his divine side. That is still a little theoretical. What does it mean for us? And what about the teaching that unless this had happened, we could not possibly have a relationship with God? Let's look at it from our common experience. How do we relate to one another? Most of us are not skilled in ESP. We have to see and talk to people in order to have a relationship with them. In other words, we relate to one another through our bodies. We approach each other and get to know each other through the things we physically say and do. It is the same in our relationship with God. It's very hard to relate to a theological concept or to a vast, undefined, infinite being. But we can relate to a human being. And God came as Jesus precisely so that we could relate to God as a human being. He became human just like us, and filled his humanity fully with his Divine self. Because he did this, we can now have a relationship with him just as we can have a relationship with our friends. God wants to be our friend. And he has come to us personally, and both taught us and shown us the things we must do in order to be his friend. God is still present with us--still available to us as the divine human being, Jesus Christ. He is present with us as a person that we can relate to, that we can have a friendship with, and yet know that it is our all-loving, all-knowing, all-powerful Creator. Through that human presence of God, we can know who God is, know what he is like, and know how we must arrange our lives in order to have a true, inner, and deep friendship with God. This is what our covenant with God is all about. It is about learning of the Lord and his ways, putting aside everything in us that conflicts with those divine ways, and becoming the Lord's true friends by following the path that he has shown us. That path is the path of loving God, loving one another, and serving our fellow human beings with thoughtfulness and love. Amen. ------------------------------------- Rev. Lee Woofenden, Pastor Bridgewater New Jerusalem Church 88 Central Square Bridgewater, MA 02324 508-946-1767 (home office) 508-697-3068 (church office) 508-946-1757 (fax) Church web site: http://www.ForMinistry.com/02324NJC Lee Woofenden's Sermons: http://www.leewoof.org Denominational site: http://www.swedenborg.org From leewoof@leewoof.net Sun Apr 11 17:09:34 2004 From: leewoof@leewoof.net (Lee Woofenden) Date: Sun, 11 Apr 2004 13:09:34 -0400 Subject: [Sermons] "The Eternal Resurrection of the Christ, " by the Rev. Lee Woofenden Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20040411130904.03ed1a68@mail.leewoof.net> The Eternal Resurrection of the Christ By the Rev. Lee Woofenden Bridgewater, Massachusetts, April 11, 2004 Easter Sunday Readings: Isaiah 60:1-3 Arise! Shine! Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord rises upon you. See, darkness covers the earth and thick darkness is over the peoples; but the Lord rises upon you and his glory appears over you. Nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn. Mark 16:1-20: The resurrection of Jesus When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus' body. Very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, they were on their way to the tomb and they asked each other, "Who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?" But when they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were frightened. "Don't be afraid," he said. "You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter, 'He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.'" Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid. When Jesus rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had driven seven demons. She went and told those who had been with him and who were mourning and weeping. When they heard that Jesus was alive and that she had seen him, they did not believe it. Afterwards Jesus appeared in a different form to two of them while they were walking in the country. These returned and reported it to the rest; but they did not believe them either. Later Jesus appeared to the Eleven as they were eating; he rebuked them for their lack of faith and their stubborn refusal to believe those who had seen him after he had risen. He said to them, "Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. And these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well." After the Lord Jesus had spoken to them, he was taken up into heaven and he sat at the right hand of God. Then the disciples went out and preached everywhere, and the Lord worked with them, and confirmed his word by the signs that accompanied it. Arcana Coelestia #2405.8: The Lord's resurrection in us The Lord's kingdom is used in both a collective and an individual sense, as well as in a specific sense. The kingdom of the Lord comes collectively when any church on earth is re-established on a new basis. It comes individually when we as individuals are spiritually reborn and become new people. The Lord's kingdom is then being established in us, and we are becoming the church. And it happens in specific instances as often as the goodness that flows from love and faith is at work in us--since this is what the Lord's coming means. So in an individual and specific sense, the Lord's resurrection on the third morning embodies the truth that the Lord rises in our minds every day, and even every single moment, when we have been spiritually reborn. Sermon: Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord rises upon you. See, darkness covers the earth and thick darkness is over the peoples; but the Lord rises upon you and his glory appears over you. Nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn. (Isaiah 60:1-3) With all the hoopla surrounding the Lord's Passion these days, you would think that the crucifixion of Jesus were the main event--the climax of the Gospel story. And in the most traditional version of Christian theology, it is. From that perspective, the whole reason Jesus came was to be crucified, and pay the penalty for our sins by his death. Never mind that the Bible never actually says that Jesus paid the penalty for our sins! It says some things that sound that way to some people. But if that is what the Bible means, why doesn't it come right out and say so? But an even more basic problem with this heavy focus on the crucifixion is that the crucifixion and passion of the Christ is not, in fact, the main event and climax of the Gospel story. And whatever the doctrines of various Christian churches may say, the Christian world as a whole recognizes this fact in the way it celebrates the religious festivals of Holy Week. The main event of our celebrations is not Good Friday, but Easter Sunday. It is not the passion, but the resurrection of the Christ that is the climax of the story. The focal point of the Gospels is not the fact that Jesus Christ died, but the fact that he overcame death. If the main reason Christ came were to die, there would be no need for a resurrection. If the primary purpose were to pay for our sins through his suffering and death, the Gospel stories could have ended after the crucifixion, and there would be nothing essential missing. In fact, in the most radical form of traditional Christian theology, even the life and teachings of Jesus become almost like filler to get us to the crucifixion, and to make sure we appreciate Christ's passion and death sufficiently. Though it may be having a bit of a heyday right now, I believe that this old Christian theology, with its focus on Christ's death, is on the wane. A few hundred years ago, Christ's death was the focal point of nearly all of the Christian churches. Today, many are moving away from this fixation on Christ's death, and putting much more emphasis on his life and teachings, and on his resurrection. I believe that in this new Christian era, the Lord is renewing Christianity. The Lord is gradually, yet inexorably pulling the Christian world out of its focus on death, and moving its focus over to life. More and more as the decades go by, the Christian world as a whole is choosing life over death. The Christian Church is moving out of the thick darkness of a materialistic and medieval theology into the glorious dawning of a new spiritual era centered on resurrection, light, and life. And what better time than Easter to celebrate this new life in the church? This is the day when the whole Christian world celebrates the real climax of the Gospel story. This is the day when we celebrate the Lord's victory over death. This is the day when we celebrate the wonderful news brought by the angel at the Lord's tomb: "He is not here; he has risen!" If there had been no resurrection, there would be no Christian Church. If the bare requirements of traditional Christian theology were met, and Jesus died on the cross without any resurrection, the scattered and disheartened Apostles would have gone back to their fishing and tax collecting, and there would have been no Gospels. We would not even know that a man named Jesus Christ ever existed. And there would be no reason for both the scholarly and the religious world to sift through every scrap of testimony and evidence to piece together the events of an obscure Jewish teacher who lived during the ancient Roman occupation of Palestine. If Jesus' death had been the end of the story, it would, indeed, have been the end of the story, because the story never would have been told in the first place. But it was not the end of the story. Nor was it just an add-on to make sure that the story of the crucifixion got told. The resurrection of the Christ is our salvation every bit as much as the passion of the Christ is. We are saved not only through the death of Jesus Christ, but through his entire life, his death, and his resurrection. And it is when the resurrection happens in us that we are truly saved. From our church's perspective, the main source of the error in traditional Christian theology is that it focuses on the outward, material events rather than on their spiritual meaning. As an outward, material event, both the crucifixion and the resurrection of Christ happened nearly two thousand years ago. And though these events did have a major impact on history, that in itself is more a historical than a spiritual issue. What matters most about the Lord's life, death, and resurrection is how it affects each one of us today in our soul and in our life. In a favorite Easter hymn, we sing, "Jesus Christ is risen today." And that is exactly the point. Yes, Jesus Christ was risen two thousand years ago. But the important thing is not what happened two thousand years ago, but what happens for each one of us, and for all of us together, today! The Lord's resurrection is not a one-time event. When the Lord Jesus rose from death, it did not just provide the inspiration for the beginning of the Christian Church; it provided the divine pattern for an endless, eternal cycle of resurrections and rebirths. The resurrection of the Christ is not just something that happened two thousand years ago. It is something that can happen for us every year, every day, and even every moment. Even materially, we human beings are continually being resurrected. Every seven years, the entire substance of our body is replaced, and we have a new physical body. Every year we emerge from the death of winter to the life of spring. Every morning we awake from the unconsciousness of sleep to the conscious wakefulness of a new day. Yet the greatest resurrection is spiritual, not material. The greatest resurrection is not the one that Jesus accomplished in Bible times. Rather, it is the resurrection that he continually accomplishes both in the church as a body and in each person who follows the way of the spirit. The greatest resurrection is not the continual cycle of coming around to a new spring or waking up to another day; it is the inner cycle that happens each time our spirit wakes up from the sleep of spiritual death to the joy of new spiritual life. The resurrection of the Christ moves onward in eternal, spiritual cycles. Those cycles are not outside us, but within us--if we open our hearts to the Lord. Jesus Christ is risen today every time we turn away from the death of our old material desires and habits to a new spiritual life of radiating God's light and love to everyone around us. Out of the darkness and death in our own souls, the Lord rises in glory and splendor, renewing us from the inside out. This is the eternal resurrection, the eternal dawning of the Christ. Amen. ____________________ These sermons are a ministry of the Bridgewater New Jerusalem Church. If you wish to support the church that sponsors them, please send your contribution to: New Jerusalem Church 88 Central Square Bridgewater, MA 02324 To make a donation or monthly pledge via PayPal with your credit card, or from your bank account, please go to: http://www.leewoof.net/ministry/churchdonationform.html Thank you! Church web site: http://www.ForMinistry.com/02324NJC Denominational web site: http://www.swedenborg.org To learn about and discuss Swedenborgian ideas on Beliefnet, go to: http://www.beliefnet.com/boards/boards_main.AllCategories.asp?Category=132 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From leewoof@leewoof.net Thu May 6 01:58:35 2004 From: leewoof@leewoof.net (Lee Woofenden) Date: Wed, 05 May 2004 21:58:35 -0400 Subject: [Sermons] "Love, Mercy, and Evil," By the Rev. Lee Woofenden Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20040505215801.02a17790@mail.leewoof.net> Love, Mercy, and Evil By the Rev. Lee Woofenden Bridgewater, Massachusetts, May 2, 2004 Readings: Genesis 18:16-33: Abraham pleads for Sodom When the men got up to leave, they looked down towards Sodom, and Abraham walked along with them to see them on their way. Then the Lord said, "Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do? Abraham will surely become a great and powerful nation, and all nations on earth will be blessed through him. For I have chosen him, so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just, so that the Lord will bring about for Abraham what he has promised him." Then the Lord said, "The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sin so grievous that I will go down and see if what they have done is as bad as the outcry that has reached me. If not, I will know." The men turned away and went towards Sodom, but Abraham remained standing before the Lord. Then Abraham approached him and said: "Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked? What if there are fifty righteous people in the city? Will you really sweep it away and not spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous people in it? Far be it from you to do such a thing--to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike. Far be it from you! Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?" The Lord said, "If I find fifty righteous people in the city of Sodom, I will spare the whole place for their sake." Then Abraham spoke up again: "Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, though I am nothing but dust and ashes, what if the number of the righteous is five less than fifty? Will you destroy the whole city because of five people?" "If I find forty-five there," he said, "I will not destroy it." Once again he spoke to him, "What if only forty are found there?" He said, "For the sake of forty, I will not do it." Then he said, "May the Lord not be angry, but let me speak. What if only thirty can be found there?" He answered, "I will not do it if I find thirty there." Abraham said, "Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, what if only twenty can be found there?" He said, "For the sake of twenty, I will not destroy it." Then he said, "May the Lord not be angry, but let me speak just once more. What if only ten can be found there?" He answered, "For the sake of ten, I will not destroy it." When the Lord had finished speaking with Abraham, he left, and Abraham returned home. Mark 1:40-45: Jesus heals a man with leprosy A man with leprosy came to him and begged him on his knees, "If you are willing, you can make me clean." Filled with compassion, Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. "I am willing," he said. "Be clean!" Immediately the leprosy left him and he was cured. Jesus sent him away at once with a strong warning: "See that you don't tell this to anyone. But go, show yourself to the priest and offer the sacrifices that Moses commanded for your cleansing, as a testimony to them." Instead he went out and began to talk freely, spreading the news. As a result, Jesus could no longer enter a town openly, but stayed outside in lonely places. Yet the people still came to him from everywhere. Arcana Coelestia #2140: The Lord's grief over humanity Genesis 18:16-33 deals with the Lord's grief and anguish over humanity because it was steeped so much in self-love, and therefore in the desire to dominate others from what is evil and false. In that state the Lord intervened for the human race, and secured salvation for those with whom goodness and truth would be present. Who these are is symbolized by the numbers of the righteous that are recounted. Sermon Then Abraham approached him and said: "Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked? (Genesis 18:23) In the previous sermon in our series on the inner life of the Lord, we followed the story of Abraham having a meal with three visitors, and those three visitors predicting Isaac's birth. That was the second prediction of the birth, and it was made in person by three angels filled with the Lord's presence. The first half of Genesis 18 relates to the Lord's deep sense of connection with the Divine within. In looking at it, we talked about communion: about communing with God. Eating a meal with God is sharing God's love, and feeling a sense of closeness to God in our hearts. This relates both to our human feelings of closeness to the Lord and to a period in Jesus' life when he was feeling close to the Divine within. In our church, we believe that "The Father" is another name for the divine nature within Jesus, or the soul of the Lord from which Jesus came. So the story in the first half of Genesis 18 is about a sense of closeness to the Lord. It speaks of our feeling that God is right there present with us, and that everything is okay because of God's presence. As we head into the second half of Genesis 18, we get a rude awakening from that wonderful reverie with God. Right after the deep connection with God comes the story of Sodom, which continues on through chapter 19. Jesus had been communing with God; had been feeling a sense of closeness in prayer. We can think of the many times Jesus went by himself to pray, away from the crowds, so that he could be alone with his Father--alone with his own inner soul. He had those times of wonderful connection, just as we at times feel very close to the Lord. But when he came back, he found that humanity was just as messed up and evil as it had been when he left. We read the story in the New Testament of his healing the man with leprosy. This was the state of the human race. Humanity as a whole was in a state of spiritual leprosy: a state of spiritual disease. It was a disease of thinking of ourselves first, and others afterwards. Everywhere the Lord looked, he saw this in people. And his heart went out to them. He saw them as sheep without a shepherd; as people who were going toward pain and destruction. And as with the man who had leprosy, he had mercy on them. Having experienced a deep connection with God, he wanted so much to heal, to give spiritual wholeness, to give peace and happiness and joy to the people of this world--to all the people he saw around him, who were chasing so many false things. In our lives, also, after we have an experience of close connection with God comes the realization that in our real life, we are so far away from that connection. So many of the things we do and experience every day are very far away from what we get when we have our times of closeness to the Lord--those times when we go within ourselves and realize that God is with us, and that life has a higher meaning. From these we go out into our everyday relationships, to our struggles with our brothers and sisters and parents and children, and to our problems at work. And it feels like such a let-down from what we experienced when we were by ourselves, communing with God, or when we were at church sharing with others in spiritual community. This is how our life goes. We have a wonderful sense of connection, then right after that, a rude awakening. And this is what happens in Genesis 18. Today I would like to look at how the Lord deals with the fact that we humans are so far away from what he created us for; how he deals with the fact that so much of this world is chasing after money, after power, after all the things that in the end don't matter at all--that so many people are not following the way of the heart, the way of truth. How does the Lord deal with this? In the traditional Christian view that was especially strong in Swedenborg's day, the attitude was that humanity had fallen, and therefore God was angry with humanity. God was wrathful and wanted to punish humanity. And he would punish humanity if something didn't intervene to make it so that this didn't have to happen. In traditional Christian theology, the whole purpose of Jesus' coming was for him to be crucified and take that divine punishment upon himself--to deflect it from us so that we wouldn't have to be subject to the divine wrath and anger. I'm happy to say that in many parts of the Christian Church this old theology is losing its hold. And as far as I'm concerned, the faster it goes, the better! But it was the reigning theology in Swedenborg's day. We can be thankful that there has been so much change and so much waking up in the Christian Church. Yet there remain some parts of the Christian Church that still struggle under that old wrathful theology--the idea that God is angry with the human race and would punish us and send us to eternal hell out of anger. In Swedenborg's day, it was very radical to say that this is not God's character at all. It was very radical to say that the statements in the Bible about God's anger and wrath were an adaptation to our human perspective--since we think of things that way--but that in truth, there is no wrath and no anger in the Lord. The Lord is pure love and pure compassion, and is never angry, never wishes to punish us. This was the message Swedenborg brought. Yet it wasn't the first time this message had been delivered. If we look at our current chapter in Genesis, way back near the beginning of the Bible, we see this mercy of God in the face of human evil jumping off the page! The story of Abraham pleading for Sodom is so touching when we think about what was happening. Here was a city full of people who were bent upon selfishness and evil. And Abraham was standing between them and God saying, "You don't really have to destroy them, do you?" In the spiritual meaning, Abraham represents Jesus' own mercy and compassion for the human race. He represents the human side of Jesus hoping that there does not have to be destruction. So he pleads for the city; he pleads for the people. He says: Maybe there is some good left. Maybe this destruction won't have to happen. As for the destruction itself, we'll deal with that next time. That is a whole different story. Today we will deal with the pleading for Sodom, and what it says about God's attitude not only toward humanity as a whole, but also toward each one of us. In order to do that, we will play what my father likes to call "the Swedenborgian numbers game." There is a whole series of numbers here, and Swedenborg tells us that every single one of them has a special meaning. You'll be happy to know that I am not about to go into all the details of why each number symbolizes what it does. If you really want to know, it is all laid out for you in Swedenborg's Arcana Coelestia where he explains this chapter. I am not going to give you all that background. What I am going to give you is the human progression based on what these numbers mean for us. What does it mean, "fifty, forty-five, forty, thirty, twenty, ten"? It sounds like just a string of numbers. But every one of them has a meaning. Fifty: If we look at the first number, this is when everything is just fine. "Fifty," Swedenborg says, represents people who have goodness in their hearts and truth in their minds. It is people who are "married" within themselves: who love God and the neighbor and have also learned the truth of how to go about serving them. Obviously, God is not going to destroy us if we have love in our hearts, truth in our minds, and we live by these. This is a person who has reached a spiritual plateau: who is living a good life, feeling God within, and expressing it outwardly. And that last one is very important. It is not just a matter of feeling it inside, but of showing it in our lives toward others through service and kindness. This is the person represented by "fifty." And we can all aspire to that "fifty" state. Forty-five: But some of us are perfectionists who never quite reach perfection. That's why forty-five is in there. Forty-five is the number for all you perfectionists out there who think you have to be perfect, or God is not going to accept you. "Forty-five" says that's not true. Notice how Abraham doesn't say, "What if there are forty-five," but "What if five are missing?" In other words, what if there is just a little bit missing? We know that we could be better, and that we are not quite there. Is God going to condemn us for falling short? The Lord says no, "if I find forty-five there, I will not destroy it." The Bible does say, "Be perfect" (Matthew 5:48), and that is our aspiration. But if we are not quite there yet, God says: I recognize that you are trying, and doing your best. Even if you don't make it to perfection, you will find your way into my kingdom. So forty-five is for you perfectionists out there. Forty: On the other hand, forty is for those of you who have gone through difficult struggles. In the Bible, "forty" represents a state of trial and temptation. The Israelites wandered for forty years in the desert. Jesus fasted in the desert for forty days. "Forty" is those who have struggled in life, and have managed, with the Lord's help, to overcome, and move forward in their lives. If we have struggled; if we have worked against the evil within ourselves and against the evil around us, and we are continuing to move forward with the Lord, then the Lord will save us. We will find our way into the heavenly kingdom. Thirty: What about those who have struggled and struggled, and just can't seem to get out the other end? Sometimes life feels like a continual struggle--and we do not feel like we are winning. That is what thirty is for. "Thirty" is when we are still engaged in the struggle. Even if we go out kicking and screaming; even if we go through life and we are still fighting to the bitter end, the Lord says: As long as you are working at it; as long as you are sincerely trying to overcome the wrong within yourself; as long as you are fighting the good fight, that is acceptable to me. Even if you haven't won yet. Even if you are still engaged in the struggle. Twenty and Ten: When we get down to twenty and ten, there's not an awful lot to work with. And these are the numbers where the Lord's great mercy comes out so strongly. Twenty says that even if we haven't really struggled; even if we have coasted along in life, and have not done the hard work of spiritual regeneration--even then, if we have some level of goodness in our heart, if we have some desire to do what is good and right, the Lord will accept us. As long as we are generally headed toward the good, even if we haven't fought very hard, the Lord will accept us. It is like those "eleventh hour laborers" (Matthew 20:1-16) who only did an hour's worth of work, and yet they got the same reward as those who had worked all day. If we are among those have struggled hard and done all the spiritual work, we may be tempted to say, "That's not fair! I fought hard for this! I should get more than they do!" But the Lord's mercy is such that he wants to bless all of us if he possibly can. If he can possibly give us happiness, if he can find anything in us that can bring us into heaven, he wants to bless us. He wants to give us as much happiness as he possibly can, even if there is not much left to work with. Ten: That is what ten is. "Ten" is when there is just a tiny bit of goodness left in us. Ten is when we haven't totally destroyed ourselves. We may be pretty rough around the edges. We may not have lived in a spiritual way at all. Yet within us there is a sense of goodness. There is something left of what people call a "heart of gold"--even if it is deeply buried under our outward life. If there is even a small remnant left of goodness, if we haven't destroyed everything about ourselves that is good, the Lord wants to reach out to that place of goodness inside us. And the Lord will reach out, and give us salvation. These are the numbers all the way from fifty--those who have done the work, engaged in the struggle, and are fully in tune with the Lord--down to those who have just a tiny remnant of goodness left in them. And the Lord is reaching out to all of them; to all of us. This was the feeling Jesus had toward the people around him. In the Gospels we see him interacting with the people, many of whom had ulterior motives. The fellow who had leprosy just wanted to feel better! And Jesus healed him. Then he warned him not tell anyone about it. But the first thing the man did was to go out and tell everyone all about it! Because of this, Jesus was got mobbed, so he had to withdraw from the towns to unpopulated places. Jesus saw all the people out there, and he knew that they didn't understand things very well; that they didn't know where to go; and that they were often engaged in doing evil things. Yet we see him continually reaching out, through gentle words or harsh ones, trying to get through to the place in people that is open to the truth of God. This should also say something to us about how we are to deal with the people around us. The people that we are angry with. The people that our patience wears thin with. The family members that we are struggling with. The co-workers that we have a hard time getting along with. This attitude of the Lord toward human evil should make an impression on us. What are we here for? Are we here to get our own way? Are we here to feel good? To have happiness for ourselves? If that is our purpose, then we are going to find ourselves in conflict with everyone around us. We are going to find ourselves struggling and fighting--and in the end, not winning. The Lord tells us that there is a different way. When we see the evil in the world, we are to look for whatever good we can draw out, and to do our best to work with that. This can be very hard if there is someone who is so exasperating, and makes us so angry. But in this chapter, the Lord tells us to look for the one little bit of good we can find in that person, and focus on it. We are to do our best to bring that out instead of focusing on the evil in the other person. That is the beautiful thing about this story. It always focuses on the question, "What if there is some good that we can find? What if there is something good in the other person that we work with?" This is what the Lord commands us to do. This is the way the Lord treats us; and it is also the way he asks us to treat our neighbors. Think of this story: the fifty, the forty-five, the forty, the thirty, the twenty, even the ten. If we can just find that "ten" in someone else; if we can find that "ten" within ourselves to reach out from, then the Lord will be with us, and he will bless us with life. Amen. ____________________ These sermons are a ministry of the Bridgewater New Jerusalem Church. If you wish to support the church that sponsors them, please send your contribution to: New Jerusalem Church 88 Central Square Bridgewater, MA 02324 To make a donation or monthly pledge via PayPal with your credit card, or from your bank account, please go to: http://www.leewoof.net/ministry/churchdonationform.html Thank you! Church web site: http://www.ForMinistry.com/02324NJC Denominational web site: http://www.swedenborg.org To learn about and discuss Swedenborgian ideas on Beliefnet, go to: http://www.beliefnet.com/boards/boards_main.AllCategories.asp?Category=132 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From leewoof@leewoof.net Sun May 23 01:14:01 2004 From: leewoof@leewoof.net (Lee Woofenden) Date: Sat, 22 May 2004 21:14:01 -0400 Subject: [Sermons] "Sodom and Gomorrah," by the Rev. Lee Woofenden Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20040522211316.0393cbf0@mail.leewoof.net> Sodom and Gomorrah By the Rev. Lee Woofenden Bridgewater, Massachusetts, May 9, 2004 Readings: Genesis 19:4-14, 24-25: Sodom and Gomorrah Before they had gone to bed, all the men from every part of the city of Sodom, both young and old, surrounded the house. They called to Lot, "Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have relations with them." Lot went outside to meet them and shut the door behind him and said, "No, my friends. Don't do this wicked thing. Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a man. Let me bring them out to you, and you can do what you like with them. But don't do anything to these men, for they have come under the protection of my roof." "Get out of our way," they replied. And they said, "This fellow came here as an alien, and now he wants to play the judge! We'll treat you worse than them." They kept bringing pressure on Lot and moved forward to break down the door. But the men inside reached out and pulled Lot back into the house and shut the door. Then they struck the men who were at the door of the house, young and old, with blindness so that they could not find the door. The two men said to Lot, "Do you have anyone else here--sons-in-law, sons or daughters, or anyone else in the city who belongs to you? Get them out of here, because we are going to destroy this place. The outcry to the Lord against its people is so great that he has sent us to destroy it." So Lot went out and spoke to his sons-in-law, who were pledged to marry his daughters. He said, "Hurry and get out of this place, because the Lord is about to destroy the city!" But his sons-in-law thought he was joking. . . . Then the Lord rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah, from the Lord out of the heavens. Thus he overthrew those cities and the entire plain, including all those living in the cities, and also the vegetation in the land. Matthew 8:18-22: The cost of following Jesus When Jesus saw the crowd around him, he gave orders to cross to the other side of the lake. Then a teacher of the law came to him and said, "Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go." Jesus replied, "Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head." Another disciple said to him, "Lord, first let me go and bury my father." But Jesus told him, "Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead." Arcana Coelestia #2220 The meaning of Sodom In the Bible, "Sodom" means every evil that flows from selfish love. In Genesis 19 it seems as if Sodom means the evil of the worst form of adultery. But in the inner meaning, nothing else is meant by it than evil that flows from selfish love. In the Bible, the horrible things that well up out of selfish love are represented by various kinds of adultery. In general, "Sodom" means every evil that flows from selfish love, and "Gomorrah" every falsity that comes from that evil. Sermon: Then the Lord rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah, from the Lord out of the heavens. Thus he overthrew those cities and the entire plain, including all those living in the cities, and also the vegetation in the land. (Genesis 19:24, 25) This is one of the most difficult stories in the Bible. Last week we read a much nicer story--but it was leading up to the destruction of this week. Last week we talked about Abraham pleading for Sodom: how he went through the fifty, the forty-five, the forty, the thirty, the twenty, and the ten, pleading with the Lord to see if there was any way that the city could be saved. We talked about how this speaks of the great mercy of the Lord: that if there is any good and truth left in us that God can reach out to, God will reach out to us, and will bring us out of the evil--out of the destruction. This week we look at the question: What if we utterly reject goodness and truth, and choose evil instead? How does the Lord deal with us when we entirely reject goodness? When we entirely reject God? When there is nothing good and true left in us because we refuse to let it be there, or we corrupt it for our own evil purposes? There is another way of looking and this story--one that is more hopeful for us. The story of Sodom can be seen as God's mercy taking away the evil and falsity within us. It can be seen as God destroying the things in us that we are troubled with and that we struggle against. We all have our struggles. The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is about God taking away that pain and hardship from our lives. Finally, in the inner life of Jesus, it is about the Lord completely rejecting everything evil and false. The Lord rejected every wrong motive and every false thought. In doing this, he delivered us from the clutches of hell. And that is also what the story of Sodom and Gomorrah is about. From the teachings of our church and from looking more carefully at the overall Bible narrative, we find that this is not an entirely "bad" story. It does have something hopeful about it. Next time we will talk about how Lot and his family escaped--which I hope is what all of us will do from the spiritual devastation represented by the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. And that is certainly a message of hope. For today, we ask: What is this story all about, with its tale of the evil things those men were trying to do, and of the destruction that followed as a consequence? Many Biblical literalists and Christian conservatives will say that this chapter is all about homosexuality. Of course, we could read it that way. But if we want to make an argument about homosexuality based on the literal sense of the Bible, there are other passages that are much clearer than this one. Why? Because what those men in Genesis 19 wanted to do would be evil no matter whom it was directed at, whether male or female. Gang rape is a horrible evil regardless of whether it is homosexual or heterosexual. Lot offered his daughters to the men. (He was not a particularly admirable character!) And it would have been just as evil if they had carried out their intentions on Lot's virginal daughters as if they had done it to the men who were visiting Lot. This story is not really about homosexuality. Rather, the prophet Ezekiel tells us what the sin of Sodom was: Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed, and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them, as you have seen. (Ezekiel 16:49-50) This is very close to what Swedenborg says is the real meaning of "Sodom and Gomorrah" in the spiritual sense of the Bible. He says that Sodom represents the evil of selfish love--especially the selfish love of dominating others--and Gomorrah represents all the false ideas that come from this selfishness and desire to dominate. We have all had some experience of this. We have all had the experience of being bent on something that we know in our heart is not right, but that we really want to do. And our brain is ingenious at coming up with excuses and rationalizations for why we should go ahead--and why it would actually be right to do so. Sodom is our desire for self-indulgence and power; Gomorrah is the justifications and rationalizations that we come up with to back up our desires. This is what those cities represent spiritually. So the sin of Sodom was not what it is usually considered to be. Rather, both the Bible and Swedenborg say that the sin of Sodom is arrogance, violence, and blatant disregard for the needs of others. In other words, Sodom represents rank selfishness. That's what this story is all about. Anyone who would treat others in such an atrocious way is obviously involved in rank selfishness leading to a total disregard for the well-being of others. That is the meaning of the story, both literally spiritually. The message is that this kind of rank selfishness, this kind of total disregard for the well-being of others and exclusive focus on our own pleasure and happiness, leads to our own destruction. Now let's talk about who destroyed Sodom. In the Bible story, it says quite clearly that fire and brimstone rained down out of heaven from God. So we are told that God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. (Though we should also notice that the angels speaking with Sodom said that _they_ were going to destroy the city.) I would submit to you that this is the way God presents it to us when we are opposed to God's way. Think about someone who is brought before the judge. This person has robbed or murdered or raped, and is in front of the judge being convicted of the crime he has committed. Who is he going to blame it on? He is not going to blame it on himself. He's going to blame it on the judge, the jury, the victim--on everyone but himself! In the same way, when we have done something evil, we will often blame God for any bad consequences that come from our own sin. The Bible often talks in terms of how we humans perceive things. From our point of view, when we do something wrong and we get in trouble for it, it is usually someone else's fault. It is our parents' fault. It is the judge's fault. Or if we are religious, it is God's fault. God is the one who is causing this punishment to come upon us. Yet if we look at it reasonably and objectively, we know that when something bad comes from our own actions, we are bringing that evil upon ourselves. We are the ones flouting the law. If it's a physical thing, such as an addiction or a damaging lifestyle, we are the one who is bringing the destruction upon ourselves through our actions. So even though it appeared to be from God, what was really bringing destruction on Sodom was the evil of the people. And Swedenborg would tell us that the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah actually came from hell rather than from God; from evil spirits rather than from angels. Then why would God let it be said in the Bible that it was God who destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah? Besides what I already mentioned, another answer to this question is that for many people, if God isn't the one who punishes us for our wrongdoing, then he's no kind of God at all. In the minds of such people, if God is all-powerful, it means God must be able to do both good and evil--to both reward and punish. And God allows people to believe this way so that they will respect God, and follow his commandments. However, in our church we believe that God never brings destruction on anyone, nor is ever angry with anyone. We believe that God is entirely loving. At times he lets us think he is angry with us. But really, he loves us continually and completely--even when we turn away from him. Yet there are times when God cannot prevent the pain and destruction that comes upon us as a result our own actions. If we engage in wrong practices such as deliberately rushing into conflict and war, the result is pain and death. And God does not stop those results from happening, because in doing such things, we reject God's help and protection. That is what today's story is all about. It is about when we are completely unwilling to listen to God. It is about when we humans simply will not to do what God wants us to. It is about when we stubbornly go our own way, no matter what God says or does. This is what is represented by the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah. And God will not prevent the resulting destruction from coming upon us. Of course, he will do the best he can to protect us and soften the blow. But if we are bent on the wrong course, God will allow us to feel the consequences of our actions. The reason for this, under God's Providence, is that God hopes that when we feel the painful consequences of our attitudes and actions, we will realize that our way is wrong, and that we need to change our attitudes and reform our lives. This is an example of what it means when we are putting ourselves in the place of Sodom and Gomorrah. Just to make sure it isn't all theoretical, consider addiction to a substance such as alcohol. There are many helps available. There are ways we can break that habit and get free from the addiction. But if we refuse all that help and continue to drink heavily, we will bring destruction upon ourselves. No one else is doing it to us. No one is forcing the alcohol down our throat. And if we keep at it, we will eventually find ourselves on skid row. If we would ever listen, and get the help we need, then we could escape from that destruction. But God will not stop the consequences of our actions, because if he did, we would never learn the right way; we would never truly change, from the inside out. Earlier, I mentioned that there is another way of seeing the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah--a more hopeful way. So far, we have been speaking from a perspective of identifying ourselves with Sodom. In this perspective, we are the ones who are doing the evil, and we are the ones who are being destroyed as a result. And that is never pleasant! But think about the cities and towns around Sodom and Gomorrah. Think about Lot, who was a foreigner visiting there. The inhabitants of Sodom were violating one of the most important laws of the ancient Near East: the law of hospitality. Guests were considered sacred in those days. You did not do evil things to them. In the context of that culture, for the men of those cities to gather around Lot's house to attack his guests meant that they were utterly evil and depraved. Think about all the cities and towns near Sodom and Gomorrah. They had to deal with all those people who were bent on evil and destruction. It would be like living next to the old Combat Zone in Boston: you would live in constant fear of what might happen to you and your family because of all the criminal activity nearby. If we look at it from the perspective of the people outside Sodom and Gomorrah, the destruction of those cities was not a curse, but a blessing. It meant deliverance from people who might do them harm. I hope this is the perspective each of us will be able to look at it from: not as if we are Sodom, but as if we are the people who are going to be saved from Sodom's influence. In us, that influence is all of our "tendencies toward evil," in theological terms, or what in common language we call our bad habits. Sodom is everything that tends to drag us down. We know what that is in ourselves. We all have things that tend to drag us down; that we struggle against; that we sometimes lose the battle against. These are the Sodom and Gomorrah in us. And God is promising us that if we will hang on, like Lot, and follow the angels out of the city (which we will talk about next time), God will save us from those destructive tendencies in ourselves. He will destroy the evil within us so that we will no longer have to struggle against it, and it will no longer drag us down. This is the hopeful message of the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. This is the promise that God makes to us. If we will do our best to follow God's way, we will eventually overcome. In the words of the old spiritual: "We shall overcome, we shall overcome, we shall overcome some day." This is the promise made by the destruction of Sodom. Some day we will overcome those personal demons that we struggle against. Finally, there is the meaning of the story of Sodom and Gomorrah in the life of Jesus. The Lord never committed any evil or any sin. He was the one sinless person who ever lived on this earth, because he was God's own presence on this earth. But this does not mean that he didn't have his struggles. We have talked in this series about how the Lord had all the tendencies toward evil and selfishness that we do. He got those tendencies from his human mother, and from the culture around him--as well as from evil influences that flowed in from hell. He had to struggle against all the same wrong and evil things that we struggle against--and many more that we can't even conceive of. He struggled very bitterly against them. We read about his temptation in the desert after he was baptized; about his praying in Gethsemane before his crucifixion. We read the accounts of his battles with the corrupt religious authorities of the day, and of his struggles to reach so many people whose lives were focused on their own immediate pleasure and possessions. We can imagine how much agony he must have endured fighting against all of that human evil. It was the same evil that we fight against, except at a far deeper level. Jesus went through all the struggles that we go through. He had to fight against the Sodom and Gomorrah that were attacking him. The story of Sodom and Gomorrah's destruction is the story of how the Lord completely rejected all human evil and falsity. He rejected it and he overcame it. And when he overcame it, he also took to himself the power to overcome our evils. And he will deliver us from our own inner Sodom and Gomorrah if we will let him into our lives by believing in him, loving him, and obeying his commandments to the best of our abilities. Amen. ____________________ These sermons are a ministry of the Bridgewater New Jerusalem Church. If you wish to support the church that sponsors them, please send your contribution to: New Jerusalem Church 88 Central Square Bridgewater, MA 02324 To make a donation or monthly pledge via PayPal with your credit card, or from your bank account, please go to: http://www.leewoof.net/ministry/churchdonationform.html Thank you! Church web site: http://www.ForMinistry.com/02324NJC Denominational web site: http://www.swedenborg.org To learn about and discuss Swedenborgian ideas on Beliefnet, go to: http://www.beliefnet.com/boards/boards_main.AllCategories.asp?Category=132 From leewoof@leewoof.net Sun May 23 18:22:13 2004 From: leewoof@leewoof.net (Lee Woofenden) Date: Sun, 23 May 2004 14:22:13 -0400 Subject: [Sermons] "A Divine Rescue Mission," by the Rev. Lee Woofenden Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20040523142047.03976198@mail.leewoof.net> A Divine Rescue Mission By the Rev. Lee Woofenden Bridgewater, Massachusetts, May 23, 2004 Readings: Genesis 19:1-3, 15-23, 26-29: Lot and his family rescued The two angels arrived at Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gateway of the city. When he saw them, he got up to meet them and bowed down with his face to the ground. "My lords," he said, "please turn aside to your servant's house. You can wash your feet and spend the night and then go on your way early in the morning." "No," they answered, "we will spend the night in the square." But he insisted so strongly that they did go with him and entered his house. He prepared a meal for them, baking bread without yeast, and they ate. . . . With the coming of dawn, the angels urged Lot, saying, "Hurry! Take your wife and your two daughters who are here, or you will be swept away when the city is punished." When he hesitated, the men grasped his hand and the hands of his wife and of his two daughters and led them safely out of the city, for the Lord was merciful to them. As soon as they had brought them out, one of them said, "Flee for your lives! Don't look back, and don't stop anywhere in the plain! Flee to the mountains or you will be swept away!" But Lot said to them, "No, my Lord, please! Your servant has found favor in your eyes, and you have shown great kindness to me in sparing my life. But I can't flee to the mountains; this disaster will overtake me, and I'll die. Look, here is a town near enough to run to, and it is small. Let me flee to it--it is very small, isn't it? Then my life will be spared." He said to him, "Very well, I will grant this request too; I will not overthrow the town you speak of. But flee there quickly, because I cannot do anything until you reach it." (That is why the town was called Zoar.) By the time Lot reached Zoar, the sun had risen over the land. . . . But Lot's wife looked back, and she became a pillar of salt. Early the next morning Abraham got up and returned to the place where he had stood before the Lord. He looked down towards Sodom and Gomorrah, towards all the land of the plain, and he saw dense smoke rising from the land, like smoke from a furnace. So when God destroyed the cities of the plain, he remembered Abraham, and he brought Lot out of the catastrophe that overthrew the cities where Lot had lived. Luke 5:27-32: The calling of Levi (Matthew) After this, Jesus went out and saw a tax collector by the name of Levi sitting at his tax booth. "Follow me," Jesus said to him, and Levi got up, left everything and followed him. Then Levi held a great banquet for Jesus at his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were eating with them. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who belonged to their sect complained to his disciples, "Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?" Jesus answered them, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." Arcana Coelestia #2457: Rescue by the Lord The separation of the good from the evil, and the salvation of the good but condemnation of the evil, was achieved solely through the Lord's Divine Essence united to his Human Essence. Otherwise, all those people represented by Lot would also have perished along with the rest. Sermon: So when God destroyed the cities of the plain, he remembered Abraham, and he brought Lot out of the catastrophe that overthrew the cities where Lot had lived. (Genesis 19:29) Tales of brave rescue from the clutches of evil and from impending disaster have always been a staple of popular storytelling. Traditionally, a damsel in distress is rescued from death or dishonor, as in the ancient myth of Perseus and Andromeda, or in a more complicated plot, Helen of Troy. However, it is not always women who are saved from peril. For example, in the popular 1998 World War II movie _Saving Private Ryan,_ the object of the rescue mission was a male soldier stationed behind enemy lines. In today's story from Genesis 19, it is a whole family that needs rescuing. And the rescuers are not soldiers or heroes with winged feet, but angels acting for the Lord. Two weeks ago we looked at the story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, but we passed over the parts about the rescue of Lot and his wife and two daughters. As I said then, the destruction of those cities is all about the inevitable destruction that we bring upon ourselves when we persist in evil ways of living. It is also about the destruction of evil motives and false ideas within us when we are willing to be led by the Lord. And in the case of the Lord Jesus, it is about his battling and overcoming all the influences of evil and hell that tried to destroy him. In overcoming hell and evil, the Lord took to himself the power to rescue us from the grip of evil, too. That is what today's sections of the story are all about. As objects of rescue go, Lot was less like Andromeda, the innocent damsel in distress condemned to die because of the jealousy of her rivals, and more like Helen of Troy, who willingly engaged in an affair with Paris, the prince of Troy. In other words, Lot was a mixed character, and his predicament was at least partly of his own making. Of course, Lot can't be blamed for the corrupt character of the inhabitants of Sodom. However, he would have been in much better shape if he had not chosen to live among them. This is emblematic of the situation that we humans tend to find ourselves in. We can't be personally blamed for all the materialistic and evil influences of the culture around us. The culture into which we were born was there before we even existed, and it is a lot bigger than we are. Human culture is a stubborn beast; there is not a lot that we as individuals can do to change it. Every once in a while a rare spiritual and moral leader comes along who does spearhead a wave of societal change. But most of us will be quite content if we can simply make things a little better in our own neighborhood. However, truth be told, most of us end out doing less changing of our surrounding culture and more adapting to it. Going against popular trends is difficult and tiring. It is so much easier just to go along to get along. So we find the vast bulk of the population simply going along with whatever the flow of the culture happens to be, whether it is good or bad, moral or immoral. And we have to admit that we ourselves are often in this category. Lot certainly was. It's not that he was a bad man. He did offer hospitality to the two angels, in contrast to the men of the city who wanted to abuse them. At the angels' suggestion, he even pleaded with his intended future sons-in-law to try to save them from the imminent destruction of the city. Lot was not a bad man. Rather, he tended to be apathetic and resistant to the higher impulses. This is symbolized by his settling down in the low-lying city of Sodom, instead of in the highlands where his uncle Abraham settled. It is shown in his willingness to live in such a corrupt city. And it is seen in his character as the story unfolds. In our reading two weeks ago, when the men of the city were surrounding his house and demanding that his guests be brought out to them, Lot took a brave stance against them. Well . . . sort of! What he actually did was attempt to barter with them, offering them his two virgin daughters instead of his guests. I don't know about you, but at that point, I don't think I'd be very happy to have Lot as my father! And as we'll see in another two weeks, the daughters afterward got their own rather twisted comeuppance him. Lot's character of apathy and taking the easy way is also shown in today's reading. First, when the angels urged him to flee the city, he hesitated. He did not want to leave his home and his familiar surroundings, even in the midst of rank abuse and threat of destruction. The angels had to grab him and his family by the hand and practically drag them out of the city. Then, when the angels told him to take his family up into the mountains to get clean away from the destruction of the cities in the plain, Lot not only hesitated, but argued with them, begging them to let him go to a nearby town instead of up into the mountains, which he was somehow convinced would lead to his destruction--contrary to what the angels were telling him. So the angels let him take this halfway measure; and for Lot's sake they spared the little town of Zoar from the destruction raining down all around it. All of this is just a little too familiar if we put ourselves in Lot's shoes. Most of us are not great heroes or charismatic spiritual leaders. We are ordinary folks with the ordinary human feebles and foibles. Instead of standing out from the crowd, we tend to go along with the crowd. When we see something wrong going on around us, we tend to figure that it is someone else's problem, and we just mind our own business. Inevitably, we find ourselves gradually adopting the easy values of the culture around us. Just like Lot. And like Lot, when we hear a call from the Lord to leave behind that rather lazy and accommodating spiritual and moral life, we hesitate. "What's the big deal?" we say to ourselves. "Everyone does it, and they seem to get along okay. It can't be all that bad. Besides, don't I deserve a bit of harmless pleasure?" So we say to ourselves as we continue down a road that will lead us to our own physical, moral, or spiritual destruction. It is much easier just to continue in our old familiar habits. Even when circumstances and the Lord's inner voice do manage to overcome our resistance to change, we stubbornly resist major change. The mountain of true, wholehearted spiritual life looks too forbidding to us. We can't be _that_ good! So we backpedal and make excuses for changing as little as possible while still saving our own skin. We switch one addiction for another. Maybe the liver is almost gone, but the lungs can take it for a while. We stop engaging in open battles with our spouse, but continue a campaign of griping and complaining with a resigned sigh. We realize that sooner or later, the fights will break up our marriage; so we ratchet back to what we figure we can get away with. And so it goes, for so many different areas of life. The Lord calls for major change. But we drive a hard bargain, attempting to save whatever we can of our old habits and lifestyle. We re-enact Lot's story over and over again, with as many variations as there are of individual personalities and personal bad habits. The truly amazing thing is that the Lord still wants to save us! The Lord still wants to rescue us from the pain, sorrow, and destruction that we are bringing upon ourselves through our apathetic ways. This is the wonder of God's love for us. Even when we are trying to get away with as much as we can, the Lord continues to reach out to whatever good impulses are left in us, no matter how small, and use them to pull us to a place of greater spiritual and emotional safety. Those angels did not insist on having their way. They respected Lot's character and freedom, and did as much for him and his family as they could. This is where the Lord Jesus was in the deepest meaning of the story of Lot's rescue. As we read the Gospels--especially the Gospel of John--it becomes crystal clear that the Lord had the highest ideals and aspirations for humankind. He was not one to settle for halfway measures; he sought a total commitment from his followers. He told them, "Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Matthew 5:48). And to the rich young man who was proud both of his own moral perfection and of his worldly wealth, Jesus said, "If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me" (Matthew 19:21). There are no halfway measures here! Yet those high ideals and aspirations were always running up against the reality of the apathy and low moral state of the actual human beings Jesus encountered. He managed to gather only twelve who would follow him closely enough to be his full disciples--and even then, one of them turned out to be a bad apple. What about that vast mass of human beings swirling all around him, most of whom were simply interested in getting along in the world with the least pain and trouble for themselves? The great mercy of the Lord for us fallen, apathetic, compromised human beings is that he reaches out to us exactly where we are, no matter how low our state. This is shown in our New Testament reading, in which Jesus reaches out to sinners and the corrupt wealthy alike, saying, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." This was a mission that required great inner struggle on the Lord's part. His ideal was to lift everyone to the highest state of perfection. But the mercy within him prompted him to engage in a divine rescue mission even to the lowest and least worthy of human beings. Doesn't this mean that he is offering his powerful hand of rescue to each one of us as well? ____________________ These sermons are a ministry of the Bridgewater New Jerusalem Church. If you wish to support the church that sponsors them, please send your contribution to: New Jerusalem Church 88 Central Square Bridgewater, MA 02324 To make a donation or monthly pledge via PayPal with your credit card, or from your bank account, please go to: http://www.leewoof.net/ministry/churchdonationform.html Thank you! Church web site: http://www.ForMinistry.com/02324NJC Denominational web site: http://www.swedenborg.org To learn about and discuss Swedenborgian ideas on Beliefnet, go to: http://www.beliefnet.com/boards/boards_main.AllCategories.asp?Category=132 From leewoof@leewoof.net Wed May 26 15:15:49 2004 From: leewoof@leewoof.net (Lee Woofenden) Date: Wed, 26 May 2004 11:15:49 -0400 Subject: [Sermons] "One Flock and One Shepherd," by the Rev. Lee Woofenden Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20040526110943.0278e008@mail.leewoof.net> Dear Sermon Service subscribers, This is a delayed sermon from March, 2003. It was originally preached from notes and recorded, but was not transcribed until recently. My thanks go to Polly Erickson of the Swedenborg Chapel in Cambridge, who transcribed it. Though the war in Iraq has gone through many changes since then, the sermon seems just as relevant today as it was when originally preached over a year ago. This sermon will also appear in the July 2004 issue of _Our Daily Bread,_ a monthly magazine of sermons, readings, and devotions published by the Swedenborgian Church since 1949. The theme of that issue will be "God of All Nations." If you do not currently subscribe to _Our Daily Bread_ and would like to try it out, please sign up for a free six month trial subscription at: http://www.swedenborg.org/odb/trialsub.cfm Blessings to all, --Rev. Lee Woofenden One Flock and One Shepherd By the Rev. Lee Woofenden Bridgewater, Massachusetts, March 23, 2003 Readings: Ezekiel 34:17-25: One shepherd over them As for you, my flock, this is what the Lord God says: I shall judge between one sheep and another, and between rams and goats. Is it not enough for you to feed in the good pasture? Must you also tread down the rest of your pasture with your feet? When you drink clear water, must you muddy the rest with your feet? And must my sheep eat what you have trodden with your feet, and drink what you have muddied with your feet? Therefore, this is what the Lord God says to them: I myself will judge between the fat sheep and the lean sheep. Because you pushed with flank and shoulder, and butted at all the weak animals with your horns until you scattered them far and wide, I will save my flock, and they shall no longer be ravaged; and I will judge between one sheep and another. I will place over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he will tend them; he will tend them and be their shepherd. I the Lord will be their God, and my servant David will be prince among them. I the Lord have spoken. I will make a covenant of peace with them, and will rid the land of wild beasts, so that they may live in the desert and sleep in the forests in safety. John 10:7-16: One flock and one shepherd Therefore Jesus said again, "I tell you the truth, I am the gate for the sheep. All who ever came before me were thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate; whoever enters through me will kept safe, and will come in and go out, and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. "I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming, and abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. The hired hand runs away because a hired hand cares nothing for the sheep. "I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me--just as the Father knows me and I know the Father--and I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that are not of this sheep fold. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd." Divine Providence #326.9: A heaven of many religions These are the general principles of all religions, through which everyone can be saved. Belief in God and refusal to do evil because it is against God are the two elements that make a religion a religion. If either is lacking, we cannot call it a religion, since believing in God and doing evil are mutually contradictory, as are doing what is good and not believing in God. Neither is possible apart from the other. The Lord has provided that there should be some religion almost everywhere and that everyone who believes in God and does not do evil because it is against God should have a place in heaven. Heaven, seen in its entirety, looks like a single individual, whose life or soul is the Lord. In that heavenly person there are all the components that there are in a physical person, differing the way heavenly things differ from earthly ones. Sermon: I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock and one shepherd. (John 10:16) As we are all painfully aware, the United States is once again at war. If you don't know my views on the war, you are welcome to read my sermon "The Tower of Ego." Since I've already done it in that sermon, I am not going preach about the war today. Instead, I am going to talk about how the Lord sees and governs this world, with all its human differences. We will especially look at some of the general laws by which God governs the world--and which perhaps, in time, can bring our world together. We live in a world of conflict. The history of the human race is in many ways a history of wars. This is not just because of corrupt and greedy leaders. The people tend to support war. As we start this war, depending on what question is asked, anywhere from one third to two thirds of the American people support it. So it would be inaccurate to say that the wars we fight are only because of our leaders. Our leaders are in their leadership positions because of the views and attitudes we all hold. And they take the actions they do with an eye to the people they are leading. Even when there is internal debate in the country, the leaders tend to do what a majority of the people will support--or at least not actively oppose. Perhaps we have the same conflict within our own hearts and minds. We may partly support and partly not support the war. We may see some good and some bad in it. So we may wait to see the results before we make up our mind whether we think it was a good or bad thing. And in our uncertainty, we tend to let our leaders go ahead and do what they think we will support. So it is not only a matter of our leaders. It is a matter of our own views about our relationships with the other people and nations of this earth. This morning I will offer some thoughts on how the Lord governs the world. This may help us make our own decisions about some of the big issues such as war. It may also help us to make decisions in our interpersonal relationships. One of the beautiful teachings of our Church is that the big picture is just like the little picture. Conflicts among individuals are the same as the conflicts among nations, only on a different scale. So the same principles that can help nations to get along will also help us get along with the people around us. And going the other way, the same principles that help us get along with the people around us also apply to the relationship between our nation and other nations. Today I will offer four principles on God's relationship with the nations and peoples of the world. These are not the only principles I could offer, but they are some of the basics. The most basic principle of our religion is that there is one God who rules over all the universe. People of different religions have many different names for God. Yet we believe that all of these religions are approaching the same God. It is our belief that God set up the various religions of the world in order to reach out to people of different characters and cultures. Different nations and races need different approaches to God. That's why there is not one gate, but twelve gates to the holy city, representing all different ways of approaching the one Lord. And the fact that God is one makes it possible for all of humanity to be one. This, then, is the first principle: There is one God over all the universe. The second principle is that God's love is universal, and is the same everywhere. It is the same in humans, animals, plants, and even inanimate objects. And God does not love one person more that another, nor one nation more than another. God loves us all equally. Further, God loves us completely and unconditionally. We cannot cause God not to love us. In fact, there is nothing we can do that can change God's love for us. No matter what we do, God's love for us continues the same. He loves us just as much as he did before. If we are not in a mutual loving relationship with God, it is not because God has turned away from us, but rather because we have turned away from God. This is a universal principle of our religion. God is always there for us. This is the second principle I am offering you this morning: Not only is there one God, but God's love is universal and unconditional. The third principle is that all religions provide a pathway to God and salvation. God is not a small God, but a vast God reigning over all the world and all the universe. So God is the God of the Hindus, the Buddhists, the Jews, the Christians, the Muslims, the native Americans, and people of every other religion. And God has provided that each religion has the basics needed for salvation, and for getting into heaven. This is what our reading from Swedenborg is about: There are fundamentals that God makes sure are in every religion throughout the earth, so that all people will have a path to God if they choose to follow it. It is useless to argue about whether one religion is better than the others. We like to think ours is the best! But we also believe that each religion is appropriate to its own people. Perhaps Christianity is the best religion for us. But it may not be the best religion for people in the Middle East or China or India. Each region, each group of people, has its own religion. And there have been different religions at different stages of human history. Today, throughout the world, there are various choices, so that people can find a religion appropriate to the way they personally are able to approach God. There is no need for conflict among nations on religious grounds. We cannot say, "My religion is better than yours, therefore my country ought to take yours over." That's not how God rules this universe. God gives each nation a religion appropriate to its character. In _Divine Providence_ #330, Swedenborg writes "The idea that only people who are born in the Christian religion are saved is a foolish heresy." I love his brashness! The fundamental idea in many Christian churches is that you must be a Christian and believe in Jesus in order to be saved . . . and Swedenborg calls this a "foolish heresy." He continues: Those who are born outside Christianity are people just as much as those living within it. They have the same heavenly origin, and are equally living and immortal souls. They also have a religious faith from which they recognize that there is a God, and that they should live good lives. And all who believe in God and live good lives become spiritual in their own way, and are saved. Some people object that non-Christians have not been baptized. But baptism saves people only when they are spiritually washed, meaning spiritually reborn, since baptism is a symbol and a reminder of that. Some people also object that non-Christians do not know the Lord, and without the Lord no one can be saved. But salvation does not come to us because we know the Lord; it comes to us because we follow the Lord's commandments. Besides, everyone who believes in God knows the Lord, since the Lord is the God of heaven and earth. I love this statement. And I especially love the parting line. Many Christians say, "You have to believe in Jesus." Swedenborg says, "Everyone who believes in God knows the Lord, since the Lord [Jesus] is the God of heaven and earth." From our perspective, if people approach God in their own way, using their own names for God, they are approaching Jesus. This is the third principle I am offering you today: All religions provide a pathway to God and salvation. And if we look for the good things God has placed in other religions, it will help us as we seek to get along with the people who belong to those religions. The fourth principle is that the basic teachings in all religions are the two Great Commandments. This is what Swedenborg says in our reading from _Divine Providence:_ loving and believing the Lord and not doing evil are the basics in all religion. "Not doing evil" is a reverse way of saying that we should love and do good things for our neighbor. The two Great Commandments are: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and: Love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:37-39; Mark 12:29-31; Luke 10:27). Let's take a look at each of these commandments. Loving the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength means, first of all, that we must believe in God. Obviously, we have to believe in God in order to love him. And all religions provide a God that its people can believe in. So we must believe in God as we understand God from our own religious beliefs. It also means that we must put God first in our lives--above ourselves, above our possessions, above our pleasures, and even above our family, friends, and neighbors. This can sometimes be very difficult when we have to choose between following our religious principles or doing something a family or close friend wants us to do, but that isn't right. Sometime we have to choose between God and the neighbor. And this commandment says that God should always come first in our priorities. Loving our neighbor as we love ourselves means that we must consider our neighbor to be just as important and just as worthy of thoughtfulness and respect as we ourselves are. God is above all, and the neighbor is equal to ourselves in our consideration. This is true of our international neighbors, our neighbors of other religions, and so on. It is true of all relationships, big or small: we are to give others the same consideration and respect that we would like them to give us. Hardest of all, this is true even of those with whom we are in severe conflict. We are to look for the good in all people--including our enemies. And it is the good in others that we are to love. We are not asked to love the evil things other people do, nor to condone wrongdoing. Rather, we are asked to look for the good in people, and to work to draw out and increase that good, while separating the evil both from others and from ourselves. This is true whether we consider someone to be a friend or an enemy. When we recognize that God is in all people, and that God is with them just as much as with us, we can start building the bridges that we were blowing up before. Loving our neighbor as ourselves applies to everyone--though we may have to love different neighbors in different ways. And loving our neighbor isn't just a warm fuzzy feeling. It means actually doing useful, good, and kind things for our neighbor. In the Ten Commandments, there is one table about putting God first, and another table about not doing evil things to our neighbor. The flip side of the second table is that when we stop lying, stealing, committing adultery, and committing other offenses against our neighbor, then we begin to do good for our neighbor. So the fundamental commandments of the church are to put God first and to love the neighbor, which means doing good things for the neighbor. It seems simple; it seems straightforward--and yet we have such difficulty in so many areas of our life in following these simple, straightforward commandments. If we were to follow these as a world, there would be no more wars. Perhaps there would be some conflict, but we would be able to resolve it without coming to blows. The fact that our world has been engaged in wars and conflicts since time immemorial shows that we have nowhere near arrived at the kingdom of God. We still have so far to go. If we could follow these principles first within ourselves, and then among the nations, it would give focus and unity to our scattered, divided hearts and minds. If we could look at all things from these principles, we would no longer wander and waver between one point of view and another. We would see clearly what is the right thing to do. And it would bring us together as family and friends. We may not be best friends with everyone, but we wouldn't have to be in ceaseless conflict with one another. We would be able get along better with our neighbors, our co-workers, and even with the people that we consider our enemies--at least having some mutual respect even if we can't see eye to eye. Swedenborg tells us that it is our differing thoughts and beliefs that divide us. Yet though we may have different opinions, if we have love and kindness in our hearts, we can bridge those differences and work together. And as these principles rise up to the higher levels from people to communities to nations, and as both leaders and the people begin to follow them, it will bring the nations of the world together. The world can become one if we focus on our common humanity, and not on the ideologies and material possessions--or lack thereof--that divide us. Our reading from Isaiah is very pointed. The fact is that there are haves and have-nots in our society and in our world. Some are butting others aside and grabbing what they want to the detriment of others. This is what it so that we cannot get along as a nation and as a world. But when we realize that life is not about material possessions, that it is not about our own pleasure and power, but rather, that it is about the good we can do for others, then we begin to resolve the conflicts in our world. These, then, are the principles I am offering you this morning. There is one God. This God is a God of universal love. God has provided many different religions on this earth to reach out to many different people. And all people can be one, and at peace, if we will love God above all, and love our neighbor as ourselves--if we will do our best to have the same respect and kindness for others that we want them to have for us. If we will follow these principles, it will bring our world together. "I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also and they will listen to my voice so there will be one flock and one shepherd." Amen. ____________________ These sermons are a ministry of the Bridgewater New Jerusalem Church. If you wish to support the church that sponsors them, please send your contribution to: New Jerusalem Church 88 Central Square Bridgewater, MA 02324 To make a donation or monthly pledge via PayPal with your credit card, or from your bank account, please go to: http://www.leewoof.net/ministry/churchdonationform.html Thank you! Church web site: http://www.ForMinistry.com/02324NJC Denominational web site: http://www.swedenborg.org To learn about and discuss Swedenborgian ideas on Beliefnet, go to: http://www.beliefnet.com/boards/boards_main.AllCategories.asp?Category=132 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From leewoof@leewoof.net Sun Jun 6 18:09:16 2004 From: leewoof@leewoof.net (Lee Woofenden) Date: Sun, 06 Jun 2004 14:09:16 -0400 Subject: [Sermons] "Superficial Religion," by the Rev. Lee Woofenden Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20040606140824.02021618@mail.leewoof.net> Superficial Religion By the Rev. Lee Woofenden Bridgewater, Massachusetts, May 23, 2004 Readings: Genesis 19:30-38: Lot and his daughters Lot and his two daughters left Zoar and settled in the mountains, for he was afraid to stay in Zoar. He and his two daughters lived in a cave. One day the older daughter said to the younger, "Our father is old, and there is no man around here to lie with us, as is the custom all over the earth. Let's get our father to drink wine and then lie with him and preserve our family line through our father." That night they got their father to drink wine, and the older daughter went in and lay with him. He was not aware of it when she lay down or when she got up. The next day the older daughter said to the younger, "Last night I lay with my father. Let's get him to drink wine again tonight, and you go in and lie with him so that we can preserve our family line through our father." So they got their father to drink wine that night also, and the younger daughter went and lay with him. Again he was not aware of it when she lay down or when she got up. So both of Lot's daughters became pregnant by their father. The older daughter had a son, and she named him Moab; He is the father of the Moabites of today. The younger daughter also had a son, and she named him Ben-Ammi; he is the father of the Ammonites of today. Matthew 9:14-17: New wine in old wineskins Then John's disciples came and asked him, "How is it that we and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?" Jesus answered, "How can the guests of the bridegroom mourn while he is with them? The time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; then they will fast. "No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch will pull away from the garment, making the tear worse. Neither do people pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will burst, the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved." Arcana Coelestia #2468: Superficial Religion The form and nature of the religion meant by "Moab and the children of Ammon" becomes clear from the description given here of their origin, and also from many other places in the Bible, the historical as well as the prophetic, where they are mentioned. In general they are people whose worship is external, and to some extent appears holy, but is not internal. They are also people who accept whatever relates to external worship as good and true, but reject and regard as worthless everything that relates to inner worship. This type of worship and religion exists with people who are naturally good, but who consider other people to be worthless compared to themselves. They are similar to fruit that is not unattractive on the outside, but that inwardly is moldy or rotten; or they are similar to marble vases whose contents are impure and even foul; or they are similar to women whose face, figure, and movements are rather pretty, but who inwardly are diseased and full of nasty impurities. For with them there is a general goodness that looks fairly attractive; but the particular elements that go into their goodness are impure. It is not this way at first, but becomes so gradually. For people like this easily allow themselves to be impressed with whatever people call "good," and so with whatever false ideas they imagine to be true because they support that "good." This happens because these people scorn the deeper things of worship, since they are ruled by self-love. Such people live and get their being from those whose worship is purely external--who in this chapter are represented by Lot. Sermon: So both of Lot's daughters became pregnant by their father. (Genesis 19:36) This week, mercifully, we complete the sorry tale of Genesis 19. If the Bible skeptics want a chapter to turn to in casting doubt on the divine and spiritual nature of the Bible, this would be the one. It reads almost like a compendium of human sexual and behavioral corruption--not to mention the descriptions of destructive divine wrath. It is no wonder that even the Swedenborgian commentaries largely pass by this chapter in silence, or give it only the most cursory treatment. Even Swedenborg himself seems to weary of the chapter as he enters into this final section. Yes, he does interpret it. But he does so in summary fashion, referring to earlier and later explanations for some of the details. In partial explanation of this, he mentions the obvious: these things "shock people's minds and offend their ears" (_Arcana Coelestia_ #2466). And here I would mention once more that when we actually read the Bible, it turns out not to be a "nice book full of nice stories," but rather, a hard-hitting _human_ book full of human stories, including the good, the bad, and the ugly of human life. The Lord Jesus, while he was here on earth, also dealt with the good, the bad, and the ugly of human life. And if we follow this story in its deeper meaning, we find that it deals with the ugliness of those who think that religion is just a matter of external observance and ritual, without the deeper matters of love, understanding, justice, and kindness that form religion's inner core. In other words, the story of Lot and his daughters is symbolic of those who practice a superficial religion. Jesus was speaking of these when he said: Woe to you, Scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices--mint, dill, and cummin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law--justice, mercy, and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel. Woe to you, Scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean. Woe to you, Scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead people's bones and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to others as righteous, but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness. In our reading from Swedenborg, he gives descriptions almost as colorful of the nature of people who make a great outward show of religion, but inwardly are corrupt and foul. Jesus encountered such people in the Scribes and Pharisees--those who studied and taught the religious law of ancient Judaism. Though they "knew their stuff," they did not practice it except in the most superficial way. Yes, they did all the proper tithes and ritual cleansings and sacrifices. But they were not only critical and condemnatory of everyone who didn't live the way they did (just as Swedenborg says!), but they also engaged in corruption and profiteering from their positions of religious authority. In other words, even though they looked religious, they were really in it for themselves. In Swedenborg's terms, they were "ruled by self-love." So everything that made up their "religion"--or perhaps we should call it their "religiosity," was impure because it was driven by selfish motives. Swedenborg has often been accused of being anti-Jewish because of his many harsh statements about both ancient and contemporary Jews. And certainly there was a lot of anti-Jewish sentiment throughout Swedenborg's culture, which could easily have affected Swedenborg's view of the Jewish people. However, I prefer to think of his descriptions of the superficial and corrupt nature of "the Jews" as a description of the human condition. When we look at the story of Lot, and how he was corrupted by his own apathy and his focus on saving his own skin, we see a reflection of all who take the easy, external way in their religion. In the New Testament, the Jews also come in for heavy criticism by the Lord himself and by the various Biblical writers. That, I believe, is largely because from the Bible's point of view, the Jewish religion was the leading religion of the day--yet its followers, instead of being a leading light for the world, had corrupted their own religion, and given it a bad name because of their greedy and selfish lives. Is it only Jews who do this to their religion? I don't think so! The history of Christianity right up to the present day is full of church leaders who have corrupted this beautiful religion in their pursuit of personal wealth, pleasure, and power. A decade ago it was the fundamentalist Christian televangelists who were the focus of the expos?s of religious corruption, as the American public discovered that the same men and women who preached Jesus, Jesus, Jesus on TV were racking up enormous personal wealth and sleeping with prostitutes in hotel rooms. Today, the focus of the media's wrath is the Roman Catholic Church, with its terrible crimes not only of child abuse on the part of some of its priests, but of the cover-ups engaged in by bishops and archbishops going right up the church hierarchy. And lest this become merely an exercise in finger-pointing, our own church has not been without its scandals, corruptions, and bitter battles over money and power--as we in the Massachusetts Association are now painfully aware. Yes, superficial religion is not limited to the Jews. It is a universal human curse. And though we could spend time decrying the evils of all those churches, clergy, and leading lay people out there who have made a mockery of their religion, the real point of the Bible story is not to give us ammunition in pointing the finger at others, but rather to make us conscious of our own faults that need correcting. When Jesus confronted the corrupt religious authorities of his day with their hypocrisy, the point was not so much to fuel our righteous indignation at those who misuse their religion for personal power and gain, but to let it serve as an object lesson for each one of us when we are tempted to act similarly. The Bible story is the story of each one of us. And if we can believe it, even the whole culture in which we live is the story of each one of us. If we find ourselves pointing fingers of blame at all those terrible, corrupt Scribes and Pharisees out there, we should be aware that our finger is also pointing squarely at our own soul. This is expressed another way in the classic words of John Donne: "Therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." Donne understood, and expressed beautifully in his poetry, that the sickness and death of all is the sickness and death of each one of us. Of course, this does not mean we should ignore corruption "out there" in our society. Televangelists, priests, and other church and society leaders, not to mention ordinary lay people, must be put on notice that if they engage in hypocritical and corrupt behavior, they will be brought to account for it; that if they use their positions of spiritual power to engage in practices of worldly greed and debauchery, they will pay the price. Yet when we have confronted the corruption in our society, we have only waged half the battle--and not the most difficult half. Our greatest struggle is to confront the corrupt superficiality within our own selves. The message of Lot, and the message of the Lord to the Scribes and Pharisees, is a message to all who consider themselves to be religious, yet don't live up to the ideals of their own religion. Lot was a nephew of Abraham, who received the call of God; yet he lived among the corrupt people of Sodom. The Scribes and Pharisees were the called and chosen religious leaders of the ancient Jews; yet they used their position for personal power and privilege. What do we, who are blessed with the incredible depths of an entirely new revelation of spiritual understanding, do with these spiritual treasures that have been entrusted to us? If outside observers were to compare the way we live to the way anyone else in our society lives, would they notice any difference? Does the fact that we belong to the New Jerusalem Church cause us to go beyond the ordinary ranks of our community, not in great shows of our religious piety, but in a life full of acts of care and compassion for the human beings who surround us on every side? And looking at our church--both this congregation and the Association and denomination of which it is a part--what have we done, and what are we doing, with the great blessings of material and spiritual wealth that have been entrusted to us? In all our struggles to move the church forward, are we acting merely from a desire for self-preservation? To preserve the church that we and our families attend and benefit from? Or are we truly interested in serving the spiritual needs of the community, the state, and the continent where we as a church have our home? These are ultimate questions of our own spiritual worth, and the spiritual worth of our church. These are questions even Jesus faced within himself, when he confronted the temptation to merely be right rather than to be compassionate. And the Lord gave us another metaphor to move us out of the curse of superficial religion: When we have experienced the new wine of deeper spiritual religion, we must put it into new wineskins of a changed life: a life of constant, growing understanding and compassion for our fellow human beings. ____________________ These sermons are a ministry of the Bridgewater New Jerusalem Church. If you wish to support the church that sponsors them, please send your contribution to: New Jerusalem Church 88 Central Square Bridgewater, MA 02324 To make a donation or monthly pledge via PayPal with your credit card, or from your bank account, please go to: http://www.leewoof.net/ministry/churchdonationform.html Thank you! Church web site: http://www.ForMinistry.com/02324NJC Denominational web site: http://www.swedenborg.org To learn about and discuss Swedenborgian ideas on Beliefnet, go to: http://www.beliefnet.com/boards/boards_main.AllCategories.asp?Category=132 From leewoof@leewoof.net Tue Jul 27 23:52:57 2004 From: leewoof@leewoof.net (Lee Woofenden) Date: Tue, 27 Jul 2004 19:52:57 -0400 Subject: [Sermons] "Rationality and Faith," by the Rev. Lee Woofenden Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20040727194549.0203db60@mail.leewoof.net> Dear Sermon Service Friends, Here is a delayed sermon from the end of the regular church year at the Bridgewater New Jerusalem Church. It is transcribed and edited from the recording of a sermon that was originally delivered from notes. This will be the last Bridgewater New Church sermon distributed until regular services start up again in September. Meanwhile, if you would like to read earlier sermons, or listen to some of the more recent ones on audio, please visit: http://www.leewoof.org If you would like to contribute to the Bridgewater New Jerusalem Church and help keep these sermons coming, scroll to the end of this message, where there are instructions for contacting and contributing financially to the church. Our thanks go to all of you members of our extended congregation. It is good to have you virtually with us! Blessings, --Rev. Lee Woofenden, Pastor Bridgewater New Jerusalem Church ----------------------------------------------- Rationality and Faith By the Rev. Lee Woofenden Bridgewater, Massachusetts, June 13, 2004 Readings: Genesis 20: Abraham and Abimelech Now Abraham moved on from there toward the south country, and lived between Kadesh and Shur. For a while he stayed in Gerar, and there Abraham said of his wife Sarah, "She is my sister." Then Abimelech king of Gerar sent for Sarah and took her. But God came to Abimelech in a dream one night and said to him, "You are as good as dead because of the woman you have taken; she is a married woman." Now Abimelech had not gone near her, so he said, "Lord, will you destroy an innocent nation? Did he not say to me, 'She is my sister,' and didn't she also say, 'He is my brother'? I have done this with a clear conscience and clean hands." Then God said to him in the dream, "Yes, I know you did this with a clear conscience, and so I have kept you from sinning against me. That is why I did not let you touch her. Now return the man's wife, for he is a prophet, and he will pray for you and you will live. But if you do not return her, you may be sure that you and all yours will die." Early the next morning Abimelech summoned all his officials, and when he told them all that had happened, they were very much afraid. Then Abimelech called Abraham in and said, "What have you done to us? How have I wronged you that you have brought such great guilt upon me and my kingdom? You have done things to me that should not be done." And Abimelech asked Abraham, "What was your reason for doing this?" Abraham replied, "I said to myself, 'There is surely no fear of God in this place, and they will kill me because of my wife.' Besides, she really is my sister, the daughter of my father though not of my mother; and she became my wife. And when God caused me to wander from my father's household, I said to her, 'This is how you can show your love to me: Everywhere we go, say of me, "He is my brother."'" Then Abimelech brought sheep and cattle and male and female slaves and gave them to Abraham, and he returned Sarah his wife to him. And Abimelech said, "My land is before you; live wherever you like." To Sarah he said, "I am giving your brother a thousand shekels of silver. This is to cover the offence against you before all who are with you; you are completely vindicated." Then Abraham prayed to God, and God healed Abimelech, his wife and his female slaves so they could have children again, for the Lord had closed up every womb in Abimelech's household because of Abraham's wife Sarah. Mark 4:10-12: The purpose of the Lord's parables When he was alone, the Twelve and the others around him asked him about the parables. He told them, "The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside everything is said in parables so that, 'they may be ever seeing but never perceiving, and ever hearing but never understanding; otherwise they might turn and be forgiven.'" Arcana Coelestia #2496: Abraham's sojourning in Gerar In Genesis chapter 12 the subject was Abraham's sojourn in Egypt. This symbolized the instruction that the Lord received in factual knowledge when he was still a boy. In chapter 20, the subject is Abraham's sojourn in Gerar, where Abimelech lived. This sojourning, in a similar way, symbolizes instruction that the Lord received. But now it is instruction in the principles of kindness and faith. The particular subject in this chapter is the source of the principles of kindness and faith--specifically, that these principles are spiritual and come from heavenly origin, not from the rational mind. Sermon: For a while Abraham stayed in Gerar, and there he said of his wife Sarah, "She is my sister." Then Abimelech king of Gerar sent for Sarah and took her. (Genesis 20:2) For the last three weeks we have been covering Genesis chapter 19--a very tough chapter. And even though our general sermon series is about the inner life of the Lord, we have drifted away from that theme in the last few weeks, and toward humankind and our spiritual struggles. This is not a coincidence. Even Swedenborg, in interpreting Genesis 29 with its terrible events, focuses more on the human condition than on the Lord's inner condition. Today we return more fully to the Lord's inner story, while continuing to look at our story. One of the beautiful teachings of our church is that the Lord's story is the pattern for our story. The Lord's life--his struggles and triumphs, his inner story--is the model for human lives. So whatever level we look at, we gain insight on our own spiritual growth. Let's give today's story some background. Our reading from Swedenborg mentions that this chapter parallels the story in Genesis 12. That chapter tells the story of Abraham sojourning in Egypt. In today's chapter, Abraham sojourns in Gerar, which is in the part of Canaan where the Philistines lived later on in the Bible. Spiritually speaking, the story of Abraham sojourning in Egypt is the story of the Lord Jesus as a young boy when he was learning. He was learning all the "facts" of his religion. He was studying the Scriptures--the Law and the Prophets. We know that by the time Jesus was twelve, he had a very solid knowledge of the Scriptures of his church. This knowledge didn't come automatically. Jesus had to sit down and study the Scriptures and the teachings of his religion. Spiritually, the story of Abraham's sojourn in Egypt is the story of the Lord learning the factual knowledge of the religious teachings of his church. This was required as a foundation for everything that came later. Now let's step back even farther for a minute, and consider the relationship of the spiritual meaning to the literal meaning of the Bible. One of the general principles of the Lord giving revelation to humankind is that God has to speak at the level where the people on this earth are. If we look at the Old Testament, there is very little about truly spiritual subjects. The Old Testament says almost nothing about the spiritual world; it says almost nothing about the inner aspects of our spiritual growth; it says almost nothing about the entire higher level about religion. It also says very little about the inner nature of the Lord. The literal sense is like this because it was being spoken to people at a time in human history when almost everyone was focusing on the external aspects of life--on behavior. People's attitude toward religion and God was: You tell me what to do, and I'll do it. Or maybe I won't do it. I may refuse to do it. But it was all on the level of outward behavior, and not on the level of inner, spiritual life. If we want to derive deeper meaning from this, it has to be on a whole different level. As a result, the spiritual meaning of the Bible is often very different from the literal meaning. In fact, it is often so different that those who haven't studied correspondences and learned something about the nature of the spiritual meaning may think that it is very farfetched. How in the world could these meanings come out of that story? It just doesn't compute. That's because when we look at the literal, we are dealing with a whole different level of human existence. We are dealing with the outward, behavioral level, whereas the spiritual meaning deals with the inner level--the level of our thoughts and feelings, of our inner struggles. And those levels of ourselves often look very different than what we do outwardly. So even if the meanings given this morning for the story in Genesis 20 may sound a little farfetched, that is what happens when we go to the higher levels of meaning in the Bible. We will not look at all the reasons why these things mean what they do. For that you'll have to turn to Swedenborg. He spends many, many pages interpreting Genesis chapter 20, and all the other chapters in Genesis and Exodus in his work _Arcana Coelestia._ When we begin to grasp the spiritual meaning, it talks not only about the Lord's inner life, but about our inner life, and the struggles we go through on an inner, spiritual level. Though we have been on a different track for a few weeks, there is a progression to the whole story. The Lord's story as it is told in _Arcana Coelestia_ covers a subset of the Bible. In fact, Swedenborg starts the Lord's story at Genesis 12, and concludes it at the end of Genesis. That section is taken as a unit, telling the entire story of the Lord's life. Just to catch up, let's do a whirlwind tour of where we have been. Where have we been so far in the Lord's life, and in our parallel life? We started with Genesis 12. This is when God called Abram from his family's home, and sent him on a journey to the Holy Land. In the Lord's life, this is the first inkling that there is a deeper level to life. As a very young boy, the Lord felt a call from the Divine within to go to a deeper, higher plane of existence. In our life, it is God calling us and telling us that there is more than this outer life. There is more than working, eating, and sleeping. There is a whole new land of deeper reality that God calls us to explore, and to settle into. We then go through Genesis 13 and 14. Abram had his nephew Lot with him, and we get the first battle in the Bible. This parallels our story. When we first begin to turn our life toward spiritual things, it's not easy. We have to battle our old self. We have to struggle to attain even the first beginnings of our spiritual life. And the Lord had to do that as well. In chapter 15 God makes a covenant with Abraham. After we have put out some effort and done some struggling for the spiritual life; after we have "put our money where our mouth is"; after we have actually done something instead of just talking about being spiritual, then we feel God's presence within us in a new way. We feel a new connection with God--a covenant with God that we hadn't had before. And the Lord, in his life, gained a far deeper connection and oneness with his own Divine soul within. Meanwhile, we are still trying to understand what religion is all about. And so was Jesus. The story in Genesis 16 of Ishmael being born to Abram and Hagar, his wife Sarai's slave woman, represents our first attempt to understand religion. And this early understanding has a lot to do with wanting to feel good about ourselves, and to think that we are good because we are religious. The Lord struggled with this internally as well. But we overcome that. In Genesis 17 and 18, there is another covenant--this time, the covenant of circumcision. And at this time, the birth of Isaac is predicted. This is also when Abram and Sarai have their names changed to Abraham and Sarah. They both have the name of the Lord placed in their names. Spiritually, we are to be named after the Lord. We are to have the new character that is the Lord's plan for us. Jesus felt this very deeply. He was God's presence here on earth. He was now to be totally dedicated to the Divine. In Genesis 19 there are many struggles, which we have covered in the last few weeks. Genesis 20, our chapter for today, is the interlude just before the birth of Isaac. I mentioned earlier that the story of Abraham's sojourn in Egypt is the story of learning the "facts" of religion. The story of Abraham's sojourn in Gerar, part of the land of Philistia, lifts that up to a higher level. It involves not just learning the literal sense of the Word of God, not just learning the teachings of the church, but bringing it all together, synthesizing it, and coming up with a spiritual perspective or "doctrine." For the Lord, this involved consciously learning the spiritual principles that he would use as the basis for teaching the people. So today's story is another story of learning and instruction, but at a higher level. The Lord is not just learning "facts" anymore. Now he is putting it all together. And the question at issue in this story, both for the Lord and for us, is: Where will these spiritual principles come from? Will they come from our own rational thought? Will we think about it and figure out the principles for our religious life? Or will we listen to the Lord's voice within us, and in the Bible? Let's look at this question first in terms of the Lord's inner process. Jesus had been moving from his earliest sense of his origin and his task on earth, as told in Genesis 12, to a more mature and clearly seen vision. He started out with a feeling of spiritual calling, but he needed to have a clear vision--a road map of the way ahead. He needed a clear sense of what his purpose was in his life on earth. This took many struggles and false starts, which are told in all the stories from Genesis 12 up to today's chapter. Genesis 20 is the Lord's last struggle before the birth of Isaac; before it came fully clear to Jesus what his vision and mission was. In chapter 20, the Lord is almost there, but is struggling as to where those spiritual principles are going to come from. It was a question of whether he would rely primarily on his thinking capabilities. Jesus was a very smart guy! If we watch him in action in the Gospels, we find that he was truly amazing in responding to the tough questions that were thrown at him. The people he was going up against were the cream of the crop. They were the scholars. They were the ones who had been through twenty-five years of college. They were the best! And when he went up against them, he was brilliant. So we know that Jesus was incredibly intelligent. In his younger life, Jesus was tempted to rely upon that brilliance. He was tempted to say (in modern words), "I am smarter than everyone else. I can figure things out better than everyone else. Therefore I can just blow 'em all away." In the spiritual meaning, this is what Sarah being married to Abimelech would mean: thinking that religion means being smarter than everyone else. That's what Jesus was struggling with. The fact is, he _was_ smarter than everyone else. And he could have pushed his ministry forward on that basis. But it was not right for Sarah to be taken by Abimelech. Jesus' thinking capability had to come from a higher source. In the story, that "source" is Abraham, who represents the Lord's divine love within, which is called "the Father" in the New Testament. So the struggle in Jesus' mind was, would he be a spiritual leader because he was so smart? Or would he be a spiritual leader because he felt the love of God within him? Would he truly be doing God's work here on earth? The beautiful teaching of this chapter is that Jesus moved away from mere intellectualism. He was still the smartest man who ever lived. If we could give him an IQ test, I guess it would have to come out "infinite." But that wasn't going to be what drove him. He wasn't going to rely on external authority, on outward learning. He was going to open his spirit to the divine presence within, and get his inspiration from that deeper source. And he was able to do that in a way that none of us are capable of, because the Lord God was his own inner soul. Jesus' inspiration came from within, not from the people around him. We can see, as he engages in dialog with the Scribes and Pharisees and the people, that he looked at things from a higher perspective than any of them. It was the perspective of God. It was the perspective of love. This was the Lord's struggle. And this was where he moved forward toward a true rationality, which is symbolized by the birth of Isaac in Genesis 21. Now let's look at the parallel story in our lives. In our spiritual life, we have the same struggle that the Lord did. And Swedenborgians are especially susceptible to this temptation. New Church people sometimes make a big deal of saying that ours is a rational religion. And that is true. Our religion makes sense. But it is a temptation and an illusion to think that the reason we should believe in our religion is that it is so rational. If we rely upon human rationality, human-derived thoughts, we come to many wrong conclusions--and we reject the deepest parts of religion. With apologies to our Unitarian Universalist friends, I would suggest that the current beliefs of the Unitarian Universalist Church are the result of letting human reason determine our religious beliefs. This leads to throwing out the first two basics of the Christian Church: The Lord Jesus Christ as God, and the Word of God as sacred, divine, and inspired. Human reason, by itself, will leave behind these most fundamental teachings of the Christian Church because they cannot be derived from human reason. What is left is the ethical and moral teachings. And those are good! Yet churches that take this path are decapitated of their theology. If we follow the path of mere human rationality, we will lose our personal Lord and Savior. We will also lose the Word of God, where the Lord speaks to us. And it is not so much that what's left is bad, but that it is limited. It limits us from having the deepest experience of communion with the Lord, both directly and through the Word. Swedenborgians also have this choice. Will we be Swedenborgians because it makes so much sense? Because we can rationally argue for our beliefs? We can do this if we want. And if we do, we will leave behind the heart of our religion, the heart of true Christianity. Something deeper is needed for true religion. First, we must recognize that God has taught us the truth in his Word. We must subject our reason, not to irrationality, but to teachings from a higher and deeper source. The problem with rationality is not so much that it is wrong, as that it is limited. We can use rationality to support our faith after we have arrived at it. But we cannot rationalize our way to faith. Faith must come from a deeper source. Our first source is the Word of God. That is why God has given us the Bible. In the Bible we are taught the truth about religion. It provides a reliable source for God's teachings. And ultimately, the source of our spiritual beliefs is God's own presence within us. This was the source that Jesus turned to. We have the Bible outside of us, and the Lord inside of us. And the Lord inside is the Lord speaking to our heart. One of the surprising teachings of our church is that faith is actually love. I'm still struggling with that! It seems to me that faith is faith; it's something we think about. But Swedenborg says, no, faith is really love. Faith is really our love within connecting with God, and connecting with one another. This is what must drive us. This is what must drive even our thinking. If we think from a coldly analytical place, we will be coldly analytical about the people around us, and we will not truly love them as our neighbors. But if we think from the heart, our rationality can be a "supporting actor." We can rationally support our beliefs; yet our faith comes from a deeper source. Our faith comes from the Word of the Lord, and it comes from the heart. Amen. ____________________ These sermons are a ministry of the Bridgewater New Jerusalem Church. If you wish to support the church that sponsors them, please send your contribution to: New Jerusalem Church 88 Central Square Bridgewater, MA 02324 To make a donation or monthly pledge via PayPal with your credit card, or from your bank account, please go to: http://www.leewoof.net/ministry/churchdonationform.html Thank you! Church web site: http://www.ForMinistry.com/02324NJC Denominational web site: http://www.swedenborg.org To learn about and discuss Swedenborgian ideas on Beliefnet, go to: http://www.beliefnet.com/boards/boards_main.AllCategories.asp?Category=132 From leewoof@leewoof.net Thu Sep 16 17:38:14 2004 From: leewoof@leewoof.net (Lee Woofenden) Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2004 13:38:14 -0400 Subject: [Sermons] "Doing the Lord's Work," by the Rev. Lee Woofenden Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20040916133729.02ecd710@mail.leewoof.net> Doing the Lord's Work By the Rev. Lee Woofenden Bridgewater, Massachusetts, September 12, 2004 Readings: Isaiah 51:1-8: Everlasting salvation "Listen to me, you that pursue righteousness, you that seek the Lord: Look to the rock from which you were cut, and to the quarry from which you were hewn; look to Abraham, your father, and to Sarah, who gave you birth. When I called him he was but one, and I blessed him and made him many. The Lord will surely comfort Zion, and will look with compassion on all her ruins; he will make her deserts like Eden, her wastelands like the garden of the Lord. Joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and the sound of singing. "Listen to me, my people; hear me, my nation: The law will go out from me; my justice will become a light to the nations. My righteousness draws near speedily, my salvation is on the way, and my arm will bring justice to the nations. The islands will look to me and wait in hope for my arm. Lift up your eyes to the heavens, look at the earth beneath. The heavens will vanish like smoke; the earth will wear out like a garment and its inhabitants die like flies. But my salvation will last forever; my righteousness will never fail. "Hear me, you who know what is right, you people who have my law in your hearts: Do not fear the reproach of others, or be terrified by their insults. For the moth will eat them up like a garment; the worm will devour them like wool. But my righteousness will last forever, my salvation through all generations." Matthew 7:15-27: Doing the Lord's work "Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thorn bushes, or figs from thistles? Likewise every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them. "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only those who do the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?' Then I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!' "Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash." Arcana Coelestia #2009.11: What is a congregation? In Matthew 18:20 we read, "Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them." Those who are "gathered together in the Lord's name" are people who have religious teachings about love and kindness, and who are therefore engaged in love and kindness. Sermon: Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. (Matthew 7:24) We are now beginning another church year together, having received many blessings as a congregation in recent years, and with new possibilities ahead of us in the coming year. One of the possibilities that we hope for each year is that our congregation will continue to grow, just as it has been doing each year for the last five years. And my message this morning is simple: If we want this church to grow, we need to put the idea of growth on the back burner, and focus instead on doing the Lord's work as a congregation. If we are truly doing the Lord's work, then growth will come as a matter of course, if that is God's will for our congregation. In other words, church growth is simply a natural consequence of being a real church! It is just like the growth of our bodies. How many of us, as children, got up every morning and said to ourselves, "I think I'll work on growing today; maybe if I work at it hard enough, I can add an eighth of an inch to my height by the end of the week"? Well . . . sometimes kids do have funny thoughts! But most of the time, we got up in the morning and went about the business of being a kid: eating breakfast, playing, running around outside, reading a book, doing our chores, and so on. As we did our part, eating, sleeping, exercising our bodies and our minds, the Lord did his part, causing us to grow to maturity both physically and mentally. In fact, if, as kids, we were to concentrate on growing, we would be more likely to make things worse than better. We might eat lots and lots of food, thinking it would make us grow faster, only to find that it made us sick or overweight instead. Perhaps we would hang by our knees or our hands for hours and hours, hoping to stretch out our bodies. Not much help there! Or, in this modern age, how about taking hormone pills to stimulate growth? We could certainly do it . . . and then find out two or three decades later that those artificial hormones were carcinogenic. Of course, all of this is a bit silly. We know that kids grow naturally. All we have to do is make sure they get food, exercise, fresh air, sleep, and all the other things that the human body needs to do its work. Then God and nature will take care of the rest. It's about time we had the same faith and assurance about the church. Many churches are focused on figuring out how to grow. But we can't make a church grow any more than we can make a child grow. As with the growth of a child, the growth of the church occurs naturally when all the conditions and needs for growth are met reasonably well, and when the church does what it's supposed to be doing as a church. So if growth is a natural consequence of being a normal, healthy church, just what is a church supposed to be doing in order to be normal and healthy? The short answer is that a church should be doing the Lord's work. Now, Emanuel Swedenborg was not much of an institutional guy when it came to the church. He grew up as a preacher's kid, so for him, the institution of the church was a given. And he seems to have thought very little about it in those earlier years of his life, judging by the fact that up to his mid-fifties, he wrote almost entirely on scientific and philosophical subjects, and hardly at all about the church, institutionally or otherwise. Even when he began writing about theology and religion, he still wrote very little about church organizations--and he certainly didn't leave us a manual of ecclesiastical order. He apparently preferred to focus on the spiritual side of religion, and leave others to figure out the organizational aspects. In other words, Swedenborg didn't explain how to run a church. But he did leave a few hints here and there about what the church is supposed to be. And about the closest thing I've found to a definition of a congregation is found in our brief reading from _Arcana Coelestia_ #2009. To quote the salient portion again: Those who are "gathered together in the Lord's name" are people who have religious teachings about love and kindness, and who are therefore engaged in love and kindness. Here he draws on the Lord's words in Matthew 18:20. And the Latin word for "gathered together" is the one that our word "congregation" comes from. So from a Gospel perspective, a "congregation" is two or three or more people gathered together in the Lord's name. And according to Swedenborg, people are "gathered together in the Lord's name" when they have religious, or spiritual, beliefs about love and kindness, and as a result of those beliefs, actually engage actively in the work of love and kindness. That's what a congregation is, and that's what a congregation does. It believes in God's teachings about love and kindness, and actually lives by those beliefs. Of course, our church has many beautiful teachings about love and kindness. In fact, all those thirty green volumes of Swedenborg's writings with all that fancy theological terminology are simply a big, long version of the Lord's teaching that we are to love the Lord most of all, and our neighbor as ourselves. That's what it all boils down to. In traditional Swedenborgian language, this is called the "doctrine of uses"--which itself is just a fancy way of saying that if we want to be truly spiritual, we can't just learn the church's teachings; we have to live by those teachings. We have to actually go out and do things for people. Jesus, in his usual fashion, doesn't talk in fancy theological language. Instead, he uses down-to-earth stories and images to get the point across. "Every good tree bears good fruit," he says, "but a bad tree bears bad fruit." And he is equally concrete about what happens to the bad trees--the ones that do not bear good fruit: "Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire." The Rev. George Henry Dole (my great-grandfather), drawing on Darwin's catchy phrase "the survival of the fittest," called it "the survival of the useful." Spiritually, those who are useful survive and have eternal life, while those who are not useful have their spiritual lives cut down and thrown into the fire of selfish and materialistic desires--which is eternal death. For the church, spiritual survival is also of a more earthly kind. Those churches that actively engage in the Lord's work tend to not only survive, but thrive. Those churches that focus on their own survival, however, and neglect serving their community, will sooner or later dwindle and die, no matter how rich they are in money or spiritual insight. "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven," Jesus says, "but only those who do the will of my Father who is in heaven." Then the Lord goes on to give us another plain and simple illustration of this truth. Those who hear his words and do them, he says, are like people who build their houses on the rock; and when the storms of life come--as they inevitably will--the "house" of their faith and spiritual life will stand up to the challenges, and survive. But those who merely learn the teaching, and don't put them into practice, are like people who build their houses on the sand. And when the storms of trials and tribulations come, their faith is swept away and destroyed because it has no solid foundation, but is simply a castle in the air. The Lord's words apply to the church, and to each congregation, just as much as they do to an individual person. Knowing the truth, as great as it is, does not in itself do anything for a congregation. But when a congregation of people work together to serve its neighbors in the community, doing this in the Lord's name, then that faith becomes real, and begins to bear fruit. It's a simple, obvious message. We all know it, and recognize its truth as soon as we hear it. And yet, putting it into practice is the real challenge. So let's get just a little more specific about our church. The Swedenborgian Church has always been great at offering Bible studies, doctrinal classes, lectures, and books, books, books on God, salvation, the spiritual meaning of the Bible, heaven and hell, and how to live a spiritual, heaven-bound life. And I'm not knocking that! These are all things I personally love to do; these are gifts we as a church have been given. And these are, in fact, good works of service to whatever audience we can gather together. This is the work of preaching and teaching, and it is important work. Where we have not been so strong is in the ministry of service and healing. It's not that we don't do it at all. Over the years, our church has done many service projects of various kinds, from the former Ladies' Sewing Circle making quilts for needy families to today's Sunday School raising funds to provide farm animals to third world families. I believe that the challenge ahead of our congregation is to find ways that we as a church can serve the local community right around us. While continuing to do the work of teaching, we need to add the practical ministries of hands-on service to the people of Bridgewater and the surrounding communities. And I am convinced that as we do the Lord's work more and more, the Lord will bless our church with new life and growth. Amen. From leewoof@leewoof.net Tue Oct 26 20:02:46 2004 From: leewoof@leewoof.net (Lee Woofenden) Date: Tue, 26 Oct 2004 16:02:46 -0400 Subject: [Sermons] "Natural Allies," by the Rev. Lee Woofenden Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20041026160149.0423fec8@mail.leewoof.net> Natural Allies By the Rev. Lee Woofenden Bridgewater, Massachusetts, October 17, 2004 Readings: Genesis 21:22-34: The treaty of Beersheba At that time Abimelech and Phicol the commander of his forces said to Abraham, "God is with you in everything you do. Now swear to me here before God that you will not deal falsely with me or my children or my descendants. Show to me and the country where you are living as a foreigner the same kindness I have shown to you." Abraham said, "I swear it." Then Abraham complained to Abimelech about a well of water that Abimelech's servants had seized. But Abimelech said, "I don't know who has done this. You did not tell me, and I heard about it only today." So Abraham brought sheep and cattle and gave them to Abimelech, and the two men made a treaty. Abraham set apart seven ewe lambs from the flock, and Abimelech asked Abraham, "What is the meaning of these seven ewe lambs you have set apart by themselves?" He replied, "Accept these seven lambs from my hand as a witness that I dug this well." So that place was called Beersheba, because the two men swore an oath there. After the treaty had been made at Beersheba, Abimelech and Phicol the commander of his forces returned to the land of the Philistines. Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beersheba, and there he called upon the name of the Lord, the Eternal God. And Abraham stayed in the land of the Philistines for a long time. Luke 6:12-19: Jesus calls his twelve apostles During those days Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God. When morning came, he called his disciples to him and chose twelve of them, whom he also designated apostles: Simon (whom he named Peter), his brother Andrew, James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James son of Alphaeus, Simon who was called the Zealot, Judas son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor. He went down with them and stood on a level place. A large crowd of his disciples was there, and a great number of people from all over Judea, from Jerusalem, and from the coast of Tyre and Sidon, who had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases. Those troubled by unclean spirits were cured, and the people all tried to touch him, because power was coming from him and healing them all. Arcana Coelestia #2723.2: The meaning of Beersheba "Beersheba" means merely human rational ideas that are allied with religious teachings. And because they are allied with them, thus making those teachings understandable to the human mind, Beersheba is called "a city." A city stands for an entire religious perspective, seen as a whole. Sermon: So Abraham brought sheep and cattle and gave them to Abimelech, and the two men made a treaty. (Genesis 21:27) Relations would not always be so good between the Hebrews and the Philistines. Later on in the Bible story, during the time of the Judges and the Kings, the Philistines would become one of Israel's most stubborn enemies--an enemy that was never entirely overcome. But here in Genesis 21, in the first explicit mention of the Philistines after the genealogical tables of Genesis 10, relations are generally cordial, if a bit strained, between Abraham and Abimelech, the Philistine king. And Abraham's son Isaac had similar relations with Abimelech: though there was conflict over wells, and a fear on Abimelech's part that Isaac's clan would overrun his land, the two managed to resolve the issues peacefully, and Abimelech ultimately made a treaty with Isaac similar to the one he had made with his father Abraham. Of course, we are interested in these events not just because the story is a good read with strong characters and an engaging plot line, but because the characters and events in the story are telling about our own inner experience, and about the inner life of the Lord. It is a recurring theme in Swedenborg's interpretation of various historical events in the Bible that the Lord would not have bothered to put all these stories, with their numerous and specific details, into his Word if they did not have some deeper significance. Other than a general moral lesson about getting along with our enemies, what does it really matter to us today, in the twenty-first century, what happened between two obscure Middle Eastern clan leaders in the twentieth century before Christ? If these stories are truly a part of God's Word, they must be written in such a way as to be far more powerful than mere human history or moral tales. We read in Isaiah 55:8-9: "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the Lord. "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts." This should make it clear that the things that God says in his Word are far higher than mere human compositions. And if the Bible is truly the Word of God, then it must have far greater and deeper meanings than any human literature. This is precisely what our teachings tell us about the Bible: it has higher and deeper meanings hidden within it that no one would ever be aware of if God had not seen fit to reveal their existence to us in these times. And God does not say things nor reveal to us their meaning without some specific purpose in mind, as he points out in the continuation of that passage from Isaiah: As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire, and achieve the purpose for which I sent it. (Isaiah 55:10-11) Yes, God's Word not only has higher and deeper meanings than any human composition, but those meanings always have a purpose. And that purpose is to "water" our minds and our lives, making us bud and flourish spiritually, so that we, also, may accomplish the Lord's purposes both here on earth, and in eternity. With this in mind, let's take a closer look at the story of Abraham's treaty with Abimelech in Beersheba. It is not a coincidence that water, which is mentioned in the passage from Isaiah about the words of the Lord, is also the focal point of conflict between Abimelech and both Abraham and his son Isaac. Water is fundamental to life on earth. It covers over three-quarters of the earth's surface. Life originally emerged from the water, and without its constant presence, the abundant life on this earth would die out. This is true even though water has no nutritional value whatsoever! It is simply the universal medium and carrier of all the processes of life. As babies, almost 80% our body is composed of water. This drops to 65% by the time we are one year old, and as adults, 50% to 65% of our body is composed of water. Clearly, this substance is fundamental to our lives! The spiritual analog, or correspondent, of water is equally fundamental to human life. It is truth, the universal medium of spiritual life. Truth by itself does not, in fact, nourish the human spirit. No, our spirit is nourished by the food of love and kindness. Yet we are virtually swimming in a sea of truth of all kinds: facts, ideas, rational systems, understanding, learning, intelligence, and sometimes even wisdom. Though we are nourished by God's love and by our love for one another, that love would have no effectiveness at all if it were not carried on a continuous stream of truth flowing through our minds and our lives. And just as Abimelech's people quarreled with both Abraham's and Isaac's people about wells of water, aren't our conflicts, both inwardly and interpersonally, often about the truth of the matter? Inwardly, don't we struggle to decide what we really believe, and what we don't believe? And when we come into conflict with others, doesn't it regularly involve, among other things, who is right and who is wrong? Whose conflicting ideas and perspectives are the truth, and whose are not? We see this clearly in political campaigns in which one candidate says one thing, the other says the opposite, and each claims to have the truth. And internationally, though the conflicts among nations, as among most politicians, generally boil down to issues of money and power, and who will have them, those conflicts can also be seen as clashes of cultural and even religious perspectives, each asserting itself against all comers as the truth. Abraham and Abimelech had clashing ideas. Abimelech saw the land on which he was living as belonging to him and his nation. But Abraham believed that God had promised this entire land to him and his descendants. Each had his own view of things, his own "truth." And those conflicting ideas were expressed outwardly in their conflicts over water. In Abraham's day, at least, that conflict was brought to a peaceful resolution. And this gets at the heart of this story's spiritual meaning. We have, in fact, been following not just one, but two levels of deeper meaning in our current series on the book of Genesis. Those two are the "heavenly meaning," about the Lord's inner life and process during his life on earth, and the "spiritual meaning," about our own inner spiritual process of rebirth, or "regeneration." (There is a third, the "internal historical," which is about the spiritual process of the human race as a whole, but we are largely passing over that level of meaning in this series.) Though each of these deeper meanings of the Bible story exists independently on its own level, the various levels of meaning do parallel each other. In particular, the Lord's inner process is the perfect template and pattern, and our inner story is an imperfect shadow and copy of that perfect divine life. What does the story of the treaty of Beersheba mean on these deeper levels? And does it really have more relevance to us today than the story of a treaty between two clan leaders who lived four thousand years ago? In several of the recent sermons in this series, we have been focusing on the divine rationality and human rationality. Abraham as a character represents the Lord himself, or the divine love. Both Sarah his wife and Isaac his son represent the truth, or rational side of the Lord, and of us as well. So the stories in this part of Genesis revolve around the developing intellectual and rational capabilities in the Lord as a young boy--and in us as we grow out of early childhood and into the later years of childhood and adolescence, when we move from the simple, almost instinctual, heart-centered life of infancy into a time when our life focuses more on learning and intellectual growth. As we explored the stories of Isaac and Ishmael in earlier stories, we discovered in the spiritual meaning a conflict between our first headstrong, self-assured, and rather combative notions of right and wrong, represented by Ishmael, and the growing sense of a higher, more thoughtful, and more compassionate rationality represented by Isaac. In the Lord's life, this involved looking to the divine wisdom within for his guide and inspiration, rather than adopting the views of the religious teachers of his day. For us, in parallel fashion, it involves being guided by a spiritually enlightened rationality rather than by limited and faulty human notions of right and wrong. Our story for today continues that theme, only with a different outcome--at least, for the time being. Ishmael was ultimately banished from Abraham's household. But in our story for today, as well as the parallel story of Isaac and Abimelech in Genesis 26, the story ends, not with a breach and separation, but with a treaty and peaceful coexistence. What does this mean in the Lord's life, and in ours? Both the Lord Jesus and we, in our spiritual life, must come to a time when we set aside the notion, represented by Ishmael, that "I am right and you are wrong, so it is okay for me to attack and condemn you." Of Ishmael it is said, "He will be a wild donkey of a man; his hand will be against everyone and everyone's hand against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers" (Genesis 16:11-12). There is no room for this kind of combative, condemnatory "rationality" in our developing spiritual lives. And where we see this in various religious leaders and believers in the world around us--whether they are Christians, Muslims, Jews or of any other faith--we know that we are encountering people who have a long way to go in their spiritual life. Abraham's treaty with Abimelech in Beersheba represents a new development in the inner struggle between the world's view of things and a more spiritual view of things. To understand the meaning of Abimelech and the Philistines, it helps to know that they lived along the southern Mediterranean coastline of Palestine. The Mediterranean Sea is simply called "the sea" or "the coast" in the Bible story. And seas, in general, represent the gathering together of our experience in memory, just as the waters of the streams and rivers all flow into the sea, and are gathered there. Being at the lowest level--sea level--seas also represent natural and worldly ideas and information. Further, the South also represents our intellectual capabilities. So Abimelech, living by the sea, in the southern part of the land, represents all the intellectual and rational capabilities we develop from our life in the world, among human beings and human ideas. For the Lord, this would especially mean all of the religious knowledge he gained during his boyhood as he studied the Scriptures and conversed with the religious leaders of his day. For us, Abimelech and the Philistines represent all of our worldly learning and ideas, and especially the various human philosophies and perspectives about life and its meaning. In contrast to the sea, a well represents a higher and more living source of truth and understanding. Specifically, a well represents spiritual truth, or the Word of the Lord. What, then, is the conflict here? And how is it resolved? "Beersheba," Swedenborg tells us, "represents merely human rational ideas that are allied with religious teachings." In the Lord's life, the treaty of Beersheba meant that he could use all he had learned from religious leaders, and make it a part of his ministry to the people. And in the Gospel story, we find him very effectively using his thorough knowledge of the Scriptures and of Jewish customs in preaching his own higher message. In our own, lives, this story represents a time when we realize that we do not have to set aside everything we have learned of human ideas and knowledge. On the contrary, all of the things we have learned and experienced can become "natural allies" to our spiritual life, giving rational help, support, and illustration to our growing spiritual perspective on life. As we move forward in the stories of Abraham and Isaac, we will flesh out this natural alliance between human and spiritual rationality, and see how it strengthens us in the early development of our spiritual life. For now, it is sufficient to know that the Lord does not require us to throw away anything we have learned in this life. Nothing we have learned, experienced, or done is useless; it all contributes to the angel that we are becoming. Amen. ____________________ These sermons are a ministry of the Bridgewater New Jerusalem Church. If you wish to support the church that sponsors them, please send your contribution to: New Jerusalem Church 88 Central Square Bridgewater, MA 02324 To make a donation or monthly pledge via PayPal with your credit card, or from your bank account, please go to: http://www.leewoof.net/ministry/churchdonationform.html Thank you! Church web site: http://www.ForMinistry.com/02324NJC Denominational web site: http://www.swedenborg.org To learn about and discuss Swedenborgian ideas on Beliefnet, go to: http://www.beliefnet.com/boards/boards_main.AllCategories.asp?Category=132 From leewoof@leewoof.net Mon Nov 1 14:34:14 2004 From: leewoof@leewoof.net (Lee Woofenden) Date: Mon, 01 Nov 2004 09:34:14 -0500 Subject: [Sermons] "Defining Moments," by the Rev. Lee Woofenden Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20041101093343.04001270@mail.leewoof.net> Defining Moments By the Rev. Lee Woofenden Bridgewater, Massachusetts, October 24, 2004 Readings: Genesis 22:1-19: Abraham Tested Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, "Abraham!" "Here I am," he replied. Then God said, "Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about." Early the next morning Abraham got up and saddled his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about. On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. He said to his servants, "Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you." Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went on together, Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, "Father?" "Yes, my son?" Abraham replied. "The fire and wood are here," Isaac said, "but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?" Abraham answered, "God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son." And the two of them went on together. When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. But the angel of the Lord called out to him from heaven, "Abraham! Abraham!" "Here I am," he replied. "Do not lay a hand on the boy," he said. "Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son." Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called that place "The Lord Will Provide." And to this day it is said, "On the mountain of the Lord it will be provided." The angel of the Lord called to Abraham from heaven a second time and said, "I swear by myself, declares the Lord, that because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, and through your seed all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me." Then Abraham returned to his servants, and they set off together for Beersheba. And Abraham stayed in Beersheba. Matthew 7:13-14: The Narrow and Wide Gates Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it. Arcana Coelestia #2764: The Lord's most severe temptations In the inner meaning, Genesis 22 speaks of the Lord's severest and inmost temptations, through which he united his human side with his divine side. It then speaks of the salvation, by means of that union, of those who form the Lord's spiritual church. Sermon: God tested Abraham. He said to him, "Abraham!" "Here I am," he replied. Then God said, "Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about." (Genesis 22:1-2) If we look back over our lives and consider the things we have been through, we will see along the way, like pearls on a string, or for our Catholic friends, like beads on the rosary, defining moments of our lives. Moments at which we changed. Moments at which we had experiences or made choices that changed the course of our lives. For me, there have been a number of defining moments--as I'm sure there have been for you. I recall the time I decided not to go into the ministry. That happened during my second year of college. I had intended to go into the ministry for as long as I had had any particular aspirations. When I decided not to go into the ministry, it changed not only the next decade of my life, which I spent doing things other than ministry, but also the rest of my life. I also remember when I decided once again that I would go into the ministry. That was about the time my daughter was born--and it, too, was a defining moment. Some of our defining moments are positive: the birth of a child; a new start in life. Others are more difficult. And some of them change us in ways we wish had not happened. If we look at the life of a nation, we also see defining moments. For this nation, the Revolutionary War was a defining moment. The Civil War was a defining moment. There have been many defining moments. September 11, 2001 was a defining moment. And we still don't know just how that event, and our reaction to it, will define this nation. But we know that we will never be the same. In the life of the Lord there were also defining moments. When the Lord was baptized, and the Holy Spirit came down upon him like a dove, that was a defining moment, showing him what his life was to be. And when he went into the desert afterwards and was tempted by the devil--when he went through three temptations . . . three temptations winnowing his soul--that was a defining moment that determined the course of his life. We all have our defining moments. Our story for today, the so-called "sacrifice of Isaac," was certainly a defining moment in Abraham's life. It was a definition, in his life, of what was going to be the most important to him. Abraham's son Isaac had been born in a miraculous way. And incidentally, the Bible hedges a bit when calls Isaac his only son. Abraham did, in fact, have another son, Ishmael, who was born before Isaac. But as far as the biblical writers were concerned, Ishmael was not a true son of Abraham. His true son was the one born to him by his true wife, Sarah. So Isaac is treated as his only son. And in the context of the story, this especially means his only heir. Isaac was the one through whom his line would continue. It was through Isaac that God would carry out the promise to Abraham that he would become a great nation. Now God was telling him he must give that up. Or at least, that's what Abraham thought God was telling him. He heard God say, "Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love . . . and sacrifice him as a burnt offering." And Abraham saddled his donkey and went. That was a defining moment: when Abraham decided to obey God even though it would mean such a huge and painful change in his life. And so he traveled toward Mount Moriah with his son Isaac. It is poignant to see him walking along with Isaac. We don't know exactly how old Isaac is at this point--perhaps pre-teen or a young teenager. And he is talking to his father. Isaac knows how sacrifices work. He knows that you bring the fire, the knife, the wood, and the animal for the sacrifice. And he is confused. We have everything but the most important thing: the animal! So he asks his father Abraham a question: "The fire and wood are here, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?" Abraham's answer is fascinating: "God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son." And they continue on. Abraham believed that God had provided the animal for the sacrifice. He believed that the animal for the sacrifice was his son Isaac, whom God had given to him as a miraculous gift. He believed that if God had given Isaac to him, then God could require Isaac back from his hand. That is what Abraham believed when he spoke those words. And with untold pain in his soul, he traveled onward to give that precious gift back to God. But that was not his last defining moment. When Abraham took his son, bound him, and was prepared to kill him--prepared to carry out what he believed was God's order to slay and sacrifice his son--there was another defining moment. "Abraham! Abraham!" The angel of the Lord called out from heaven, and held back his hand, not allowing him to slay his son. He said, "Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your only son." And the angel called out to Abraham again and gave him this message: Because you have not withheld your only son, I will bless you incredibly--and not only you, but all the nations of the earth will be blessed through you. We have seen the literal fulfillment of that promise. There are three great religions on this earth that were blessed through Abraham and his obedience to the Lord. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all take inspiration from Abraham, and from his willingness to put the Lord first, even at great personal sacrifice. And that influence has reached out into the other parts of the world through the good that the people of those religions have done. Let's pause a moment to look at the issue of God telling Abraham to sacrifice his son. You may be familiar with the childhood game that my neighborhood used to call "Operator." All the kids get in a circle. One of them thinks up a phrase and whispers it into the next one's ear. That one whispers whatever he or she heard into the next one's ear, and so on. When it gets to the other end, the last one says out loud whatever came through. Then the one who started says the original phrase out loud. Sometimes it is very funny to hear what comes out the other end, compared to what it started as! In this Bible story there is a game of Operator going on between God and Abraham. God said something to Abraham, who heard it according to what was in his own mind. We know that we interpret what other people say to us. In fact, we sometimes we get trouble with people because they say something to us, and we hear something very different--and proceed to act on the assumption that what we heard is what they meant. There is a complicated saying that goes like this: "I know you believe you understand what you think I said, but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant." Things get very convoluted even trying to communicate with other people. We hear God in the same way: according to how we ourselves think. And it is important to understand that in Abraham's time, human sacrifice was considered perfectly valid, and was viewed as the supreme act of devotion toward one's deity. Clearly, this was part of Abraham's thinking as well. What did he do when he heard God telling him to sacrifice his son? What would one of us do? We would say, "That's not God speaking. God would never tell me to do something like that!" But that's not how Abraham responded. He saddled his donkey and went, fully intending to carry out what he believed God was commanding him. From a spiritual perspective, God was saying to Abraham, "You must make the supreme sacrifice. You must totally dedicate your life to me. You must not withhold anything from me." What Abraham heard was, "You must perform the supreme sacrifice. You must sacrifice your beloved son." Abraham believed this was the ultimate way of showing his devotion to the Lord. That's why the angel of the Lord accepted the willingness on Abraham's part--not because it would have been a good thing for Abraham to do, but because it showed that he was willing to put God above everything else in his life. This was also a defining moment for the Hebrew nation. It established that human sacrifice would not be a part of the Jewish religion. Yes, there is the later story of Jephtha and his daughter. But in general, human sacrifice was not practiced by the Jewish people, as it was by many of the surrounding peoples. The "sacrifice of Isaac" was a defining moment in which God turned around the belief of Abraham and his people that human sacrifice was pleasing to God. In effect God said: I appreciate the fact that you were willing to do this. But this is not what I am asking you to do. On a deeper level, the sacrifice of Isaac does speak of making the supreme sacrifice. For each one of us, that supreme sacrifice will be different. But for all of us, this is a story about the times when we face our toughest and deepest choices. This story is about our deepest times of temptation and trial, when we feel God calling us to do something that we are just not sure we can do--something that we think would mean leaving behind everything we believe is most important, and laying them down for God. In more doctrinal terms, we are tested as to what our "ruling love" will be. What will be the dominant force, the dominant love, in our life? And yes, sometimes we are tested as to whether we will put our family and loved ones first, or whether we will put God first. Sometimes we do have to make a choice between what our friends and family, even what our own children want us to do, and what we know God is telling us to do. Sometimes we have to struggle between what we ourselves believe we should do toward our family and friends, and what we know God is telling us. This can be very difficult. It can be just as harrowing as what Abraham went through when he heard God asking him to sacrifice his son. Sometimes we do have to sacrifice family members in our minds when we realize that God is calling us to do something very difficult. This testing is not theoretical. It is very real. It is very concrete. And it sifts our souls. As Abraham was walking along, it was not a theoretical task he was about to do. He was being asked to give up what was most important to him. And I know it tore his heart apart to make that decision. It does tear our hearts apart to make the ultimate decisions that God puts in front of us. Yet these are the defining moments of our lives. These are the moments that determine who we will be. These are the moments that determine the rest of our lives. The choices we make, the directions we go at these times will set our course. And it will be very difficult to change that course farther down the line. Even if we do change course later, we can never change the choice we made before, and its consequences will continue. These defining moments do determine the course of our lives; and most importantly, they determine the course of our hearts. They define the person we will be. The Lord faced these choices as well. In correspondential terms, Isaac represents the "divine rational" in the Lord. Isaac represents the Lord's higher vision of life, of spirit, of his mission, which he was beginning to see as a young boy. Isaac represents his divine calling. And the Lord had to make a choice between that calling and what the world said he should do--and even what his own lower heart said he should do. Consider Jesus in the desert being tempted by the devil. One of the temptations the devil put before the Lord was to show him the vast human landscape from a mountaintop, and say to him: Do you see all of these kingdoms, all these people, this entire world? I will give it to you if you will fall down and worship me. In a way, this was exactly what the Lord wanted. He wanted all the people of the world. His greatest love, and the reason he came to earth, was to save the human race. And that doesn't just mean the human race in general. He came to save each one of the people that he saw around him. He came to save each one of us in this church, and every other person both in and out of all of the churches today, and throughout all time. This was his love. This why he came: to save a humanity that was destroying himself. And now the devil was telling him: I'll give it to you. All you have to do is compromise; all you have to do is just this once, bow down and worship me. Jesus, as in all three of these temptations, turned to Scripture. He turned to the divine rational, to his inner Isaac, to his deeper understanding of what the Scripture was telling him, in order to defend against every one of the temptations. He followed Isaac's line. He kept to divine teaching instead of doing what humanity or the devil wanted. In so doing, Jesus put himself on a collision course with the religious leaders of his day. After that defining moment, when he was baptized and tempted in the wilderness, and when he followed God's way instead of the devil's, it was only a matter of time before he would find himself on the cross. It was only a matter of time before the conflict with the world would become so great that people would act with murderous hatred against him, trying to destroy him. And he knew this when he made that defining choice in his life. Our defining decisions may put us on a collision course with the people around us as well--our family, our friends, the people we work with. After those defining moments, our lives will never be the same again. We may never again be able to have that particular relationship with our family, those particular friendships, that particular job. These moments, these choices, define our lives. They send us in a different direction than we were going before. This is what Abraham faced. This is what the Lord faced. And this is what each one of us faces at our defining moments. Sometimes we face choices every bit as tough as the one Abraham faced on Mount Moriah. Perhaps we don't hear God literally telling us to sacrifice our children. But at times we do hear God telling us to sacrifice what we believe is most important to us. What will we do at that moment? How will we define our lives? ____________________ These sermons are a ministry of the Bridgewater New Jerusalem Church. If you wish to support the church that sponsors them, please send your contribution to: New Jerusalem Church 88 Central Square Bridgewater, MA 02324 To make a donation or monthly pledge via PayPal with your credit card, or from your bank account, please go to: http://www.leewoof.net/ministry/churchdonationform.html Thank you! Church web site: http://www.ForMinistry.com/02324NJC Denominational web site: http://www.swedenborg.org To learn about and discuss Swedenborgian ideas on Beliefnet, go to: http://www.beliefnet.com/boards/boards_main.AllCategories.asp?Category=132 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From leewoof@leewoof.net Tue Nov 16 16:35:25 2004 From: leewoof@leewoof.net (Lee Woofenden) Date: Tue, 16 Nov 2004 11:35:25 -0500 Subject: [Sermons] "The Divine Marriage: Preparing the Way, " by the Rev. Lee Woofenden Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20041116113403.03665480@mail.leewoof.net> The Divine Marriage: Preparing the Way By the Rev. Lee Woofenden Bridgewater, Massachusetts, November 14, 2004 Readings: Genesis 24:1-9: Abraham charges his servant to seek a wife for Isaac Abraham was now old and well advanced in years, and the Lord had blessed him in every way. He said to the chief servant in his household, the one in charge of all that he had, "Put your hand under my thigh, and I will make you swear by the Lord, the God of heaven and the God of earth, that you will not get a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites, among whom I am living, but will go to my country and my own relatives and get a wife for my son Isaac." The servant asked him, "What if the woman is unwilling to come back with me to this land? Shall I then take your son back to the country you came from?" Abraham said to him, "Make sure that you do not take my son back there. The Lord, the God of heaven, who brought me out of my father's household and my native land, and who spoke to me and promised me on oath, saying, 'To your offspring I will give this land'--he will send his angel before you, and you will get a wife for my son from there. But if the woman is unwilling to come back with you, then you will be released from this oath of mine. Only do not take my son back there." So the servant put his hand under the thigh of his master Abraham and swore an oath to him concerning this matter. Matthew 7:7-12: Ask, seek, knock Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who seeks finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. Which of you, if your child asks for bread, will give a stone? Or if the child asks for a fish, will give a snake? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you; for this sums up the Law and the Prophets. Arcana Coelestia #3017: Being blessed When it says that "the Lord blessed Abraham in every way," in the inner sense it means that the Lord from the Divine itself rearranged everything in his human side into divine order. . . . When "being blessed" refers to human beings, it means being enriched with spiritual and heavenly goodness. We are enriched in this way when the things within us are rearranged by the Lord into a spiritual and heavenly pattern, and so into the image and likeness of divine order. Our spiritual rebirth is nothing else. Sermon: The Lord, the God of heaven . . . will send his angel before you, and you will get a wife for my son from there. (Genesis 24:7) For the next few weeks we will focus on one of the most beautiful chapters in the Bible: Genesis 24, on the marriage of Isaac and Rebekah. Though the Bible is full of references to marriage, there are not many good love stories in the Bible. Genesis 24 tells the simple and beautiful story of how Abraham's son Isaac and Rebekah, his wife-to-be, were brought together under the Lord's divine providence, and were married. And I do want to emphasize that this took place under the Lord's providence--which will become clear in the next few weeks as the story unfolds. In Swedenborg's book _Marital Love,_ there is a story in which an angel talks about how married couples come to be: Provision is made for couples to be born who are well matched in marriage for each other. Under the Lord's continual guidance they are brought up with a view to their marriage, though neither the boy nor the girl is aware of this. When in due course the young woman, as she is then, is of an age to be married, and the young man, as he is then, is ready for marriage, they meet somewhere as if by fate and see each other. Then by some instinct they at once recognize that they are well matched, and they think to themselves, as if by some inward prompting, the young man 'She is the one for me,' and the young woman, 'He is the one for me.' After allowing this to sink into their minds for a while, they resolve to speak to each other, and they become engaged. We say as if by fate and by instinct, but we mean by divine providence, because when this is not known, it looks like fate. (_Marital Love_ #316) Of course, this is an angel speaking, and angels see marriage as it unfolds in an ideal way. Here on earth, where things are much murkier and more confusing, we may not always manage to meet and marry our partner in such a simple and beautiful way. Still, love at first sight, which is what the angel describes, is a reality for many married couples. It was the reality for Isaac and Rebekah, as we will see later in the story. And it is a reality that, according to our teachings, does not come about "by fate or instinct," as it may appear to us outwardly. Rather, it takes place under the guiding hand of the Lord, who prepares us for the moment we will meet and marry our soul's partner--whether that wonderful event happens while we are living here on this earth or after we have passed into the spiritual world. For those hoping and longing for a happy marriage, our church has a message of hope and joy: the Lord has someone in mind for you. But let's be honest: our path toward happy marriage is often not an easy one, and it may not take place on the schedule we hope for. Some people go through unhappy marriages, divorces, and other painful experiences with relationships before finding someone with whom they can "live happily ever after." Some marry only late in life. Some do not find their partner here on earth, but must wait out this lifetime and find their partner in the next. We do not know what the Lord's providence has in store for us. And that can be hard to bear for those who do not see their heart's wishes fulfilled for many years. Still, whatever our "fortunes of love" may be, we can prepare ourselves for the marriage that the Lord has in mind for us. Although the emphasis in our culture and in our own minds--and even in our story from Genesis--is on _finding_ the right person, it is even more important that we _be_ the right person: the kind of person who can be in a mutually loving and growing marriage. We will look into this reality more fully over the next few weeks. For today, I would like to prepare the way by looking briefly at the source of all marriage: the Lord. The teachings of our church tell us that marriage is not merely a human affair. It has its source and origin in the nature of God, from whom all things--including marriage--come. Though it was left to Swedenborg to spell out the nature of this divine marriage, its existence is implied in the first chapter of Genesis, at the very creation of humans: And God said, "Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness." . . . So God created humankind in his image; in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. (Genesis 1:26-27) If humans, both male and female, are created in the image of God, and they are created to become "one flesh" (Genesis 2:24; Matthew 19:5; Mark 10:8), this means that the origin of both male and female, as well as the origin of marriage itself, must be in God, in whose image and likeness we were created. Returning to the theme of the inner life of the Lord Jesus, this must also mean that there was and is a marriage within the Lord himself. When we read the story of Isaac and Rebekah, we are not only reading a human love story. At it's deepest, heavenly level of meaning, we are reading the story of the marriage of love and wisdom, or of goodness and truth, in the Lord himself. This divine marriage is the source of all human marriage. As we will see in the unfolding story of Isaac and Rebekah, spiritually speaking, finding a wife for Isaac involves making an inner marriage between what we love and what we believe, or in more concrete language, getting our head and our heart together. As the Genesis story has shifted from Abraham to Isaac, we have followed the course of the Lord's shift, in early childhood, from simple, heartfelt promptings of the divine love toward his life work of saving the human race, toward a more mature rational and spiritual understanding of what he needed to do in order to accomplish that work. And as we will see, the story of Isaac and Rebekah is the story of how the Lord's developing rational mind found its true partner in a love for spiritual rationality and truth. This is the meaning of getting a wife for Isaac from among Abraham's own relatives. Abraham's family represents a spiritual view of life, while the Canaanites among whom Abraham was living represented a materialistic view of life. And as we have been discovering in our series on the Lord's inner life, Jesus himself always moved toward a higher, spiritual view of the world around him, and of his life and mission in it. What, practically, does this mean for us as we prepare our hearts and minds for the true marriage that the Lord has prepared for us? (And this applies even if we are already married!) Following in the Lord's footsteps, if we wish to find true love and a happy and growing marriage relationship, we must also lift our hearts and minds above a focus on the things of this world, toward a higher focus on the things of eternal life. If we focus on building up our status and wealth in this world, we will never have a real marriage, even if we "find the right one." There will be no room in our heart for loving another person, because we will be too busy loving ourselves. But if we focus our lives on opening our hearts to love the Lord and our fellow human beings, and opening our minds to the Lord's guiding truth, we will build a true marriage of mind and heart within ourselves. Then we can be a person who can experience true love with our life's partner. Amen. ____________________ These sermons are a ministry of the Bridgewater New Jerusalem Church. If you wish to support the church that sponsors them, please send your contribution to: New Jerusalem Church 88 Central Square Bridgewater, MA 02324 To make a donation or monthly pledge via PayPal with your credit card, or from your bank account, please go to: http://www.leewoof.net/ministry/churchdonationform.html Thank you! Church web site: http://www.ForMinistry.com/02324NJC Denominational web site: http://www.swedenborg.org To learn about and discuss Swedenborgian ideas on Beliefnet, go to: http://www.beliefnet.com/boards/boards_main.AllCategories.asp?Category=132 From leewoof@leewoof.net Sat Nov 27 22:12:20 2004 From: leewoof@leewoof.net (Lee Woofenden) Date: Sat, 27 Nov 2004 17:12:20 -0500 Subject: [Sermons] "The Divine Marriage: Seeking Oneness, " by the Rev. Lee Woofenden Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20041127171147.033e7968@mail.leewoof.net> The Divine Marriage: Seeking Oneness By the Rev. Lee Woofenden Bridgewater, Massachusetts, November 21, 2004 Readings: Genesis 24:10-28: Abraham servant finds Rebekah Then the servant took ten of his master's camels and left, taking with him all kinds of good things from his master. He set out for Aram Naharaim and made his way to the town of Nahor. He made the camels kneel down near the well outside the town; it was towards evening, the time the women go out to draw water. Then he prayed, "O Lord, God of my master Abraham, give me success today, and show kindness to my master Abraham. See, I am standing beside this spring, and the daughters of the townspeople are coming out to draw water. May it be that when I say to a girl, 'Please let down your jar that I may have a drink,' and she says, 'Drink, and I'll water your camels too'--let her be the one you have chosen for your servant Isaac. By this I will know that you have shown kindness to my master." Before he had finished praying, Rebekah came out with her jar on her shoulder. She was the daughter of Bethuel son of Milcah, who was the wife of Abraham's brother Nahor. The girl was very beautiful, a virgin; no man had ever lain with her. She went down to the spring, filled her jar, and came up again. The servant hurried to meet her and said, "Please give me a little water from your jar." "Drink, my lord," she said, and quickly lowered the jar to her hands and gave him a drink. After she had given him a drink, she said, "I'll draw water for your camels too, until they have finished drinking." So she quickly emptied her jar into the trough, ran back to the well to draw more water, and drew enough for all his camels. Without saying a word, the man watched her closely to learn whether or not the Lord had made his journey successful. When the camels had finished drinking, the man took out a gold nose ring weighing a half shekel and two gold bracelets weighing ten shekels. Then he asked, "Whose daughter are you? Please tell me, is there room in your father's house for us to spend the night?" She answered him, "I am the daughter of Bethuel, the son that Milcah bore to Nahor." And she added, "We have plenty of straw and fodder, as well as room for you to spend the night." Then the man bowed down and worshipped the Lord, saying, "Praise be to the Lord, the God of my master Abraham, who has not abandoned his kindness and faithfulness to my master. As for me, the Lord has led me on the journey to the house of my master's relatives." The girl ran and told her mother's household about these things. Luke 6:43-45: A tree and its fruit No good tree bears bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit. Each tree is recognized by its own fruit. Figs are not gathered from thorns, nor are grapes picked from briers. A good person brings good things out of the good stored up the heart, and an evil person brings evil things out of the evil stored up in the heart. For the mouth speaks out of the abundance of the heart. Arcana Coelestia #3080: Beauty from within All beauty comes from goodness that has innocence within it. When it flows from our inner self to our outer self, goodness itself is what is beautiful; goodness is the source of all human beauty. We can recognize this from the fact that it is not a person's face, but the love shining out from the face that stirs feelings in another person. With those who love goodness, it is the love of goodness seen in someone's face that moves them; and it moves them just as much as there is innocence behind the goodness that they love. So it is the spiritual reality within the material surface that stir their love, not the material apart from the spiritual. Sermon: Before he had finished praying, Rebekah came out with her jar on her shoulder. . . . The girl was very beautiful, a virgin; no man had ever lain with her. She went down to the spring, filled her jar, and came up again. (Genesis 24:15, 16) Today's story, the second in our four-part series on Genesis 24, is a story of seeking oneness. It is a story of seeking a wife for Isaac, who would become one flesh with him. In last week's story, Abraham commanded his head servant to travel to his relatives at Haran, in the northern part of the fertile crescent, and find a wife for Isaac. He was very specific in saying that Isaac should not marry one of the Canaanites from the surrounding lands, who were pagans, and were not of the same mind with the Hebrews. The servant was to go back to Abraham's own people and find a wife for Isaac there. In today's story Abraham's servant goes with great faithfulness to do what his master has asked of him. And we can see by the servant's actions why Abraham chose him to do this most precious task of finding a wife for his son Isaac. He is a God-fearing man who prays to the Lord and does what his master commands with a lot of heart and a lot of intelligence. Today we will go through the different parts of the story, and then use it as a metaphor not only for the Lord's inner process and our parallel inner process, as we have in previous sermons, but also for what we go through in seeking an eternal life partner for marriage. The first thing the servant does is to get ready. He takes ten of his master's camels, and loads them with many good things. He also takes other servants with him to help him on the journey. Then he sets out for Haran, to seek a wife for Isaac. After he reaches his destination, the first thing he does, after settling his camels down, is to kneel down near the well and pray to the Lord for success. In his prayer, he proposes a test to help him recognize the right woman: Let the one God has chosen for Isaac be the one who, when I ask for a drink, not only gives me a drink, but also offers to draw water for my camels. This was not an arbitrary test. A young woman who did this would be a woman of good character. She would be a woman who was eager to help and serve others, who was thoughtful and put out the extra effort, and who had personal grace and a respect for visitors. This was the kind of woman the servant would want to find for his master's son. Rebekah beautifully fulfills the test of character. There is some suspense in the story as we read along. When he first asks for a drink of water, she lowers the jar and says, "Drink, my lord." She does not immediately say she will water his camels also. And we can imagine the servant waiting and wondering to see if the Lord has given him success. But as soon as the servant has finished drinking, she says, "I'll draw water for your camels too." Then the servant does something very important: he follows through. Rebekah has taken the initiative and shown that she is a good and thoughtful woman. Now the servant follows through, giving her gifts: a golden nose ring and bracelets. And he asks for an invitation: "Is there room in your father's house for us to spend the night?" And she says, "We have plenty of straw and fodder, as well as room for you to spend the night." The whole exchange is about mutual agreement; about proposing and accepting. Then the servant prays once again--a prayer of thanks to the Lord for giving him success on the journey. He is not yet certain that he has gained success, but he knows that so far the Lord is making it come out just right, and he thanks the Lord for that gift. Those are the steps the servant goes through in finding Rebekah. Now let's look at the story on three levels: the Lord's inner life, our inner life, and our relationship with a life partner. These correlate with the three levels of deeper meaning in the Bible: the highest, "heavenly" meaning, which is about the Lord; the second, "spiritual" meaning, which is about our inner life and spiritual growth; and third, "internal historical" meaning, which involves our relations with one another as human beings. Let's look first at the highest level of meaning: the heavenly level, about the Lord. Marriage is not an arbitrary thing; it comes from God. In the beginning God created humans male and female; both were created in the image and likeness of God, and they were created to be joined together in marriage. Throughout the Bible we find the metaphor of the divine marriage--and that is where our marriages come from. What is this divine marriage in God? As we look the divine marriage expressed in the life of Jesus, it is the union between the Lord's heart--his deep love for humanity--and his rational mind--his understanding, intelligence, and wisdom. It is the union between the outpouring divine love that he felt within him and the guidance of the divine truth. Jesus went through a definite process to achieve that inner marriage of head and heart. And he achieved it through the very same steps that take place in today's story. First, Jesus accepted the inner call to move toward a higher and deeper union within himself. He heard God from within, represented by Abraham, calling him to find a deeper union--one from "his own people," meaning one from the Divine itself. Like the servant in the story, Jesus also continually prayed to the Divine within for help and guidance. In Gospel story we find Jesus on many occasions praying to God--which was really to his own inner divine soul--for the help and strength he needed. He also turned to Scripture and to the inner guidance of divine truth. In the story, the servant found Rebekah at a well. A well is source of water--which is a universal symbol for truth. At that inner, divine well Jesus found not only living water to satisfy his mind's thirst for truth, but also divine love in his heart, represented by the woman, Rebekah. These are the bride and groom of inner marriage. Jesus moved very consciously toward that marriage--toward a oneness of heart and mind in which he would never say or do anything that did not come from the heart. How many of us can say that we always speak and act from the heart? We often say superficial things and do careless things. The Lord was always moving to a state in which everything he thought, said, and did came from the heart of divine love, and was shaped by the mind of divine truth. This was the marriage represented in the story of the servant seeking a wife for Isaac--seeking to unite male and female. And Jesus did achieve that inner marriage. After he had gone through his life on earth, and through his final, terrible temptation on the cross, he rose to full union with the Divine within, so that there was a complete marriage between the head and the heart of God, and between the inner and the outer levels of God. Now in Jesus we see God fully and seamlessly represented--and as fully present with each of us as we are able to receive. And the Lord achieved this by a process corresponding to our story of seeking a wife for Isaac. Moving to the spiritual level, the level of our inner spiritual life, we also are always seeking union between heart and head. For example, we tend to look for a career that we not only have the knowledge and skills for, but that we also love. How many of us enjoy a job that we are good at, but that we don't love? And if we want to go into some career, but the knowledge and skills required are beyond us, it can be very frustrating. We want a job that we both love and understand. Turning to the deeper spiritual levels represented by the story, we first hear a call from God to move to a higher union: a union of our deeper loves and our higher thoughts. This is the call that Abraham gives to the servant in us. Then, if we wish to fulfill that call, we need to spend time praying to God to give us the heart and the guidance we need to follow this spiritual path. And if we do pray sincerely, God will show us the way. We also need to turn to Scripture, while listening to the inner guidance that we get from God in prayer. We go to the "well" of God's truth to gain insights that will guide us toward a deeper life. That inner guidance becomes the standard by which we do everything. For example, if we are in the business world, making money will no longer be the most important thing for us. Yes, making money is important in the business world, and we will still recognize that. But for us, the most important thing will be serving our customers well, and always doing what is right. We will then be moving forward spiritually while following our material profession. We will be acting from higher and deeper motives--from a sense of the mission that God has given us to carry out on this earth. Having prayed to God, and having sought out the well of divine guidance, we move consciously toward a union with the love that comes from within. As we move along in life, we have to make decisions about what we will devote our lives to. My decision was to devote my life to working in the church. Yours will probably be something else. But if we wish to have a truly fulfilled life, at some point in our lives we must make a decision about the direction we will go, and what we will devote our life to. With God's help, we can make our life into something "very good." To do this, we move consciously toward uniting our heart with our head; we move toward uniting the love that we feel from within with the understanding we have gained in our life's journey. And God promises us that if we make this decision and this commitment, he will give us success. It may not be material success; we may not become wealthy. But we will have spiritual success. We will become good people, and we will also come into good relationships with those around us because we are acting out of love for God and love for our neighbor. Moving on to the third level of meaning, what does this story, and our explanation of it so far, have to do with the kind of marriage that we seek with a life partner? As we set out toward marriage, just as the servant went to seek a wife for Isaac, we must go with a belief in marriage, and pledge ourselves to seek not just a physical and social connection, but an inner, spiritual connection with another human being. Following our Bible story once more, if we truly want to have a spiritual union, we must spend time praying to God and saying, "Please send me the person who will be the right one for me. But especially, please make me the person who can be in loving relationship with my life partner!" What is the connection between the inner marriage we spoke of earlier and our outer marriage with another person? It is this: If we are not moving toward a marriage of head and heart within ourselves, we will never experience true marriage with another person outside of ourselves. To be ready for marriage with another person, we must have love in our hearts, and we must have definite values and beliefs, based on our inner love, to guide our lives. Only then we can be of one mind, knowing who we are and where we are going. And only then can we seek out a person who loves what we love, who values and believes what we value and believe, and who can therefore be of one mind with us. This is why we must continually pray to God for help and guidance not only in finding our life partner, but in becoming an inwardly "married" person who can be in a loving marriage relationship. And of course, when we do seek out a partner, it would be foolish to simply look at the exterior, and make our choice based on how good the other person looks. Beauty and good looks are fine. After all, God created human beauty for us to enjoy. But as our reading from Swedenborg points out, true beauty is not on the surface; it comes from within. We know that this is true. We can look at a face and see that it is very beautiful, yet find it cold and uninviting because there is no love shining through. But when we see a face that has love shining through it, that face becomes very beautiful, and attracts us to the person behind it. It is the inner character, the inner love, that truly makes a person beautiful. I am sure we all have dearly loved family members and friends that we think of as beautiful even if they would never get their photo in a fashion magazine. My father tells a story from his youth about his minister, a man whom he loved and admired. One time someone said to my father, "He's a wonderful man; too bad he's crippled." My father was taken aback: "Crippled! He's not crippled!" Physically he was, in fact, crippled. But my father never thought of him that way. He only saw the beauty of his minister's character. In the things that count most, in his inner character, he was a strong and whole person--one who had love in his heart and the guidance of God's truth in his mind. As we seek someone for marriage, we are not merely seeking someone who is good-looking outwardly, but someone who has a good inner character--just as the servant sought a woman of good character as a wife for Isaac. And we are seeking to become a person of good character ourselves, so that we can be united with that person. We also have to take conscious steps to make the connection. We can't just sit back and let marriage come to us. We have to make a decision and a commitment. We have to propose and accept. We have to reach out to the person, just as the servant reached out to Rebekah. It says that he ran to her and spoke to her. We run in spirit to the other person to speak to him or her--and to find out whether God has sent us our eternal partner. And this is not only for those who are seeking a partner, but for those of us who are already married, and seek a deeper oneness with our partner. God promises that if we will prepare ourselves, pray to the Lord, seek an inner union of head and heart, and then reach out in love and thoughtfulness, seeking to find and unite with another, we will find true love, whether in this world or in the next. Amen. ____________________ These sermons are a ministry of the Bridgewater New Jerusalem Church. If you wish to support the church that sponsors them, please send your contribution to: New Jerusalem Church 88 Central Square Bridgewater, MA 02324 To make a donation or monthly pledge via PayPal with your credit card, or from your bank account, please go to: http://www.leewoof.net/ministry/churchdonationform.html Thank you! Church web site: http://www.ForMinistry.com/02324NJC Denominational web site: http://www.swedenborg.org To learn about and discuss Swedenborgian ideas on Beliefnet, go to: http://www.beliefnet.com/boards/boards_main.AllCategories.asp?Category=132 From leewoof@leewoof.net Sat Dec 25 05:09:13 2004 From: leewoof@leewoof.net (Lee Woofenden) Date: Sat, 25 Dec 2004 00:09:13 -0500 Subject: [Sermons] "A Star in the East," by the Rev. Lee Woofenden Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20041225000818.0190afb0@mail.leewoof.net> A Star in the East By the Rev. Lee Woofenden Bridgewater, Massachusetts, December 24, 2004 Christmas Eve Readings: Psalm 148: Praise the Lord Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord from the heavens, praise him in the heights above. Praise him, all his angels, praise him, all his heavenly hosts. Praise him, sun and moon, praise him, all you shining stars. Praise him, you highest heavens and you waters above the skies. Let them praise the name of the Lord, for he commanded and they were created. He set them in place forever and ever; he gave a decree that will never pass away. Praise the Lord from the earth, you great sea creatures and all ocean depths, lightning and hail, snow and clouds, stormy winds that do his bidding, you mountains and all hills, fruit trees and all cedars, wild animals and all cattle, small creatures and flying birds, kings of the earth and all nations, you princes and all rulers on earth, young men and maidens, old men and children. Let them praise the name of the Lord, for his name alone is exalted; his splendor is above the earth and the heavens. He has raised up a horn [of strength] for his people, the praise of all his saints, of Israel, the people close to his heart. Praise the Lord. Matthew 1:18-25: The birth of Jesus Christ Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way: When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, "Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins." All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: "Behold, the virgin will conceive and bear a son, and they will name him Emmanuel," which means "God with us." When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife, but had no union with her until she had borne a son; and he named him Jesus. Matthew 2:1-12: The visit of the wise men After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, "Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star in the east and have come to worship him." When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. He called together all the people's chief priests and teachers of the law, and asked them where the Christ was to be born. "In Bethlehem in Judea," they replied, "for this is what the prophet has written, 'But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for out of you will come a ruler who will be the shepherd of my people Israel.'" Herod called the wise men secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. He sent them to Bethlehem and said, "Go, make a careful search for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him." After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen in the east went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshipped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another way. Sermon: After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen in the east went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was (Matthew 2:9) For the wise men, the entire journey began with a star. A tiny little point of light in the sky. At least, we think of stars as tiny little things. But they are not. Each one of those "little stars" is a sun. Our sun is over a hundred times the diameter of the earth. Over one million earths could fit inside it. Those "little stars" that we see twinkling in our night sky are actually vast balls of intensely hot nuclear reactions reaching temperatures of over twenty-five million degrees at their core. If we were to travel too close to of those beautiful little dots of light, we would first be burnt to a crisp, and then vaporized. We see them as tiny points of light only because we are so far away from them. And that is good to keep in mind as we contemplate, with the wise men, the star that led them to Jesus. The star that we think of as tiny is, in fact, far larger and far more intense than anything our experience has prepared us to imagine. The first thing the wise men had to do in order to see the star was to look up. None of the priests and teachers of the law in Jerusalem saw the star. Their eyes were too focused on their books and their laws and their church politics to even notice the sign of the new King's birth. The wise men were willing to look up . . . and they saw a star in the east that would lead them on their journey. We, too, must be willing to look up. We must be willing to look beyond our jobs and our books and our families, and all the pressing cares of this world. We must be willing to clear our minds from time to time of all those cares, and lift the eyes of our minds beyond the things of this world to the deeper matters of spiritual life. Otherwise, like our four-footed friends, we will have our gaze constantly fixed on the grass and dirt in front of us . . . and we will never notice or see the far greater heavenly beauties that await our wondering eyes. And the wise men were willing to do something else--something that made them not merely smart, but truly wise. Once they had lifted up their eyes and seen the star, they were willing to follow it wherever it led them. They were willing to leave behind their familiar surroundings, and travel to a distant land, seeking the one who was born king of the Jews. And so they went on their journey, taking weeks, months, perhaps even a year or more to reach a destination that was still unknown. We, too, if we are to be wise, and not merely smart, must be willing to follow the star of spirit where it will lead us. We must be willing to pick ourselves up and leave behind our old, familiar attitudes and patterns of thinking and feeling. We must be willing to travel to a distant new land in which we will think new thoughts, feel new loves, live renewed lives. We must be willing to relinquish our own control to the newborn King within us, journeying not where we would prefer to go, but toward the Bethlehem of our inner Holy Land. On the way, we need to consult the Bible and the teachings of the church. The wise men did not find the child on their own. Even the star did not lead them directly to Bethlehem. To reach their destination, they had to consult with King Herod and the priests and teachers in Jerusalem. Yet in the end, it didn't matter whether those leaders were holy or corrupt. In the end, it doesn't matter whether the church is full of hypocritical leaders and imperfect people. What matters is that the church, with its most precious possession, the Word of God, gives us the detailed guidance we need to focus our journey in the right place. Renewed in this knowledge--the knowledge of who Jesus is and where he may be found--we can once again see the star of spiritual insight guiding us right to the place within us where we can encounter the newborn Lord for ourselves. For our meeting with the Lord Jesus Christ is not something that happens in the church, but in our hearts. With joy, the wise men saw the renewed and brightly gleaming star, and it led them right to the house where the child was. This was no ordinary, earthly star, which could never have rested over a single house. It was a star seen with their spiritual eyes. We, too, can see that star guiding us to the Lord Jesus, if we are willing to lift up our eyes to deeper things, and journey from our usual attitudes and habits toward its light. And if we do, in time we will find, not a tiny little star, but an vast, all-encompassing Sun of Righteousness, rising in the spiritual east our lives with healing in its wings (Malachi 4:2). Amen. ____________________ These sermons are a ministry of the Bridgewater New Jerusalem Church. If you wish to support the church that sponsors them, please send your contribution to: New Jerusalem Church 88 Central Square Bridgewater, MA 02324 To make a donation or monthly pledge via PayPal with your credit card, or from your bank account, please go to: http://www.leewoof.net/ministry/churchdonationform.html Thank you! Church web site: http://www.ForMinistry.com/02324NJC Denominational web site: http://www.swedenborg.org To learn about and discuss Swedenborgian ideas on Beliefnet, go to: http://www.beliefnet.com/boards/boards_main.AllCategories.asp?Category=132 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From leewoof@leewoof.net Sun Dec 26 00:29:52 2004 From: leewoof@leewoof.net (Lee Woofenden) Date: Sat, 25 Dec 2004 19:29:52 -0500 Subject: [Sermons] "The Divine Marriage: Making the Connection, " by the Rev. Lee Woofenden Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20041225192946.030d77f0@mail.leewoof.net> The Divine Marriage: Making the Connection By the Rev. Lee Woofenden Bridgewater, Massachusetts, November 28, 2004 Readings: Genesis 24:29-54: Speaking to Rebekah's family Now Rebekah had a brother named Laban, and he hurried out to the man at the spring. As soon as he had seen the nose ring, and the bracelets on his sister's arms, and had heard Rebekah tell what the man said to her, he went out to the man and found him standing by the camels near the spring. "Come, you who are blessed by the Lord," he said. "Why are you standing out here? I have prepared the house and a place for the camels." So the man went to the house, and the camels were unloaded. Straw and fodder were brought for the camels, and water for him and his men to wash their feet. Then food was set before him, but he said, "I will not eat until I have told you what I have to say." "Then tell us," he said. So he said, "I am Abraham's servant. The Lord has blessed my master abundantly, and he has become wealthy. He has given him sheep and cattle, silver and gold, menservants and maidservants, and camels and donkeys. My master's wife Sarah has borne him a son in his old age, and he has given him everything he owns. And my master made me swear an oath, and said, 'You must not get a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites, in whose land I live, but go to my father's family and to my own clan, and get a wife for my son.' "Then I asked my master, 'What if the woman will not come back with me?' "He replied, 'The Lord, before whom I have walked, will send his angel with you and make your journey a success, so that you can get a wife for my son from my own clan and from my father's family. Then, when you go to my clan, you will be released from my oath even if they refuse to give her to you--you will be released from my oath.' "When I came to the spring today, I said, 'O Lord, God of my master Abraham, if you will, please grant success to the journey on which I have come. See, I am standing beside this spring; if a maiden comes out to draw water and I say to her, "Please let me drink a little water from your jar," and if she says to me, "Drink, and I'll draw water for your camels too," let her be the one the Lord has chosen for my master's son.' "Before I finished praying in my heart, Rebekah came out, with her jar on her shoulder. She went down to the spring and drew water, and I said to her, 'Please give me a drink.' "She quickly lowered her jar from her shoulder and said, 'Drink, and I'll water your camels too.' So I drank, and she watered the camels also. "I asked her, 'Whose daughter are you?' "She said, 'The daughter of Bethuel son of Nahor, whom Milcah bore to him.' "Then I put the ring in her nose and the bracelets on her arms, and I bowed down and worshipped the Lord. I praised the Lord, the God of my master Abraham, who had led me on the right road to get the granddaughter of my master's brother for his son. Now if you will show kindness and faithfulness to my master, tell me; and if not, tell me, so I may know which way to turn." Laban and Bethuel answered, "This is from the Lord; we can say nothing to you one way or the other. Here is Rebekah; take her and go, and let her become the wife of your master's son, as the Lord has directed." When Abraham's servant heard what they said, he bowed down to the ground before the Lord. Then the servant brought out gold and silver jewelry and articles of clothing and gave them to Rebekah; he also gave costly gifts to her brother and to her mother. Then he and the men who were with him ate and drank and spent the night there. Matthew 5:13: You are the salt of the earth You are the salt of the earth. But if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot. Arcana Coelestia #3158: The marriage of truth and goodness In the literal meaning, this chapter deals with the engagement and marriage of Rebekah to Isaac. But the internal meaning deals with the introduction and joining together of truth and goodness--for this is spiritual engagement and spiritual marriage. In both cases, there must be freedom to consider and decide upon the union. It is well known that this is necessary for engagement and marriage. It is not so well known that it is also necessary for the introduction and joining together of truth and goodness, because they are not visible to our natural mind, and these things happen without our noticing or thinking about them. Yet this activity continues moment by moment in us when we are being reformed and reborn. Specifically, we experience a state of freedom when truth is being joined to goodness in us. Sermon This is from the Lord; we can say nothing to you one way or the other. Here is Rebekah; take her and go, and let her become the wife of your master's son, as the Lord has directed. (Genesis 24:50-51) This is the third in our series on the divine marriage. In our story two weeks ago, Abraham charged his head servant to find a wife for his son Isaac. He gave very specific instructions: He was not to find a wife from among the locals. The locals were not of the same mind as the Hebrews. They were pagans who worshiped many gods, and they didn't worship the God of Israel. Abraham wanted for his son a wife from his own clan, who would be compatible with him not just on the social level, but on the religious level. In our story last week, Abraham's servant set out with great faithfulness to carry out that task. He traveled to Haran, at the northern edge of the Fertile Crescent, and came to the town where the rest of Abraham's clan was still living. The servant went to the well outside the town, and there he met Rebekah. In today's story, he goes to "meet the parents," so to speak. He goes to Rebekah's home and meets her family--especially her brother Laban and her father Bethuel. And he is given a warm welcome. They provide fodder for his camels, and they give the servant and his men water to wash their feet--a customary way of showing hospitality to guests. They also set food before them. But the servant is on a mission, and he wants to carry it out right away. He says, "I will not eat until I have told you my story." He then recounts to Rebekah's family the whole story of what had taken place, from the time his master Abraham charged him with his mission to the time he met Rebekah at the well. This may seem to be a repeat. But it is different the second time around. The first time the story is told, the events are actually happening. The second time, the events are being shared with all of Rebekah's family. He is telling the whole story to the family so that they will have just as much knowledge of the situation as he does. He starts out by saying, in effect that Isaac is a "good catch." He is wealthy; you are not going to have to worry about Rebekah's well-being if you send her with me to marry this man. But then he moves on to the more spiritual and providential side of the events: about God guiding him to Rebekah, and the test he proposed in prayer to God: Let her be the one who, when I say, "please give me a drink," replies, "Not only will I give you a drink, but I will also water your camels." And as we said last week, this showed that Rebekah was a woman of good character: a woman who was ready to serve, and to give a little extra. She was a woman of intelligence and initiative. And she seemed to be just the person that God would choose as a wife for Isaac, who was to be the next in the line of Israel's Patriarchs. After the servant tells the story, Laban and Bethuel both give their consent. They say: This is from the Lord, what can we say about it? It is the Lord's will. Take her and go. And in next week's reading, we will find that Rebekah also gives her consent. So there is a proposal, and in response there is consent not just from the woman herself, but from the whole family, so that everyone is involved in and supportive of this union. All of this lays the foundation for the spiritual story. Let's look at it for a few minutes as we continue on our current theme of marriage. This story is all about consent, or informed and thoughtful agreement. When Abraham's servant came to the household, he did not simply take Rebekah and go. He could have come with a raiding party and run off with her--which was a fairly common thing to do in those days. Instead, he came and proposed marriage on behalf of Isaac. He wanted everyone involved to have full knowledge; so he took the time to met them and tell the whole story. In this way, he showed respect for the family to which he was making this proposal. He wanted them to be able to give informed consent to the union. Moving to the spiritual level, we know that for any connection to be real, it must involve both our head and our heart. Within us, marriage is a union of our heart, which is our loves, desires, motives, and our head, which is our thinking, rational, intellectual part. We see in the story how this takes place in us. Notice that the first meeting is with Rebekah herself. When we begin moving toward a new phase of our life, it is our heart that initially prompts us. Everything we do ultimately comes from the heart, just as it was Rebekah, the woman, that the servant first met and made proposals to. But if we are going to be truly and fully engaged in this new phase in our life, our head must also consent. Our heart usually guides us right, but sometimes it may not. Our head must look thoughtfully at this possible new phase of our life, and consider whether it is what we really want, and whether it is a good idea. In the story, this is represented by the servant telling the whole story to the family so that they can consider it and make up their own minds. The head, represented especially by Laban and Bethuel, must give its consent. Only then can the heart give its full assent--which is our story for next week. Only then can Rebekah say: Yes, I do want to go with you and marry this man. This is the how it works out within us. How does in work out in our marriages with one another? What happens as we move into a marriage? The first thing that usually happens is that we see someone, and there is a spark; we feel an attraction. We feel a stirring in our heart toward that person, and it causes us to watch him or her. Sometimes it may be quite a while before we actually say anything. In our story for last week, the servant watched and wondered: has God sent me to the right one? We think more and more about the other person. We make a point of meeting and talking to him or her. We know that we feel attraction to the person. But we have to consider whether it could really work out. We have to bring our head into it as well. We have to consider whether this person is compatible with our character--and also whether there are any serious personality problems that would torpedo the marriage no matter how good the match of personalities may be. And here I would like to mention a mistake that women are especially vulnerable to: thinking that we are going to "fix up" the other person. We may say to ourselves, for example, "Yes, I know he's an alcoholic; but if I love him enough, he'll sober up." This sort of thinking usually ends in tragedy and a broken marriage. I believe that God is telling us in our Bible story that we must use our head, and evaluate whether this person we are attracted to is capable of being in a marriage, and is also a good fit for us. This is not a matter of the head thwarting the heart's desires. Rather, it is making sure that the heart's desires are together with our mind, so that we can be fully one in our commitment to the marriage. We must engage our head, evaluate, consider, and decide whether we think this will be a good union and a good marriage. It is only when we have gone through the process of thinking it out that it moves back to the heart, and our heart can give full assent. It is only then that we are completely at one within ourselves in moving into this relationship. When our heart says yes and our head says yes, then and only then can we be fully united with the other person, heart, mind, and body. Then we can have a full marriage. Of course, things don't always work out the way we want them to. And even if we don't find a loving marriage here on earth, we can still have a good life. To drive this point home, I would like to read you the story of an attempt at love by none other than Emanuel Swedenborg. Swedenborg was a lifelong bachelor. And of course, he did wonderful things with his life, even though he experienced disappointment when it came to marriage. Swedenborg loved the company of women, and very much wanted to be married. When he was a young man, like other young men moving up in the world and starting a career, he hoped to have a wife and a family to love, and to make a home with. I'd like to read the story from _The Swedenborg Epic,_ by Cyriel Odhner Sigstedt--a wonderful biography of Swedenborg. Some of the story has already been told as we begin: What, then, went wrong with his hopes for a marriage with Emerentia Polhem? An answer to this is contained in a document read before a Stockholm society in 1789. The young lady's brother, Chamberlain Gabriel Polhem, there states that while his father was working on the construction of locks at Trollh?ttan, with Swedenborg as his assistant, "the assessor conceived a violent passion for Polhem's second daughter, Emerentia." But she, who was only fifteen years of age, could not be persuaded to enter an engagement, whereupon her father, who loved Swedenborg very much, gave him a written claim upon her in the future, in the hope that when older she would become more yielding; and this contract her father obliged her to sign. However, she fretted about it so much every day that her brother, Chamberlain Gabriel Polhem, moved with compassion, stole the contract from Swedenborg, whose only comfort consisted in daily perusing it, and who therefore quickly missed his treasure. His sorrow at this loss was so evident that her father insisted on knowing the cause; when by an exercise of his authority he gave orders that the lost document be restored to him. But when Swedenborg himself saw her grief, he voluntarily relinquished his right, and left the house with a solemn oath never again to let his thoughts settle upon any woman, and still less to enter into any other engagement. Popular belief notwithstanding, Swedenborg did not give up all thoughts of marriage, for we now have documentary evidence to prove that many years later, he sought the hand of another young lady. Even later in Swedenborg's life, we believe that he settled upon a woman that he thought would be his wife in the spiritual world. But marriage was not to be his in this life. Besides being a story of disappointment in love, this is also a story of how marriage must involve consent. When Swedenborg saw that although he had feelings for Emerentia Polhem, she did not have feelings for him, he released her. He knew that it was not right, and that it could not work if her heart did not say "yes" to him. Yet Swedenborg went on to have a very good and full life, and to accomplish a great deal in science, engineering, administration, and, of course, in the realms of spirit. So we certainly shouldn't get the idea that if we don't find our mate while we are still living here on earth, our life is not worthwhile. God has things for us to do whether or not we happen to find our partner here on earth. Let's move into the spiritual meaning again. We know that in a marriage there must be a proposal, agreement, and consent. We know that both people must be willing to have the union take place. We don't know quite as well that this is also true of any union that takes place within ourselves. We have talked about the inner marriage of head and heart. And the very same process of proposal and consent--or refusal--goes on within us. Sometimes our head says that it wants our life to go in a particular direction, and our heart says, "No, I don't want to." Sometimes our heart says that it really wants to do something, and our head says, "That's crazy, you do not want to do that." And we go ahead with something only when our heart and our head can come to some sort of agreement. Swedenborg tells us that the inner marriage involves the same kind of proposal, consideration, and consent as a marriage between two people. We go through the same stages within ourselves as the servant did when he approached Rebekah (the heart), then her brother and father (the head), telling his story so that they could consider it and give their consent, which prepared the way for Rebekah to whole-heartedly embrace the marriage. The Lord went through the same process in his life. He had within himself a tremendous love for humanity. Yet he could have decided that he didn't want to follow that love. He could have decided simply to enjoy this one life he would have on earth. But his heart was saying that he wanted to live for humanity. And his mind said: Yes, but how? With his seeking mind he studied and learned all the spiritual knowledge of his day, especially a knowledge of Scripture, which he needed in order to see whether his heart's desire could be fulfilled. As a young man, he studied the Scriptures and learned them thoroughly--as we know from his teachings and his conversations with the scribes and Pharisees. And he did gain the guidance to do the work that he felt moved and called to do. He had a desire to save humanity. He saw that the people around him were hurting, especially inwardly--and his heart went out to them. He also spent the time necessary to gain the knowledge, insight, and wisdom to do what his heart prompted. Then he put his whole self into that work. He had a union of head and heart within himself, and in the three years of his public ministry he was completely devoted, heart, mind, and body, to reaching out to us and showing us the way of life. It is the same union that we must have within ourselves. Our heart must propose, and our head must consider, think it over, and decide whether this is truly what we want. And when our head sends it back to our heart with a "yes," then we have an inner union--a union that will encompass our heart, mind, body, and soul. This is the union God is proposing to us as well. He is saying to each one of us: I want to come to you. I want to be in your heart and in your mind. I want to guide your life. Are we ready to accept that proposal? Are ready to say "yes" to the Lord with both our mind and our heart--with our whole self? ____________________ These sermons are a ministry of the Bridgewater New Jerusalem Church. 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