From leewoof@leewoof.net Sun Jan 2 20:39:38 2005 From: leewoof@leewoof.net (Lee Woofenden) Date: Sun, 02 Jan 2005 15:39:38 -0500 Subject: [Sermons] "When Disaster Strikes," by the Rev. Lee Woofenden Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20050102153903.046ae7d0@mail.leewoof.net> When Disaster Strikes By the Rev. Lee Woofenden Bridgewater, Massachusetts, January 2, 2005 Readings: Jonah 1:17-2:10: Jonah's prayer Now the Lord provided a large fish to swallow Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the fish's belly, and he said: "I cried out to the Lord because of my affliction, and he answered me. Out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and he heard my voice. For you cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the floods surrounded me, all your billows and your waves passed over me. Then I said, 'I have been cast out of your sight, yet I will look again toward your holy temple.' The waters encompassed me even to my soul, the deep closed around me, weeds were wrapped around my head, I went down to the foundations of the mountains. The earth with its bars closed behind me forever. Yet you have brought up my life from the pit, O Lord my God. When my soul fainted within me, I remembered the Lord, and my prayer went up to you, into your holy temple. Those who regard worthless idols forsake their own mercy. But I will sacrifice to you with the voice of thanksgiving. I will pay what I have vowed. Salvation is of the Lord." So the Lord spoke to the fish, and it spewed Jonah out onto dry land. Matthew 18:10-14: The parable of the lost sheep Take care that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you, in heaven their angels continually see the face of my Father in heaven. For the Son of Man came to save the lost. What do you think? If a shepherd has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray? And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray. So it is not the will of your Father in heaven that one of these little ones should be lost. Arcana Coelestia #2395: The Lord destroys no one The Bible often says that "Jehovah destroys." But the deeper meaning is that people destroy themselves; for Jehovah, or the Lord, destroys no one. But since it seems as if the destruction comes from the Lord, because he sees and governs every single thing, the Bible does make that statement in various places. This is to keep people to the general idea that the Lord sees and guides all things. Once this idea has been established in people's minds, they can then be taught easily, since explanations of the deeper meaning of the Bible are simply the details that fill out the general idea. Another reason is to keep unloving people in a state of fear so that they will be in awe of the Lord, and go to him for deliverance. So you can see that it does no harm to believe the literal meaning--even though the internal meaning teaches something different--as long as it is a simple-hearted belief. . . . Since angels have the inner meaning, they are so far away from thinking of the Lord as destroying anyone that they can't stand even the idea of it. So when people read passages like these in the Bible, the literal meaning is pushed into the background for the angels, and eventually merges into the teaching that evil itself is what destroys people, and that the Lord destroys no one. Sermon: It is not the will of your Father in heaven that one of these little ones should be lost. (Matthew 18:14) With the death toll now climbing past 125,000, and likely to reach 200,000, the earthquake and tsunami that hit the Indian Ocean on December 26, 2004, has become one of the top fifteen worst natural disasters in recent centuries. These range from 77,000 killed in a 1755 earthquake and tsunami near Lisbon, Portugal, to 3,700,000 killed in a 1931 flood of the Huang He River in China. To put these figures in perspective, the worst human death tolls have come from wars, governmental oppression, famines caused either by human conflicts or by natural disasters, and plagues and epidemics. Examples of these are 600,000 killed in the U.S. Civil War in battle or from war-related disease; 15-20,000,000 in the African slave trade between 1700 and 1865; 30-50,000,000 civilian deaths during Mao's regime in China; 50,000,000 military and civilian deaths in World War II; and looking farther back in history, the biggest epidemic on record, a whopping 100,000,000 estimated deaths in the Justinian Plague in the years 540-590 in Europe. What it all adds up to is staggering numbers of human deaths, some by natural disasters, and even more by human greed and power-lust, or by human-preventable causes. Of course, throughout history the human death toll has always remained constant at 100%. Every single person born into this world does die, whether at one hour old or one hundred years old. Yet when disaster or human evil strikes, and large numbers die all at once, we naturally ask, "Why?" And if we are religious, we naturally ask, "How could a loving God allow such terrible things to happen to so many innocent people?" For some people, the answer to this question is that there is no God. Many of these people, of course, have rejected God anyway, and are simply looking for reasons to back up their atheism or agnosticism. Others, though, simply can't find reasons that an all-powerful God would allow such suffering, or they are unwilling to accept the character of a God who would, and therefore they reject God's existence altogether. For many more people, the answer is simple: God is angry and wrathful with the human race due to our stubborn refusal to live by his laws, and is punishing us for our sins. This view is by no means confined to Christianity. One Buddhist monk in a hard-hit area of Sri Lanka is quoted as saying, "The people are not living according to religious virtues. Nature has given them some punishment because they are not following the path of the Lord Buddha. The people have to learn their lesson." Though this monk attributed the punishment to nature rather than to God, the idea is the same: natural disasters are punishments for departing from divine commandments. This view of death and disaster is found in many of the sacred writings of the world, including the Bible. For example, we read in Psalm 18:6-7: In my distress I called upon the Lord; to my God I cried for help. From his temple he heard my voice, and my cry to him reached his ears. Then the earth reeled and rocked; the foundations also of the mountains trembled and quaked, because he was angry. As Swedenborg explains in our reading from Arcana Coelestia #2395, there is a reason these statements about God's wrath, anger, and destruction of the wicked appear in the Bible. Some people who are not particularly thoughtful or loving need to believe that God has the power to destroy, and that he will use this power against those who displease him. To these people, a God who was only loving and never wrathful would look like a weak God. They themselves think of evil as powerful due to the powerful hold it has on their own minds and lives. They are not at a state of spiritual development in which they can realize that all power is in love, and that despite the outward appearance, evil is actually weak and self-destructive. But the main reason for the appearance of divine wrath is that God wishes to reach out to all people, both the loving and the unloving, both the spiritual and the materialistic. And God will use whatever language it takes, gentle or harsh, loving or wrathful, to break through to people and induce them, if possible, to change their hearts, their attitudes, and their lives. For many people, this means pounding them with words of divine anger, wrath, and destruction wreaked upon sinful humans. This, however, is merely an appearance. God is not actually wrathful or destructive, but only appears that way to those who are caught up in evil thoughts and actions. This truth is beautifully stated later in Psalm 18, verses 25-27 where the Psalmist says to the Lord: With the loyal you show yourself loyal; With the blameless you show yourself blameless; With the pure you show yourself pure; And with the crooked you show yourself perverse. For you deliver a humble people, But the haughty eyes you bring down. "With the crooked you show yourself perverse." It is not that God actually is perverse, but that he appears that way to those who are "crooked"--to people who have not straightened up their lives. And if the only way to reach these people is to plant a very literal "fear of God" in their minds, then God is quite willing to work in this way. This is not from any real anger or destructiveness on God's part. Rather, it is because of God's infinite love for all, both the good and the evil. It is not only Swedenborg who states that God does not actually hate or destroy anyone. The Bible also teaches this--though in somewhat more subtle ways. For example, in our reading from Matthew it says, "It is not the will of your Father in heaven that one of these little ones should be lost." How can we reconcile this with the fact that in every disaster, whether natural or caused by human greed, selfishness, and ignorance, thousands, even millions of children die? That in fact, children are some of the hardest hit and are often among the first to die? If it is not the will of our Father in heaven that one of these little ones should be lost, why are thousands of them lost every day to disease, hunger, war, and disasters of every kind? From a natural, or materialistic, perspective, this question has no real answer. If the statement in Matthew 18:14 is taken literally, the only conclusion is that God is weak, or at least not all-powerful, so that even though he does not will that children should die, they die anyway. From a materialistic perspective, there simply isn't any way of reconciling disasters with a loving and all-powerful God. After all, even if God were justified in destroying the wicked, why does he not prevent the deaths of so many innocent children and adults? Only a more spiritual view of reality can bring real and satisfying answers to these questions. And though we can easily spend our lifetimes coming to a full understanding of such difficult issues, perhaps a few thoughts will help. From a spiritual perspective, death does not mean physical death. Yes, 125,000 people's bodies died in the recent tsunami. But the people themselves did not die. They continued to live in the spiritual world, having left their physical bodies behind. From the angels' perspective, physical death is not death at all, but a continuation of life. In fact, for the angels, each time someone here "dies," they experience it as someone arriving to make heaven a fuller and richer place. And for children in particular, our belief is that all who die as children will find their place in heaven as angels, since they are still innocent of any truly intentional and spiritual evil. Spiritually speaking, death has a different meaning. It is the death, not of the body, but of the soul. And the only way our souls can die is if we willfully and intentionally turn away from God toward evil and selfish ways of living. When we do this, we are heading toward a death far worse than the death of the body. When the body dies, we continue to live, and in a place far more beautiful than this one. But when the soul dies, that eternal life becomes instead the eternal death of living in the hell of our own collective human evils, where, as it says in Psalm 34:21, "Evil shall slay the wicked." It is to save us from this true and deeper death that the Lord is willing to show himself as loyal, blameless, pure . . . or perverse as needed to save every single person who has the least willingness to be saved. So the first thing to understand, as hard as it is for those of us who still live on this world in our material bodies, is that physical death is not a curse, but a blessed part of the divine plan. It is through death that we leave our temporary and often rather dark home here on earth, and pass into a far brighter and more beautiful home. For those children (and adults) who die like flies from disasters natural and human-caused, life immediately gets better. Although they do, of course, miss their loved ones who are still here on earth, they are greeted by the angels of those who have gone before them, and welcomed into the beauties of heavenly life. In other words, for those who die, death is not a curse, but a blessing. It is those who are left behind that suffer. Those who survive the mayhem and disaster must endure, with pain and anguish, not only the death of their loved ones, but the continuing struggle and darkness of life in this world. And again we ask, why? Even if we accept that it is not God's will for human beings to suffer, why does God allow so much pain and suffering in this world? Why does God not prevent not only large-scale disasters such as the recent tsunami, but all the small-scale disasters of suffering and pain that strike thousands, millions, and even billions of people each day? How could a loving God stand by and allow us to suffer so? There are many answers to this question. Each of you will have to ponder this question, and struggle with it, and come to your own conclusions. One answer is that God will not violate human freedom, because to do so would be to make us non-human, and make it impossible for us to be saved spiritually and live eternally in heaven. God will not save us from the consequences of our own actions, because if he did, we would never learn what is evil, and make the commitment to destroy the evil in our own attitudes and actions. This answer, if fully thought through, can satisfy the minds of those who must have reasonable explanations for the mysterious ways of Providence. But what about the heart? I believe there is also an answer that the heart can accept--and it is one that will not allow us to merely stand by and think things through. God is loving, and does not simply stand by and let us suffer. Rather, God, in his tender love and compassion, works through us, through people here on earth, to show love and mercy to all the people he has created. Why does God allow natural disasters to happen? When we humans face these ultimate disasters, our hearts are stirred, and we move beyond our usual self-absorbed and materialistic focus. When we hear of people suffering and dying, our compassion--which is really the Lord's compassion in us--is awakened. The human anguish we see and experience opens our own hearts, and prompts us to live for others rather than for ourselves. And when we do this, we are moving closer to the blessings of heavenly and spiritual 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 Tue Jan 18 18:12:43 2005 From: leewoof@leewoof.net (Lee Woofenden) Date: Tue, 18 Jan 2005 13:12:43 -0500 Subject: [Sermons] "The End of a Golden Era," by the Rev. Lee Woofenden Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20050118130849.03191650@mail.leewoof.net> ---------- Note: I am looking for volunteers to transcribe sermons from digital (computer file) recordings. If you would be willing and able to do this, please email me, and I will send you a file to transcribe. You must be able to receive large files (up to 5MB) attached to emails. Thank you! ---------- The End of a Golden Era By the Rev. Lee Woofenden Bridgewater, Massachusetts, January 16, 2005 Readings: Genesis 25:1-18: The death of Abraham; Ishmael's sons Abraham took another wife, whose name was Keturah. She bore him Zimran, Jokshan, Medan, Midian, Ishbak and Shuah. Jokshan was the father of Sheba and Dedan; the descendants of Dedan were the Asshurites, the Letushites and the Leummites. The sons of Midian were Ephah, Epher, Hanoch, Abida and Eldaah. All these were descendants of Keturah. Abraham left everything he owned to Isaac. But while he was still living, he gave gifts to the sons of his concubines and sent them away from his son Isaac to the land of the east. Altogether, Abraham lived a hundred and seventy-five years. Then Abraham breathed his last and died at a good old age, an old man and full of years; and he was gathered to his people. His sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him in the cave of Machpelah near Mamre, in the field of Ephron son of Zohar the Hittite, the field Abraham had bought from the Hittites. There Abraham was buried with his wife Sarah. After Abraham's death, God blessed his son Isaac, who then lived near Beer Lahai Roi. This is the account of Abraham's son Ishmael, whom Sarah's maidservant, Hagar the Egyptian, bore to Abraham. These are the names of the sons of Ishmael, listed in the order of their birth: Nebaioth the firstborn of Ishmael, Kedar, Adbeel, Mibsam, Mishma, Dumah, Massa, Hadad, Tema, Jetur, Naphish and Kedemah. These were the sons of Ishmael, and these are the names of the twelve tribal rulers according to their settlements and camps. Altogether, Ishmael lived a hundred and thirty-seven years. He breathed his last and died, and he was gathered to his people. His descendants settled in the area from Havilah to Shur, near the border of Egypt, as you go towards Assyria. And they lived in hostility towards all their brothers. Matthew 5:17-20: The fulfillment of the Law Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven. Arcana Coelestia #3236: Passing from heavenly to spiritual "Abraham took another wife" means a further state that the Lord, whom Abraham represents, passed through. "Abraham and Sarah" represent the Lord on the Divine Heavenly level, and "Abraham and Keturah" the Lord on the Divine Spiritual. . . . The Divine Heavenly and the Divine Spiritual relate to people who receive the Lord's Divine; for people see the Lord according to their own character. . . . The Lord appears as the sun to those who are heavenly, but as the moon to those who are spiritual. The Lord appears to heavenly people as the sun because they have heavenly love in them, which is love to the Lord. But he appears to spiritual people as the moon because they have spiritual love in them, which is kindness toward the neighbor. The difference is like that between the light of the sun during the daytime and the light of the moon at night, and also between the warmth of both that causes things in the ground to grow. These are what were meant in Genesis 1 by the words, "And God made the two great lights, the greater light to have dominion over the day, and the lesser light to have dominion over the night" (Genesis 1:16). Sermon: Abraham lived a hundred and seventy-five years. Then Abraham breathed his last and died at a good old age, an old man and full of years; and he was gathered to his people. (Genesis 25:7-8) Today we are returning to our series on Genesis, and the lives of the Patriarchs: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. We started with Genesis 12 and the Call of Abram. This is the beginning of what we might call "real history" in the Bible. Before this chapter, the story is more like mythic history: it was written to tell a spiritual message, but the events described did not take place literally. The events from Genesis 12 onward, though, speak of real people. Perhaps "the fish got bigger" over time as the story was told and retold; but these stories are based on actual events. Abraham was a real person, as were his sons Ishmael and Isaac and the others--and, of course, Jacob and his twelve sons, who became the twelve tribes of Israel. From the time of the Call of Abram in Genesis 12, Abraham has had many travels. He has traveled from the land of Babylon to Haran, and then to the Holy Land. He has traveled to Egypt and back again, and has finally settled into the land. By the time of our story, his wife Sarah has died, and his son Isaac has married Rebekah. Today's reading includes the story of another wife that Abraham took, named Keturah, by whom he had six more sons. It also includes the genealogy of his first son, Ishmael, who was borne to him by his wife Sarah's maidservant Hagar, an Egyptian woman. But the centerpiece of the story is that Abraham has come to the end of his life on earth. He has lived a long and full life, and is passing on the torch to his son Isaac, who will carry on the family tradition. It is time, in the picturesque Biblical phrase, for Abraham to be "gathered to his people." And if anyone thinks that people of ancient times didn't believe in an afterlife, this one phrase should tell the story. Abraham was "gathered to his people." He was going to those he knew: to his parents, grandparents, and brothers who had died before him; he was going to be with those who knew and loved him, and were part of his early life. Abraham's death was the passing of an era. In many ways, it was a golden, almost mythic era. It was not quite like the earliest days of the Garden of Eden. Yet it was a time of simple trust. Abraham simply heard the words of the Lord, and did them. He was not a complicated man. God told him to get up and go, and he got up and went. God told him to sacrifice his son, and he simply set out to do it--until God restrained him at the last minute. He followed without question the word of God as he heard it within himself, in his heart. It was a simple, golden era in the formative years of the Israelitish people. In this series, we are following the Bible stories on two different levels. Our church teaches that these stories are not only about the life histories of people who lived several thousand years ago, but that as part of God's Word, they must have a meaning for us today as well. We believe that this meaning is hidden within the literal story. When the Lord was on earth, he spoke in parables. It says of Jesus in Matthew 13:34 that "he did not say anything to the crowd without using a parable." We believe that this is the way God speaks to us everywhere in the Bible: through parables that have deeper meaning. We have been following the deeper meanings of these stories on two different levels: the level of our own inner spiritual growth, which we call "regeneration" or "rebirth, and the level of the Lord's inner process while he was on earth, which we call "glorification." We believe that the Lord Jesus was the pattern for all of us. This means that he must have gone through what we go through--yet at a far deeper level. So the Lord's story is our story. The earlier golden age represented by the Garden of Eden was a different golden age. That was a truly mythic time. In our lives, it represents the time of our early infancy. Most of us do not have any memories of our infancy. It is deeply buried in our past and in our subconscious. We have to ask our parents and aunts and uncles to find out what we were like during those times, because for us the memories are veiled over, and are no longer available to us. Yet this was a formative period in our lives. Abraham does not represent that earliest period in our life. Rather, he represents a time when we are entering into our early childhood and becoming toddlers. These are the times when our earliest conscious memories are formed. Our life at that time is very simple. At least it seems that way to us. It is complicated for our parents, of course. They have to take care of us and support us, and deal with all the complicated events going on in the world around us. But for us, it is a simple time when our parents take care of our needs, and we simply live from the heart. This is the "golden era" that Abraham represents in our lives: the early times of our first conscious memories, when we are spontaneous and open, living from our feelings, and letting others take care of us--just as the Lord took care of Abraham. It would be nice if we could stay in that golden age of childhood, and be joyous and spontaneous and not worry about the things of the world. But we do grow up. We move beyond that stage and head into our older childhood and youth. And we begin to realize that the world is a lot more complicated than we thought. We go to school. That's a big adjustment for many of us. We see the little kindergarteners who don't want to go to school, clinging to their mothers and saying, "Do I have to, Mommy? I don't want to go!" We lose the early innocence of living in the "womb" of our family. We begin to go out into the world. An era has passed in our lives, just as an era was passing in the life of the early Patriarchs when Abraham breathed his last and died, and passed the torch to his son Isaac. As we grow from that early stage when we are spontaneous and ruled by the heart, we pass into a time when we are ruled more by our head. We must think about our actions; we must learn what is right and wrong; we must apply what we learn to our words and actions; and we must feel the consequences when we don't do what we know we ought to do. We pass into a time of learning and of struggle. This is the time represented by Abraham's sons Isaac and Ishmael. It is a stage of conscious learning and thinking. Looking a little farther in the story, Jacob represents the time when we are passing from youth into young adulthood, and we realize that our parents are will not be taking care of us anymore. It is a time to roll up our sleeves and get to work, as we begin to make our own way in the world. We pass through all of these stages--from the early, spontaneous heart-centered time represented by Abraham, to a time of learning represented by Isaac, to a time in our youth and early adulthood represented by Jacob, when we must start using what we have learned in order to support ourselves and make our way in the world. And as our life moves on we may have nostalgia for our early days. We may think back to the time of our childhood and say to ourselves, "If only things could be that way now; if only things could still be as simple as they were then." But they are not. To use another example, it is like a marriage. When we first meet someone and feel an attraction, there is a spark, and we want to get to know the person. We get together with him or her, and we find that we are wonderfully attracted. We feel alive. We feel that this is the one--and it gives our life new meaning. Everything seems to be opening up for us. A whole new phase is beginning, and it is wonderful! We are blessed with a honeymoon in which we can enjoy our new love. This is a good thing. In our later lives, we can look back to this early honeymoon period, and draw strength from it as we face our life struggles together. This early honeymoon period does not last forever. Some couples manage to hold onto it longer than others. But sooner or later, we begin notice the wart that's right there on our partner's face. And our partner notices the mole that's right there on our face. Of course, I'm speaking metaphorically: we begin to realize that this person we are living with is not perfect, and our partner begins to notice that we are not perfect. We begin to rub against each other and chafe in a way that we didn't when we were first falling in love. We pass from the early innocence, when our heart was leading, to a time when we have to work on our marriage. In this new phase, if we want to remain together, we have to recognize that neither we nor our partner is perfect--which means that we must change and grow, that we must struggle, and that our life together will not always be easy. In later life, we sometimes look back at the very beginning of our relationship and wish we could be back in that beautiful time. And yet, as our marriage progresses we are growing inwardly, and becoming more mature. We are learning to love one another on a deeper level than before. At first it was all excitement. Now we are beginning to look within and see the deeper aspects of one another, and find places where we can grow together. Yes, the end of the honeymoon is the end of an era . . . but it is also the beginning of a new era. It is the same in our spiritual lives. Each of us who has made a decision to give our lives over to the Lord, to commit our lives to the church or to a spiritual way of living, probably had an early "honeymoon" period when it was very exciting to embark on this new and deeper phase in our life. We thought with enthusiasm, "This is going to be the new me. This is going to be my new life." And we soaked up everything we could from the church. We really wanted to learn about the Bible and the church's teachings and all about spiritual things. Everything was fresh and new. This is the time of Abraham in our spiritual life. Everything is new, and we are simply and innocently following the Lord where he leads us. But as we progress in our spiritual life, just as in our growing up years and just as in marriage, we begin to hit snags. We begin to realize, for example that the church is telling us we must love our neighbor as ourselves, and we _don't_ love our neighbor as ourselves. We still care more about ourselves than we do about others. And we realize that we have to face issues like this and struggle with them. We cannot just be led by our heart; we must let our heads tell us that this or that thing about ourselves is not quite right--and then work to change it. This is what we go through when we pass from the time of Abraham to the time of Isaac in our spiritual life. We move from our early excitement and heart-led embracing of a spiritual way of life to the realization that this is going to mean an awful lot of work for us. It is the end of an era. But it is also the beginning of a new one. The same thing happened in the Lord's life. As Jesus grew up, he also had an early phase in which he lived simply and innocently. And as time went on he, too, moved into a time of learning, and then to a time of great struggle. As a boy, we know that the Lord did at least two things. One was that he learned the Scriptures thoroughly. We know this from the skillful way he quoted them later on, in his adult life. As a young boy Jesus studied the Scriptures, soaking them up and grasping the depths of that wonderful, ancient wisdom. We also know that Jesus learned the trade of carpentry from his father. Those who have done woodworking know that there is a lot of satisfaction in cutting the wood and shaping it and sanding it and putting it together to make something both beautiful and useful, such as a chair or table. We can imagine Jesus as a boy soaking up both worldly and spiritual knowledge, and living simply, from the heart. Yet he came to a time when he knew he must do greater and more difficult things. It was the passing of that early, innocent phase, and the beginning of a new period of struggle, conflict, and conscious effort to carry out his mission. Because the Lord also went through these phases, we can look to him as we go through our own life passages, and realize that the Lord went before us. He went through everything that we go through, and showed us the way. His way was to face the deeper issues, to struggle against the evil, and to overcome it, both for himself and for all of us. His life gives us the pattern for our lives. It is hard to leave behind the early, innocent time when things were simple, and everything seemed to just flow along. Yet we know that we must become adults. We must face both our inner demons and the evils in the world around us. In our spiritual life, we too must pass from Abraham to Isaac. It is hard to face the death of our early, heartfelt, and innocent idealism. But the Lord does not ask us to struggle and toil for nothing. He gives us a wonderful promise. It is same promise that he made to Abraham when he first called him in Genesis 12. He promised that if Abraham would follow the him, he would bring Abraham into the land that he would show him: the land of Canaan, which is the Holy Land. The Lord gives us the same promise. If we will face the issues of life and engage in the struggles ahead of us--whether those struggles are in our marriage, in our working life, or in our spiritual life--the Lord has a wonderful promise for us. He assures us that in the course of time we will find ourselves settled in the Holy Land. The Holy Land of marriage is a deep, joyful, and loving marriage, in which we are together with our partner as one, supporting each other throughout our lives, and to eternity. The Holy Land of our spiritual life comes when realize that all of our struggles have been worth it. One day we will know that everything we have done to face and overcome our inner and outer obstacles has been leading us on a path that only the Lord knew from the beginning, but that we are now discovering. The Lord is leading us on a path toward becoming angels: toward becoming people who can truly love one another, feel the Lord's love inside ourselves, and make our eternal homes in the heavenly community. 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 30 03:50:18 2005 From: leewoof@leewoof.net (Lee Woofenden) Date: Sat, 29 Jan 2005 22:50:18 -0500 Subject: [Sermons] "The Divine Marriage: Becoming One, " by the Rev. Lee Woofenden Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20050129224838.04758928@mail.leewoof.net> Dear Sermon list subscribers, Here, at long last, is the final sermon in the four part series on The Divine Marriage. Enjoy! Blessings, --Lee The Divine Marriage: Becoming One By the Rev. Lee Woofenden Bridgewater, Massachusetts, December 5, 2004 Readings: Genesis 24:54-67: Rebekah goes to Isaac When they got up the next morning, he said, "Send me back to my master." But her brother and her mother replied, "Let the girl remain with us ten days or so; then she may go." But he said to them, "Do not delay me, now that the Lord has granted success to my journey. Send me on my way so I may go to my master." Then they said, "We will call the girl and ask her." So they called Rebekah and asked her, "Will you go with this man?" She said, "I will go." So they sent their sister Rebekah on her way, along with her nurse and Abraham's servant and his men. And they blessed Rebekah and said to her, "Our sister, may you increase to thousands upon thousands; may your offspring possess the gates of their enemies." Then Rebekah and her maids got ready and mounted their camels, and went back with the man. So the servant took Rebekah and left. Now Isaac had come from Beer Lahai Roi, for he was living in the South. He went out to the field one evening to meditate, and as he looked up, he saw camels approaching. Rebekah also looked up and saw Isaac. She got down from her camel and asked the servant, "Who is that man walking in the field to meet us?" The servant answered, "It is my master." So she took her veil and covered herself. Then the servant told Isaac all the things he had done. Isaac brought her into the tent of his mother Sarah, and he married Rebekah. So she became his wife, and he loved her; and Isaac was comforted after his mother's death. Matthew 5:14-16: You are the light of the world You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before people, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven. Arcana Coelestia #3203: Loving and living truth Our love for truth is separated from our material mind when truth is no longer something that we merely know, but something that we live. When truth becomes something that we live, which happens when we make a habit of relying on the truth, then it permeates our whole being in the same way our innate disposition or character does. And when it permeates us in this way, it flows quite spontaneously into action, without our thinking about any of the particular facts we have learned that form the truth in us. . . . It is similar to how, as young children, we learn to walk, talk, think, and use our intelligence to draw sensible conclusions. Once we have done these things regularly enough that we no longer have to think about them, so that they are spontaneous, we no longer recall the knowledge of how to do them, because we now do them instinctively. Sermon: Isaac brought her into the tent of his mother Sarah, and he married Rebekah. So she became his wife, and he loved her. (Genesis 24:67) This is the last in a four part series about marriage based on the story of Isaac and Rebekah. In this series we have been looking at the marriage within us and within the Lord, and also at our marriages with one another. Today we will bring these all together into one. In the story so far, Abraham has sent his head servant on a mission to find a wife for his son Isaac. The servant has carried this out: he has gone to Haran and met Rebekah at the well, and her family also; and her family has given their consent to the marriage. In today's story, it is the next morning. The servant says to his hosts, "Send me on my way"--with Rebekah, of course. Understandably, her brother and her mother are reluctant to let her go. There were no phones in those days, so Abraham's servant did not call ahead and say, "I'm coming for your daughter. Get her ready, and prepare yourselves to say goodbye." Rebekah and her family had been living peacefully, not bothering anyone, and all of a sudden some men show up out of nowhere and say, "We want to take your daughter." Any one of us in that situation would probably want some time to get used to the idea. So it was a very reasonable request: "Let the girl remain with us ten days or so; then she may go." But the servant is single-minded. He is on a mission, and he plans to carry it out. He says: "Do not delay me, now that the Lord has granted success to my journey. Send me on my way so I may go to my master." At this point they decide to call Rebekah herself, and ask what her wishes are. She immediately says, "I will go." This, once again shows Rebekah's character. She is not one to hold back; she is a woman who knows what she wants, and puts her whole self into it. Later in the story, we find that she is more than a match for Isaac. So Rebekah, having met these people for the first time the day before, says she will go with them. And she and her nurse and maids return with Abraham's servant and his men to the land of Canaan. They go all the way to the southern part of the land, where Isaac is living. Perhaps Abraham has already moved away, because although Abraham had sent his servant on the journey, the servant returns to Isaac. We do know that Abraham later took another wife. Perhaps he has already departed, knowing that his work for Isaac is finished, and that it is time for Isaac to take over as the head of the household. The meeting of Isaac and Rebekah is beautiful story, told in just a few understated words. Isaac is out meditating in the field: he is a contemplative man, perhaps communing with God, perhaps with his own thoughts. He looks up and sees a caravan of camels approaching, and probably recognizes it as the delegation his father had sent. Then we see the other side: Rebekah on her camel looking out and seeing a man walking toward them. She knows in her heart who it is. She gets down from her camel and asks the servant: "Who is that man walking in the field to meet us?" He says: "It is my master"--now referring to Isaac instead of Abraham. So Rebekah takes her veil and covers herself, as a chaste woman would in those days when meeting the man she was to marry. Isaac takes Rebekah into the tent of his mother Sarah, who had died not long before. Isaac marries Rebekah, and we are told that he loved her, and that it comforted him after his mother's death. That is the happy ending of this beautiful story of love. Yet we know that marriage is not the end, but the beginning. Marriage is a process of becoming one. In fairy tales, once the hero and heroine get married, that's the end of the story, and they live happily ever after. Wouldn't that be wonderful! In real life, marriage is just the beginning. The time of courtship, when we are finding our partner, when we are attracted to one another, getting to know each other, making the proposal, and up to the wedding--all of this is like the process of being formed in the womb before we come to birth. When we get married, we can think of it, not as the end of the story, but as the birth of the marriage. That is when we begin our married life together. We do not automatically become one in spirit just because the minister has made the pronouncement, "You are now husband and wife." Rather, we start a long process of becoming one--if we can truly be one in our hearts and minds. And marriage is a relationship in which we not only become one with our partner, but also one within ourselves. Those of us who have been married, or who have had a very close friendship, know that over time we come to know and love our partner or our friend in a way that we couldn't at first. We come to know the other person on a deeper and deeper level. It is like the proverbial artichoke: we peel away the layers one after another, moving toward the heart. We know quite a bit about our partner even at first. But as the years and the decades go by, we get to know our partner more intimately and more deeply, and we can become one with our partner at a deeper level than we were capable of earlier on. Several things are happening here. One is that as we see more and more of who our partner is, we begin to "internalize" his or her characteristics--to use a psychological term. In more practical terms, we come to know the things that our partner knows, and to love the things that our partner loves. So we bring something of our marital partner into ourselves, and we become more like him or her. Another thing that happens as we live together with a person whom we are very close to is that we go through an internal process of becoming more one within ourselves, in our heart and mind. As we rub edges against one another, we find out where our own feelings and thoughts conflict with each other. We discover ways that the things we say and the things we do don't quite match. Marital partners are good at showing us where we have work to do. Out in the world, it is fairly easy to keep a mask on, and not show what we are really like inside. But when we are living with someone, it doesn't take long before the masks come off, and the other person knows exactly what's inside of us. In this close relationship, we discover things about ourselves that we did not know before. This gives us an opportunity work on the inner marriage: putting our deepest loves together with our highest thoughts, and becoming person who acts from the heart, with intelligence and thoughtfulness. As we become one within ourselves, we are also becoming more and more one with our partner, at a deeper and deeper level. Swedenborg tells us that in heaven, married pairs achieve such oneness that they are not called two angels, but one angel. Each does have his or her own presence and individuality. One has the face and body of a woman, the other has the face and body of a man. Yet it is easy to see that they are one in spirit. Swedenborg describes this oneness in a quote that we use in our wedding service: True marital love is union of souls and a bonding of minds, creating a bond in the hearts and therefore in the flesh. . . . Its everlasting joys are innocence, peace, tranquility, unreserved trust, inmost friendship, and a mutual desire of mind and heart to be of every possible service to each other. (_Marital Love_ #179, 180) This is our goal in marriage: to find that kind of oneness; that kind of interdependence, peace, and tranquility; that kind of heartfelt desire to be of every service, of every good, to one another. This is something we don't immediately achieve, but that we work for throughout our lives. And this applies to us whether we are married here on earth or not. Marriage is first and foremost something that takes place inside of us. And if it does take place inside of us, then whether or not we find our partner here on earth, the Lord has someone waiting for us to spend eternity with. This is something we can all hope for, aspire to, and work towards. Turning from our life to the life of the Lord, we know that our process is parallel to the Lord's process. The Lord showed us the way in his outward life, and especially in his inward life. We will never achieve the fullness of union that he did. Yet we can always be working toward the oneness with God that he fully achieved. In his life on earth, the Lord Jesus was moving toward a full union: toward a seamless flow from the divine heart of his infinite divine love, through his divine mind (the "divine rationality" that we have been talking about in other sermons), into his words and actions. If we watch him in action in the Gospel stories, we see that there is no hesitation in his words. He acts immediately from the heart, but also with great intelligence and wisdom. Looking at the Lord's life, we see the seamless flowing of a spirit that is one within itself. I hasten to add that we also see times when the Lord struggles within himself. It was not until the very end of his life--until after his crucifixion, until the resurrection--that he achieved full oneness. Yet we can see his oneness illustrated during his life in his interactions with the people, with the scribes and Pharisees, and especially with his closest disciples. We, too, are moving toward a oneness--though at a finite, limited level, in contrast to the infinite oneness that the Lord achieved. And it takes us a lifetime to achieve the level of inner oneness that we are capable of. Swedenborg gives the example of learning to walk. When we are little and we are learning to walk, it is hard work. As one-year-olds, and we are determined to get up and walk. It doesn't matter how many times we fall. We keep on trying and trying. We keep on working at it until we are finally able to walk. At first it takes all of our concentration. We may be walking along doing fine, and then somebody says something to us and we look up . . . and boom! Over we go! We can't pay attention to walking and listen to someone talking at the same time. Just walking requires all our concentration. But as we walk more and more, it gets to be second nature. Soon we don't even think about it. How many of us think, as we are walking down the road, "Now let's see . . . first I have to put my right foot forward, then I have to put my left foot forward"? We don't think about it anymore because it has become part of our character. This is what Swedenborg means when he speaks of truth moving from the level of our external, material mind into our inner selves. When the truth moves into our inner selves it becomes part of us. We no longer even have to think about it; we just act on it. We experience this in many ways: in having children and figuring out how to raise them; in going into a new career and having to learn how to do work; and so on. Whenever we start something new, it is always a challenge. We have to think hard about it and work at it. Then as time goes by we become good at it, and it becomes second nature. It is the same with our spiritual life. Whenever we start a new phase of our spiritual life, we have to work at it, we have to try hard, and it seems very difficult. To give another example from outward life, other day my son Chris was practicing his guitar. He is just fine picking out a melody on the strings. But for some reason he has a mental block about playing chords. We asked him to play the songs that have chords, and he just kept saying, "I can't do it! I can't do it." We said to him, "Of course you can. And if you're not going to, you might as well not take guitar lessons, because you are won't be able to play guitar if you don't play chords." He just kept saying, "I can't do it! I can't do it!" I went upstairs, and a few minutes later I heard guitar chords floating up the stairs. It wasn't that he couldn't do it; it was that it was a struggle for him, and he didn't want to. That's how it is for us when we turn over a new leaf. It's a struggle, and we don't really want to do it--to speak a nice word instead of a nasty one, to do the dishes when we'd rather watch television, to go the extra mile in anything. But if we can make it through, we get to the point where the thing that seemed so hard at first just becomes a part of who we are, and is built that right into our character. We get married and become one within ourselves when we have gone through the struggle; when our head and heart have gotten to a point where they work together, and we are at one with ourselves, loving, believing, and doing what is good and right. This is a lifetime process. We go through it over and over again in little ways. And in the course of our entire lifetime we also go through a process of gradually bringing our heart and our head together, centered around loving God and loving one another. This is what Jesus is talking about in our reading from Matthew. When we put our love into practice, and show our light in our actions, that is when our light is not hidden under a bowl, but is put on stand. We let our light of truth shine when we put it on the stand of good deeds. We may think that truth is all about believing and talking. But truth is really about acting. It is about guiding us on the right path in our lives. And when, in our actions toward everyone around us--toward our marital partner, toward our family, our friends, our coworkers--we let our spiritual beliefs guide our actions, we are putting our light on a stand. Even if it is hard at first, the more we live out our beliefs, the more our light shines out. When we can do this, we are spiritually married: our heart and our head are one, and they are working through our hands. And then, as Jesus says, "our light will shine before people, so that they may see our good deeds, and praise our Father in heaven." 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 Mon Mar 21 04:29:51 2005 From: leewoof@leewoof.net (Lee Woofenden) Date: Sun, 20 Mar 2005 23:29:51 -0500 Subject: [Sermons] "A Sacrifice of Love," by the Rev. Lee Woofenden Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20050320232419.04669ec8@mail.leewoof.net> Dear Sermon List friends, After a gap in which I have been preaching from notes, I am happy to be able to send you my Palm Sunday sermon. I am also happy to announce the publication of my new book of sermons: On Earth as it is In Heaven: Reflections on Jesus' Parables of the Kingdom and Emanuel Swedenborg's Heaven and Hell. It is available on Amazon.com at a 25% discount: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1595261753/wwwswedenboro-20/ref=nosim For faster shipping, buy a copy direct from the publisher, Llumina Press, at: http://www.llumina.com/store/onearth.htm Enjoy! And now on to the sermon: A Sacrifice of Love By the Rev. Lee Woofenden Bridgewater, Massachusetts, March 20, 2005 Palm Sunday Readings: Jeremiah 33:10-11, 14-16: Sacrifices of praise and love This is what the Lord says: "You say about this place, 'It is a desolate waste, without people or animals.' Yet in the towns of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem that are deserted, inhabited by neither people nor animals, there will be heard once more the sounds of joy and gladness, the voices of bride and bridegroom, and the voices of those who bring sacrifices of praise to the house of the Lord, saying, 'Give thanks to the Lord Almighty, for the Lord is good; his love endures forever.' For I will restore the fortunes of the land as they were before," says the Lord. . . . "The days are coming," declares the Lord, "when I will fulfill the good promise I made to the house of Israel and to the house of Judah. In those days and at that time, I will make a righteous Branch sprout from David's line; he will do what is just and right in the land. In those days Judah will be saved, and Jerusalem will live in safety. This is the name by which it will be called: The Lord Our Righteous Savior." Luke 23:26-34: The crucifixion of Jesus As the soldiers led him away, they seized Simon from Cyrene, who was on his way in from the country, and put the cross on him and made him carry it behind Jesus. A large number of people followed him, including women who mourned and wailed for him. Jesus turned and said to them, "Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep for yourselves and for your children. For the time will come when you will say, 'Blessed are the childless women, the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never nursed!' Then they will say to the mountains, "Fall on us!" and to the hills, "Cover us!" For if people do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?" Two other men, both criminals, were also led out with him to be executed. When they came to the place called the Skull, they crucified him there, along with the criminals--one on his right, the other on his left. Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing." Arcana Coelestia: #2776 The Passion of the Cross These days, people generally believe that the [ancient Jewish] burnt offerings and sacrifices were symbols of the Lord's passion, and that by his passion the Lord atoned for the sins of all people. Indeed, people believe that he took these sins on himself, and thus bore them himself, so that those who believe are made righteous and are saved, if only they think, even in the last hour before their death, that the Lord suffered for them--no matter how they may have lived throughout their entire lives. But such beliefs are mistaken. The passion of the Cross was the most severe temptation that the Lord endured. Through it he fully united the Human to the Divine and the Divine to the Human, and in this way glorified himself. That union is the means by which people who have faith in him that is grounded in love can be saved. For the supreme Divine was no longer able to reach the human race--which had moved so far away from the heavenly things of love, and from the spiritual things of faith, that people did not even recognize them anymore, let alone perceive them. Therefore, so that the supreme Divine could come down to all people who are like this, the Lord came into the world and united the Human to the Divine within himself. This union could not have been accomplished except through very severe conflicts in temptations, and through victories in these, and at last through the final temptation on the Cross. As a result of this, the Lord is able from the Divine Human to enlighten human minds--even with people who are very distant from the heavenly things of love--as long as they have within them faith that is grounded in love. Sermon: Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing." (Luke 23:34) In the popular rock musical Jesus Christ, Superstar, as the figure of Jesus remains unmoved in the center, the crowd anxiously milling around him asks the question, over and over again, "Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, who are you; what have you sacrificed?" In ancient Judaism, the sacrifices were literal: animals were slaughtered and burnt, in part or in whole, on the altar in the tabernacle, and later in the temple at Jerusalem. These sacrifices were strictly commanded in the Law of Moses, and were considered to be the holiest act of worship--the core of the Israelites' devotion to the unseen God. They viewed that God as, yes, a merciful God, but also as a God who could burn with anger, and whose anger needed to be placated by the soothing aroma of burning animal flesh rising up to God in heaven on columns of smoke from the altar of burnt offering. For those people who lived thousands of years ago, whose focus was entirely en external, physical things, these sacrifices were a very concrete and visual reminder that God was present in their lives, and that his commandments must be obeyed. Yet how far that sort of worship is from what God truly desires of human beings! As long as those sacrifices came from willing and obedient hearts, God accepted them, not because the flesh of burning animals was pleasing to him, but because the attitude of devotion in those who offered them was pleasing to him. But as soon as that devotion and obedience was gone, he spoke to them through the prophet Amos: I hate, I despise your religious festivals; I cannot stand your assemblies. Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them. Though you bring choice fellowship offerings, I will have no regard for them. Away with the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps. But let justice roll on like a river, and righteousness like a never-failing stream. (Amos 5:21-24) And in Psalm 51, David sings to the Lord: You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. (Psalm 51:16-17) It is not the physical sacrifice that God wants, but rather, the humble acceptance in our minds of God's commandments, the open acceptance in our hearts of God's love, and the willing obedience of our hands to God's will. And these human realities are exactly what the ancient sacrifices signify in their deeper, spiritual meaning--in the meaning that relates to our inner, spiritual life. The external sacrifices of slaughtering and burning animals was never God's intention. This was simply a practice that already existed in the ancient cultures to whom God spoke in the days when the Old Testament was being formed and written. God used the sense of the sacred that those people living thousands of years ago had attached to these burnt offerings, and turned their hearts toward him by making those sacrifices meaningful in the service of the Lord of all, rather than in the service of the many pagan gods that these people would otherwise have worshiped. He did not attempt to violently uproot the acts of worship that they viewed as sacred, even though these were not pleasing to him in themselves. Rather, he accepted them for the spirit of obedience and reverence in which they were given. Those sacrifices did have at least one virtue: They were concrete, physical, and visible even to the most materialistic of human minds. And we humans do seem to need physical demonstrations of the subtle, spiritual realities of God's love and truth. Especially when we first start out on our spiritual path, we find these deeper things to be wispy and shadowy, hard to grasp and appreciate. So even though God really desires change in our hearts and minds, he shows us the way through outward signs and symbols of the higher realities of love and wisdom that are God's presence in us. He gives us outward, physical demonstrations, right in front of our eyes, of the deeper realities of his love. And he does this because he is determined to reach out to us and love us . . . no matter what it takes. And so it was an act of infinite divine love that brought the God of the universe to us in physical, tangible, human form as our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The time came in human history when not even the daily, visible, guttural sacrifice of animals could reach human hearts and turn them to the Lord. The time came when, as Emanuel Swedenborg writes, we humans "had moved so far away from the heavenly things of love, and from the spiritual things of faith, that people did not even recognize them anymore, let alone perceive them. Therefore," Swedenborg continues, "so that the supreme Divine could come down to all people who are like this, the Lord came into the world and united the Human to the Divine within himself." This is the same thing that the prophet Isaiah is expressing in more poetic fashion when he writes: I looked, but there was no one to help; I was appalled that no one gave support; so my own arm achieved salvation for me, and my own anger sustained me. (Isaiah 63:5) In the poetic language of prophecy, God's supreme, burning love is expressed through the human appearance of burning anger and wrath. And God's own arm expresses the physical reality of the Lord appearing in the material world as the Son of Man, the human-born one, our flesh-and-blood Lord, Jesus Christ. When there was no prophet left, no priest left, who could reach through the thick, dark, hardness of human hearts that had abandoned themselves entirely to the material world and its pleasure and pain, the Lord did not abandon us to our materialistic self-destruction. He did not stand idly by in his place of divine bliss and allow us to rush unchecked into the eternal death and destruction of hell. He could not sit stand by, and still be a God of love. When God saw that we were heading to our own destruction, that we could no longer hear the voice of God's love calling to us from within, he did not, he could not abandon us. He loved us too much for that. He loved us with an infinite love. And so he sacrificed his own pleasure and his own bliss, and came to us here in our dark, cold, and evil world. He became as human and physical as we are, and suffered through the last dregs of evil and bitterness that fallen human beings, and all of hell, could throw at him. He allowed himself to suffer the ultimate agonies of rejection and death at the hands of violent human beings who had utterly turned themselves away from his love. This was the extent and greatness of God's love for us. This was what God, in Jesus Christ, sacrificed for us. He showed that no matter how violently we hate and reject him, his love is stronger than our rejection. He forgave us even as we were crucifying him. He loved us even as we were putting him to death. Jesus Christ. Who is he? He is God with us (Isaiah 7:14; Matthew 1:23). What has he sacrificed? He has sacrificed himself, given himself completely to us, in love. Amen. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From leewoof@leewoof.net Mon Mar 28 15:55:23 2005 From: leewoof@leewoof.net (Lee Woofenden) Date: Mon, 28 Mar 2005 10:55:23 -0500 Subject: [Sermons] "Why do you Look for the Living among the Dead?, by the Rev. Lee Woofenden Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20050328105439.046c6b20@mail.leewoof.net> Why do you Look for the Living among the Dead? By the Rev. Lee Woofenden Bridgewater, Massachusetts, March 27, 2005 Easter Sunday Readings: Deuteronomy 30:11-20: Choose Life! Now what I am commanding you today is not too difficult for you or beyond your reach. It is not up in heaven, so that you have to ask, "Who will ascend into heaven to get it and proclaim it to us so that we may obey it?" Nor is it beyond the sea, so that you have to ask, "Who will cross the sea to get it and proclaim it to us so that we may obey it?" No, the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart so that you may obey it. See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. For I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in his ways, and to keep his commands, decrees, and laws; then you will live and increase, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess. But if your heart turns away and you are not obedient, and if you are drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them, I declare to you this day that you will certainly be destroyed. You will not live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess. This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live, and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the Lord is your life. Luke 24:1-8: The resurrection of Jesus On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, "Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: 'The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinners, be crucified, and on the third day be raised again.'" Then they remembered his words. True Christian Religion #48: Living people and dead people We humans have been created so that we can receive love and wisdom from God, yet it appears just as if they came from ourselves. This is to allow us to receive love and wisdom, and be connected with God in this way. This is why we are born without any love or any knowledge, and in fact, without even the ability to love and be wise by ourselves. If, then, we attribute all the good of love and all the truth of wisdom to God, we become living people. But if we attribute them to ourselves we become dead people. Sermon: Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen!" (Luke 24:5-6) Life or death? That, in the simplest words, is the question posed to us by Good Friday and by Easter. Good Friday (why is it called "good"?) is what we humans do when we are left to ourselves: we kill the Lord. We did this literally two thousand years ago, when the religious leaders banded together with the political leaders to crucify Jesus. We do it spiritually today whenever we banish the Lord from our lives, and follow our own ways instead. Easter is what the Lord does despite the worst we humans can do. Easter is when the Lord conquers death with life. He did this literally two thousand years ago when he rose from death on the third day. He does it spiritually today whenever he lifts us up out of our own deadness, and gives us a new and higher life. The angels understood this very well when they asked the women who had come to the Lord's tomb, "Why do you look for the living among the dead?" We humans are always looking for the living among the dead. We all have a desire to feel alive, to feel love, to feel energy flooding through us, to feel the exuberance of life! And where do we look for that life? If we follow our own tendencies, we look in all the wrong places. We look for life in things that have no life in them. One of the dead things we look for life in is money. We think that if we could just make a lot of money, we would be happy and feel alive. But as the old saying goes, "Money can't buy you love." Warren Buffet, a man who has made a lot of money, understands that. At a recent stop at the College of Management of Georgia Tech, he joked: You can't buy love. It's very irritating! It's so much easier to just write out a check. "I'd like a million dollars worth of love." You can get a million dollars worth of sex but . . . . And with joking aside, he goes on to say, You're only going to be loved if you're lovable. If you are, you get it back in spades. The truth is, you always get back more than you give away. Some people never learn that. They're busy cheating people, cutting corners, lying to them, all kinds of things, and they think they're a success because they have tens of millions of dollars later in life. I don't think they are a success, and I don't think deep down they feel like they are a success. I suppose we could say, "That's easy for Warren Buffet to say!" But wealthy people, if they reflect on their situation at all, will realize that their money does not make them happy. And even if they don't realize it, everyone else can read in the tabloids all about their human misery amid material plenty. Even the wealthiest people never have enough, if money is their goal. In fact, a survey once showed that most Americans think they would be doing fine if they could just make 10% more than they were making right now. It didn't matter whether they were making $30,000 a year or $500,000 a year; they thought that if they could just make 10% more, they'd be doing well. Money is just one of the places we look for the living among the dead. Men look for life in fancy cars, in sports, in Rolex watches. Women look for love in clothes, in beauty, in big houses and expensive diamonds. And we all have an alarming tendency to look for love in alcohol, in drugs, in food, in physical pleasures of various kinds. We never find it in these things. Yet we continue feverishly trying, thinking that if it didn't work out last time, it's just that we didn't get it quite right; we didn't get enough; we just have to do it one better--and this time it will work! What a mess we humans are! Thousands of years of looking for the living among the dead. Thousands of years of turning to money and war and sex and power and pleasure, and has it brought us happiness? Has it brought us life? There is still just as much pain and heartbreak and death in the world as there ever was, after all those thousands of years of our useless human efforts to create life and buy love for ourselves. Easter is what breaks that feverish human cycle of searching for life in things that are dead. The women came to the tomb expecting to find a body. They had the spices all prepared to anoint the body of the one they had called "Lord." They were ready to pay their last respects; to give a decent burial to the one they had loved--the one who was Life itself. But their spices had to be set aside for another day, for another death. Because at the tomb there was no death. There was only life! "Why do you look for the living among the dead?" the angels asked, their gleaming clothes practically blinding the women with radiance. "He is not here, but has risen!" The angels knew all about death and life. They had lived out their lives here on earth, facing the darkness and struggles and pain of this world. They had faced everything those women had faced. And they had chosen life. Now they were living in their eternal homes--in a place of light and love, a place filled to overflowing with life . . . with eternal life . . . with the deep and powerful life that can come only from within and above; that can come only from our Lord, our God, our Creator. Those angels spoke from their own experience, from what they had known and what they knew now. They spoke from a place of having the living Lord in their hearts and minds every day. The radiance that shone from them was not their own, but the Lord's glory shining through them. "Why do you look for the living among the dead?" We can look for the living among the dead if we want to. The Lord will let us try out every possibility for life. He wants us to find out from our own experience that our ideas of life will not bring us the real life that we are looking for. He lets us try out money, cars, beauty, houses, and all kinds of physical pleasures to see if they will work. As with those angels, he wants us to know from experience that life comes only in the Lord. "For the Lord is your life," he says to us through Moses. We may turn away to other gods of money and pleasure, but we will not find life there. But if we turn to the Lord and his ways, recognizing that everything good, true, and alive come from the Lord, then we will find real life. Then we will discover the same thing that the angels at the tomb had discovered. "He is not dead, but has risen!" The Lord is not to be found in the dead things of this world. Rather, he is to be found in the living things of spirit. The Lord rises to life in us each time we realize that life is not found in getting things for ourselves, but in giving love to others. The Lord Jesus spent his entire life, not getting for himself, but giving: teaching, preaching, healing the people both physically and spiritually. We also find life and love when we follow the commandments of the Lord. And the core of all his commandments is that we love one another, as he has loved us (John 13:34). "Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen!" ____________________ 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 Purchase the Rev. Lee Woofenden's new book of sermons, "On Earth as it is In Heaven," on Amazon.com at: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1595261753/wwwswedenboro-20 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 Mon Apr 4 15:35:17 2005 From: leewoof@leewoof.net (Lee Woofenden) Date: Mon, 04 Apr 2005 11:35:17 -0400 Subject: [Sermons] "The Power of Baptism," by the Rev. Lee Woofenden Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20050404113437.04b21088@mail.leewoof.net> The Power of Baptism By the Rev. Lee Woofenden Bridgewater, Massachusetts, April 3, 2005 Readings: Exodus 30:17-21: The basin for washing Then the Lord said to Moses, "Make a bronze basin, with its bronze stand, for washing. Place it between the Tent of Meeting and the altar, and put water in it. Aaron and his sons are to wash their hands and feet with water from it. Whenever they enter the Tent of Meeting, they shall wash with water so that they will not die. Also, when they approach the altar to minister by presenting an offering made to the Lord by fire, they shall wash their hands and feet so that they will not die. This is to be a lasting ordinance for Aaron and his descendants for the generations to come." Luke 3:1-18: The baptism of John In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar--when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of Iturea and Traconitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene--during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the desert. He went into all the country around the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. As is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet: "A voice of one calling in the desert, 'Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him. Every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill made low. The crooked roads shall become straight, the rough ways smooth. And all humanity will see God's salvation.'" John said to the crowds coming out to be baptized by him, "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance! And do not begin to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our father.' For I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. The axe is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire." "What should we do then?" the crowd asked. John answered, "Anyone who has two shirts should share with someone who has none, and anyone who has food should do the same." Tax collectors also came to be baptized. "Teacher," they asked, "what should we do?" "Don't collect any more than you are required to," he told them. Then some soldiers asked him, "And what should we do?" He replied, "Don't extort money, and don't accuse people falsely; be content with your pay." The people were waiting expectantly and were all wondering in their hearts if John might possibly be the Christ. John answered them all, "I baptize you with water. But one more powerful than I will come, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire." And with many other words John exhorted the people and preached the good news to them. True Christian Religion #685: The purpose of baptism The first purpose of baptism is so that we may be named Christians. The second follows from this: so that we may come to know and accept the Lord, the Redeemer, Regenerator, and Savior. The third is so that we may be reborn from the Lord; and when this happens, we are redeemed and saved. These three purposes follow one after the other and combine in the last, so that angels think of them together as one. When baptism is performed, read about in the Bible, or spoken of, the angels present do not think of baptism, but of spiritual rebirth. Sermon: John answered them, "I baptize you with water. But one more powerful than I will come, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire." (Luke 3:16) The Sacrament of Baptism is based on a ritual that is (I hope!) as old as humanity itself: the act of washing. Most of us wash ourselves in one way or another every day, and think little of it. Not only do we wash our entire body regularly by bathing or showering, but we wash our hands, face, feet, and other parts of our body whenever they get dirty, or before eating, or when we go to bed at night or get up in the morning. We also wash our clothing, the dishes we use to eat, our cars, and sometimes even our houses. And then there are all our other acts of grooming, such as combing, brushing, and cutting our hair, trimming our nails, shaving (some of us, anyway!), and so on. In fact, we put quite a lot of effort into cleaning and caring for our bodies, and making ourselves presentable. It is simply a part of life. If we do stop to think about it, we quickly realize that life without washing is something we would probably prefer not to think about. Lately I've been watching the reruns of the old M.A.S.H. series that ran from 1972 to 1983. In one episode, the two leading characters, Captain "Hawkeye" Pierce and Captain B. J. Hunnicutt go on a shower strike in protest against the French Horn playing of their tentmate, the high-born and sanctimonious Major Charles Emerson Winchester III--who, I must say, is a really bad French Horn player! Hawkeye and B. J. get progressively smellier, until they are barred from entering the mess tent, being forced to eat at a table outside where they can't even stand the smell of one another. Finally, the entire camp forms a mob to hose them down, douse them with soapy water, and give them a scrub. (Charles's offending French Horn is then promptly dispatched by being run over with a jeep!) Fortunately, most of us don't allow ourselves to go without bathing so long that we become the target of a spontaneous mass demonstration! But there are some unfortunates who either do not or cannot bathe. They generally live on the fringes of society, outdoors, eating and sleeping separately from the rest of society. I'm referring, of course, to the homeless--not all of whom are careless of their personal grooming, but many of whom do not take care of their bodies as polite society believes we should do. And their unwashed condition is an emblem of their position outside of "acceptable" society. Yes, we take washing for granted . . . until we encounter those who don't wash, and then we realize not only what a regular part of our lives it is to keep cleaning ourselves, but what a critical part it is. Because not washing has not only social consequences, but also consequences for our health. The dirtier we get, the more likely we are to contract various sicknesses that come with the growing filth. In short, dirtiness is a hazard both to our social relationships and to our health. And persistent dirtiness is usually a sign that something is seriously wrong with us. Perhaps this sets the stage for an understanding of both the necessity and the power of the Sacrament of Baptism. Of course, as a physical act, Baptism doesn't accomplish much. For those who practice full-immersion baptism, I'm sure the people being baptized do come out just a little cleaner than they went in. But I'll bet they take a shower that morning anyway! For those who use only small, symbolic amounts of water, as we do in our church, the physical effects of baptism are virtually nil. Well . . . perhaps it produces a few crying babies . . . but that is soon taken care of when the little one is handed back to his or her parents! Clearly, the purpose of baptism is not physical washing. And in fact, John the Baptist himself pointed to a deeper meaning of baptism when he told the people, "I baptize you with water. But one more powerful than I will come, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire." John introduced people into the Christian Church with the baptism of water; but he understood that this was only an introduction; the real baptism was a matter of spirit and of spiritual fire. What, then, does baptism do for us spiritually? By itself, if we take it as a mere ritual, it does very little. But even as a ritual, it does accomplish at least one thing: it introduces us into the Christian Church. Baptism is universally recognized by Christians as the sign that a person is a Christian. And though some Christian churches require re-baptism into their own church, our church, and many others, recognize any Christian baptism as a sign that the person is--or is to become--a Christian. And this leads to the second power that baptism carries with it. Once we are a part of the Christian Church, we have conscious access to the one for whom the church is named: Jesus Christ. Of course, anyone, of any religion, can read the Gospels and learn from the wisdom of Christ. But only Christians will approach Jesus Christ as "God With Us"--as the unique human presence of the God and Creator of the universe. When we call ourselves Christians, and introduce our infants and children into the Christian Church through baptism, we bring ourselves and our children into the church where we can know, love, and follow our Lord, God, and Savior, Jesus Christ. And notice that we are not only to know the Lord, but also to love and follow him. This leads to the third power of baptism: our spiritual rebirth, or "regeneration." It is not enough merely to be called a Christian and to believe in Jesus Christ. The Lord himself says, "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" (Matthew 7:21). It is no accident that the Lord chose a ritual of washing to symbolize introduction into the Christian Church. But the washing that he wished to lead us to was not physical washing--as important as that is for our life here on earth--but spiritual washing, which is essential for our life in eternity. You see, even if, as we believe, there is no such thing as original sin, there certainly are many inborn tendencies to evil in each one of us. And I think we all realize that each one of us has also indulged in many words and actions that are not right. In plain terms, we have all said and done things that are evil. These things are like internal dirt that clings to us and causes us to become odious to the people around us, and to sink into spiritual disease and death. And of course, as long as we are spiritually filthy, we can never enter the eternal brightness and beauty of heaven. To do that, we must wash ourselves and make ourselves clean through the practice of inner baptism--which is, with the Lord's help and in the Lord's power, cleansing our lives of all evil thoughts, feelings, and actions. As we do this, we become Christians not only in name, but in spirit and in reality. This is the true, spiritual power of baptism: the power to make us new creations in 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 Purchase the Rev. Lee Woofenden's new book of sermons, "On Earth as it is In Heaven," on Amazon.com at: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1595261753/wwwswedenboro-20 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 Aug 2 17:17:23 2005 From: leewoof@leewoof.net (Lee Woofenden) Date: Tue, 02 Aug 2005 13:17:23 -0400 Subject: [Sermons] "God's Masterpiece," by the Rev. Lee Woofenden Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20050802131630.03919050@mail.leewoof.net> God's Masterpiece By the Rev. Lee Woofenden New Church of New York City, June 12, 2005 Readings: Psalm 8: How majestic is your name! O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens. From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise Because of your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger. When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, The moon and the stars, which you have set in place, What are human beings, that you are mindful of them, Mortals, that you care for them? Yet you have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor. You have given them dominion over the works of your hands; You have put everything under their feet: All flocks and herds, and the beasts of the field, The birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, All that swim the paths of the seas. O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! John 1:1-14: The light shines in the darkness In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness did not comprehend it. Arcana Coelestia #300: The universe is a stage Each and all things in the universe represent the Lord's kingdom, so much so that the universe with all its constellations, its various atmospheres, and its three kingdoms is nothing but a kind of stage, on which the Lord's glory as it exists in heaven is represented. In the animal kingdom, not only humans but also each living creature--even the smallest and most insignificant of them--is representative. For example, caterpillars crawl on the ground and feed on plants, and when the time to mate is at hand they become chrysalises. Soon after this they are furnished with wings, with which they are raised up from the ground into the air, which is their heaven. There they enjoy freedom of movement as they play together, obtain nourishment from the best parts of the flowers, lay their eggs, and so produce a future generation. This is when they attain the state that is their particular heaven, and also their beauty. Anyone may see that these things are representative of the Lord's kingdom. Sermon: I am so pleased to be here in New York City to speak on the theme "God's Masterpiece." It is a particularly wonderful place to talk on this subject, since New York City has always been a great center for the arts of various kinds--performing, pictorial, sculpture, and many other forms of artwork. In fact, the night before I came here, my daughter was in a high school production of a show called "That's Entertainment." It's a variety show that includes pieces from many Broadway show tunes, among other things. And there I was, listening to songs like "NYC" from _Annie,_ "America" from _West Side Story,_ and "New York, New York," made popular by Frank Sinatra. So I was all primed and ready to go to New York! So it is particularly appropriate to talk about the creative arts here. Also, the theme of the Swedenborgian Church's annual convention this year is "Spirituality and the Arts." I suppose all artists like to think that they are doing something new--something that hasn't done before. They think they had this idea, and they are going to put it on paper, or into sculpture, or on the stage, or on the screen, and it will be something no one has ever seen before. And it might be a little annoying to think that God thought of it first. This is my idea! Yet we know theologically that nothing comes to us except from the spiritual realm. All of our thoughts and feelings come to us from the spiritual world; and the angels and spirits there get them from God. So all of the ideas that are flowing into us are actually coming from the Divine. Swedenborg describes a scene involving some spirits who had newly arrived in the spiritual world, and didn't believe this. They insisted that their ideas were their own. So they were allowed to experience just how many ideas they had on their own: they were temporarily cut off from any communication with the angels and spirits around them. Though we may not be aware of it, we are in continual contact with angels and spirits, even while we are here on earth. When those newly arrived spirits were cut off from that communication, their minds went completely blank. They were not able to have any thoughts and feelings at all. They were given just enough consciousness so that they could remain aware of their state of mind. Through that experience, they had to admit that on their own they had no thoughts and feelings whatsoever. Everything we have, including the artistic works that we produce, are actually expressions of something that is coming to us from the spiritual world, and ultimately from the mind of God. This may be annoying to some artists, who want to take credit for their work. On the other hand, what greater honor could there be than to realize that we are expressing something of the nature of God? To know that in our artwork there is something of the Divine nature being expressed? Even the most abstract art draws on life experience. Most art is drawn very directly from the world of nature, of the human form, and the world of human emotions and interactions--all of which God created. Our artwork expresses our experiences, our thoughts, and our feelings, all of which originally came from the mind of God. And I find this to be a very wonderful thought. As long as we can get our ego out of the way, and not try to claim our work as our own, we can have the marvelous realization and experience of being a conduit through which God flows. When I was in my twenties. I served as an apprentice in an artist's studio. The way I got that job is a funny story. At that time I was living out on an island on Puget Sound in Washington State, which is a very beautiful part of the country. I had been making my living doing what these days they call "landscaping"-- which really means mowing people's lawns, doesn't it? I did other things too, such as digging garden beds and trimming hedges. As time went on, I dropped most of these jobs and did other things for a living. But there was one job I kept. I kept on mowing one person's lawn and trimming his hedges. That was for an artist--who, incidentally, regularly showed his work at the Kennedy Galleries here in New York. I kept working for him because I knew that the apprentice he had at the time would soon be finished there--and I had my eye on that job. So I kept on mowing the artist's lawn and trimming his hedges. One day as I was sweeping the electric hedge trimmer across his hedges, he was standing back looking at my work with an artist's eye. I could see his mind working: "Could he do this?" Of course, I was doing my best artistic hedge-trimming! And it clicked into place: "Yes, he could be my apprentice." It wasn't long before I was not only mowing his lawn and trimming his hedges, but also working in his studio. His primary work was sculpture in wood, stone, and bronze. I used woodworking and carving tools, hammer and chisel, and other artist tools, roughing out the pieces under his direction. I worked for him for a number of years. None of the work I did in his studio was my own. I knew it was his work, not mine. But I got great pleasure from taking the rough piece with all his markings, listening to his instructions, grasping what his aim was for the piece, and working away with the tools to express in wood or stone what was in his mind. So I was working in someone else's studio, doing someone else's work, helping him to create beautiful artwork that many people would enjoy and be inspired by--because there was a strong sense of the spiritual in his artwork. The forms evoked deeper meanings and messages. This, then, was an experience of doing work that wasn't my own, but was expressing something of the artist's mind. That is what we are all doing here. We are all doing things that aren't our own--yet through us, God is expressing something of the Divine spirit. When we think how our creativity comes from God, this naturally leads us to consider God's tremendous creativity. In human artwork we see expressed the human form, flowers, birds, landscapes, scenes of country and city life, and so many other subjects, all of which were originally created by God. The human form, both male and female, which is the subject of so many paintings, sculptures, and other types of art, is one of God's supreme creations. Everything in nature, including every tiny part of it, is a creation of God. It is mind-boggling to think that God designed each wing of the smallest hummingbirds, and of the delicate dragonflies, and even designed the intricate structures of creatures so tiny that we need a microscope to see them. And I believe that God is not only mindful of each and every one of these created things, but also finds great of joy in creating them. Not only did God create every detail of each creature, but also created the entire universe--on the large scale and on the small scale, from galaxies and superclusters all the way down to the tiniest subatomic particles--and all of this works together. This becomes too vast and incredible for us to grasp. "Masterpiece" isn't anywhere near big enough a word to describe it! We create, in our own little world, a production on the stage, or a series of paintings or sculptures, and they are beautiful. But when we think about creating this vastness that our minds can hardly even comprehend a fraction of; when we think about the distances over which we would have to travel to get to the farthest reaches of the universe, and realize that God is just as mindful of things all the way at the other end, millions of light years away--things that we are never going to experience except as a tiny gleam of light--and is just as present there, creating tremendous wonders that we will never see . . . we do have to call it "God's masterpiece." God has also taken the whole cosmos and compressed it into every single part of it. In today's words, we would say that the universe is holographic. God has made everything on the large scale reflected in the small, and everything on the small scale reflected in the large. This is expressed in the famous opening line of the poem "Auguries of Innocence," by William Blake: "To see the world in a grain of sand, and heaven in a wild flower." That is God's design for the universe, because everything in the universe is expressive of the nature of God. If we could analyze a single atom and fully determine its substance and structure, we could find every part of God reflected in it. And if could grasp the universe as a whole and everything in it, we would find God reflected in the universe, and all of its myriad parts. This is also true of the human body and mind. Genesis 1:27 says, "God created human beings in his own image; in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them." So we each have a microcosm of God right in our own body and spirit. When we contemplate artwork depicting scenes in nature, or the human body, or even a human city, we are wandering through our own psyche. Because God has arranged the universe so that everything around us reflects what is inside of us, and everything inside us is reflected around us. Nothing that we experience around us is separate from us. It is all what's inside. John Muir captured this beautifully when he said, "The sun shines not on us, but in us. The rivers flow not past, but through us." Everything around us is within us as well. This is true of the people around us as well. We think of ourselves as having relationships with other people, and we do. Yet when we are having that argument with our mother, we are also having that argument within ourselves. Because our mother is not only outside of us; she is inside of us as well, because she has become a part of us. And when we have that loving moment with our spouse or children or grandchildren or a dear friend, we are also making a loving connection between different parts of our own spirit. There is no one around us who is simply outside us. We are interacting at the same time with those parts of our soul with in us. This is what I find so beautiful about both the harmonious and the difficult relationships we have with people. I don't want to use the "good" and "bad" language here, because our difficult relationships are also good. They bring out different parts of what is inside us so that we can confront it and deal with it. God created all of the universe, and also all of our interactions with the people around us, to reflect what is within us--to show us who we are, and help us to develop into the angels that God created us to be. And the more I think about it, the more my mind is overwhelmed at the sheer beauty of what God has done. Sometimes we get used to life here, and think things are ordinary. We've walked down that street so many times before. We've walked up those old, worn-out stairs so many times before. We've had this conversation with our spouse over breakfast so many times before. But it only takes the lightning flash of one moment to see that within the experience or interaction we have been having over and over again all those years, there is so much more. All of a sudden we realize that tremendous things are happening; that this is not just an external world. This is God expressing the Divine in our everyday life, and our spirit is growing each time. We may think it is just a circle, but it is actually a spiral. We come around to the same place, but each time we are a little bit higher. Each time we are a little bit deeper. We can think of the spiral as going upward, or as starting at the edge and going inward. We are always circling around, moving closer and closer to the Divine at the center. And each time around, we are a little closer, receiving a little more of God's glory and God's inspiration. Everything we are, everything we are in, all the people around us, the city, the countryside--all of it is God's masterpiece. And all of it is teaching us both about the nature of God and about the nature of our own spirit. And I find that to be very beautiful. ____________________ 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 Purchase the Rev. Lee Woofenden's new book of sermons, "On Earth as it is In Heaven," on Amazon.com at: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1595261753/wwwswedenboro-20 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 Sep 19 21:42:10 2005 From: leewoof@leewoof.net (Lee Woofenden) Date: Mon, 19 Sep 2005 17:42:10 -0400 Subject: [Sermons] "Our Higher Neighbors," by the Rev. Lee Woofenden Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20050919174131.03b70900@mail.leewoof.net> Our Higher Neighbors By the Rev. Lee Woofenden Bridgewater, Massachusetts, September 18, 2005 Readings: Deuteronomy 28:1-6: Blessings for obedience If you fully obey the Lord your God, and carefully follow all his commands that I give you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations on earth. All these blessings will come upon you and accompany you if you obey the Lord your God: You will be blessed in the city and blessed in the country. The fruit of your womb will be blessed, and the crops of your land, and the young of your livestock--the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks. Your basket and your kneading trough will be blessed. You will be blessed when you come in and blessed when you go out. Luke 10:25-37: The good Samaritan On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. "Teacher," he asked, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?" "What is written in the Law?" he replied. "How do you read it?" He answered: "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind'; and, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'" "You have answered correctly," Jesus replied. "Do this and you will live." But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?" In reply Jesus said: "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper. 'Look after him,' he said, 'and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.' "Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?" The expert in the law replied, "The one who had mercy on him." Jesus told him, "Go and do likewise." The Heavenly City #91: Levels of the neighbor It is not just individual people who are our neighbor, but also groups of people, such as small and large communities, our country, religion, the Lord's realm, and most of all, the Lord himself. All of these are our neighbor, so we should do good things for them out of love. These groups of people are our at higher and higher levels. A community with many people in it is our neighbor at a higher level than an individual person; our country is our neighbor at an even higher level; religion at an even higher level; the Lord's realm at a still higher level; and the Lord is our neighbor at the highest level of all. These higher and higher levels are like a staircase with the Lord at the top. Sermon: "Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?" The expert in the law replied, "The one who had mercy on him." Jesus told him, "Go and do likewise." (Luke 10:36-37) It is good to get back to basics. And for our Sunday School classes and worship services this fall, we are going to get back to one of the most basic basics commanded by the Lord: loving our neighbor. In traditional language, this is called "charity." But charity means so much more than donating money to the poor and volunteering our time to help those in need. It is not just something we do with our spare money and in our spare time. Charity is a way of life. Charity is expressed (or not) in everything we think, feel, say, and do. Today, as an introduction to our fall series, we will take a brief tour of two of the answers given in our church's teachings to the question that the lawyer asked Jesus: "Who is my neighbor?" One answer to this question--which a thoughtful reading of the Parable of the Good Samaritan will reveal, is that the good in others in our neighbor. Swedenborg writes: Goodness is our neighbor in the broadest sense, since people are our neighbor according to the kind of good qualities they have from the Lord. And since goodness is our neighbor, love is our neighbor, because all goodness comes from love. So people are our neighbor according to the kind of love they have from the Lord. (_The Heavenly City_ #88) The practical meaning of this is that in loving our neighbors and doing good for them, we are to help and strengthen what is good in them, and, on the other hand, work against and weaken what is not good in them. The refrain from classic song made popular by Bing Crosby expresses it well: You've got to accentuate the positive, Eliminate the negative, Latch on to the affirmative, Don't mess with Mister In-Between, You've got to spread joy up to the maximum, Bring gloom down to the minimum, Have faith, or pandemonium's Liable to walk upon the scene. If our words and actions toward others help to accentuate the best in them and eliminate the worst in them, then we are truly loving our neighbor. But this does not fully answer the question asked by the lawyer, "Who is my neighbor?" Another answer--one that will provide the guideline for our fall series--is provided in our reading from _The Heavenly City,_ #91, on "levels of the neighbor." Here is the gist of it: It is not just individual people who are our neighbor, but also groups of people, such as small and large communities, our country, religion, the Lord's realm, and most of all, the Lord himself. All of these are our neighbor, so we should do good things for them out of love. Living as we do in a rather individualistic society, when we hear the word "neighbor," we tend to think of individual people. But as Swedenborg points out, the word "neighbor" has broader and broader meanings as we move from individual human beings to the community, to the country, and even, these days, to the entire world. And it has both broader and deeper meanings as we move on from civil society to spiritual society: to people's religious faith, and to the Lord's kingdom throughout the earth--which we as Swedenborgians believe extends to people of all faiths who love God and live by the good teachings of their religion. And of course, God is our highest neighbor, and God's presence in all people and in all things is the neighbor in the broadest sense of all. What does this teaching mean? And what does it do for us? It means that if we are loving and serving the people right around us, that is good--but it is only the beginning of living a truly charitable life. This teaching calls us to move beyond the people closest to us, and extend our love and charity to those more distant from us--to people we may not know or appreciate at all. If we think about it, this idea is contained right in the parable itself. As has been pointed out many times, the Samaritans were considered anything but neighbors by the largely Jewish audience who heard Jesus speak the parable. The Samaritans were hated and despised foreigners--people to be scorned, not people to be loved. And Jesus taught this highly resistant crowd that even those outcast foreigners can both love and be loved. The parable pushes the boundaries of our love and charity beyond our family, our friends, our co-workers, our customers, to those in other communities and other nations. In today's geopolitical environment, this would mean that as Americans, Jesus is commanding us to see the good in the Iraqis, the Iranians, and the North Koreans. Jesus is commanding us to think of them as our neighbor, and seek ways to do good for them, just as the Samaritan in the parable did good for the man who fell into the hands of robbers. (And his hearers would naturally have thought of that poor man as a Jew like themselves.) Both the Bible and the teachings of our church call us to broaden our concept of the neighbor, to broaden the boundaries of our hearts, to these higher levels of the neighbor. If we have learned to love and serve our individual neighbor, perhaps it is time to start thinking about our community and its good. Perhaps it is time to put some of our knowledge and skills to work making our community a better place to live. If we have done this--have gotten involved in our community and its concerns, and served on that level, then perhaps it is time to broaden our charitable action still further, and think of what we can do to serve our nation and its good. There are many opportunities. And if our thinking and our loyalty and service already extends to our nation, then perhaps it is time to stretch our hearts still further to the church and to the Lord's kingdom on earth--to people of all faiths throughout the world--even those whose religion we don't particularly understand or appreciate. What can we do to serve those whose beliefs and lives are very different from our own? And of course, the highest meaning of loving our neighbor is to love the Lord above all, and to seek out and cherish the Lord's presence everywhere we can find it. This means looking for the good and the truth in everyone around us, at all levels. It means bringing out the best in our own children and grandchildren, and it also means seeing and bringing out the best in those we may think of as our enemies around the world. "Who is my neighbor?" the lawyer asked. Our neighbor is everyone and everything throughout the world. Because if we are willing to open our eyes to greater spiritual heights, we will find that there is good in every person, in every nation, and in every religion. 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 Purchase the Rev. Lee Woofenden's new book of sermons, "On Earth as it is In Heaven," on Amazon.com at: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1595261753/wwwswedenboro-20