Hillside Swedenborgian Community Church

Following God’s Three-Step Program

September 13^th, 2009

Readings: Proverbs 1:20-33; Mark 8:27-38

Jesus tells us in three steps how to not only save our soul, but also to embrace true spirituality.

Step 1: Deny Yourself

Step 2: Take up your Cross

Step 3: Follow Jesus

What does Jesus mean by these three steps? What must we do to not “forfeit” our souls? We can find some sense of them in Jesus’ words about his fate that he highlights prior to these steps. He says he must be rejected, suffer, die, and rise again. He is sharing the steps that he, the Christ, will model.

Swedenborg identifies this as our process of regeneration. He names the three steps as repentance, reformation, and regeneration. He writes how we do not regenerate only once, but again and again. The process is not a circle, but a spiral upward through which we repeat the process, letting go of our attachments, as we move ever closer to God. 

Swedenborg identifies three heavenly states for people on earth: a natural state, a spiritual state, and a celestial state. Looking at regeneration in a simple way, people in the natural state repent of their transgressions towards God and their neighbors in the letter of the law. People in the spiritual state repent of their transgressions towards God and their neighbors as perceived through their faith. People in the celestial state repent of their transgressions towards God and their neighbors as perceived through their love.

The way I understand it, as people move from their natural state to their spiritual state, they are dying to a self-serving love and being reborn into a faith of love for God and others. As people move from their spiritual state to their celestial state, they are dying to their separateness with others as they become aware of their love of God and others. The ultimate of this love of God and others is the end of all separateness, when only the experience of oneness remains.   

As a process of regeneration, let’s look at God’s hopes for us through some of the Ten Commandments. Those in a natural state focus on the literal level of these “laws,” such as not committing adultery, coveting, and lying. Those in the spiritual state focus on the spirit of the laws. As an act of faith, they commit themselves to being truthful and loving in their relationships with God and others. This includes a faith in God as conveyed through their acts of service to all, such as being respectful, compassionate, and generous.

Those in the celestial state focus on the essence of the laws as an act of love. More than not committing adultery, it means remaining deeply and compassionately committed in their relationships with God and God’s people. More than not coveting, it means loving the goodness and truth in others as an outpouring of God’s goodness and truth in themselves. More than not having other gods in their hearts, it means keeping their love of God as primary and foremost in their hearts. Moments of forgetfulness are moments of separateness.

This process of regeneration is a process of surrendering what and who we believe ourselves to be. Only after letting go of our attachment to our view of ourselves can we embrace something more authentic and soulful. The essence and spirit of God’s laws are much more important than the laws of man. Getting put into jail for reckless driving is nothing compared to being recklessly driven towards our own self-serving gain. The laws of man determine the fate of our bodies … while on earth. The laws of God determine the fate of our souls … while on earth and the hereafter!

Let’s look at the three steps through Jesus’ own steps.  

Step 1: Deny Ourselves

Even Jesus had to deny himself, though he was most exalted. At Gethsemane, the day before he was crucified, he asked God to take away the cup of suffering and death that awaited him. Yet, he asked foremost for God’s Will to be done. By denying his own preference, he was able to welcome something more glorious that God was offering him. In this way, we can see the first step of denying ourselves means to accept God’s wisdom instead of our own.

Swedenborg writes about this first step of repentance as follows:

“Actual repentance is to examine oneself, to recognize one’s sins, to confess them before God, and thus to begin a new life ….” (True Christian Religion, n. 561)

Notice the part about confessing one’s sins before God. God knows our faults and limitations. However, Swedenborg is saying that God wants us to name them before God, to claim that which we are powerless to overcome alone. The process of confession is a cleansing process. When done with a repentent heart, it allows us to let go, surrender our control, and humbly ask for God’s help.

Step 2: Take Up Our Cross

Looking at Jesus again, his act of taking up his cross meant carrying that for which he was accused. It meant carrying the weight of the truth he knew in his heart, and facing the rejection, the suffering, and the death that ensued. What was the accusation against him by the leaders of his community? Blasphemy. Specifically, he was accused of seeing and recognizing God in himself. He also was accused of seeing and recognizing God in others.

For our process, we can face our internal psychology and external environments with the conviction and commitment of what we know to be true in our hearts. We may become the brunt of jokes or ridicule or laughter from others. Maybe we realize how our attachment to a manic pace in life denies ourselves the nurishing quality of Sabbath time we need. If we speak up for the need to create Sabbath time in our homes, a time when God can be with us without our frenetic pace, we may experience a form of rejection from our partners, finding ourselves spending Sabbath time alone. Or maybe we realize how we are unconsciously complicit in blocking particular gay rights. Taking steps in support of all gay rights will bring on rejection from a number of others.

This is an important time to pray. Pray to remain committed and humble as we ask for God’s help. Through prayers and a humble heart, God can fill us with the spirit to remain strong and resolute in what we know to be true. As we remain committed, we move closer to the psychological death of the part of us that was once attached to the ways of the world.

Step 3:  Follow God

It was because of Jesus’ death that we have come to know of his ressurection. When Jesus rose up, he revealed the truth of his words. His regeneration was complete and he was completely free. Jesus is the model for our rebirth, for our regeneration. As we die to our patterns or attachments, we are no longer controlled by them. We are free of them, having broken their hold on us. After we have died to materialism, like the desire to always wear the latest fashions or the need to own the coolest iPhone or the obsession to keep up with the lives of the movie stars, we release the previously attached energy and receive a freshness of new life.

An important requirement of this stage is gratitude. Just like the way we enjoy being more generous with a person who is grateful for a good deed we did for them, God similarly is drawn to the gratitude we have. This keeps our hearts open to God’s love and guidance. It makes our hearts tasting like the sweetness of a mango fruit that we can offer to God.

This process of regeneration sometimes begins by God through our unconscious. We may not know what cup God is offering us until we come to know it through a dream, often a nightmare. Nightmares highlight the suffering of which we are unconscious. Most nightmares are about running away from or being threatened by someone or something. When a person takes the time to explore the meaning of his nightmare, he can experience the most grace-filled love from God. For example, one man had a nightmare of his house being deluged by a heavy rain storm that threatened to collapse his roof. He realized the rain was a metaphor for his tears from unresolved sadness from his relationship with his parents at an early time in his life. When he realized he was unconsciously holding back the sadness, he realized that God was inviting him to deny his need to protect himself from deeper feelings. After he cried at the deep sadness he was holding back, he experienced a lightness in his being. He felt cleansed and in a way … reborn.

Like this man when he was young, we may also have heard too many reprimands from those who supposedly loved us the most. A piece of wisdom I learned from my mentor, Greg Comella, who passed away last year, was that behind every “no” there is a deeper “yes.” Whenever you say “no” to something or someone, you are saying a deeper “yes” to something or someone else. When Jesus said “no” to Peter’s words in our gospel reading, he was saying “yes” to his love of Peter and helping Peter understand the nature of his words.  

For those of you who have or had young children, you know you reprimand them usually because you love them. When you speak to them strongly, they usually don’t hear anything loving about your words.  Just a few days ago my older son was telling me that he didn’t think my wife and I cared whether he made his bed or not. When I asked him if he thought we cared about how he behaved in life, he again said he didn’t think we cared. While I know he was still feeling sore from my reprimand, perhaps he has taken in too many “rebukes” and needs to hear more of the tenderness behind the reason for my words. I then began to lovingly explain to him that it is because his mother and I love him so much that we reprimand him. That didn’t sink in very far at that moment but I learned later that he understood the message.  

Like my son, I wonder how many of us are still living with too many rebukes from our parents or guardians? Too many reprimands erode the love in our relationships. We may have been repeatedly told directly and indirectly that we are not enough: not good enough, not loving enough, not sensitive enough, not strong enough, not speaking-up enough, not thinking-of-others enough. We have forgotten how much God loves us just the way we are. We have lost touch with the comfort and care God wants to share with us. We might be so starved for healthy intimacy that we can hardly believe God wants intimacy with … us! Can this be true? From my personal experience, the answer is a resounding “YES!”

God speaks to this point in the first reading from Proverbs. God shares how much God desires to be intimate with us, saying:

 ²³ If you had responded to my rebuke,
       I would have poured out my heart to you
       and made my thoughts known to you.

What would we not give to receive God’s heart and know God’s thoughts?! How could there be anything more intimate and wonderous? God is offering us God’s heart if we “respond” to God’s rebuke by following the steps Jesus outlined. God is rebuking us and asking us to deny ourselves so that God can give more of God’s Self to us. God is rebuking us because God so loves us. God is asking us to say “no” to what is temporal and limited, and to say “yes” to what is infinite and unlimited. How amazing!

Our lives will be over before we know it. Let’s not wonder where the time went as we lie on our death beds. Time is precious. The question that God continually offers us is: “How far do we each want to go in this intimate relationship of love and truth with God?”

Amen.