Rodrigo Marcus – October 11, 2009 – Loving the Giver of the Gifts
October 13th, 2009Readings (printed at end of document):
Job 22:12-28, Mark 10:17-31
Swedenborg: True Christian Religion n. 504
The rich man in the gospel is indeed wealthy. He has not murdered, not committed adultery, not stolen, not given false testimony, not defrauded, and has honored his father and mother. He has an abundance of spiritual wealth. Yet, Jesus said he lacks one thing. What could this thing be, when he has followed the commandments he thinks God has asked of him?
The answer is simple, yet profound. The answer lies in Jesus’ first words to the man: “Why do you call me good? No one is good—except God alone.” Jesus is asking the man to think of the source of Jesus’ goodness. In other words, is Jesus-the-man doing the goodness or God-in-Jesus doing the goodness? Though the man links Jesus with God by calling him “good teacher,” conveying this by falling on his knees before Jesus, the man does not identify God as the source of his own goodness.
The man asks Jesus for eternity. Jesus turns it around and invites the man to find eternity within his own being. He tells the man to let go of everything temporal and limited, and notice the eternal God who had been fulfilling the commandments since he was a boy. However, he could not let go of the temporal. The man was attached and identified not only with his material wealth but also with himself as the doer of his own goodness.
Like Jesus, Swedenborg wants us to recognize God as the source of all the good we think, feel, and do. He says that God is not only the wisdom that feeds our understanding, but also the love out of which arise our impulses and efforts to do good. If we hold on to the belief that we are the source of our goodness, then we are believing falsely like the rich man and can never enter the kingdom of God. As Jesus said, it is impossible for man to enter the kingdom of God. Why? Because there is no such thing as our own effort. In reality, our effort is God’s effort through us. By our human nature, we naturally identify with much of what we know, what we have, and what we do. In this lies the deception. We are so full of ourselves that there is no room inside for God. Yet, if we want eternal life, we need to empty ourselves of ourselves and everything temporal. Swedenborg points out that though God wants us to think, feel, and act as if we are operating by ourselves, God wants us to identify God as the source of everything good. The more we do this, the more we are staying focused on the eternal, the more we are becoming filled with God.
When Jesus invites the man to sell everything he has, Jesus is inviting him to let go of the way he is identified with and possessed by his possessions. We can do likewise, by letting go of our attachment to our possessions. One way to assist this inward change is to begin loving God through all the possessions God has given us. In the reading from the Book of Job, we hear that it was God who fills our houses with good things. When we say prayers of gratitude for what God has provided, we begin this process of letting go. Many of us do this with our food by saying prayers of thanks to God for our meals.
We can continue this process by noticing the ways God is personally relating to us through our individual experience of our things. With our food, the process can continue if we take time during our meals to notice how God is close to us through our food. For example, one woman has a new awareness of God’s presence in her life through ice cream. A few days ago she shared with me her craving for ice cream. When she ate her favorite maple walnut ice cream, she said it felt like she was in heaven. We explored how her desire for the sweetness of ice cream reflected her desire for more sweetness in her life. When she took the time to become aware of the sweetness of God through the sweetness of ice cream, she felt grateful to God in a more personally meaningful way. Instead of the ice cream itself, the “heavenly” experience is the loving gift God is giving her. The more she opens to the truth that God not only gave her this experience but also is in this experience, that she is enjoying a quality of God we know as sweetness, the more she can relate with the truth of how God is personally loving her. Slowly, this process transforms the truth that God is the source of this goodness into an experience of love of God. And slowly, as our love of God grows, we let go of our attachments to our things and see them only as a means to God.
In another example from a few months ago, a different woman became more deeply aware of God’s loving presence through her bed. She has a chronic fatigue condition and spends most of her life in bed. This condition has brought her to tears for a number of years, waking up every morning with the same bodily fatigue. We reflected together how her bed, throughout all these years, has comforted her, supported her, and listened to her sadness and her emotional and physical pain. Through her bed, she has become aware of how God has supported her, comforted her, and listened to her sadness and pain. Through her bed, she now has a new experience of these qualities of God as supporting, comforting, and listening. The more she becomes aware of God’s presence through this experience, the more she will feel God’s love, and the less she will identify with her bed. Thus, she will be filled less with herself and more with God.
All the material gifts God has given us are opportunities to let go of our attachments to them and open up to God through them. By noticing their usefulness, we can appreciate how God attends to our needs. Maybe it’s the way God helps us to see more clearly through contact lenses, or how God protects our feet with our shoes. Maybe it’s the way God helps us hear better through our hearing aids, or cares for our spirits through the beauty of Nature on the other side of this window behind me. The more time we spend identifying with God through God’s creation and the ways it personally attends to us, the more we let go of our attachment to everything in God’s creation.
In the same way as with God’s creation, we can also recognize God through the goodness in our minds and hearts, through our understanding and will. Think how much we know about and enjoy in the Bible, filled with wisdom and love. Think about all the ways we shared goodness with our families – the way we helped our children get dressed each day, the way we provided for everyone through income or making meals. Think about all the ways we shared our gifts with others – the way we listened to a friend whose parent passed away, the way we kindly offered to explain something to a co-worker. God is not only the source of our good deeds, compassion, and understanding, but also to be noticed and recognized through them. The more we become aware of God as the source of these qualities of goodness, the more we can notice the way God has filled us abundantly. This understanding helps us feel closer to God and experience a growing love for God.
In our current states though, filled so much with ourselves, we must remember how abundantly we are loved just the way we are. Jesus addresses this in His exchange with the rich man in the gospel. We are told “Jesus looked at him and loved him.” The man had already told Jesus how he kept the commandments. And Jesus already knew what this man lacked. Even so, Jesus loved him. When we think of all the times we failed to notice God through our gifts, we must remember that God loves us still. However many times we may forget to identify God as the source of our gifts, we can always feel confident in knowing that God continues to love us still.
One important way Jesus showed His love of the man was in the way Jesus looked at him. Jesus was already looking at this man because they were talking with each other. Yet, the author of this story wants to emphasize that Jesus looked at him. What was in this look from Jesus?
This is not the way you and I look at each other when we are talking with one another. This is not the way we usually look at someone whom we love. Why? Because Jesus loved the man for the goodness He saw in him, not for how the man was for Jesus. Jesus recognized God in this man. Quite naturally, Jesus loved him. This look is what the 14th Century German mystic named Meister Eckhart calls a glance of recognition. He said the only true gift we can give one another is this glance of recognition. Jesus saw beneath what was lacking in the man, seeing more deeply into his core, into the abundance of God already present.
What a gift Jesus gave this man! What would we not give to be seen by God in this way? For who we are most authentically? For the goodness at the heart of our being? For all the good we want to share? We are all hungry for this glance. We have hungered for it since we were little. I see it in my children, how hungry they are to be seen, to be known for their goodness. “Papa, watch me!” “Look at me, papa!” The roots of this lie in their deepest desire to be recognized. Let us share some more of God’s goodness with each other. Let us give one another, like Jesus, what we hunger for. Let us give one another a glance of recognition. Perhaps once a day, when we see someone we like, let’s recognize God’s goodness we see in them. Look at them. Really look into their eyes and see the goodness of God present. In this way, we will quite naturally love them.
The more we share this recognition, the more we share God, the more we empty ourselves, and the more we enjoy what is eternal.
Job 22:12-28 (New International Version)
Is not God in the heights of heaven? And see how lofty are the highest stars!
Yet you say, “What does God know? Does he judge through such darkness?
Thick clouds veil him, so he does not see us as he goes about in the vaulted heavens.”
Will you keep to the old path that evil men have trod?
They were carried off before their time, their foundations washed away by a flood.
They said to God, “Leave us alone! What can the Almighty do to us?”
Yet it was he who filled their houses with good things, so I stand aloof from the counsel of the wicked.
The righteous see their ruin and rejoice; the innocent mock them, saying,
“Surely our foes are destroyed, and fire devours their wealth.”
Submit to God and be at peace with him; in this way prosperity will come to you.
Accept instruction from his mouth and lay up his words in your heart.
If you return to the Almighty, you will be restored: If you remove wickedness far from your tent and assign your nuggets to the dust, your gold of Ophir to the rocks in the ravines, then the Almighty will be your gold, the choicest silver for you.
Surely then you will find delight in the Almighty and will lift up your face to God.
You will pray to him, and he will hear you, and you will fulfill your vows.
What you decide on will be done, and light will shine on your ways.
Mark 10:17-31 (New International Version)
As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. “Good teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” “Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone. You know the commandments: ‘Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not give false testimony, do not defraud, honor your father and mother.’” ”Teacher,” he declared, “all these I have kept since I was a boy.” Jesus looked at him and loved him. “One thing you lack,” he said. “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” At this the man’s face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth. Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God!” The disciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said again, “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” The disciples were even more amazed, and said to each other, “Who then can be saved?” Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God.” Peter said to him, “We have left everything to follow you!” “I tell you the truth,” Jesus replied, “no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age (homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—and with them, persecutions) and in the age to come, eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last first.
Swedenborg Reading
True Christian Religion n. 504
Man is an instrument for life; and God alone is life. God pours His life into the instrument and all its parts, just as the sun pours its heat into a tree and all its parts. God allows man to feel that life in himself as if it were his own; and God wants man to feel this so that man may, as it were of himself, live in accordance with the laws of order, which are as many as there are commandments in the Word; and so that he may put himself into a suitable state of mind to receive the love of God.
