As a preface to Earth Day, I wanted to delve into the concepts of sustainability illustrated by the works of both Emanuel Swedenborg and William Blake.  Although Swedenborg’s writings had quite an influence on the younger Blake, he eventually rejects much of Swedenborg’s moral doctrine.  However, the following quotations reveal their shared view on the holographic nature of reality.

“Imagination is the real and eternal world of which this vegetable universe is but a faint shadow.”

-Jerusalem, published in 1804, William Blake

“The visible universe is nothing else than a theater, representative of the Lord’s kingdom.”

-Arcana Coelestia, 3483, published 1749-1756, Emanuel Swedenborg

What is this “Vegetable Universe” Blake is referring to?  And, does it matter if its not real?  What are our responsibilities to shepherd this world?  Is our physical environment a mere representation of celestial patterns and truth?  Buckminster Fuller defined these ephemeral truths as “pattern integrity” in his lengthy tome, Synergetics.  His most basic example of this was his deconstruction of a simple overhand loop knot in a piece of rope.  He explained that it was the ephemeral pattern that had “tensegrity” not the material.  It did not matter if he used a hemp rope or even a piece of cooked spaghetti.  It is the pattern that matters.

The opening stanza of William Blake’s Augeries of Innocence is one of his most famous…

To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.

As the congregation joined me in a song repeating this verse, I remarked on the final scene of the movie, “Men in Black.”

Click here for the scene from Men in Black (dubbed in French!)

Of course, there are more direct pop culture references to William Blake.  Here is the scene from Bull Durham.

The value of poetry and art is that because of pattern integrity, they offer us more accessibility to complex concepts. Thanks to these movies and the popularity of Aldous Huxley and Jim Morrison, I have heard of William Blake long before I learned of Emanuel Swedenborg.  I appreciate the value of learning more about the true flow of sustainability.

I close this blog post with a description of flow by Mihaly Csikzentmihaliyi…

Flow is completely focused motivation. It is a single-minded immersion and represents perhaps the ultimate in harnessing the emotions in the service of performing and learning. In flow the emotions are not just contained and channeled, but positive, energized, and aligned with the task at hand. To be caught in the ennui of depression or the agitation of anxiety is to be barred from flow. The hallmark of flow is a feeling of spontaneous joy, even rapture, while performing a task.

Easter Sunday — April 4, 2010

Hillside Community Church

Rev. Dr. James Lawrence

Psalm 118:8-24, 29; John 20:1-9  (text follows sermon)

Imagine that a great cathedral is about to go under construction. The foundation must be laid first, and the contractor is inspecting a load of newly-arrived quarried stone. Some stones he approves, and others he rejects. Later in the day the architect arrives on the scene and casually surveys the pile of discarded stones.  One stone nearly leaps out of the pile at him. Examining it closely, he whistles under his breath: it will make the perfect cornerstone. Calling the contractor over, he asks, “Why did you pass over this stone? To which the builder replies, “Because it doesn’t go with these others very well.” Emphatically, the architect declares: “Then the others must be chiseled to fit with this one.” So, the stone which the builder refused is polished, inscribed, and set in the place of honor, becoming the cornerstone.

This is the kind of scene imagined by the psalmist to describe the activity of God in his life. We don’t know who wrote the 118^th psalm, or what the circumstances of their life were, but the psalm indicates that the author felt he had been tossed aside by others, like builders rejecting a stone. He turned to God and learned it is better to trust in the One who made heaven and earth than in people and princes. God came to his rescue, gave new meaning to his life, and exultantly in his new-found inspiration, the psalmist declares with words echoing down the ages in over a million worship services: “This is a day the Lord has made: let us rejoice and be glad in it!”

Peter referred to this very psalm in the Book of Acts, saying “Jesus is the stone which was rejected by the builders, but which has now become the cornerstone.”

And yet another stone looms in the story of the Christian scriptures, of course: the tombstone. Not a stone of construction, like a cornerstone, but a stone of destruction, a stone the soldiers used to seal Jesus’ tomb, a stone of death and annihilation.

Two great stones: one symbolizing life and the other death. One upholding a magnificent structure, and the other darkening a grave. In the highest possible sense, the two stones stand for two diametrically opposed ways of relating to life: one is ego transcendence and an embracing of the community of life; the other is ego absorption and a reduction into a personal prison of serving oneself first and foremost. One supports the experience of transformation, and the other seals and encloses upon itself.  

Much of the time in our work as a church we strive to understand the spiritual way of living, especially with regard to how to love the neighbor, what it means to unite with the Divine within ourselves and in our living. That is, we are constantly trying to polish the cornerstone, at least in our outermost focus as a church. But this morning I want to focus on one particular teaching that is at the heart of Easter, one which arises from this contemplation of the two great stones—namely, that one crucial understanding of how the cornerstone blasts away the tombstone is that in God we never die.

What we believe about the destiny of our lives is not unimportant. Do you need to believe in an afterlife to live a good life? No, you don’t. It is not only possible to live ethically, honorably, and even courageously with the belief that it is all over when the heart stops pumping, but there are many who do. Does believing in the afterlife automatically render one more authentically spiritual? No, it does not. There are many who claim to believe in an afterlife whose living raises great questions about their ethics and values, at least from a Swedenborgian spirituality point of view.

So does that mean that it doesn’t matter what the truth is and that it isn’t worth attention or focus in our spiritual life discourse? The answer to that is a resounding no. The truth of the big picture can make an enormous difference in the way people set about their living, and over time can be a crucial part of a spiritual growth lifestyle that is far more satisfying, not to mention correct, than believing that physical life here is the sum and substance of meaning and purpose.

Some might recall that back in the early 90s there was a popular pithy saying found on bumper stickers, mugs, magnets and t-shirts that read, “Life’s a bitch and then you die.” A rejoinder was made by some New-Age types—and I know a Swedenborgian was in on the ground-floor—so that one could buy bumper stickers and t-shirts that said, “Life’s a miracle, and then you live forever.” You can still see some of these faded t-shirts at our annual convention sometimes.

Swedenborg lived in the age of reason and the heady times of the rise of Enlightenment science with its emphasis on viewing reality as consisting in what can be observed by the physical senses and subjected to mathematical analysis. Swedenborg himself, of course, was in the front-rank of European physical scientists of his generation. But in his religious and spiritual work, it became abundantly clear to him that people overall were in great ignorance about the nature of the long journey, about higher reality, and he also believed that having better far-sightedness would immensely help many people with the way they are walking toward their destiny now.

So in 1758 he published his book Heaven and its Wonders, and Hell: From Things Heard and Seen. Of his eighteen or so theosophical works, H & H became his best-seller by far. The Harvard religious historian specializing in 19^th century America, Leigh Eric Schmidt, says that archival records show that by the 1820s Swedenborg’s Heaven and Hell rivaled in sales the most popular novels by James Fenimore Cooper and Sir Walter Scott. Swedenborg presented an entirely new idea about the soul’s survival of physical death than had been believed in the dominant Christian denominations of that day: ideas of purgatory, ideas of a shadowy realm called sheol, ideas of lying dormant in unconscious death until the Second Coming. Swedenborg labored to explain that the soul awakens immediately into an alert and very real spiritual existence upon cessation of physical functioning. And life is in many ways similar to what we’ve known here: only more intense, more real, if you will. But the continuities are striking, and in fact this is the belief framework that caught on to a large degree. The longtime chairperson of the fine arts department at New York University, H.W. Janson, who was not a Swedenborgian, produced a critical study of cemetery art in the 19^th century, and he concluded that Swedenborg’s popular presentation of what life after death is like became the most common spiritual belief of those who believed in an afterlife.  I use his published essay with its copious illustrations of graves, every time I teach my “Swedenborg in History” class, which I’m teaching this semester. The tell-tale evidence is that in the three decades after the immense popularity of Heaven and Hell, the way graves, tombstones, and mausoleums were ornamented showed the departed as very much still themselves, instead of being decorated by little cherubs and the like.

Yet the strange assault upon the soul’s survival of physical death has continued in our so-called scientific age, but the scientific community has done shockingly little to progress in its efforts to explain the unexplained. Hard factual evidence for telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, and continuation of human consciousness apart from the body does exist; sadly, its voice has been stifled by deficient psychical research. So many in our physicalist and technological religion, if you will, will badmouth what they will not actually explore or ignore as impossible—a conclusion that they themselves have not buttressed with facts.

Barbara Bradley Hagerty is the religion correspondent for NPR and has just released a new book a few months ago called Fingerprints of God: the Search for the Science of Spirituality. Though she grew up Christian Science, as an adult she had become agnostic and disconnected from any experiential basis for believing there is anything more than the obvious phenomena of the material world. Yet after having had a couple of striking spiritual experiences, she decided as a journalist to look into the science and religion conversation.  She went to conferences at Oxford and at Chicago, she read research, and met with countless writers and thinkers associated with the questions, and one of the most crucial conclusions she came to is that science isn’t following its own standards when it comes to questions such as the soul’s ability to exist apart from the body. She focuses especially on near-death research. Her conclusion is that the science community in general is derelict in its unwillingness to confront evidence and is not following its own rules of engagement in the matter. She says she looked at the mountains of evidence and separated out what she regarded as qualifying as reasonably hard data that a self-respecting scientist would want to explore. That data is specifically the testimony of many hundreds at this point from all walks of life, from all classes and religious backgrounds, including atheist, who had lucid experiences when clinically at the point of death (completely blacked out) who could describe later in vivid detail what went on around them as they hovered outside their physical body. She says, forget seeing grandma and all the other kinds of testimony that can’t be investigated. Focus on the testimony that can be investigated: there were others present who can corroborate or contest the report. What she regards as hard evidence is the decent-sized mountain of reports from disembodied states that is corroborated by those who were there.

I found myself wanting to research Arthur Ford again a couple of months ago. One doesn’t hear much about Ford anymore, but he might lay claim to being the best-known and best-respected American psychic of the 20^th century, and certainly was so for the decades between 1950-1980, when he was a household name. I sent an email to one of our ministers, Ernest Martin, whom I knew used to have Ford speak at his church back in the Fifties (this minister is now 87 years old) and whom I also knew took an active leadership role for many years in Ford’s organization called Spiritual Pioneers Fellowship, which held conferences and supported research and study on non-physical matters. In the course of responding to my questions, Erni sent me an email which said in part:

“Jim, you asked what impressed me most about my experiences with Arthur Ford.  I was convinced of his authenticity, proven over a career of more than 50 years. I admit that, under pressure to perform, he probably did “research”, from time to time, on the backgrounds of prominent people, so that he could come up with evidence”.  But over his 50 years, he met with thousands and thousands of people, and in most cases they were unknown people, and were scattered through lecture audiences.  For example, Dorothy Schmucker, a woman from the General Church in Bryn Athyn, went to a public lecture given by Ford in Philadelphia, in about 1958.  She had recently lost her oldest son in a destroyer explosion off Cape Cod. She was devastated and confided to me that she had been considering suicide. In a lecture before a large audience, Ford spoke of his conviction of the reality of life beyond death.  He then had messages for people in the audience.  He said the first one is from Buddy. “Buddy wants to assure his mother that he is alive and well, “ and then he gave more details.  At the door, as people were leaving, Ford singled Mrs. Schmucker out of a large cluster and called, “You’re Buddy’s mother, aren’t you?” She called him later, and arranged for a private “sitting”. That sitting was very convincing to her.”

People say, I need proof. Has anyone ever come back and shown us? Swedenborg did everything he could to try to “come back and tell us,” so to speak. Yet, we are left in a crucial freedom to make up our minds about many things from an inner place. As with the question of whether the world of nature shows evidence of a divine mind behind it or not, the answer with life after death is the same, according to Swedenborg. If you are open to it, you will find confirmations aplenty. If you are not actually open to it, you will probably drift towards unbelief.

But the real and final question is whether having this understanding and vision is truly useful to us in making us better people. The answer is the same as with many other facets of life: knowledge in the hands of immature or even selfish-minded intentions is dangerous; knowledge in the hands of good intentions is powerful.

Seeing the great purpose of our life in God is like a foundation stone for growing strong in love, for seeking higher wisdom in effectiveness, for having forbearance with others, for shouldering the pains of evolution of life here. Roll that tombstone away from your spiritual eyes. See instead the great purpose of your life in God which Christ demonstrated, and hear God’s call to you and to me to be sculptors together with God in crafting all the stones of our spiritual house to fit with the cornerstone of eternal life.

Psalm 118: 8-24, 29

It is better to take refuge in the LORD
       than to trust in man.

It is better to take refuge in the LORD
       than to trust in princes.

All the nations surrounded me,
       but in the name of the LORD I cut them off.

They surrounded me on every side,
       but in the name of the LORD I cut them off.

They swarmed around me like bees,
       but they died out as quickly as burning thorns;
       in the name of the LORD I cut them off.

I was pushed back and about to fall,
       but the LORD helped me.

The LORD is my strength and my song;
       he has become my salvation.

Shouts of joy and victory
       resound in the tents of the righteous:
       “The LORD’s right hand has done mighty things!

The LORD’s right hand is lifted high;
       the LORD’s right hand has done mighty things!”

I will not die but live,
       and will proclaim what the LORD has done.

The LORD has chastened me severely,
       but he has not given me over to death.

Open for me the gates of righteousness;
       I will enter and give thanks to the LORD.

This is the gate of the LORD
       through which the righteous may enter.

I will give you thanks, for you answered me;
       you have become my salvation.

The stone the builders rejected
       has become the capstone;

the LORD has done this,
       and it is marvelous in our eyes.

This is the day the LORD has made;
       let us rejoice and be glad in it.

Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good;
       his love endures forever.

John 20: 1-9

 Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!”

So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. Then Simon Peter, who was behind him, arrived and went into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the burial cloth that had been around Jesus’ head. The cloth was folded up by itself, separate from the linen. Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. (They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.)

This is a test of the “Sermon Podcast Subscription Service” — it is not a real sermon. . . .

“Thy Will Be Done”

Or for those of you who would rather read, here is the text of the sermon!  The readings are 1 Kings 19: 11-13, Mark 14: 32-36 (text follows the sermon).

Thy Will Be Done

            Catherine of Sienna, a woman recognized by the Catholic Church as a saint, said “If you are what you are meant to be, you will set the whole world on fire.” I took this to mean that God has plans for each of us, and if we live those plans out the world can be an amazing place. The trouble is discerning what those plans are. I hope to share with you some of my ideas on how to listen to God for a message on what you are truly meant to be.

            Ignatius of Loyola, another Catholic saint and the founder of the Order of Jesuits, had an experience of hearing God’s message in a relatable way. There was no burning bush or sudden vision of Jesus Christ. He had a subtle feeling and recognized it for what it was – a sign from God. After being injured in a war, he was laid up in bed for quite some time, and he was left with nothing to read but a book on the lives of the saints, and a book about the life of Jesus. He preferred heroic and romantic stories about knights, but he was very bored, so he read what was available to him. He liked to imagine himself as the hero of stories as he read them, so he spent a lot of time imagining himself as both a knight in service to the king, and a soldier in God’s army. He found that when he thought about being a knight, he was left feeling tired and empty, but when he imagined himself as a saint, he was left feeling renewed and energized. Ignatius came to realize that this was God’s way of telling him that if he devoted his life to God, his spirit would be renewed. As I said, here there was no flash of light from on high, no thundering voice, simply a feeling deep down inside himself and a slow realization of what that feeling meant.

            We can see that God’s will will be done eventually, there’s no sense in resisting it, it’s just a matter of how long you struggle with discontent and lack of fulfillment before finding the right path. Some people live their whole lives searching, and only upon reflection do they realize they touched their chosen path at some point in their lives but drifted away again, or, they discover it was the journey they were on the whole time, something as simple as having a family and raising their children to be good people. That’s not to say that you should just kick back and relax and assume everything will fall into place, you need to actively listen for what your course of action should be and look for signs and messages that you’re on the right path.

            But how do I listen? Everyone has his or her own way of listening to God, and it’s important to find a way that you’re comfortable with. I’ve come up with a few suggestions after talking to many people about how they listen to God. The first, and most obvious, is through prayer. Prayer doesn’t have to be the recitation of a few memorized lines, or a desperate cry for help, it can be a daily conversation with God. I encourage you to make up your own prayers that are significant to you, thanking God for the things He has provided and asking for direction and guidance as you move through your life. There are many, many ways to pray. Some people enjoy praying in groups, picking a topic or person to pray about for that meeting, others say daily private prayers upon waking or at bedtime. Most people pray in church on Sunday with the congregation. These are all good ways of starting a dialogue with God.

            Another form of prayer is meditation, but just as there are many ways to pray there are a million ways to mediate. It’s a matter of finding the right fit for you. You might silently focus on the flame of a candle while trying to clear your mind of chatter, you might walk a labyrinth or trace a handheld labyrinth with your finger, or you might enjoy guided meditation where you listen to a story and let your mind make up the details.

            Another way to listen for God’s voice is to write or journal. I suggest keeping a notebook handy so you can jot down those flashes of ideas that come to you. They might just be God directing you to pay attention to something. Keeping a daily journal is a good way to track patterns in your life. You can find the recurring themes and feelings and trace them back to their sources. Keeping a dream diary can be another good exercise; sometimes God speaks to our unconscious mind more easily. You can also write letters to God asking for guidance and examining what you think His plans are for you.

            Sometimes God speaks to us through other people, so developing your listening skills is important. Listen closely to your friends, relatives, and spiritual advisors and look for patterns that emerge in those conversations. I especially listen closely to children when I speak with them. Does a recurring theme continue to arise? Is there some common thread or idea that keeps popping up in your life through the words of friends, television commercials, news events, posted flyers, or in your dreams? This is where keeping a journal can come in handy.

            Another important part of discerning God’s will for us is learning to tell the difference between God’s actual will and our own desires. I think it’s important to examine our motivations to help us figure this out. Ask yourself: why are you invested in a particular outcome? Is it because you’ve prayerfully thought it through and feel peaceful and joyful when thinking about it? Or do you have some selfish motivation? It’s okay to want nice things to happen in our lives – God doesn’t will for us all to be ascetic hermits who constantly self-flagellate. The question should be: why do we want these things? Will a better job allow us to be closer to God? Will a relationship with a particular person bring more love (and therefore more God) into our lives? The questions to ask yourself about the things you want to happen or the decisions you make are these: how will this bring me closer to God? How will this allow God to be more present in my life? What effect will this have on my spirituality?

            In addition to examining our motivations, another thing to watch out for is mistaking chance events and happenings as “signs” from God. God truly does send us signs, but how do we know when we experience one? It’s easy to see “signs” from God everywhere if you’re looking for them: a green light, a chance meeting with someone, finding a lost item. But are those really signs, or more coincidences? Ask yourself these questions: did this enhance my relationship with the Divine? Do I have a sense of peace or joy? What message is God trying to send me with this happening?

            Ultimately, to live God’s will, we have to let go of the outcome. As Fraulein Maria’s Mother Superior told her in The Sound of Music, “Where God closes a door He always opens a window.” Sometimes the things we think God is directing us to do don’t work out. In that case, it’s not the end result that was God’s will for us, it was something along the journey. This might mean that someone starts a program of study, and works hard for many years, only to be denied admission to the graduate program they thought would be best for them. But what has been learned along the way? What skills have been developed? What connections and relationships have been formed? Perhaps those were the things God willed for us, rather than the outcome we willed for ourselves.

            In our first reading today we heard about God speaking to Elijah. In Elijah’s story I like the example of the “still small voice,” which is his real message from God. Despite all the seeming “signs” that happen before his eyes—earthquakes, winds, fires—he recognizes that the Lord was not in any of those. It is only when he hears the quiet whispering that he feels in his being that the Lord has come to speak to him. This can be likened to any one of us listening for a sign from God as to what he wills for us. It may not come through a burning bush or an earthquake, it may be the equivalent of a “still, small voice.” That voice might be the voice of a friend or loved one or stranger nudging us in the right direction, or it might be a thought that pops into our heads in the middle of the night. We have to discern, however, if the Lord is really in the wind or not, and wait for that feeling inside our being that lets us know it’s time to come out of the cave and face what the Lord has in store for us.

In our New Testament reading, we heard about Jesus  “stepping out of the cave,” so to speak, to face God’s will for him, and turning over his human will to follow God’s will, even though it meant his imminent death. Jesus was anguished in the garden, he would have preferred not to die on the cross, we can see that in what he says, but he understands that he has a destiny to fulfill on earth, and that ultimately, the will of God will bring about an immense good, making the divine more accessible to mankind. While none of us will ever have quite this kind of decision to make, there are times in each of our lives when we might want to give up the cup God has given us. Perhaps the path God seems to want us on is a harder path to follow than the one we’d will for ourselves, maybe we’ve made sacrifices in our lives to live a more heavenly life. But ultimately, there will be rewards! The reward is a closer relationship with God, and being elevated to a heavenly state. Sure we can’t BE Jesus Christ and do what he did, but we can be more LIKE Jesus and do our own tasks as he would have done them.

Two more examples I’d like to offer you are those of the prophet Jeremiah and Mary of Nazareth. Jeremiah spoke to God on a regular basis and received messages from Him. The gist of Jeremiah’s teachings was that the true center of a religious life was not the temple itself or the religious rites, but rather a personal relationship with God. His teachings show us that it is only through a personal dialogue with God that we can hear his call to us. We must “live God” to know God.

            As we all know, an angel came down and told Mary that she was to give birth to God’s child, and she was afraid at first, but accepted what the angel was telling her and rejoiced in God’s glorification of her. But imagine how that must have seemed to a young girl! To have an angel of the Lord appear and announce that your life is going to take a drastically different path from the one you’ve planned for yourself…at the same time, Mary was free to say “no.” Just as we are all free to accept or reject God’s will for us, Mary was given a choice in the matter of whether or not she would bear the Son of God. Only because she was so “full of Grace,” did she accept without hesitation this offer to serve God. Mary is the ultimate example of someone hearing a call from God and turning her life over in service to Him.

            Also in the scripture, during Jesus’ ministry, he often said “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” I think this is about discerning God’s call to us all. Jesus opened up the ears of the deaf so that they might be able to listen to him preach God’s message, and loosed the tongues of the mute so they might be able to spread the word. He didn’t do this for his own glorification, or to prove anything to anyone – remember he usually forbids them to tell anyone he healed them – but rather that they might be more free to live their lives according to God’s plan for them. Jesus and God want us all to be whole and happy, and listening for our calling is how we can be more fulfilled.

            Swedenborg makes his feeling about following God’s will perfectly clear. His second “Rule of Life” is to submit everything to the will of Divine Providence. This can be hard to do, because, as I’ve discussed already, it is sometimes difficult to discern what the “will of Divine Providence” even is. And even when we know it, we have our self-will to contend with, which often doesn’t want us to do what we should. I think it’s the sentiment behind the rule—the intention—that is most important. Of course we can’t submit everything perfectly, because as fallible human beings perfection is beyond our grasp, and as part of that, so is perfect knowledge. We can’t possibly know everything, so we can’t really ever know with certainty what God’s will is for us. We can only do our best to lead heavenly lives, guided by feelings and prayer, and hope that we’ve got our best foot forward. However, using all of the techniques I’ve discussed to discern God’s will can still be helpful!

            I thought in closing I’d share with you a few examples from my own life of ways I listen to God. The first is through journaling. I’m an extroverted thinker and learner, which means that I need to discuss ideas with others in order to fully formulate them. However, I’ve developed the skill of “pretending” to have discussions by writing down my thoughts as if I were saying them, and then writing down any arguments I can think of and my responses. That way I can also keep track of my thought processes. I’m not good at quiet contemplation, but writing for me is akin to meditation. I sit silently and let my fingers do the thinking for me while my mind stays blank. If any thoughts pop into my head I pull them out and jot them down and then return to my blank state of mind.

            In the past year I have become a listener, something I thought I’d never be. But I’ve found that there are important themes that keep coming up in the lives and conversations of other people that relate to me. There’s a saying in AA that there’s a message at every meeting just for you, and if you listen, you’ll hear exactly what you need to hear at that moment. I have found this to be very true in my own life. Two examples I can think of are of a time when I was feeling lost as to what I should be doing with my life, and I heard a woman share in her story about being a teacher of high school students and how fulfilling it was. I remembered back to my days as an assistant ESL teacher at Albany High and was filled with that same sense of fulfillment she spoke of. I had totally forgotten my dream of being a high school English teacher and needed just then to be reminded of it. Another message I got was that courage is not the absence of fear, courage is being terrified and doing it anyway. I needed to hear that one too, right at the moment I heard it.

            Two other things in AA (or NA) that relate to listening to God’s call are the third step and its corresponding prayer. The third step is “We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.” This is something anyone can do, not just those in recovery. Turning your will and your life over simply means that you will try at all times to live the life God wants you to be living. I don’t mean that you necessarily have a “destiny” to fulfill, but there is some direction in life that will make you happiest and most at peace, and that is where God wants you to be. That’s all God wants for us is to be as fulfilled as human beings as we possibly can be, therefore living in a heavenly state. This means moving away from things that are destructive and moving towards things that are constructive.

            The third step prayer is simply “Take my will and my life, guide me in my recovery, show me how to live.” This is a simple prayer that I say every day, but it can be modified by any one of you to be used in your daily prayer practices. Maybe you’d like to say “Take my will and my life, guide me on my journey, show me how to live.” By turning your will and your life over you are not giving anything up, you are choosing to return to a state of union with God, which is where you came from and where we all try to return to.

            In conclusion, God has given each of us wonderful gifts, but He never forces those gifts upon us, they’re ours for the taking, to be opened and used or not. It’s only a matter of discovering what’s inside the package, and how it’s meant to be used (He doesn’t tend to include instruction manuals). But don’t shake the box too hard trying to figure out what’s inside! It might be fragile!

1 Kings 19:11-13

            And he said, “Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the Lord.” And behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and broke in pieces the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice. And when Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. And behold, there came a voice to him, and said, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”

Mark 14:32-36

They went to a place called Gethsemane, and Jesus said to his disciples, “Sit here while I pray.” He took Peter, James and John along with him, and he began to be deeply distressed and troubled. “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death,” he said to them. “Stay here and keep watch.”

Going a little farther, he fell to the ground and prayed that if possible the hour might pass from him. “Abba, Father,” he said, “everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.”

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Reading:  Habakkuk 3:17-19

Though the fig tree does not blossom, and no fruit is on the vines; though the produce of the olive fails and the fields yield no food; though the flock is cut off from the fold and there is no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will exult in the God of my salvation. God, the Lord, is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, and makes me tread upon the heights.”

Finally!  All the pieces of recording equipment worked today!  Click on the title above to hear Lana’s Fourth Sunday of Advent (Peace) sermon.  Keep listening when she’s done — we also recorded today’s anthem!

Readings:

 Micah 5: 2-5

 But you, O Bethlehem of Ephrathah, who are one of the little clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to rule in Israel, whose origin is from of old, from ancient days. Therefore he shall give them up until the time when she who is in labor has brought forth; then the rest of his kindred shall return to the people of Israel. And he shall stand and feed his flock in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God. And they shall live secure, for now he shall be great to the ends of the earth; and he shall be the one of peace. If the Assyrians come into our land and tread upon our soil, we will raise against them seven shepherds and eight installed as rulers.

 Luke 1: 39-45

 In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leapt in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed with a loud cry, ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leapt for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.’

 From the Writings of Swedenborg

 “In the process of taking on human manifestation, God followed God’s own design…God introduced God’s design into the universe as a whole and into each and every living thing in it. It is a law of the divine design that the closer and closer we come to God, which is something we have to do as if we were completely on our own, the closer and closer God comes to us. “ [True Christian Religion, paragraph 89]

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Readings:

Isaiah 12:2-6

“Surely God is my salvation; I will trust and not be afraid.  The Lord, the Lord, is my strength and my song; he has become my salvation.”  With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.  In that day you will say: “Give thanks to the Lord, call on his name; make known among the nations what he has done, and proclaim that his name is exalted.  Sing to the Lord, for he has done glorious things; let this be known to all the world.  Shout aloud and sing for joy, people of Zion, for great is the Holy One of Israel among you.” 

Matthew 1:18-25

This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. Because Joseph her husband was a righteous man and did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.

But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”

All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: “The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel”—which means, “God with us.”

When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. But he had no union with her until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.

Spiritual Experiences n. 5155  Concerning Heaven and Its Joy

All joy, bliss, prosperity, happiness and delight, in the heavens, is in the affection of use for the sake of use, and is according to the quality and quantity of the affection, and according to the quality of the use; in fact, heaven is a kingdom of uses; and if anything else than use is regarded as an end, as eminence, self-glory, or gain, which looks elsewhere than to use itself, thus [any end] which regards self, and the world for the sake of self – then, in proportion to the extent to which it [i.e. the end of use for the sake of use] perishes from the affection, in the same proportion is the quality of the affection changed; since it is use on account of self which is the end; and, as far as this is regarded, so far is [a man] not in heaven, and is destitute of the life of heaven. And if use for the sake of self has dominion, then he is no longer in heaven, but in hell and, then, he enjoys no reception of any prosperity, or happiness, interiorly.

Luke 1: 59-79 (text at end of sermon)

          One day last week my nine-year-old daughter had a play date with a friend.  The next day, I got a call from the friend’s mother while I was at work.       She said, “I just wanted to tell you something that Claire said yesterday.”       I said “Oh, no… what did she do?” as my heart sank. 

          But Julie said, “Oh no, it’s nothing like that, don’t worry.  What happened was that I was driving the two of them in my car, and they were talking in the back seat, not realizing that I was listening. 

          Claire said to Sophia, ‘I’m not sure if I believe in Santa Claus anymore, so I made up a test.  I wrote down my Christmas wish list on a little piece of paper, and stuck it in a book that we never read anymore in my sister’s bookcase.  No one will ever find it.  And then I’ll know: if I get some of the presents that are on that list, I’ll know Santa is real.  And if I don’t, then I’ll know that Santa is just my parents.”

          She’s a 9-year-old, on the fence about her belief.  She is putting her faith to the test, wanting to believe yet feeling it couldn’t possibly be true, that she should outgrow this childish belief in magical reality. I have since ransacked that bookcase but I haven’t yet found the piece of paper!

          It strikes me that this is the way many of us are about the Christ himself during the season of Advent.  We’re circumspect.  We’re busy.  Another Christmas—time to get out the Christmas lights, bake the cookies, do the shopping, go to a party or two, be nice to seldom-seen relatives.  We go through the motions.  Yes, for people of faith there may be this underlying suggestion that there is something more… a faint glimmer of something potent and life-changing beneath our to-do lists.  Something about Christ.

          I wonder if we sometimes feel, however, that our belief in Christ is somehow naïve—a relic of a younger time in our lives when belief in magical things was easier.  But perhaps we want to believe—we want to believe it’s still true.  I wonder how many of us do what Claire did, and hide an imaginary wish list away in a forgotten book, testing God to reveal Godself to us.  We shut out the awesome revelation of God in human flesh, because we have Christmas lights to hang.  Or perhaps there are more internal reasons why we push the arrival of Christ to the outer reaches of consciousness.  It’s scary.  We’re upholding a fair amount of false thinking in our consciousness—rationalizations and justifications of why we keep living in diminished ways, reasons for us not to reach for the fullest potential of who we are or what we can do to serve the world.  The arrival of Christ might cause us to change our ways.

             Our text today centers on the birth of a baby whose arrival will have cosmic significance.  No, it’s not the birth of Jesus—not yet—but the birth of John the Baptist, whose story mirrors that of Jesus in rhetorically significant ways.  An angel of the Lord has come to announce a very special birth.  The parent offers a beautiful song praising the Lord in response—the famous Magnificat from Mary precedes our text by just a few verses, while this one—Zechariah’s song of praise upon the birth of his son John—is known as the “Benedictus.”  The baby born is immediately understood as a fulfillment of God’s promise to Israel.  Zechariah’s song speaks of the long history of the Israelite people through the Old Testament and their relationship with a God who has promised them deliverance.  This is a parallel story to the birth of Christ, but this baby boy comes first.  John is a liminal figure—a Jew who embodies both the promise of the Hebrew scriptures and the fulfillment of them by preparing the way for the Christ who follows him.

          This passage comes at a time when Israel suffered under the domination of Rome, and powerful rulers like Herod issued edicts that affected the lives of everyday commoners—commoners like Elizabeth and Zechariah, like Mary and Joseph.  In fact, the roman emperor Ceasar Augustus has just issued a ruling that the conquered people of Israel be registered by name and city with the occupying government.

          Zechariah’s benedictus is a prayer for a world “turned right-side-up,” in a time when the world was pretty certainly upside-down.  This is the old, old song of a people who had been singing God’s promises for generations, through struggle, despair, disappointment and hope.  His song links the new baby prophet to the long history of his people with the hope that this, finally, may be the fulfillment of God’s promises.

          Now what I’d like to bring our attention to is the second half of this benedictus.  The first half is a thanksgiving to God for all the good that he has done.  But the form changes at verse 74, and becomes a supplication: a specific request of God’s blessing.  What does Zechariah ask for, in this high moment of redemptive promise? 

          He says, “grant us, that we, being rescued from the hands of our enemies, might serve [the Lord] without fear…”

          When I first read this passage, that line jumped off the page for me.  It strikes me for 2 reasons: first, it speaks of “being rescued from the hands of our enemies,” but there is no war that has just been fought, no conflict that has just been won.  All that has happened is that a baby has been born.  As with the birth of Jesus, we see the striking juxtaposition of something as enormous as the redemption of humankind next to, contained within, the small, humble, vulnerability of a newborn baby.  There is a sense of cosmic redemption that John portends. 

          The second thing that strikes me is to notice what Zechariah asks of God at this important moment.  Does he ask for Israel to be victorious?  Does he ask for the people to be spared hardship and disease?  Does he ask for wealth and ease?  No.  His request is “that we may serve the Lord without fear.”  It is so compelling to me that this—this internal, psychological state—is what is identified as primary.  Now fear is mentioned throughout the Old and New Testaments, but especially so in the gospel of Luke.  When the angels arrive to give a special communication, they begin by saying “Fear not.”  At other times, when the realm of God is communicated to a gathered people, their response is to run away in fear.  Remember the ending of the gospel of Mark, when two of the disciples glimpse the empty tomb that indicates Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, and they run away, because they were afraid.

          Fear is a barrier that prohibits our connection with God.  I think we all carry it with us to greater and lesser degrees.  And in those times when we glimpse the inbreaking, world-turning-upside-down presence of God in our reality, we sometimes want to shove it away in fear.  We sometimes want to stash it away in a forgotten book and bury this knowledge.

          Evidently it was letting go of this kind of fear that John made possible for his people.  The baptisms that he would go on to perform forgave the people of their sins, embracing them in the loving and open arms of salvation.  With this “redemption,” this being received wholeheartedly into the loving grace of God’s activity, they could then be freed “to serve the Lord without fear.”  Not just to “live without fear” and not just to “serve the Lord,” but to “serve the Lord without fear.”  Zechariah suggests that this is the highest goal of spiritual growth.

          Our Swedenborgian understanding is that John the Baptist was sent before the Lord because baptism represented purification from evils and falsities, and also regeneration by means of the Word.  Unless this purification had preceded, the Lord could not have manifested Himself.  He could not have been present with a nation that was mired in falsities and evil.  Unless that nation had been prepared for the reception of the Lord by the purification from falsities and evils by baptism, it would have been destroyed by diseases of every kind by the presence of the Divine Itself.  (AC 724.7)

          The Lord’s spirit cannot enter except where the way is prepared by humility and obedience to truth from the Word.  

          It is easy to miss the Advent message of repentance.  But this is a penitential season, and that was the purpose of John the Baptist.  John came to baptize the people, “to give knowledge of salvation to his people by the forgiveness of their sins.”  Some of us might recoil at these traditional Christian words of “salvation” and “forgiveness of sins.”  But what they mean is a cleansing and purifying of that which contorts us, distorts us, distracts us, and keeps us from living in harmony with God and one another.  The message of this text is that cleansing away the falsities we carry around in our hearts is what will allow us to serve the Lord without fear. 

          So I invite you to do three things this Advent season.

          First, believe.  Believe in the presence of embodied love in this upside-down, messed up world.  Look for it in the weak and vulnerable places.  Don’t sit on the fence like a 9-year-old testing her belief in Santa Claus.  Christ is real!   Love is here! 

          Second, purify your heart.  What obstacles must be removed in order for us to receive the Lord? As Diane Bergant suggests, “As individuals, we might have to overcome deep-seated resentment, persistent fault-finding, unwillingness to forgive, dishonesty in our dealings with others, a bullying attitude. As a society we might have to dismantle unfair housing policies, employment disparity, economic injustice, racial and ethnic biases.”  What rationalizations and justifications within your own mind need to be cleansed and washed away so that your heart might be clear?

          Third, after doing the first two, serve the Lord without fear.  Incline yourself to moving in the world in accordance with God’s ways: helping others, including others, making healthy space, nurturing healthy relationships, righting injustice…and not being surprised or dismayed when we glimpse the real presence of God in our midst.

          The kingdom of heaven is always at hand.  The Lord stands at the door, always ready to enter.  Our part is to open the door, to prepare a way.  Amen.

Luke 1:59-79

 On the eighth day they came to circumcise the child, and they were going to name him after his father Zechariah, but his mother spoke up and said, “No! He is to be called John.” They said to her, “There is no one among your relatives who has that name.” Then they made signs to his father, to find out what he would like to name the child. He asked for a writing tablet, and to everyone’s astonishment he wrote, “His name is John.” Immediately his mouth was opened and his tongue was loosed, and he began to speak, praising God. The neighbors were all filled with awe, and throughout the hill country of Judea people were talking about all these things. Everyone who heard this wondered about it, asking, “What then is this child going to be?” For the Lord’s hand was with him.

 His father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied: “Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, because he has come and has redeemed his people. He has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David (as he said through his holy prophets of long ago), salvation from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us—to show mercy to our fathers and to remember his holy covenant, the oath he swore to our father Abraham: to rescue us from the hand of our enemies, and to enable us to serve him without fear in holiness and righteousness before him all our days. And you, my child, will be called a prophet of the Most High; for you will go on before the Lord to prepare the way for him, to give his people the knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of their sins, because of the tender mercy of our God, by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven to shine on those living in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the path of peace.”

 Swedenborg, Apocalypse Explained, 724.7

 John the Baptist was sent before to prepare the people for the reception of the Lord by baptism, because baptism represented and signified purification from evils and falsities, and also regeneration by the Lord by means of the Word. Unless this representation had preceded, the Lord could not have manifested Himself and have taught and lived in Judea and in Jerusalem, since the Lord was the God of heaven and earth under a human form, and He could not have been present with a nation that was in mere falsities in respect to doctrine and in mere evils in respect to life; consequently unless that nation had been prepared for the reception of the Lord by a representation of purification from falsities and evils by baptism, it would have been destroyed by diseases of every kind by the presence of the Divine Itself; therefore this is what is signified by “lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.” That this is so is well known in the spiritual world, for those there who are in falsities and evils are direfully tormented and spiritually die at the presence of the Lord.

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Mark 13: 1-26

 As he was leaving the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher! What massive stones! What magnificent buildings!”

“Do you see all these great buildings?” replied Jesus. “Not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.”

 As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John and Andrew asked him privately, “Tell us, when will these things happen? And what will be the sign that they are all about to be fulfilled?”

Jesus said to them: “Watch out that no one deceives you. Many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am he,’ and will deceive many. When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be earthquakes in various places, and famines. These are the beginning of birth pains. You must be on your guard. You will be handed over to the local councils and flogged in the synagogues. On account of me you will stand before governors and kings as witnesses to them. And the gospel must first be preached to all nations. Whenever you are arrested and brought to trial, do not worry beforehand about what to say. Just say whatever is given you at the time, for it is not you speaking, but the Holy Spirit. Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child. Children will rebel against their parents and have them put to death. All men will hate you because of me, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved. When you see ‘the abomination that causes desolation’ standing where it does not belong—let the reader understand—then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Let no one on the roof of his house go down or enter the house to take anything out. Let no one in the field go back to get his cloak. How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers! Pray that this will not take place in winter, because those will be days of distress unequaled from the beginning, when God created the world, until now—and never to be equaled again. If the Lord had not cut short those days, no one would survive. But for the sake of the elect, whom he has chosen, he has shortened them. At that time if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or, ‘Look, there he is!’ do not believe it. For false Christs and false prophets will appear and perform signs and miracles to deceive the elect—if that were possible. So be on your guard; I have told you everything ahead of time.  But in those days, following that distress, ’the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.’ At that time men will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory.”

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1 Kings 17:8-16 

Then the word of the Lord came to him: “Go at once to Zarephath of Sidon and stay there. I have commanded a widow in that place to supply you with food.” So he went to Zarephath. When he came to the town gate, a widow was there gathering sticks. He called to her and asked, “Would you bring me a little water in a jar so I may have a drink?” As she was going to get it, he called, “And bring me, please, a piece of bread.”

“As surely as the Lord your God lives,” she replied, “I don’t have any bread—only a handful of flour in a jar and a little oil in a jug. I am gathering a few sticks to take home and make a meal for myself and my son, that we may eat it—and die.”

Elijah said to her, “Don’t be afraid. Go home and do as you have said. But first make a small cake of bread for me from what you have and bring it to me, and then make something for yourself and your son. For this is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘The jar of flour will not be used up and the jug of oil will not run dry until the day the Lord gives rain on the land.’ ”

She went away and did as Elijah had told her. So there was food every day for Elijah and for the woman and her family. For the jar of flour was not used up and the jug of oil did not run dry, in keeping with the word of the Lord spoken by Elijah.

Mark 12:38-44 

As he taught, Jesus said, “Watch out for the teachers of the law. They like to walk around in flowing robes and be greeted in the marketplaces, and have the most important seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at banquets. They devour widows’ houses and for a show make lengthy prayers. Such men will be punished most severely.”

 Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put and watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury. Many rich people threw in large amounts. But a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins, worth only a fraction of a penny.

Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything—all she had to live on.”

Swedenborg, Invitation to the New Church, n.34

The Lord’s Coming is according to order in this respect, that the spring does not come until after the winter; nor the morning, until after the night; that the travailing woman has comfort and joy, only after pain; that states of comfort are after temptations; and that there is genuine life after undergoing death; even as the Lord says, “Unless the grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed.  But if it dies, it produces many seeds.”