Exodus 15:11-18 John 15:9-17 Psalm 33

This morning I thought I’d reflect on God’s infinite love. When we say “infinite love” it may be hard to grasp just what it means. Our minds cannot understand infinity. Therefore, I thought I’d say a few things about how God’s love interacts with us, and how tirelessly and lovingly God strives to bring us into a mutual relationship with Himself. And since all joy comes from what we love, when God brings us into His infinite love, He is bringing us into as much joy and happiness as we can bear.
Before we can understand how God unceasingly loves us, we need to do away with some false ideas about God. One false idea about God comes from too literal a reading of parts of the Old Testament. From some places, one can get the idea that God is a punishing God. That God takes revenge–even down to the 7th generation of those who offend Him. One can get the idea that God damns people to hell. Or that God sits on high making a list of all the offences that we mortals commit. But God is none of these things. When the Bible was written, long, long ago, people thought that way, so they saw God that way. Even so, there are other passages that talk about God’s unfailing love, as in the Psalm we read this morning. There, we find the words, “May your unfailing love rest upon us, O LORD, even as we put our hope in you” (Psalm 33:22). As our hopes rest in God, we will find His unfailing love. So God is not the damning, punishing God we can sometimes read about in the Old Testament. Swedenborg writes,
as [God] wills only what is good He can do nothing but what is good. . . . From these few statements it can be seen how deluded those are who think, still more, those who believe, and still more those who teach, that God can damn anyone, curse anyone, send anyone to hell, predestine any soul to eternal death, avenge wrongs, be angry or punish. he cannot even turn Himself away from a person, nor look upon him with a stern countenance (TCR 56).
On the contrary, God is nothing but love and mercy. God wants to give to the whole human race all that He has. He wants to give everyone happiness and peace. We can think about the love that parents have for their children when we think about God. Parents never cease to care for their children. Parents want always to help their children. Parents want to give to their children all they can to make their lives happy. This is an image of heavenly love, which angels extend to everyone, and which God extends to everyone.
Heavenly love is not to wish to be one’s own, but to belong to all; so that one wishes to give all the things which are one’s own to others; in this the essence of heavenly love consists. The Lord, because He is love itself, or the essence and life of the love of all in the heavens, wishes to give to the human race all things that are His (AC 1419).
And in order to make us happy, God gently lifts us out of our harmful behaviors and the evils that limit true joy. This is the nature of love, and God is love itself.
To love itself, no other attributes are competent than those which are of pure love; thus of pure mercy towards the universal human race; which is, that it wills to save all and make them happy to eternity, and to transfer into them all things of its own; thus from pure mercy to draw all who are willing to follow to heaven; that is, to itself, by the strong power of love (AC 1735).
It’s passages like this that cause me to reflect on my own life. A while back I was in a very unhappy place. In fact, I was miserable. But as is so often the case, I was in love with my misery. Not happy as I am now, but happy to be a miserable cuss. Several factors made me that way. First, there was the University system itself. In higher education, there is the idea that life is meaningless and bleak. I remember a friend of mine coming into the classroom, dropping her books on the table and exclaiming, “Do I really have to believe that everything is meaningless in order to maintain my academic credibility?” I mentioned this to a professor of mine later, and he said, “yes.” If I wrote a paper on how happy my life was and that I believed in a loving, caring God, it would have been rejected. So, in order to survive, I came to accept some of that outlook. But there was more. I had suffered what I thought were some personal betrayals and setbacks. My own dreams seemed crushed. This made me bitter, cynical, and angry at life. And I had no concern for the world around me. I said what I wanted, and made my own pain everyone else’s pain. I said uncaring things, and made everyone who came around me as miserable as I was. I was living most of my waking life in bars, when I wasn’t in the classroom. And a couple bar owners, who had come to like me, actually gave me a heart-to-heart. They told me that they knew that I had gone through some hard times, but could I please be nicer to their wait-staff, who had complained about how mean and harsh I was treating them. I didn’t care and I didn’t change. It was as if I was trying to be evil. I ended up being kicked out of my favorite bars. It came to the point where I was drinking alone and drowning my poor, wounded self in alcohol. (One bar remembered me two years later and still wouldn’t let me in.) But through all this, I still believed in God. It was just that my personal contact with God seemed very distant. I don’t know if I’m alone in this. And this isn’t the whole story. I did have some friends, and there were some moments of happiness. It’s just that these evils stand out from this period in my life. Perhaps others can see a point in their lives where the light of God’s love seemed distant.
But God didn’t leave me there. I look back on that miserable time, and I wonder. In fact, when I look back on that time in my life, I’m scared for how I could have ended up. I am now living such a more full, happy, and loving life, it’s almost hard for me to imagine my life back then. I am free of resentments and anger. I am no longer cynical or bitter. I see the good things God has given me, and I am grateful for the life I have. I try to be good to all the people I come in contact with, instead of spreading misery. This change was all God’s doing. As Swedenborg says, “the Divine love is to will the salvation of all and the happiness of all from inmosts and in fullness” (HH 397). And what I am talking about is genuine salvation. As I look back on it, I envision God smiling on me saying, “My dear David, trying so hard to be bad.” I can’t point to any one great saving event that changed me. Of course the program of AA was a big help. But beside that, I can point only to God’s ceaseless love washing over me, lifting me out of the hell I had made for myself. He surrounded me with good, loving, and I must add tolerant people. I think of a line from Saint Augustine, “O Lord, Thou pluckest me out.” God lifts him out of what he called the fleshpots of his life, even as God had lifted me out of the misery I had built up for myself.
This story shows the nature of God, as God really is. God was thinking how I was depriving myself of the joy and happiness that heaven consists in. And God wanted to bring me into a loving relationship with Himself and with my neighbors. And He wanted this, because He knows that all true joy and happiness come from love and from giving. So rather than judge the bad things in me, and condemn me to hell, God instead lifted me up to a place where I could begin to receive heaven into my heart. He lifted me up to a place where God’s very essence of love, joy, and happiness could fill my heart and fill me with the happiness I now know. We all have that capacity to receive God’s continually inflowing love and wisdom. Swedenboirg tells us,
By accepting love and wisdom from the Lord, we are then raised up and furnished with all the means for the acceptance of love and wisdom. Moreover, we are so created that we can accept them if we are only willing to (DLW 171).
I might dispute Swedenborg, here, because I don’t know exactly how willing I really was to receive God’s love and wisdom. But somehow God got through.
That’s the way God is. That is the God that I worship and adore. That’s the way God’s love for the whole human race operates. Swedenborg describes God as the source of everything joyous in heaven–which we can to some degree know now on earth.
Heavenly love is not to wish to be one’s own, but to belong to all; so that one wishes to give all the things which are one’s own to others; in this the essence of heavenly love consists. The Lord, because He is love itself, or the essence and life of the love of all in the heavens, wishes to give to the human race all things that are His (AC 1419).
I’m still a work in progress, as we all are. God’s love acts upon us throughout our lives and through eternity, drawing everyone upward into a deeper relationship with Himself and into greater happiness. We need only remain open to God, and it is His pleasure to give us the kingdom.

Exodus 12:30-38 John 4:3-15, 20-26 Psalm 22

Religion can be summed up in Jesus’ two great commandments: love the Lord with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind, and love the neighbor as yourself. Thus we find religion as a force uniting everyone as neighbors in God’s care and love. But too often, we find religion separating people, and differing beliefs become a source of division between neighbors. And we also find other external things that cause division between people such as race, nationality, and socio-economic standing. But love for the neighbor means that we must put aside the things that divide. To be true Christians, we must look beyond the external things that cause us to look askance at our brothers and sisters. Our Bible readings this morning talk about inclusiveness between people, and argue against division. They treat of union between people of differing backgrounds, races, and nationalities.
Israel first takes on an identity as a people with the Exodus. We heard about the Exodus this morning. And as Israel becomes a nation united under Yahweh, they are an inclusive group. The Bible tells us that, “A mixed multitude went up with them” (Ex. 12:38). This means that all the many peoples in Egypt who were escaping oppression from the Egyptian power structure joined with the Israelites in their flight. The presence of foreigners in the Israelite population continues throughout the history of Israel. There are laws that recur repeatedly against oppressing foreigners with the reminder that the Israelites were foreigners in Egypt. It is only later in Israelite history that ethnic purity is called for, and even then there are voices that oppose it.
Jesus also shows openness toward those of differing ethnicity than the Jews. We heard about this in the story of the woman at the well. She is a Samaritan, and she is surprised that Jesus is talking with her. She says, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” The editor then adds, “For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.” The Jews looked down on the Samaritans in Jesus’ day. The Samaritans were originally brought to Israel from Assyria, so their bloodline was not Jewish. Their religious practice and texts differed from that of Judaism, so the Jews saw them as not orthodox, in fact, heretics. We see something of this in the woman’s words. She says, “Our fathers worshipped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem” (John 4:20). This is a reference to Mount Gerizim, where the Samaritans had their own temple. There was outright hostility between the Jews and the Samaritans at various times in their history. And yet we find Jesus talking with a Samaritan woman and offering her the gift of eternal life. The feud between Samaria and Judea is also alluded to in the famous parable about the good Samaritan. This parable is so well known that we can forget the ethnicity of the Samaritan man who shows compassion. Jesus uses the despised Samaritan man as an example of love to the neighbor, while the ritually pure Levite and priest are the ones who do not show love. Jesus was also open to other marginalized and despised people–tax collectors, prostitutes, thieves, and even Pharisees.
We find the theme of inclusiveness in the Psalm we read this morning. There we find, “All the ends of the earth will remember the LORD, and all the families of the nations will bow before Him.” The Nations refers to those countries outside Israel, and we see that they and the whole earth will worship the Lord.
These scriptures need to be taken to heart. Christ’s openness to all peoples calls us into a like openness. Our Christian charity needs to extend to the whole world. We need to open our arms to all peoples and races–black, Native, Chinese, Middle-Eastern, East Indian, and people of all callings and socio-economic standing. If we see differences instead of likeness, we throw up a barrier between us and them. Our society is making great strides toward inclusiveness, and I consider these strides a part of God’s New Church coming down to earth. I can remember the day when there were no African-American actors on TV. Now in Hollywood Will Smith, Morgan Freeman, Samuel L. Jackson, Lawrence Fishburn, Denzel Washington, and others are starring in role after role. And the remarkable thing is that they are not seen as African-American actors–they are seen as actors. I can remember Jessica Savitch, who was the first female anchor woman on a new program. Now women broadcast on every channel. In the US there are woman chief justices on the Supreme Court and in Congress. England had a female Prime Minister. I am still learning about Canadian politics, but I assume the trend is the same here. I just got back from Almont, one of our church camps, and I was delight to see the children playing together without regard to race. We had Chinese, African-Americans and whites at this camp and the children didn’t see any difference, but all played together. That is, when they weren’t fighting and hitting each other, as children also do.
And we need to open our arms to people of all faiths–Hindu, Moslem, Buddhist, Taoist, and the various denominations of Christianity. Our church has no monopoly on God. Our openness also needs to extend to those who profess no faith. We do not know what lies in their hearts. Swedenborg has a beautiful passage about this:
In the Christian world the doctrinals are what distinguish the churches; and from them people call themselves Roman Catholics, Lutherans, and Calvinists, or the Reformed and the Evangelical, and by other names also. It is from what is doctrinal alone that they are so called; which would not be at all, if they would only make love to the Lord and charity to the neighbor the principal things of faith. The doctrinals would then be only varieties of opinion respecting the mysteries of faith, which truly Christian people would leave to everyone according to his or her conscience, and would say in their heart that one is truly a Christian when he or she lives as a Christian, or as the Lord teaches. Thus from all the differing churches there would be one Church; and all the dissensions which exist from doctrine alone would vanish; yes, the hatreds against one another would be dissipated in a moment, and the Lord’s kingdom would come upon the earth (AC 1799).
This is one beautiful teaching of our church. In the faith which we say every morning, we find this teaching. We say, “As the God-Man who lives with us, He is present to save all people, everywhere, whose lives affirm the best they know.” We can affirm this while practicing Christianity as we know it. And this, too, is in our faith. In it, we find the words, “For us, this best is to love the Lord, and to love one another as He has loved us.” Being accepting of other faiths does not mean that we need to relinquish what we find beautiful in our own faith.
The beliefs and delights of the human race are as various as are our faces and dispositions. Swedenborg writes, “When I only thought of two being just alike, or equal, angels expressed horror, saying that every one thing is formed from the harmonious concurrence of many things” (HH 405). Society and the church are perfected by a harmonious blend of various personalities, beliefs, and delights. Paul alludes to this in 1 Corinthians 12:
12The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ. 13For we were all baptized by[c] one Spirit into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. 14Now the body is not made up of one part but of many. 15If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. 16And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. 17If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? 18But in fact God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. 19If they were all one part, where would the body be? 20As it is, there are many parts, but one body.
Swedenborg sees the source of all beauty in a harmony of varieties.
Heaven also is a one from various parts disposed into a most perfect form; for the heavenly form is the most perfect of all forms. That such is the source of all perfection is manifest from all the beauty, charm, and delight that affect both the senses and the mind; for they exist and flow from no other source than from the consent and harmony of many concordant and agreeing particulars . . . Hence it is said that there is delight in variety, and it is known that the delight is according to the variety (HH 56).
Love for the neighbor means being “color blind” as some say. Multiculturalism is a religious issue. Christ reached out to everyone in His day–tax collectors, prostitutes, and Samaritans. And as Christians, we are called to be like Christ in His own acceptance of variety. Early Israel was open to the foreigners who were seeking liberating and a God of liberation. And like the early Israelites, we are called to be open to people who may look foreign to us. This will ultimately benefit us. There is perfection in variety. And our joy will multiply as we include the whole human race as our brothers and sisters.

Deuteronomy 28:1-14 Matthew 20:1-16 Psalm 37

This morning I would like to consider God’s providence in our lives in this world. Specifically, I want to reflect on differing views of prosperity. In our reading from Deuteronomy, God promises all kinds of good things for those who follow His laws. I didn’t read the part about the curses that would descend upon the individual who does not follow God’s laws. But we have a conflicting voice from Psalm 37. There we find that evil people flourish and come into wealth. We read about “the wealth of many wicked” and a “wicked and ruthless man flourishing like a green tree”. Our New Testament passage brings up a related idea, but different in some respects. It talks about laborers who begin work at the beginning of the day, the middle of the day, and as the day ends. They are all paid the same. Those who started work at the beginning of the day complained that they got the same pay as those who had worked only an hour. What I take from these passages is that problems can arise when we look at the life of other people in relation to ourselves.
We can wonder about God’s providence when we see people succeed by deceit. Or we can question why some people have advanced beyond us when we have apparently put in the same amount of work, or appear to have the same credentials. This would be like the laborers who began at the beginning of the day who got paid the same as others who worked only an hour. These issues arise only when we see life from the world’s point of view. Swedenborg calls this a materialistic point of view.
Since materialists call the pleasures of self-love good . . . and convince themselves that they are good, they call rank and money divine blessings. However, when materialists see that just as many evil as good people are raised to high rank and advanced in wealth, and even more when they see good people living in disgrace and poverty and evil people living in splendor and wealth, they think to themselves, “What is going on here? This cannot be the work of divine providence, because if it were managing everything, it would supply the good with high rank and money and humble the evil with poverty and disgrace” (DP 216).
This way of looking at things is like our reading from Deuteronomy. It is a rather simplistic theology that says God rewards the good with material things. It is also a materialistic way of looking at things as it only looks at success from a worldly point of view. Those who view things this way, as Swedenborg puts it, “call rank and money divine blessings.”
But there are other blessings. Money, rank, power, and prestige last only as long as life in this world lasts. God cares about the things that last forever. Swedenborg teaches that, “Divine blessing is to be happy to eternity, and that the Lord regards such things as are of brief duration, as are the things of this world relatively, no otherwise than as means to eternal things” (AC 8717). God regards our wealth and status only as it relates to our eternal welfare. He gives wealth and status to those it will not harm.
Wherefore also the Lord provides for the good, who receive His mercy in time, such things as conduce to the happiness of their eternal life, riches and honors to whom they are not hurtful, and no riches and honors to whom they would be hurtful. Nevertheless, to these latter He gives in time, in the place of honors and riches, to be joyful with a few things, and to be more content than the rich and honored (AC 8717).
It is not bad to have wealth and status. I gave someone the impression a while ago that riches were bad. But wealth can be used for good as well as for evil. And good can come from wealth even in the hands of bad people. What matters is why and how a person uses wealth.
The reason both evil and good people are elevated to high rank and advanced in wealth is that both evil and good people do worthwhile things, Though the evil are doing them for the sake of their personal worth and for the benefit of their image, while the good are doing them for the sake of the worth and benefit of the actions themselves (DP 217).
When Swedenborg talks about the good doing worthwhile things for the benefit of the actions themselves, I think he is talking about people who want to make a difference in the world. When we look at politicians, it is easy to get cynical. It seems that getting into office is the only thing that so many politicians strive for. But I think that there are some politicians who truly want to use their power to make the world better. I have my own ideas of who some of these politicians might be, but I don’t want to include political commentary in this talk. I think we can all think of leaders and also persons of great wealth who are making the world better–or at least trying to. Bill Gates amassed great wealth by being in the right place at the right time. He had a love for computers when society was moving toward everyone owning a personal computer. Had he been born 50 years earlier, or 50 years later, he wouldn’t have amassed such a great fortune. But it was a wonderful gift to the world when he retired and set up his foundation. I can’t comment on whether Bill Gates is spiritually good or bad. But we can see that God allowed him his great wealth because God knew that Bill Gates would do good with it.
It’s too bad that society didn’t decide to move toward a hunger for Swedenborg about the time I was ordained. Then I would have been able to ride the crest and come into great wealth. But society didn’t move in that direction. I have made my life’s choice and I am very happy with it. Trouble only comes when we look at others around us. Even in the realm of religions, we look around us and see mega-churches that preach fundamentalist doctrines flourishing. It is not our place to compare ourselves with them. We have made our choice to this belief system, and we need to be contented with our choice and with this church.
The secret to eternal happiness is contentment with what we have. God knows our needs and God provides. While I watched my friends finding university positions while I didn’t, I was downcast. But God led me here to Edmonton ministering in a beautiful faith with a beautiful congregation. I’m happier now than I ever have been in my life, personally and professionally. I don’t think I would have been this happy in a university. I know this, because last fall I attended an academic conference in Montreal. I listened to a lot of academic speeches from brilliant scholars, but left feeling empty. Religion is my calling, and the love I feel for my work today doesn’t compare with the intellectual world of academia. The secret is contentment with the choices we have made and trust that God is leading us to what is best for ourselves. In heaven, the angels,
live content with what they have, whether it be little or much, because they know that they receive as much as is useful–little if little is good for them and much if much is good for them. . . . So they have no anxiety about the future, but refer to anxiety about the future as “care for the morrow,” which they say is pain at losing or not getting things that are not needed for their life’s useful activities (HH 278).
How much do you need to be happy? What things do you need to be happy? These are questions we all think about from time to time. But our real questions should be, “What do I need for eternal blessedness? How can I come near to the God who loves me? What do I need for eternal life?” These are the things that God cares about. The things of this world are short lived. We will leave them all behind when we transition into the eternal world. Love and wisdom, care for our neighbors, a heartfelt connection with God, a clean conscience–these are what live forever. These are the gifts God will provide for all who ask. And if we have these things, we will find the peace and contentment of the angels.

Isaiah 65:17-25 John 3:1-8 Psalm 18

Our Bible passages this morning all relate to spiritual rebirth, or in Swedenborg’s language, regeneration. This is clear in our New testament passage, where Jesus discusses rebirth with Nicodemus. In both this morning’s Psalm and in the reading from Isaiah, regeneration is treated according to correspondences. In Psalm 18, we read about God lifting the Psalmist out of deep waters; about God rescuing him from a powerful enemy because God delights in him. These passages refer to God’s deliverance from evils, or God lifting us upward into heavenly joy. The Psalm also talks about the earth being shaken up. We read about the earth trembling, the foundations of the mountains shaking, the valleys of the seas exposed, and the foundations of the earth laid bare. These passages all refer to the reformation of the external person, or our natural degree. The earth corresponds to the outward person, or external person, or natural degree. In regeneration, this part of our personality is shaken up, sometimes dramatically. Likewise in our reading from Isaiah, we heard about all the blessings of a reconstituted heaven and earth. God will create a new heaven and a new earth. Here, a new heaven is a new internal person and a new earth is a new external person. The inhabitants of this new heaven and earth will be, “a people blessed by the LORD.” There will be no more crying or weeping. When they call to the Lord, He will answer. The wolf and lion will become peaceful animals. All these things refer to a person who has been regenerated. His or her outward character and his or her inward character will be holy and blessed by God. The savage passions of the natural degree will become peaceful and gentle.
The process of regeneration takes place over a long period of time. The reshifting of values and the replacement of worldly passions for heavenly loves can happen only gradually.
Sins are removed so far as a person is regenerated, because regeneration is restraining the flesh that it may not rule . . . Who that yet has sound understanding, cannot conclude from this that such things cannot be done in a moment, but successively, as a person is conceived, carried in the womb, born, and educated . . . (TCR 611).
Swedenborg uses the analogy of a person’s birth to symbolize rebirth. The spiritual change that a regenerating person undergoes is like being conceived, carried in the womb, born, and educated. This fits quite well with the Bible, since Jesus says we need to be born again.
The actual process of rebirth, or regeneration, is treated in different ways by Swedenborg. One way is the three “R’s” of Swedenborg–Repentance, Reformation, and Regeneration. This process is described in True Christian Religion. He also talks about opening up the three higher degrees of our minds in Divine Love and Wisdom. Then there is the interaction between the internal person and the external person. That is the process I will talk about this morning.
We begin our lives with an external person. This is also called the natural degree. It is called the natural degree because it is a form of nature, or the world. This aspect of our personality has been formed in the image of the world. It is an image of the world, because the natural degree is formed in reaction to the world. It is how we make our way in the world. It is how we respond to the world. The famous psychologist B. F. Skinner says that our whole personality is formed by stimuli from the outside world. He says we are programmed by the conditions we grow up under. I think that there is a good deal of truth to this claim. Our natural degree is formed by how the world comes at us and how we react to it. Our survival instincts create a personality that allow us to live under the conditions we are born under. Another way to describe this is to say we create a natural degree according to the conditions we are born with–according to the world we experience and know. But psychologists also talk about heredity. So does Swedenborg. Our natural degree is not just a response to stimuli from the outside world. It is also formed by the inclinations we receive innately from our parents’ heredity. We will favor certain things above other things. We will be drawn to certain things and ignore other things. We have abilities and aptitudes in certain areas, and we don’t have aptitudes in other areas. The hereditary inclinations we are born with also determine how our natural degree is formed.
The process of regeneration is one in which our internal person is opened up, and it then acts on our natural degree to bring it into agreement with itself. The first process, then, in spiritual rebirth, is the formation of an internal person. The internal person is that part of us that knows good from evil. This knowledge is learned. Some of the things that we enjoy doing early in life are contrary to divine order. Our survival instincts begin with the drive to protect the self. We need to learn that others matter, too. We need to learn to love others as much as we love ourselves. This, our natural degree usually doesn’t have at birth.
One of the fascinating things to me about regeneration is that Swedenborg talks about changing what we enjoy. The things our natural person enjoys can be contrary to spiritual loves and enjoyments. So regeneration is very much a process of changing what we enjoy. Swedenborg tends to think that many of our early enjoyments are evil. I would agree with him to no small degree. Just think about how we react when people oppose us, and we will have an idea of how strong the self is imbedded in our personality. Plus, when I was younger, I remember enjoying partying till all hours of the night. I was after self indulgence and cared little about how my own quest for pleasure affected others.
The process of regeneration begins when we learn other ways of living. We reflect on our lives, and begin to question behaviors and delights we have come to enjoy. This aspect of our personality that can reflect on our lives is the internal degree. It is formed by spiritual teachings. As our internal is formed, we begin to feel heavenly loves. We begin to sense what it feels like to be a loving person. We begin to find our former enjoyments distasteful. As we feel heavenly delights more and more, we begin to see our self-indulgent enjoyments as evil and finally undelightful.
All affections have their enjoyments; but such as the affection are, such are the enjoyments. Affections for evil and falsity also have their enjoyments; and before a person begins to be regenerated, and receives from the Lord affections for truth and good, those affections appear to be the only ones; so much so, that people believe that no other enjoyments exist, and consequently that if they were deprived of these, they would utterly perish. But they who receive from the Lord the enjoyments of affections for truth and good, see and feel by degrees the nature of the enjoyments of their former life, which they believed to be the only enjoyments–that they are vile in comparison, and indeed filthy. And the farther he advances into the enjoyments of affections for truth and good, the more does the person begin to regard the enjoyments of evil and falsity as vile, and at length to be averse to them (AC 3938).
As time went on, I came to care about others, and to care about how I could make them happy. I replaced bar-room partying with healthy interpersonal relations with sober friends.
Swedenborg describes this process in theological language. He makes reference to evils and falsities. These are words our current society doesn’t like to hear about. I think that there is a reality to them, though, and I’m not quite sure there are other words that can be substituted for them. Maybe neurosis, or perversion, or sickness, or ego, or selfishness, or hurtful behaviors, or abusive behaviors could be exchanged. I remember in University talking about how our society wants to change evil into sickness. So things like child abuse is a sickness, rather than an evil. I do agree that evils can be “cured” by regeneration. Or in theological language, that a person can be lifted out of their evils. But I would want to keep the religious connotations of good and evil in the process. I want religious connotations because if a person refrains from evil for any other reason than because it is against God, no real spiritual reformation happens.
As our internal person is formed, we come to see in clearer light that things we had found enjoyment in are evil and hurtful. Since our natural degree is formed by the world in order to survive in the world, we need spiritual knowledge to tell us that we may be indulging in unhealthy, or evil passions.
Unless they are excited, a person scarcely knows that evils and falsities exist; but they then appear, and the longer the combats of temptation last, the more they appear, until at last they are held in horror as evils and falsities. And as evils and falsities are dissipated, so do goods and truths succeed in their place; and the more horror there is contracted for evils and falsities, the more of love for goods and truths is insinuated by the Lord (AC 1740).
As the internal degree is formed, or opened, we actually sense and feel the enjoyments of good, and we are delighted by the truth. As these feelings become rooted in us, we shy away from evil. It no longer feels good. We are acquiring a new self, a new identity. A new heaven and a new earth is formed. God draws us out of deep waters and brings us into a spacious place. We grow in our love for our neighbors and for God. Over time, and into eternity, we are reborn.

Exodus 24:3-11 John 6:35-40 Psalm 22

This is a Communion Sunday, and I thought I would reflect on just what the Sacrament of Holy Communion means. It is a Biblical sacrament. In the Old testament, we hear of the blood of the covenant being sprinkled on an altar and on the people of Israel. This is after the Israelites agree to follow the Law that they have heard from Moses. Then in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus says that Holy Communion is the blood of the New Covenant (26:28). In Matthew we also hear the following,
While they were eating, Jesus took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to His disciples, saying, “take and eat; this is my body.” Then He took the cup, gave thanks and offered it to them, saying, “drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the New Covenant” (26:26-28).
We don’t hear this same language in John, but we hear words quite like it. There, Jesus says, “I am the bread of life. He that comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never thirst” (6:35). Jesus is clearly speaking symbolically here, as we do hunger and thirst after partaking of communion. You have heard me say that the Bible is written in a symbolic language in which the literal stories mean something spiritual on a deeper level. Here, we can clearly see that this is the case. The bread and the wine are clearly not Jesus’ body and blood. Although the Catholics have a doctrine called transubstantiation in which the priest actually turns the bread and wine into Christ’s body and blood. We don’t subscribe to that doctrine. The breads and wine do signify Jesus’ body and blood, but even those symbols mean something deeper. The symbolism here is partaking of God’s love and wisdom, which are eternal spiritual qualities. When we are filled with them, we never lack spiritually.
Holy Communion is the most sacred ritual of the church. Swedenborg says that “the holy supper contains all things of heaven and the church, both in general and in particular” (TCR 711). The reason why the whole of heaven and the church are contained in the Holy Supper, is because the Holy Supper contains everything that heaven and the church depend on. The church is made out of truth and good, or wisdom and love. And these qualities are given to us by God, so they are actually God in us. So by symbolizing love and wisdom, the Holy Supper also symbolizes the Lord, too. So the Holy Supper contains the love, wisdom, and presence of God that constitute the whole of heaven and the church.
that the Lord Himself is in the holy supper, and that flesh and blood are the Lord in respect to the Divine good of love, and blood and wine are the Lord in respect to the Divine truth of wisdom. Therefore the holy supper involves three things, namely, the Lord, His Divine good, and His Divine truth. Since, therefore, the holy supper includes and contains these three, it follows that it also includes and contains the universals of heaven and the church (TCR 711).
There are quite a few Bible passages in which Jesus tells us to celebrate Holy Communion in memory of Him. But there is more involved than merely remembering Jesus in the Holy Supper. And we have more reason for partaking of it than merely because the Bible tells us to. The Holy Supper actually brings us into communion with God. “It is evident from the Lord’s very words that He is wholly present in the holy supper, in respect both to His glorified Human and the Divine from which the Human proceeded” (TCR 716). The actual presence of God occurs in the Holy Communion. But this only happens to those who approach the Holy Communion in the right frame of mind.
Holy Communion is a ritual, and it derives its power from the things rituals depend on. Eating bread and drinking wine are physical acts, and looked at in themselves, do nothing for spiritual life. It is what a person brings to the Holy Supper that makes it a holy sacrament.
When a person brings good and truth to the holy supper, then the symbols take on spiritual meaning. When a person has love in their heart, and truth in their mind; and when a person’s thought is on God, then the symbols of Holy Communion have power to bring God to the ceremony. “They approach the Holy Supper worthily, who have faith in the Lord and are in charity toward the neighbor, thus who are regenerate” (TCR 722). The symbols of the Holy Supper actually bring conjunction with God.
They who approach the Holy Supper worthily, are in the Lord and the Lord is in them; hence conjunction with the Lord is made by the Holy Supper. . . . the truths of faith establish the Lord’s presence, and the goods of charity together with faith establish conjunction . . . Whence it follows that they who approach the Holy Supper worthily, are conjoined with the Lord; and they who are conjoined with Him are in Him and He in them (TCR 725).
The Holy Supper is a ritual that brings spiritual life to those who partake in it worthily. As Swedenborg says, “The Lord is present and opens heaven to those who approach the Holy Supper worthily” (TCR 719). The actual power of the Holy Supper depends on the condition of those who are partaking in it. It depends on whether they have charity in their hearts and truth in their minds. The Holy Supper isn’t magic. Only those who already have the principal components of heaven in their souls have heaven opened to them in the Holy Supper. That is, only those who already have charity and faith in their souls find heaven opened to them when they partake in the Holy Supper. This can happen because their souls are already open to heaven in the love and wisdom they possess from God.
But how do the symbols of communion actually bring about this conjunction? Swedenborg isn’t clear on this. To answer this question I looked at the nature of correspondences in general. The physical acts we do are a grounding for the spiritual realities that transpire in our souls. That means that our soul is grounded in the physical things we do. What would an agreement be without a handshake to confirm it? Or what is happening more and more today, what would an agreement be without a contract that ratifies it. The things that we see in nature and the things that our bodies do correspond, or communicate with the world of spirit. So Swedenborg writes,
. . . all goods and truths descend from the Lord, and ascend to Him; that is, that He is the first and the last; for man has been so created that the Divine things of the Lord may descend through him down to the ultimates of nature, and from the ultimates of nature may ascend to Him; so that man might be a medium that unites the Divine with the world of nature, and the world of nature with the Divine; and that thus the very ultimate of nature might live from the Divine through man as the uniting medium (AC 3702).
The bread and wine are those “ultimates” that Swedenborg refers to. They are the elements of nature that God descends to and ascends upward from. When we are focused on the physical elements of Communion, the angels that are present with us fill our hearts with love and wisdom. In this way the physical elements of Communion communicate with the spiritual realities of heaven. A connection is formed with spirit and matter through the human mind.
Eating the bread signifies accepting God’s love into our hearts. And the physical act fills us with the love we have embodied throughout our life. It surrounds us with love from angels and even from God himself. Drinking the wine signifies accepting God’s wisdom into our minds, and we are filled with the presence of angels who enlighten our thoughts. Ultimately, God Himself enters our consciousness. So when we have these spiritual realities in our souls, we have the symbolism of Holy Communion in us. When we have love in our hearts, we will not hunger spiritually. When we have wisdom in our minds, we will not thirst spiritually. We can see clearly now, how the Biblical symbols relate to the sacrament of Holy Supper. We see, now, how those who have God in their hearts will never hunger nor thirst.

Genesis 11:1-9 Acts 2:1-21 Psalm 51

In our stories from Genesis and Acts, we find a circle of alienation from God and reconciliation back to God. In our Genesis story, God separates humanity, and gives different people different languages. In our reading from Acts, humanity is reconciled in God’s Holy Spirit and people from all different nationalities hear in their own language what the Apostles are saying.
The Genesis story we heard this morning is not a statement of historical fact. Anthropology has a different picture about how different cultures formed along with their languages. Furthermore, Genesis says that it is God who confounds humanity’s languages and separates people from people. This is said because it was important to the Biblical writers to understand everything as in God’s power and providence.
But there are elements in the Genesis story that contribute to a deeper meaning. There is more to this story than an explanation of why there are different countries and different languages. This story, in a deeper level, is about how people separated themselves from God. The confounding cause in this story is human pride and ego. And when human ego runs wild, we are separated from God.
There are several story elements in Genesis that illustrate human self run riot. First, the people in our story migrate east to Babylon. This is where the plain of Shinar is, which is mentioned in Genesis. Babylon has a generally negative connotation throughout the Old Testament. It is seen as a city of idolatry and superstition. It was a powerful city and thought itself invincible. So it is fitting that this story of human ego would be set in Babylon.
The first move away from God by humanity is in the formation of bricks. The people say, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone and bitumen for mortar” (Genesis 11:3). The bitumen that Genesis mentions is a kind of slimy mud that floats down the Euphrates River. I see the line “bricks for stone” as one of the key story elements here. What is happening is that people are relying on man-made technology. They aren’t using natural stone. They are relying on man-made bricks to build with. This is a symbol for relying on self instead of relying on God. They are depending on their own materials and not relying on what God provides for them.
We see this happening more and more in society today. People are becoming increasingly consumed with materialism. High priced cars with all kinds of gadgets in them. The internet and computers, which includes gaming and texting. Television is programming longer and longer commercials to lay before viewers all the material things they can spend their money on and fill their minds with a craving for. Ipads, ipods, Blackberries, twitter, facebook, DVD’s, podcasts, broadcast streaming. People are working longer and longer hours in order to acquire the material things they crave. The bonds between parent and child are becoming thinner and thinner. The natural bonds of love and community are being severed by the technology that is proliferating in culture. Some of us are losing touch with the world of nature and our inner harmony with God.
Other story elements in Genesis is the line about building a city, a tower to heaven, and making a name for themselves. “Then they said, ‘Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves’” (11:4). Building a city reinforces the trend toward materialism. The contrast here is between the nomadic and agricultural life the Israelites knew versus the apparent sophistication of the great city of Babylon. Building a city is another way of moving away from nature into man-made structures. It also symbolizes moving away from God into self. Making a name for themselves is clearly an ego-driven inclination. They want to make their name known among the nations around them. When we think of a person today wanting to make a name for him or herself, we see this as self-importance. It is a desire to feel important. To be famous or powerful. It is a striving for self-aggrandizement. The height of self-aggrandizement is seen in the tower. The tower was to reach to heaven. Here we see an attempt to climb to heaven by human power. The people in the story wanted to climb up to heaven by the force of their own efforts. This symbolizes the proprium, or selfhood. It symbolizes the drive to rule over holy things from selfhood. Selfhood wants to exalt itself above everyone, be the one in charge, and have one’s own will followed. Selfishness, or ego, if left unrestrained would seek to rule over God Himself.
Self will run wild ends up separating the self from others. When a person desires their own way above all, community is broken up. Community is formed when people come together on an equal basis and will what is good for each other. Selfhood wills only what is good for the self, and seeks to elevate oneself above others. So the natural consequences of self will run riot are the dispersal and confusion of language that the Bible speaks of. It is not God who disperses such people from community, but the individual him or herself by breaking the bonds of mutual love.
But in Christ all of humanity is reconciled. When we are filled with Christ’s Holy Spirit we are in union with God, each other, and with the natural order of things. While in Genesis we heard about a confusion of languages and the dispersion of peoples, in Acts we hear of a common language and spiritual community. The Holy Spirit descends upon the Apostles and tongues of fire appear above their heads. The they all begin to prophesy telling “the mighty acts of God.” When the Apostles are prophesying, everyone hears their words in each one’s native language. All kinds of different people hear the words of the prophets. We are told that there are Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus, and even Asia, Phrygia, Egypt, and Rome, Cretans and Arabs (Acts 2:8-10). What this must have sounded like I can’t imagine. But some observers think that they’re drunk and babbling. Peter explains that they are not drunk–after all, he says, it’s only 9AM! It is the fulfillment of what the prophet Joel said about the last days. Then, the Spirit of God shall be poured on all flesh.
When we are filled with God’s love, we are given to perceive truth more and more clearly. It was Christ’s Holy Spirit that gave the various nationalities the capacity to understand what the Apostles were saying. And as we progress spiritually, as we are filled ever more deeply and fully with the Holy Spirit, our notions of truth get refined and purified into more accurate truth.
While selfhood separates a person from God, the Holy Spirit brings us into communion with God. The people of Babble tried to build a tower to heaven by their own might. But the only way to heaven is by letting go of self and allowing God’s Spirit into us. Swedenborg writes,
Generally speaking, the divine action and powerful effects meant by the Holy Spirit are the acts of reforming and regenerating us. Depending on the outcome of this reformation and regeneration, the divine actions and powerful effects also include the acts of renewing us, bringing us to life, sanctifying us, and making us just; and depending on the outcome of these in turn, the divine actions and powerful effects also include purifying us from evils, forgiving our sins, and ultimately saving us. These are the powerful effects, one after the other, that the Lord has on people who believe in Him and adapt and modify themselves in order to welcome Him and invite Him to stay (TCR 142).
It is through God’s actions in us that these things are accomplished and we are brought into heavenly bliss. And as everyone heard the Apostles’ prophesies, so God is calling each and every one of us into communion with Himself and into heavenly joy.
It is important to know that the Lord is carrying out these salvation processes in every single one of us all the time. They are the steps to heaven. The Lord wants to save everyone; His purpose is to save all people (TCR 142).
While selfhood alienates and separates, the Holy Spirit unifies and forms loving community. All of heaven is being in God’s Holy Spirit. All the delight in heaven and on earth flows from mutual love and God’s Spirit in our hearts and minds. All frustration and rage flow from selfhood, as no one can ever get their own way all the time. We are taught in the lesson about Babble what are the alienating consequences of selfhood, egotism, and materialism. And in the Pentecost story we are taught about God’s reconciling love in His Holy Spirit. The choice is ours.

Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21 John 17:13-26 Psalm 97

In the book of Revelation, we find a beautiful invitation to God’s kingdom. Jesus says, “The Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come!’ . . . whoever is thirsty, let him come; and whoever wishes, let him take the free gift of the water of life” (Revelation 22:17). Jesus holds out his love to everyone who wants it. It is not restricted to those of a certain sect, or a certain race, or a certain belief system. He says that “whoever wishes, let him take the free gift of the water of life.”
This passage refers to accepting Jesus into a person’s life. Earlier in the Gospel of John, Jesus promised to give the water of eternal life to a Samaritan woman. In that passage, Jesus says, “The water I give will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (John 4:14). This water of eternal life is given to all who want it. Jesus will come to all who ask Him to. This is what we heard in our reading this morning from John 17. It refers to Jesus entering a person’s life. Jesus says about His Father, “I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them” (John 17:26).
When we have Jesus in our hearts and lives, only then do we truly live. There are several ways in which this statement can be understood. Spiritually, it means that only when we have Jesus’ love and wisdom in our souls do we have spiritual life, or eternal life. Everyone has life as a free gift from God. But what matters most, is the spiritual life that we accept from God. It is spiritual life that is eternal, and eternally blessed. And we have spiritual life when we have Christ in our lives.
In our reading from John, Jesus talks about the world. He says that his followers are not of the world. Verse 18 reads, “They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.” It is receiving God’s love that lifts us out of the world and makes us children of the kingdom. Last Sunday there were questions about living in the world. The question arose about how to interact with the world as we let God into our hearts, and into our very behavior. There are two ways to consider this question. First there is the question of how to deal with the world in our own souls. Then there is the question of how to deal with the world outside of our own souls.
In our reading from Revelation, there is a clear teaching about spiritual purification. We read, “Blessed are those who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the tree of life and may go through the gates into the city” (Revelation 22:14). In order to enter the Holy City New Jerusalem, we need to wash our robes. We need to detach from the things of this world and to embrace the things of heaven. Truth is what leads us away from the things of this world and points the way to heaven.
When we first come to adulthood, we are filled with ideas about the world and ideas taken from observations about the world. We look around us to the things at hand and seek fulfillment in them. We look at jobs and professions; we look at fashions and clothing; we seek status and power; we seek pleasures that our senses give us; we seek to make a name for ourselves. This is a necessary stage in human development when it is taken in moderation. There are some things that pertain to the world that are essential. These things are a livelihood, a roof over our head, food, clothing, and the like. Fulfilling these needs is a part of everyone’s spiritual development. But there are other things that pertain to the world that we do not need, in fact, that inhibit our spiritual development. These things would be the craving for status and power; exaggerated self-importance; overindulgence in bodily pleasures and sensual gratification; and then there are neurotic patterns of behavior that inhibit healthy social relations and Christian love. When these things dominate our consciousness, we are then in the world and we are of the world. It takes spiritual truth to show us what really matters in life, and it takes spiritual truth to point the way out of these worldly cravings. Swedenborg clearly teaches us how powerful truth, or knowledge, can be for our spiritual liberation:
Worldly things cannot be dispersed before truth and good are implanted in the heavenly things, through knowledges; for a person cannot distinguish between heavenly and worldly things, before he or she knows and recognizes what the heavenly is, and what the worldly. Knowledges make a general and obscure idea distinct; and the more distinct the idea is made by knowledges, the more can the worldly things be separated (AC 1557).
I can remember how I was in my early 20’s. I was a salesman and a musician. I drove a shiny Catalina, wore a three-piece suit, and carried around a brief case. I was going to the top. I was quite full of myself. And being immersed in these things and with that attitude, I saw no problem with the direction my life was heading. I still went to church, but the truths I heard didn’t affect my character. I think to one degree or another, we all go through something like this stage in life. My own spiritual aspirations ended up in something like spiritual pride for my good behavior. I was honest–at least to others; I didn’t steal; I believed in God; and I thought I was a pretty holy person. When I was so full of pride and worldliness, I was unable to see any other life. So Swedenborg writes, perhaps reflecting on his own life,
It is similar with all in the world who are in the love of self and the world, and therefore in no goodwill. They know the enjoyment of those loves, but not the enjoyment of goodwill. Thus they are altogether ignorant of what goodwill is, and still more that there is any enjoyment in goodwill; when yet the enjoyment of goodwill is what fills the universal heaven, and makes the blessedness and happiness there (AC 3938).
But through some harsh knocks to my complacency, and through continued spiritual learning, I evolved. This was a very slow process. So slow, that I can’t even point to how or when changes happened. As I grew and progressed in my own spiritual development, I could look back and see how empty, and even harmful, those former ideals actually were. As we progress spiritually, we are able to look back on our former desires and enjoyments and see them as comparatively repugnant. So Swedenborg writes,
They who receive from the Lord the enjoyments of affections for truth and good, see and perceive by degrees the nature of the enjoyments of their former life, which they believed to be the only enjoyments–that they are vile in comparison (AC 3938).
So the worldliness that Jesus speaks of can be something that is inside each and every one of us. But by allowing God’s love into us, by accepting Jesus into our life, we become filled with that goodwill and love that the Gospel of John talks about. This brings up the problem of living in the world as a spiritual being. Jesus says, “My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one” (17:15). This is a prayer that we all know too well. We want to be shielded from hardships and from hurtful company. We want to be shielded from the evil one. Our Christian response to hardships that come our way, seemingly unprovoked, is patience, toleration, and forgiveness. When we have Christ in our hearts, we will be able to bear hardships better. When we are deprived of money or something material, we will accept God’s dispensation and rest content with what we have. When we are slighted, we will not retaliate because our ego is no longer vulnerable to wounding. How often are we offended because our ego is involved! In AA they teach us to see where we played a part in an argument or when we feel resentful. When we are filled with God and not self, where is the hurt?
Jesus calls us all into community through His Holy Spirit. He says,
I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me (John 17:22, 23).
We are called by Christ into unity with our brothers and sisters. We are especially called into unity with our fellow Christians, and with spiritual seekers of all faiths. We are called into unity in smaller units such as this denomination, and this church. We are called into unity with our families and friends.
This unity in Christ is also cosmic. When we are in unity with Christ, we are in unity with the very creative power of the universe. And since the universe is created in God’s image, we are also in unity with the whole created universe when we are in unity with Christ. Swedenborg writes,
Everything in the universe was created by the divine love and wisdom of the Divine Human. The universe, from beginning to end and from first to last, is so full of divine love and wisdom that you could call it divine love and wisdom in an image (DLW 52).
The pattern of love and wisdom that our soul is made in is the same patter in which the universe is made. When we are in Christ, we are in love and wisdom. And that love and wisdom is God’s very form, the form of the whole angelic heaven, and the whole created universe. The union of love and wisdom that we embody puts us in unity with the universe, with heaven, and with God.
Let us remember that Christ’s invitation to unity is extended to everyone, as must be our love and community. “Whoever wishes, let him take the free gift of the water of life” (Revelation 22:17). Jesus spoke with a Samaritan woman, who was an outcast to orthodox Jews. He let a sinful woman anoint him. He dined with thieves and tax collectors. We can see him saying to all of them, “Whoever is thirsty, let him come.” So our Christian love is not limited to those in our own church building, our own faith, or our own race. We can imitate Christ in His complete openness to the whole human race. Christ calls us into unity in His name. And our unity is to let the world know that there is another way than materialism, power, and status. As the song goes, “We are one in the Spirit; we are one in the Lord.”

John 5:1-9 Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5 Psalm 67

Last Sunday I talked about God’s presence with everyone. Today I would like to talk about our reciprocal presence with God. There is a difference between God’s presence with us, and our presence with God. God is continually reaching out to us, and in our inmost soul, God is present with everyone. In this sense, God is always in us. But we are not always in God. We have a responsibility to respond to God and to let God into us. When we let God into us, then we are in God.
Our Bible readings this morning speak to this issue. In our reading from John, we heard about a man who had been sick a long time. He was lying beside the healing waters of Bethzatha. Jesus asked him if he wanted to be healed and the man responded that he never got the chance to enter the waters. Jesus then said, “Take up your bed and walk.” The man was instantly healed. This healing, as with all Jesus’ healings, symbolizes God’s deliverance from evil. We are spiritually sick when we let evil have power in us, and it is God’s own power that lifts us out of evil and holds us in God’s heavenly joy and love. This is the picture we have in our reading from Revelation. There we have that beautiful vision of the Holy City New Jerusalem. There is no need for the sun to be there because God Himself is the light. Nor is there a temple because there is a direct relationship with God in the Holy City. This vision of the Holy City comes after all the tumult in the earlier parts of the Book of Revelation. It comes after the horrors of the four horsemen, the plague, the sword, famine, and wild beasts. It comes after the dragon tries to swallow up the new born baby from the woman clothed with the sun. The Holy City New Jerusalem comes after the victory is won. It comes after our spiritual sicknesses have been healed by God. Then God is in us and we are in God.
This end of times vision in Revelation is our birthright. We are born to be in harmony with the created order. And the created order is good, as we read in Genesis, “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good” (1:31). The whole created universe was created by God and as such, is full of God in every aspect of it. Swedenborg tells us, “the universe as to essence and order is in the fullness of God” (TCR 63). Since God is goodness itself, so, also, the universe is full of God’s goodness,
Because he wills nothing but what is good, he cannot do anything but what is good. . . . God is in fact goodness itself. When he does something good, he is in himself. He cannot walk away from himself.
Clearly then, his omnipotence fills, and works within, the sphere of the extension of goodness, and sphere that is infinite. At a deep level, this sphere pervades the universe and everything in it (TCR 56).
So the whole universe from the smallest to the largest is filled with the order God has imposed on it, and that order is good.
Genesis tells us that we are created in the image and likeness of God. This means that we are created according to God’s divine order. We have been created in the form of goodness that the universe is created in. We are in the same form in which the whole created universe is, and we are created in the order in which the whole of heaven is. That form, or that order, is a form of love and wisdom.
We have been created as forms of the divine design because we have been created as images and likenesses of God, and since God is the design itself, we have therefore been created as images and likenesses of that design.
The divine design originally took shape, and it continues to exist, from two sources: divine love and divine wisdom. We human beings have been created as vessels for these two things. Therefore the design that divine love and wisdom follow in acting upon the universe, and especially upon the angelic heaven, has been built into us (TCR 65).
We are created in the same form as heaven and the universe. If we follow our nature, we will be at one with the universe, at one with heaven, and at one with God.
This is where our responsibility enters the equation. We have been created in the order of heaven, which is a vessel that can receive love and wisdom. But we need to allow that love and wisdom to enter us. We need to respond to God’s call. We need to turn ourselves to God and ask Him into our hearts and minds. When we do this, we are in God. If we do not allow God into our lives, we will not be in God. God is present to everyone in the deepest parts of our soul. But God needs to come down through all the levels of our consciousness in order for us to have God in us fully. The difference is whether God is only in the highest parts of our soul, or whether God is in our whole being and all the levels of our consciousness.
Now because a person was created a form of divine order, God is in him or her, and so far as he or she lives according to Divine order, fully; but if he or she does not live according to Divine order, still God is in him or her, but in their highest parts . . . But as far as a person lives contrary to order, so far he or she shuts up the lower parts of his or her spirit, and thus prevents God from descending and filling them with His presence; consequently God is in them, but they are not in God (TCR 70).
God is present with everyone and God is in every part of the universe. This is possible because God is not in space or time. All the dark spaces of the universe that appear to us as being empty and vacant are filled with God. The psalmist says,
Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
If I make my bed in hell, you are there.
If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
If I settle on the far side of the sea,
Even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast (139:7-10).
God will be with us wherever we are. And God’s love will never cease to draw us toward Himself by the mighty force of mercy. Swedenborg writes, “The absence of God from a person is no more possible than the absence of the sun by its heat and light from the earth.” But we can turn away from God. Then God will not be present in our whole being.
Therefore, as far as a person suffers him or herself to be brought back into order, so far God is omnipresent in the whole of him or her; consequently, so far God is in him or her and they are in God. The absence of God from a person is no more possible than the absence of the sun by its heat and light from the earth. The objects of the earth, however, are not in the sun’s power except so far as they receive the light and heat proceeding from it, as in the time of spring and summer (TCR 70).
We are in God, then, when we ask God into our lives. An image I have of this is God beginning in our depths and working His way down into our behaviours. This is a lifelong process, and even continues for ever in the next life. This process may involve struggle at times. This process may involve the spiritual equivalent of all those calamities in the book of Revelation. But to the victor goes the crown. When we have consistently prayed and acted in Godly ways, God’s omnipresence will be in our souls, minds, and spiritual bodies. God will be in us and we will be in God. God will be with us always, even to the end of the age, as he tells the Apostles at the very end of Matthew, and as we read at the end of the Book of Revelation. “The throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it, and his servants shall worship him; they shall see his face, and his name shall be on their hearts” (Rev. 22:3).

Revelation 21:1-6 John 13:31-35 Psalm 148

Today I will talk about God’s presence with us. In our Revelation reading we find a loud voice saying, “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God” (21:3). This passage is related to the reading we heard from John. In it, Jesus says, “Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another” (13:34). God is present with us in the love we feel for one another. As God is love itself, when we have love in us, we have God in us.
This brings up a very difficult doctrine in Swedenborg’s theology. In order to understand God’s presence with us, we have to leave behind all thought based on time and space. And it seems everything we know is based on time and space. In fact, the philosopher Immanuel Kant said that in order for us to know anything, we need to think in terms of time and space. So for Kant, an idea that doesn’t have time and space in it can’t be known.
But the laws of spirit don’t involve time and space. We can feel close to someone who is way across the country. And we can feel distant from someone right beside us. The laws of love are apart from distance. In fact, at times we can feel close to people we have known who are now in the spiritual world. It looks to us like we are separate from each other, since our bodies can be at a distance from each other. But our emotions obey a different law. Emotionally, there is no separation of one from another. Love connects the whole universe and each individual is a part of the whole. The idea that we are separate people living in separate bodies is an illusion. The great Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor says that this is a distinctly modern idea. In the past, people thought that their minds were open to all sorts of spiritual influences and that actual angels and demons could enter their heads. Swedenborg agrees with this. Our thinking and our emotions are connected with each other and with the whole heaven. Our thinking and emotions are connected with the thoughts and feelings of angels and demons. And ultimately, our thoughts and emotions are connected with God, no matter where we are.
So in order to understand how God is present with us, we need to forget about distance and space. This is not easy for us to do. But it is the only way to understand how God is with us. It can cause confusion when we hear Jesus say, “I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you” (John 14:20). “What exactly does ‘in’ mean, here?” we may ask ourselves. We think “inside” and the teaching doesn’t make sense. What is inside me are organs and a heart and lungs and blood. There is no one inside me, we may think. So in order to understand the reality of God’s presence with us, we need to remove ideas like “inside,” “separation,” and “distance.”
From God’s point of view, God is present equally with everyone. But from our point of view it looks like God is close or distant depending on the person or circumstance. We hear Swedenborg talk about the highest heaven being “above” the lowest heaven, or more “interior.” These are spatial words. They are words based on space and distance. The truth is that God is just as present with angels of the lowest heaven as He is with angels of the highest heaven. Swedenborg tells us,
As a result of the differences in angels’ acceptance of the Lord, the heavens appear to be marked off from each other. The highest heaven, called the third heaven, seems to be over the second, and the second over the first. It is not that the heavens are distant from each other, but that they seem to be. In fact, the Lord is just as present with people in the most remote heaven as he is with people in the third heaven. What causes the appearance of distance is in the subjects, the angels, and not in the Lord (DLW 110).
God is equally present with all of us. But we do not feel God’s presence the same. Some of us feel God’s presence more intimately and others less so. And sometimes we feel God closer to us than we do at other times. Some of us have embodied much of God’s wisdom and love and others of us have embodied less of God’s wisdom and love. So our feeling of God’s presence will vary. This difference is in us, not in God. So Swedenborg tells us,
It does seem as though the Divine were not the same in one person as in another–that it were different, for example, in a wise person than in a simple one, different in an elderly person than in an infant. But this appearance is deceptive. The person is a recipient, and the recipient or recipient vessel may vary. A wise person is a recipient of divine love and divine wisdom more aptly and, therefore, more fully than a simple person and an elderly person who is also wise, more than an infant or child. Still, the Divine is the same in the one as it is in the other (DLW 78).
An example that Swedenborg uses to illustrate this idea is the way the sun interacts with the different planets. The sun is the same, but some planets are hotter than others. Mercury and Venus are closest to the sun and their temperature is very hot. (And as Armand will tell us, Velikovsky anticipated this before scientists did.) Mars is farther away, and it is colder. But the sun is the same. Likewise on our planet earth, we find different parts of the globe with different weather patterns. Florida is warmer than Alberta because it is farther south. The sun shines the same, but the earth is on an angle so that some parts of it get direct sunlight and other parts get slanting rays of the sun.
God is in us as love and wisdom. True love and true wisdom are not ours. They are God’s in us. So when the book of Revelation says, “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God” (21:3), it is referring to God’s love and wisdom in us. God is in us to the extent that love and wisdom are in us. Everyone who has embodied love and wisdom is in heaven. And since that love and wisdom is actually God, God is in heaven.
Given the fact that distance is only apparent, then, it follows that the Lord himself is in heaven. He is in the love and wisdom of heaven’s angels; and since he is in the love and wisdom of all the angels and the angels make up heaven, he is in all of heaven (DLW 113).
And since love and wisdom are God’s in us, God actually is heaven.
The reason the Lord is not only in heaven but actually is heaven itself is that love and wisdom make an angel, and these two are properties of the Lord in the angels. It therefore follows that the Lord is heaven (DLW 114).
This is as true for us here on earth as it is for angels in heaven. After all, we are material bodies that have a soul within us. Our soul is actually in the spiritual world right now. So we are in a heavenly community or a hellish one right now.
This may seem like a matter of higher wisdom since it is being supported by reference to havens and angels. However, the same holds true for us. As far as the deeper levels of our minds are concerned, we are warmed and enlightened by that same sun, warmed by its warmth and enlightened by its light, to the extent that we accept love and wisdom from the Lord (DLW 112).
So when Jesus tells us to love one another as He loves us, He is talking about His own presence with us. He is in us, when we are filled with God’s love and wisdom. Then the relationship is mutual. When we love God back, then we are in God and God is in us.
Perhaps it isn’t so hard to think about God apart from space and time. We use such language all the time. We say things like, “You are in my thoughts.” Or, “My heart is with you.” The same is true of God. God is very much in our thoughts. We think because God is in our minds. We love because God is in our hearts. God is with us everywhere. All we need to do is to realize this, and to open ourselves to the warmth and light of God’s real presence with us. Then God Himself will be with us and be our God.

Revelation 7:9-17 John 10:22-39 Psalm 23

In this morning’s Bible readings, we have about every concept of Jesus that people think of. In Revelation, we have Jesus as the Lamb in the center of the throne presiding over the whole heavens. Then by marked contrast, we have the Jews wanting to stone Jesus because they think Him a man only. We also have Jesus making that claim, that He is God. We have Jesus using Trinitarian language, calling Himself the Son of God. Then Jesus makes an interesting reference to Psalm 82, which reads, “I said, ‘You are “gods”; you are all sons of the Most High.’” This could be read as saying that Jesus is the Son of God in the same way that we are gods and sons of the Most High. At least, Jesus seems to use this Psalm to justify His own claim to be the Son of God. So we have five different ways of viewing Jesus in these readings. And these five ways of viewing Jesus are how people today still see Him. I’d like to talk about these ways of viewing Jesus this morning.
The picture that we have from the book of Revelation is a wonderfully inclusive picture. We have innumerable people surrounding the throne on which the Lamb sits. The Lamb is the risen Jesus Christ who presides over the whole heavens. What interests me in this image are the people worshipping the Lamb. They are, “from every nation, tribe, people, and language” (7:9). This means that all different races and nationalities are worshipping the Lamb–not just the saved Christians. In this picture, we see that everyone, everywhere who live the best they know are accepted by the Christ, and that they, in turn, will recognize God when they see Him. The salvation of the Lamb is for the whole world. Some Christians think that people of other religions will not be saved. This notion is what fuels their missionary efforts. They go to all parts of the world to convert others to Christianity so that they will be saved. I remember a Lutheran minister I met in Florida. I was going to work with him to fulfill a requirement for ordination. But he found one of our web pages, and had underlined the part that said, “He is present to save everyone, everywhere, whose lives affirm the best they know.” He pointed to that passage and said, “I can’t accept that.” For strict Lutherans, it is Christ’s reconciling sacrifice on the cross that saves people. Those who do not believe this are not saved. How sad. How much of a limit that puts on God’s love. For this minister, good Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Taoists, and other religions would not make the cut. How refreshing is the picture we have in this passage from Revelation, that people “from every nation, tribe, people, and language” are all in heaven worshipping the Lamb. This is an image of Jesus that speaks to me. And the description of Jesus’ salvation is beautiful. The Bible tells us that,
They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; the sun shall not strike them, nor any scorching heat, For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of living water; and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes (9:16-17).
Moving on to another image of Jesus from this morning’s readings, Jesus says, “I and the Father are one.” How much more clearly can it be said that Jesus is God. At least that is how the Jews took it. The idea that God could assume a human form was blaspheme to the Jews. They were prepared to stone Jesus to death because He said so. They accused Jesus of being a mere man and claiming to be God. This is a doctrine that many today have a hard time with. Most people today admit that there was a Jesus, and that he was a great teacher and leader. They love His teachings. But many find it hard to accept that Jesus is God. But to me, that belief is at the center of Christianity, and it is at the center of our Swedenborgian faith. In a small book that summarizes the teachings of the New Church, Swedenborg writes, “Since the Father is in the Lord, and the Father and the Lord are one; and since the Lord must be believed in; it is evident that the Lord is God” (NJHD #284). But Swedenborg recognizes that there are those, even in Christianity, who do not believe this. He writes,
All who are of the Church, and in light from heaven, see the Divine in the Lord; but those who are not in light from heaven, see nothing but the Human in the Lord; when yet the Divind and the Human have been so united in Him that they are one; as the Lord also taught elsewhere in John: “Father, all mine are Thine, and all Thine are Mine (17:10) (NJHD 285).
Jesus seems to give people an escape route if this doctrine is too hard. He says, “If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me, but if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works” (10:37-38). His own works were evidence of His divinity. So if it is too hard to accept a Divine Human, look at the works Jesus does and believe them. I take this to mean that what Jesus stands for is almost as important as who He is. His compassion for the sick, his demonstration of love, his miraculous power, the burning of their hearts when the apostles were near Him, all these things are what Jesus stands for, and what are to be believed. Who else but God can do these wonderful works.
Jesus calls Himself the Son of God. This is one of the places where traditional Christians get their ideas about the trinity. They teach that God is three persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. How they get a person out of the Holy Spirit I can’t understand. In fact, I can’t understand the whole idea of three persons who share one essence. Swedenborg strongly opposes the trinity. He thinks that traditional Christians are polytheists–that is, they believe in three gods. This reminds me of a graffiti I saw spray painted on the sidewalk in front of a Christian church in Boston. There was a star of David and the words, “You worship gods I can’t understand.” It is in this very John passage, that we find support for the unity of God in the one person of Jesus. John 10:30 says, “I and the Father are one.” That line is so clear that it is what led the Jews to want to stone Jesus. They understood it to mean Jesus is God. And that is exactly what that passage means. There are other passages in the Bible that make Jesus look separate from God the Father. When Jesus was in the humanity He inherited from Mary, He spoke to God as if to another. But there are other passages in which He is at one with God the Father, as in the transfiguration on the mountain top we find in Mark 9. There his clothes became dazzling white and He shone with the power and glory of God. I think that reason and the Bible can support the doctrine that God and Human are one in Jesus, and that there is no other person in the Godhead besides Jesus.
The passage from Psalm 82 brings up an interesting way of viewing Jesus, that I have personally encountered recently. Psalm 82 calls all of us gods, and “sons of the Most High.” I have a friend who told me once, “I believe that Jesus is the Son of God, but so am I. We are all sons of God.” Some people believe that Jesus united Himself fully with God, and that we all have the potential to unite ourselves with God too. Often people of this belief will say that Jesus did it more perfectly than most of us could. But they hold open the idea that what Jesus did, we could all potentially do. It is true that for Swedenborg, union with God is what salvation means. We are saved to the extent that God’s Holy Spirit is in us. But Swedenborg also makes a clear distinction between what Jesus did and what we can do. Jesus is an avatar of God. His Humanity is infinite and one with the Father. We will always be finite. No matter how closely we approach God, we will always be finite and the ratio of finite to infinite is infinite. We will never be an avatar of God. The belief that we are sons of God in the same sense that Jesus is is making Jesus a mere man, and not a Divine Human. In this sense, it is not much different than the belief of the Jews who saw Jesus as a man and not God.
Jesus says, “Blessed is he who is not scandalized by me” (Matthew 11:6). And to some a Divine Human is a scandal. The works that Jesus did and continues to do are one with His being and person. His Divine message and acts of love are who and what God is in His Being and Essence. Jesus is one with the Father, and as such, could do nothing but show the infinite love and compassion that God has for every nation, for all tribes, and peoples and tongues.