Church of the Holy City

The Music of the Ten-Stringed Lyre

The Music of the Ten-Stringed Lyre
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
January 11, 2009

Zechariah 8:3-23 Matthew 25:14-29

Last Sunday I talked about sin and got that out of the way. Today I have a beautiful topic to talk about. I want to talk about God’s special dwelling in the hearts of each one of us. Both the Old Testament reading and the New Testament reading point to this. In the passage from Zechariah, there is a prophesy about the remnant of dispersed Jews returning to Jerusalem. This prophesy was written after Assyria had wiped out and dispersed the entire Northern Kingdom. And then Babylon had conquered and deported the Southern Kingdom. The Jews were displaced from their homeland. The Zechariah prophesy talks about them returning home to a beautiful, prosperous, peaceful kingdom. Mount Zion will be called “The Holy Mountain.” Old and young will play in the streets of Jerusalem.
There are some important words from the Bible that we need to pay heed to. One is the word remnant. The remnant is those Jews who were dispersed throughout the near east who remained faithful to their God Yahweh. Then there is that beautiful line, “In those days ten men from all languages and nations will take firm hold of one Jew by the edge of his robe and say, ‘Let us go with you, because we have heard that God is with you’” (8:23). There is special significance in the number ten and it is no accident that the prophesy talks about ten men taking hold of the Jew’s robe. Likewise in our reading from Matthew, the servant who had ten talents was given the one talent from the servant with one. And right after the servant with ten talents is given the other one comes the phrase, “For everyone who has will be given more, and he will have an abundance” (25:29).
When Jesus says that those who have will be given more, he is not talking about monetary wealth. Remember the rich Jew who was told to sell all he had and give to the poor. That is how Jesus felt about monetary wealth. In this passage from Matthew, the servant who had ten talents has spiritual riches. The meaning is that those who have a good heart and who have a connection with God will increase in their spiritual gifts. Those who have spiritual life will be given more and more blessings. Those who have some love for God and their neighbor will be given deeper and more pure love as they develop spiritually.
In Swedenborg’s Bible interpretation, the number ten and the faithful remnant spoken of in the prophets signify a quality of our souls called “remains.” Remains are the basic truths about God we learn as children and the states of mind associated with them. Remains are feelings of love for parents, brothers and sisters, nurses and teachers that children feel. It is also the feelings of innocence that children have. All these childhood feelings of innocence and love stay with us. They are impressed upon our memory. The delightful innocence of babies fades as we grow up. But that innocence and the states of love we feel then remain in our memories. And being impressed on our memory, they influence our adult emotional and intellectual life.
Remains are . . . all the states of affection for good and truth with which a man is gifted by the Lord, from earliest infancy even to the end of life . . . The more therefore he has received of remains in the life of the body . . . the more delightful and beautiful do the rest of his states appear when they return. . . . all that is good flows in, as loving his parents, his nurses, his companions; and this from innocence. Such are the things that flow in from the Lord through the heaven of innocence and peace, which is the inmost heaven, and thus a man is imbued with them in his infancy. Afterwards, when he grows up, this good, innocent, and peaceful state of infancy recedes little by little; and so far as he is introduced into the world, he comes into its pleasures, and into desires, and thus into evils; and so far the celestial or good things of the age of infancy begin to be dispersed; but still they remain, and the states which the man afterward puts on or acquires, are tempered by them (AC 1906).
Let me tell you what I think of when I read about remains in Swedenborg. I think about church camp at Almont Michigan, which I went to all through my childhood up into my adult life. I can still picture myself as a very young child sitting on the altar in the chapel there with a group of other children. An elderly lady named Dora Pfister was our teacher then, and she loved children. Everyone called her Anti Dora. I can still see myself sitting there, with amber light filtering into the chapel from the tinted windows. One that day, Anti Dora told us that there are trees and leaves and flowers in heaven and that they are more real than the trees and leaves and flowers we see in the world. I remember asking her how they could be more real; it didn’t seem possible. I don’t remember her answer, and I didn’t understand it at the time, anyway. But the main point was that whole experience. Sitting on the chapel altar with the amber light filtering in talking about heaven with Auntie Dora. That is one of my remains. Each year I attended church camp it was like going up to heaven for a week. And I was always sad to come home because it felt like I was leaving the mountain top. Likewise I think about a teen retreat I participated in as the youth Chaplain. On the last night of the retreat I talked with a teen girl. She said she was sad. When I asked her why, she said, “Because I think I won’t feel as close to God when I go home.” That remark made me think about remains, too.
As we grow into adulthood, we become immersed in worldly interests. We have to. We need to find a job; we need to earn an income; perhaps we also need to make a name for ourself. As our ego develops—what Swedenborg calls the proprium—these remains are displaced from our consciousness and move into the inner depths of our personality—what Swedenborg calls “the inner man.” Perhaps this inner man is what modern psychology calls our unconscious.
But that it may be known what remains are—they are not only the goods and truths which a man has learned from the Word of the Lord from childhood up, and which are thus impressed on his memory, but they are also all the states springing therefrom; such as states of innocence from infancy; states of love toward parents, brothers, teachers, friends; states of charity toward the neighbor, and also of pity for the poor and needy; in a word, all the states of good and truth. These states, with the goods and truths impressed on the memory, are called remains; which are preserved in man by the Lord and are stored up, quite without his knowledge, in his internal man; and are separated entirely from the things which are of man’s proprium. . . . (AC 561).
These remains are God’s special dwelling place with us. The angels and God are connected with us through these states of love and innocence. While our childhood experiences of love and innocence are probably some of the deepest seated remains, Swedenborg tells us that we continue acquiring remains all our lives.
These states are given to man from infancy, but less by degrees as the man advances into adult age. But when a man is being reborn he then receives new remains also, besides the former, thus new life (AC 1738).
This is what Jesus means when he says, “To those who have, more shall be given.”
Swedenborg claims that everyone is gifted with remains. As we say in our faith every Sunday, God is “present to save all people, everywhere whose lives affirm the best they know.” It is easy to think our religion is the only one true faith. And we see this everywhere. We see it in this church and in other denominations. But God is so all-encompassing that He can find a way into everyone’s heart. He gifts everyone of all faiths with remains.
It is very common for those who have conceived an opinion respecting any truth of faith, to judge others that they cannot be saved, unless they believe as they do—a judgment which the Lord has forbidden (Matt. 7:1,2). On the other hand, I have learned from much experience that persons of every religion are saved, provided they have by a life of charity received remains of good and of apparent truth. . . . The life of charity is to think kindly of another, to wish well to him, and to feel in one’s self joy that others also are saved. But those have not the life of charity who wish that none should be saved but those who believe as they do (AC 2284).
I had an unforgettable experience when I was in my Ph.D. program in Virginia. I had been learning about the Hindu God Shiva. At a social function, I happened upon a group of East Indian students. I started talking about Shiva as an intellectual topic I was interested in. Then, as they started talking with me, emotions from my childhood Sunday school days started welling up in me. It dawned on me that these Hindus grew up as children learning stories about Shiva, and what struck me was that we shared similar feelings of holiness from our childhoods—even though we learned about different Gods. What began as intellectual curiosity in me became an experience of shared remains as I listened to these Hindus talk to me about their God. I stood on holy ground and treated our discussion with reverence and respect.
Let me be clear, though. I am Christian and the God I follow is Jesus Christ. All my childhood remains are associated with stories from the Bible. But in my adulthood, I believe new remains have been given me as I learn about other religions. My affection for learning and the emotions associated with the intellectual truths I acquired in grad school have opened my heart to beliefs and peoples of all faiths. I continue to discuss differences in belief with others just as much as I remain committed to my own Christian tradition. But I know in my heart that in peoples all over the world, God has a special place in the innocence and love of their childhood. And that God continues to multiply the blessings he gave in childhood all through a person’s life. “To him that has, more shall be given.” “In those days ten men from all languages and nations will take firm hold of one Jew by the edge of his robe and say, ‘Let us go with you, because we have heard that God is with you’”