| Reading: John 20:1-2, 11-18

Text: John 20:15-16

Jesus said to Mary, “Why are you weeping? Whom do you seek?” She, supposing him to be the gardener, said, “Sir if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him and I will take him away.” Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him, “Rabboni! (my Teacher)”

Doctrine: Arcana Caelestia no. 5962

“Those in heaven still have changing states. They go through what can be called their morning, midday, and evening times. It is morning for them when they feel the presence of the Lord and they have the sense of good. It is midday when they are strongly in the light of truth and everything is clear to them. They are in their evening when they are more remote from good and truth, and at these times it seems to them that the Lord is hidden from them. When it is like this, they feel troubled, and turn back to the Lord, and soon the dawn comes and the morning. These changes happen because, like people, angels and spirits are created beings.”

You and I will have had the strange experience of seeing someone somewhere who looks very much like someone we know. We’re almost tempted to go over and see if it really is our friend. Then we look again and we begin to see that no it isn’t them after all; there’s a general similarity but there are some slight differences. This is someone else. It was a good thing I didn’t call out…how embarrassing that would be.

Scattered around the Bible there are quite a few cases of what we can call mistaken identities. Most of them are in the gospels and most of these happen after the resurrection. But let’s start with the Psalms. Here, quite often, the speaker complains to God… “God has forgotten and he hides his face.” “My heart said, “I will seek your face, Lord. Do not hide your face from me.” And this one, “How long, Lord, how long will you hide your face from me?”

This idea of God hiding his face matters. God never plays games with us – Now you see me, now you don’t. God is not like that. But we have our ups and downs and sometimes we feel close to God and sometimes we feel we are far from him, and we think that God is hiding himself from us. Quite a lot of people seem to think that if you get the idea of God, you’re all set up from then on, you are home and dry. The reality is not like that. It is only the beginning. We will keep moving close to God and then away from God or feel we’ve lost it, and the point is for us to always keep choosing to come back to God again. That strengthens us and does us good, even if it is hard for us to cope with.

The reading from our church teaching maps it out well and it is helpful for us to see that this coming and going and coming back is always how it is. We should not feel bad about ourselves, it happens even to angels as well as people. You see, it can only be God himself who stays exactly where he is and how he is.

So, let’s have a quick look at how this goes on in the gospels. Jesus is teaching in the synagogue in Nazareth where he grew up. Everybody would know who he is. He speaks beautifully with great wisdom. And the listeners begin to bristle at this. “Who is this? Where does he get such wisdom from? Isn’t he the carpenter?” Well, yes he is but really, no he isn’t just the carpenter although it is true that the Lord works on us very much like a carpenter who turns a piece of wood into a beautiful sculpture.

After the resurrection these miss-takes come thick and fast. The disciples are fishing and catch nothing and Jesus appears to them on the shore and they suppose he is a ghost. All they know is that Jesus had died. On the road to Emmaus two disciples walk sadly and Jesus joins them and asks them why they are sad. And they think he is a stranger, and reply, “Are you the only person who doesn’t know what happened, that the Lord was killed?” And later, he reveals to them who he is, and they marvel, but Jesus immediately vanishes.

Then we come to Mary (Mary Magdalene) out of whom Jesus had cast many evil spirits and you wonder what kind of life Mary Magdalene had led before finding Jesus. She had come to love Jesus in her own special way, so she was grief-stricken when Jesus was crucified and she watched him on the cross and then went to the garden where they had put him in the tomb. She saw the open tomb and how it was empty, and then she saw a man she supposed was the park gardener. She went to him and asked him where the body of Jesus is, and that she would take the body away herself.

And then the magic moment. This man says, “Mary.” And suddenly she gets it and realises. “Rabboni!” (My Teacher!) Try and imagine her discovery. She may have wanted to hold him for evermore, never to ever let him go away from her again. But Jesus tells her she must not cling to him because he has not ascended to heaven. “Go and tell the disciples you have seen the risen Lord.”

Mary thought this man must be the gardener. She couldn’t see. She could only try and put two and two together. But just as those in the synagogue said Jesus is the local carpenter and those who stood at the cross and said, “He saved others, himself he cannot save!” there is always a truth in the way they put things. Jesus is our Carpenter. Jesus could not save himself. And Jesus is our Gardener.

You have only got to think about the parable of the Sower to start to make the connection. Seeds thrown here and there in the garden of our mind where some immediately get eaten by the birds, some grow high and then fall over because the sun scorches them and they haven’t any soil, some get choked by so many weeds which are really the cares of the world, and some grow as they should and produce their crops because they are in good ground.

And the whole Bible almost begins with a garden scene – the Garden of Eden. God made man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend it. He is allowed to eat of all the fruit trees except just one, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This is forbidden, but this of course is the tree from which Adam and Eve would soon eat and begin their self-awareness and be turned out of the garden.

So, we are like a garden and the Lord can be called its Gardener. Mary was right, even though she only supposed in her despair that this man can only be the garden keeper. People seem to love being in a garden. If I ask people where they enjoy being the most, you can bet the first answer will be ‘in a garden because it’s just so lovely.’ Nobody says ‘in the laundry’ or ‘in the bank’ or ‘in the supermarket’ and I am still waiting for someone to say ‘being in church’. But being in a garden seems to resonate with most people as a lovely place to be in, especially if it is your own garden. The space, the air, the growth, the sunshine, the layout, and all the variety. No wonder!

I know people who do their thinking (or maybe their praying) out there in the garden because the setting helps. I knew a lovely lady who quietly died bending over some plant or weed. And let’s face it, Easter is so well pictured by growth and beauty and newness. The flowers open – the tomb opened. The plants rise – Jesus rose.

Jesus once made much use of gardening. “I am the vine, you are the branches. He even talked about pruning. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit is taken away, and every branch that does bear fruit is pruned (cut back) so that it will bear more fruit. And while it looks like Jesus is giving us a gardening tip, he is of course talking about the garden inside us and its care. His work on it and our work on it. It is always both, the two of us together. Easter and the Resurrection is always meant to take us by surprise and be a sudden unexpected new thing for us to feel joy about. Who of us doesn’t go out into the garden and cry out that the row of seeds we planted are all beginning to come up? Each time it is like a miracle because we suddenly see it for real. Things in life can plague us or make us feel terribly sad, and then we come across a beautiful touch of someone’s tender loving care.

Easter on one level is telling us that the love of God cannot ever be killed off. It is indelibly permanent and will always be what it is. God holds all creation, including ourselves in his hands. It will always bounce back and come into view somewhere we don’t expect it. It is there to lift us up as we sit and look at the half-filled glass and wonder if it is half-full or only half-empty. Its abiding message is for us to be part of it, not only to hope about it but to decide for it so that we are absolutely sure about one thing for certain in our life. And we will be given so much evidence as we go with that decision. Amen

Jacob, the future patriarch of the twelve tribes of Israel, uses outright deception and lies to gain the best blessing; the blessing that was rightly his older brother Esau’s. And it appears from the story that Rebekah, Isaac’s wife and the mother of the twins, not only conspires with Jacob in his lie but the whole deception was her idea.

This was not the first time Jacob cheated his twin, Esau. And, I think it is safe to assume that this was not the first incident of Rebekah acting opportunistically in advancing the interests of her favoured son. Jacob had already obtained the precious birthright of the firstborn by inducing Esau to sell it for a simple meal of lentil stew. We think of Jacob then as a sharp trader, a man quick to seek advantage for himself, willing to use deception, looking out for himself. Is this man a hero for us? Are we to do the same? Shall we live like Jacob?

Maybe, if we stop the story here, but reading further we learn that Jacob paid for his deeds. He fled from home after this deception. He was twenty years in exile for fear of Esau’s revenge. When he returned from the house of Laban with wives, maidservants and children, rich with flocks and herds, he bowed before Esau asking forgiveness. He was a changed man. And the Lord had blessed him according to the words of the very blessing he had stolen: “God give you of the dew of heaven, of the fatness of the earth, and plenty of grain and wine. Let peoples serve you and nations bow down to you” (Gen. 27:28f).

The question is not so much ‘shall we live like Jacob?’ but the question is ‘do we live like Jacob?’ And the answer is, Yes!

Do not misunderstand this answer. No, we may not purposely lie or steal to get what we want in life. We may not intentionally take advantage of others. “You shall not steal.” “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour.” “You shall not covet. . . .” These commandments are clear. So, in what way then should we be like this Jacob or, more precisely, in what way are we like Jacob.

Jacob represents the regenerating man. Jacob is every man, a man of the world and wise to its ways. We are like Jacob, and like Jacob we too must be changed. In contrast, Esau seems a bit dumb, naive and short-sighted. The firstborn, loved by his father but not favoured by his mother, was a hunter, unrefined and undisciplined. It was Jacob who had the potential.

These twin sons bear a remarkable representation in the Word. Together they embody or picture what doctrine calls “the natural man.” This is human life in the world. This is the life of our loves and our intelligence as we know it. It is twofold when we reflect on it. We are born with certain natural loves, even as animals have instinctive loves; but unlike instinct in animals, which is quickly developed, human loves emerge slowly. They require knowledge and intelligence to provide them with structure and form.

The natural man begins with rudimentary loves and later develops intelligence. These “firstborn” loves are represented in the Word by Esau; and the life of intelligence or truth, which we acquire later, by Jacob. From the doctrine for the New Church we read the following: “The affection for good in the natural and consequently the good of life is that which is called ‘the elder son’, whereas the affection for truth and consequently the doctrine of truth is that which is called ‘the younger son’. The fact that the affection for good and consequently the good of life is the elder son, that is, the firstborn, is quite evident from the consideration that good reigns in anyone’s children at first. . . From this it may be seen that good is ‘the elder son’, that is, the firstborn, and truth therefore ‘the younger son’, or one born later, for truth is not learned until childhood, adolescent, and adult years are reached.” (AC 3494)

These “firstborn” goods in a man are not really our own. They are from the Lord and they are the gifts we call “remains.” They are the “birthright” which we so can at times value very little. Like Esau, we sell out our precious heritage from the Lord, those genuine goods which should be the loves of our life.

It was not the Lord’s intention that we sell these. The doctrine states that “His ‘sons’ therefore are all the young children who are born, and after that time whenever they become wise. Also, insofar as the latter are at that time ‘young children’ – that is, insofar as the innocence of a young child, the love of a child for its parent (who is now the Lord), and mutual charity towards playmates (who are now the neighbour) exist in them, they are adopted by the Lord as ‘sons’.” (AC 3494e)

These genuine goods of life are loved by the Lord just as Esau was loved by his father. But Rebekah loved Jacob.

What did Jacob receive from his mother Rebekah?

Literally, two choice kids of the she-goats, flesh to prepare for Isaac. Not the flesh of a wild deer such as Esau sought but flesh of a domestic animal. The difference is important to our understanding of this text. What Esau brought from his hunting was different from what Jacob brought from the flock. The meat of the deer signifies the kind of natural good we have described as “firstborn” with a person, the good of infancy and the good of remains. The meat of the domestic goats signifies a different kind of natural good, something the Writings call “home-born natural good.” This is a good which a person derives from their parents, or into which the person is born, “quite distinct,” we are told, “from the good of the natural which flows in from the Lord” (AC 3518). This is what Jacob received from Rebekah and it is what we receive from our parents as well.

Rebekah loved Jacob. The mother provided her son with “home-born” Goods; not pure ones, but goods of natural life that were contaminated with hereditary evil. Jacob was motivated by Rebekah to seek his father’s blessing. She put him up to it. This signifies how our innate or hereditary affection promotes us.

We too are motivated to seek the best blessing. We want heaven for ourselves-selfishly, at first and we seek good for the wrong reasons. It is part of our heredity.

And how do we get the blessing? Through a pretence.

Rebekah had Jacob put on Esau’s clothes and had him cover his hands and neck with the goatskins to carry the savoury food to Isaac. Isaac was suspicious. “How is it that you have found it so quickly, my son? And the voice was different.

Isaac called his son to come nearer so that he could feel him. “The voice is Jacob’s voice,” he said, “but the hands are the hands of Esau” (Gen. 27:20, 22). It was only by deception that Jacob got his father’s blessing.

Can we deceive the Lord? Can we find the happiness of heaven by lying and pretending as Jacob did? Certainly not. How then can we obtain the Lord’s blessing? How can we apply some meaning of this account of Jacob’s deception to further our own spiritual development?

The story, itself, gives us a very simple answer. To get to heaven we have to pretend to be someone that we are not! We are not born angels and we are not, now, angels. The loves of angelic life are not natural to us, in fact, for much of our lives they fit like a bad suit. We do not naturally incline to put our neighbour first and ourselves second. We do not naturally feel a sense of humility before the Lord. We do not naturally resist the inclination to seek revenge against those who offend us.

These things are not natural to us, but they can be acquired. Like Esau’s clothing and the skins of the goats, we can put these goods on.

We have the ability to pretend to be the heavenly person we are not. Not only do we have the ability but one of the lessons of this story is that each and every one of us goes through a Jacob stage. That is the means of our reformation and regeneration. This is what is shown by the account of Jacob’s deception and his later return. It took him twenty years, but Jacob came back a changed man from Haran – a man rich in the Lord’s blessings. This is the promise for us.

The story of Jacob is a call to us to put on a new way of life. At first we put it on like a costume. It is not a true representation of our inner character. We are pretending to be what we are not – a good person – and we are seeking reward, the blessings of our Heavenly Father.

The Lord knows. The words of our text show exactly what the Lord knows: “The voice is Jacob’s voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau” (Gen. 27:22).

Remember that Esau represents good, and Jacob truth. The “hands” of Esau signify the power of doing good, for the hands are the means by which a man works in the world. But it was not really Esau who came to Isaac. It was Jacob disguised like Esau, Jacob with hands like Esau.

Think of your own life, of your own actions and in particular; your own intentions. We do things that are outwardly good. We pretend to love our neighbour. We emulate charity. But it is not us. It is a pretence – and it can be a most useful one.

The doctrine for the New Church tells us that Jacob’s deed pictures “inverted order.” “[P]roper order requires good, which belongs to the will, to exist inwardly, and truth, which belongs to the understanding, to exist outwardly” (AC 3563). But it can be otherwise, as it is here. So, we are told, “When a person desires truth not because he has life in view but some other ends [which are selfish]. . . the order existing with the good of the natural and the truth of the natural is akin to that represented here by Jacob. . .” (AC 3563:4)

This is the order of our life before regeneration, and Jacob represents, at first, the unregenerate man. But this order leads to genuine order, serving as a means to it.

After twenty years Jacob returned and was reunited with the brother whom he had cheated of his rightful inheritance and blessing. When they met it is said that Jacob “bowed himself to the ground seven times, until he came near to his brother. But Esau ran to meet him, and embraced him. . .” (Gen. 33:3f)

This touching scene of reunion signifies how the Lord restores man’s order of life. We spend years in the process of regeneration, struggling to live the life of religion that is not really a part of us. The best we can do is compel ourselves to live it because we know we should. And, at last, we embrace it.

We look to the Word for knowledge from the Lord, for knowledge of a heavenly variety. We seek to take this heavenly knowledge and make it a part of our life. But are we to emulate the lives and the actions of those characters and people in the Word? Not really. We seek this knowledge of those in the Word so that we can better understand our own nature, the ways we act, often without awareness and intent of actions. The only person within the Word whose actions, thoughts and intentions we should emulate is The Lord for “no one is good but One, that is, God” (Luke 18:19). And, still, the actions we take in this manner will feel unnatural to us, but do it anyway. The Lord desires that every person should be blessed with a heavenly life from Him.

Rev Howard H. Thompson

When we think back to these stories, it is generally acknowledged that Abraham is the obedient one. In the internal sense we see that this is because Abraham represents the highest of loves: love of the Lord. God tells Abraham to move from one land to another, he does it. Abraham was 100 years old when Isaac was born, and Isaac was just a boy when God asked him to sacrifice the joy of his life. And he was going to do it! So when God tells Abraham that he’s got to be circumcised as an adult, we shouldn’t be surprised when he goes ahead and does it. Think about that for a moment: if God came to you and said to do that to yourself, would you?! With a flint knife and without serious painkillers?! Not likely. But Abraham always did what God said.

But it wasn’t just Abraham who was obedient. Read this excerpt from Genesis 26:

Genesis 26:1-6
Now there was a famine in the land—besides the previous famine in Abraham’s time—and Isaac went to Abimelech king of the Philistines in Gerar. 2 The LORD appeared to Isaac and said, “Do not go down to Egypt; live in the land where I tell you to live. 3 Stay in this land for a while, and I will be with you and will bless you. For to you and your descendants I will give all these lands and will confirm the oath I swore to your father Abraham. 4 I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and will give them all these lands, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, 5 because Abraham obeyed me and did everything I required of him, keeping my commands, my decrees and my instructions.” 6 So Isaac stayed in Gerar.

Did you catch that? There’s a famine in the land, their lives are at stake, and God says to them, “Stay put.” And Isaac does! Let’s take a look at that in comparison to the book of Jeremiah. In Jeremiah there’s also a situation where their lives are at stake, and God says to them…

Jeremiah 26:2, 3, 7-9:

“Stand in the courtyard of the LORD’s house and speak to all the people of the towns of Judah who come to worship in the house of the LORD. Tell them everything I command you; do not omit a word. 3 Perhaps they will listen and each will turn from their evil ways.The priests, the prophets and all the people heard Jeremiah speak these words in the house of the LORD. 8 But as soon as Jeremiah finished telling all the people everything the LORD had commanded him to say, the priests, the prophets and all the people seized him and said, “You must die! 9 Why do you prophesy in the LORD’s name that this house will be like Shiloh and this city will be desolate and deserted?” And all the people crowded around Jeremiah in the house of the LORD.”

So Isaac is told to stay in a land where there is famine, and he does. In Jeremiah’s time, they’re given some bad news, but a chance to avoid it, but the response is to kill Jeremiah. Two very different responses.

Isaac’s son Jacob was also an obeyer. Jacob is mostly known as a somebody who was always devising a scheme… how to get the birthright, how to get the blessing, but when it came to doing what God said, he did it. Jacob fled from home after stealing his father’s blessing, and 20 years later God tells him to go back home. Jacob is scared. What is Esau going to do to him? So Jacob sends messengers ahead of him to try to suss out Esau’s state of mind towards him.

Genesis 32:6-12
6 When the messengers returned to Jacob, they said, “We went to your brother Esau, and now he is coming to meet you, and four hundred men are with him.”
7 In great fear and distress Jacob divided the people who were with him into two groups, and the flocks and herds and camels as well. 8 He thought, “If Esau comes and attacks one group, the group that is left may escape.”
9 Then Jacob prayed, “O God of my father Abraham, God of my father Isaac, LORD, you who said to me, ‘Go back to your country and your relatives, and I will make you prosper,’ 10 I am unworthy of all the kindness and faithfulness you have shown your servant. I had only my staff when I crossed this Jordan, but now I have become two camps. 11 Save me, I pray, from the hand of my brother Esau, for I am afraid he will come and attack me, and also the mothers with their children. 12 But you have said, ‘I will surely make you prosper and will make your descendants like the sand of the sea, which cannot be counted.’”

Jacob was operating “in great fear and distress.” He’s not a little worried, he’s terrified! He drops all of his fears on God, acknowledging how God has blessed him up to this point and says, “But you have said I’ll prosper…” So he went ahead with God’s plan.

So allow me one more comparison to Jeremiah. The kingdom has been taken over by the Babylonians, Jerusalem basically burned to the ground… then the Ammonites attack, and the survivors are now fearing for their life. They think the Babylonians are going to wipe them out in retribution so they consider going to Egypt. The inquire of Jeremiah’s as to what to, and…

Jeremiah 43:1-3
When Jeremiah had finished telling the people all the words of the LORD their God—everything the LORD had sent him to tell them— 2 Azariah son of Hoshaiah and Johanan son of Kareah and all the arrogant men said to Jeremiah, “You are lying! The LORD our God has not sent you to say, ‘You must not go to Egypt to settle there.’ 3 But Baruch son of Neriah is inciting you against us to hand us over to the Babylonians, so they may kill us or carry us into exile to Babylon.”

Are you following me here? Are you picking up what I’m putting down? It really is eye-opening to compare the differences between the patriarchs and the book of Jeremiah. It’s a complete reversal. 180 degrees. How did we get here? How did we get from “I’ll give up that which I love most” to “God’s lying to us!”

We know that the book of Jeremiah says that all the disaster that came on the people was a result of their idolatry. But the difference I see is how people dealt with fear. When the patriarchs were afraid, they acknowledged their fear, but then went ahead and did what God had told them anyway. The people Jeremiah was dealing with just let their fears overtake them. They thought surely the path that God was putting them on was not a good one. They thought that they had some angle, or some better insight than God Himself on how to navigate the situation. Jeremiah records them as “arrogant men” and you don’t get more arrogant than saying you know better than God.

There are some people who say that “fear” is an anacronym for False Evidence Appearing Real, and I think it really fits in this situation. The false evidence was the kings thinking that they could avoid doom, or that Baruch was inciting Jeremiah. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, they had “evidence” that things were bad. Isaac just had to look around and see the ongoing famine in the land. That looks very real, and very present. Looking around and seeing desolation and being hungry, that can be pretty compelling evidence. But God’s Word is the real evidence. “Stay put and you’ll be fine” should be all we need. But fear will keep pointing out to us the desolation, our empty bellies, and try to tell us that God doesn’t know what He’s talking about.

Jacob was very aware of how he’d deceitfully stolen from his brother. His evidence was knowing how HE would have responded had somebody done that to him. He knew how he had worked Laban’s flocks to enrich himself, and therefore could project onto Esau what was coming his way if he ever stood on his home ground again. And it wasn’t going to be good, the only chance was to buy his way out of this mess. But he went ahead anyway with the only evidence being “God said.”

Now we know that these stories have a deeper meaning, and that God isn’t trying to tell us to stay put when there’s a famine or drought. But He is telling us that fear and distress are precursors to real change in our life. If we get into a place where we are scared and fearful, turning to Google and trying to understand the world from a scientific point of view isn’t going to help. I feel bad for people without any faith, because when the bad times hit they just think they’re victims of bad luck and that there’s no hope for a way out. I can imagine somebody doing a search on the science of happiness and coming to the conclusion that they just need an injection of seratonin or other chemical compound and it’ll all be fixed. It might give some short term relief just as lots of drugs do, but to me that approach to life is what Egypt stands for. Google is great, but it isn’t where we turn for the big questions of life. God said, don’t go to Egypt. You may feel scared right now, you may not see a way out, but don’t go to Egypt. Stay in the promised land.

Abraham, Isaac and Jacob did. Every time. Every single time. And it wasn’t because they weren’t scared. They were. And it wasn’t because God’s way was painless, because it wasn’t.

Now, personally I don’t feel all that tempted by Egypt these days. I don’t tend to want science to answer my questions about spirituality. But what does really grab me in these stories is the pain. I do my best to avoid pain; physical, mental or emotional. I don’t think I’m the only one who does. None of us like pain.

Which brings me back to obedient Abraham’s circumcision. He was 90 years old when he was told to do it, and I’m sure the body changes over the years, but still that’s got to hurt. But what it represents is an external representative sign that they were of the Church, (AC 4462:4). We are considered to be spiritually circumcised when we are purified from the love of self and the world. (AC 4462:3). The knives of flint represent the truths that do the purification (AC 2799). But what we also know is that circumcision was a ritual that was done to set the children of Israel apart from other people. They were to be different. They were to be God’s people.

Being God’s people sounds great, right? Who wouldn’t want to be blessed directly by God Himself? It doesn’t get any better than that! Yet, when the years go by, eventually what undoes all this original obedience is not so much a desire to avoid pain, or dealing with fear, but what starts them down the path to Jeremiah’s doom is the seemingly harmless desire to be like other nations. Yes, they got bogged down in Egypt for 400 years, and had a difficult time getting back to a God-centric life coming out of slavery because they really didn’t quite get what had really happened.

Eventually though they settle in the Holy Land as promised, and it’s all happening. The promise has been fulfilled. There’s relative peace in the land. But the people come to Samuel and say, “They said to him, “You are old, and your sons do not follow your ways; now appoint a king to lead us, such as all the other nations have” (1 Samuel 8:5). Samuel goes to the Lord and tells Him of the request, and the Lord says to Samuel that the people have in fact “rejected Me as their king” (1 Samuel 8:7). Samuel gives the people a laundry list of reasons as to why they don’t want a king, but the reply is simple: “No!” “We want a king over us. Then we will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles” (1 Samuel 8:19, 20).

Note that God said to them, “don’t do this,” but there was no obedience. No trust. No belief that God would actually take them to a better end, and no desire to be set apart as God’s chosen people. And it wasn’t like having a king was a totally terrible decision, at least at first. Saul was a great warrior for them for a while, and so was David. Solomon brought about the best years the kingdom ever saw… but each of the kings had flaws, flaws that God as king never had. The trouble was that each successive king added their flaws to the previous kings flaws, and while it was okay for a while, the trajectory had been set where they were no longer going to be special. They were going to be just like everybody else.

But that’s what they wanted. I said earlier that Egypt isn’t very tempting to me, but believe it or not, the desire to be like others is a temptation that I do understand. I look around at my life, and there are times when it would be nice to be just like everybody else. It would be nice even to just be more like everybody else if not just like them… you know, maybe be part of a major church organization. Or maybe just be apathetic to spirituality and go through life just talking about the cricket or the latest dumb thing said by a politician. It’s not actually happiness, but there is a certain comfort in being miserable, outraged, and annoyed like everybody else.

This is what God was dealing with. People who wanted to be just like everybody else. They really just didn’t understand the whole being different thing. Jeremiah questions God as to why is it that other nations aren’t being destroyed, because the other nations are just as bad as they are. But that’s exactly the point. In the end the Israelites are no better than anybody else. God says to Jeremiah:

“If you have run with the footmen, and they have wearied you,
Then how can you contend with horses?
And if in the land of peace,
In which you trusted, they wearied you,
Then how will you do in the floodplain of the Jordan? (Jeremiah 12:5)

God does not want us to be wearied by running with others. Specifically, the Word says “footmen” so the representation is being worn out by people who are in the natural because the “foot” corresponds to the natural. It’s the lowest elements in our life. If you get worn out by day to day life, by dealing with things of the world around you, how are you going to survive when your own ego starts swelling with pride? That’s the floodplain of the Jordan. Our desires swelling up, and encroaching on spiritual life. We have to be able to be God’s chosen people no matter what other people around us are saying and doing, and we have to be God’s chosen people even when we feel that we’re desiring something else.

Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob… they didn’t want to be like others. They wanted to be different. They wanted to be set apart from everybody else. God promised them abundance if they did as He said. They were promised great things… and they believed. Do you believe? Do you believe it enough to do what God says in spite of what anybody else says? Are you willing to stand out and be somebody different from everybody else?

Let me close with this quote from King David, who in this instance really does have it right, and provides us with the attitude we should have when it comes to obeying the Lord:

The LORD is my light and my salvation;
Whom shall I fear?
The LORD is the strength of my life;
Of whom shall I be afraid? (Psalm 27:1)

Every year on the 19th of June, we celebrate the birth of the New Church. We use this date because of the statement above from True Christian Religion, telling us that on this date, in the year 1770, the Lord sent His disciples out into the spiritual world to proclaim the gospel once again.

Imagine being someone in the spiritual world when this proclamation was made. What might these statements mean to you, if you were an angel hearing these words, no longer as a prophesy, but as a reality: “The Lord God Jesus Christ reigns and His kingdom will last for ages and ages! Blessed are those who come to the wedding feast of the Lamb!”

Well, to our natural ears we may just think of this as a proclamation. We might just think of it as a statement about something that has happened. But to angelic ears, this meant that they were now, more than ever, able to do their favourite thing! This is because angels love nothing more than to lead people to heaven! “Angels want nothing more than to help people, to teach them, to lead them into heaven. This is their highest joy” (Heaven and Hell 450).

So, imagine that you were an angel on the 19th of June, 1770. For a very long time, the pathway to human minds had been clouded and obscure. In the natural world the power of hell prevailed in human minds, and so the truths angels use to teach and lead people could not be used without them being perverted and twisted by hell, causing people to profane the Word (see Doctrine of The Lord 61; Cannons 25). But, from this day on the balance was re-established! And this balance will last for ‘ages and ages’ because ‘The Lord God Jesus Christ reigns’.

So as we celebrate the birth of our beloved church, let us remember what the point of that church is. The New Church and its teachings are now open to the world to lead people to heaven. Let us join forces with The Lord and His angels to invite people to the ‘wedding feast of the Lamb’. Not all people will accept this invitation, but those who do will be blessed with eternal life in heaven.

The 19th of June by Chuck Blair

The 19th day of June is a yearly celebration in traditional New Church congregations. What is it?

As a day, its roots go back to theologian Emanuel Swedenborg’s notation that on that date, in 1770, a spiritual event occurred – one with great spiritual symbolism. On that date, Swedenborg held that the 12 disciples of the New Testament regathered to again proclaim the message that the Lord God Saviour Jesus Christ reigns. The message they had lived on this earth was again claimed but this time in heaven.

Just hold the core of that statement for a moment. What it means is that the New Church proclaims that Christ is alive and active in the world, and ours is to celebrate this living reality. Was Swedenborg really given to see those things? That is for the individual to decide but just “test drive” the message for the moment.

What the message means is that the anticipated “Second Coming of Christ” has occurred through the understanding of the real heart and soul of the bible – a testimony centred on love. This what Swedenborg wrote of. That Second Coming, is not, from a New Church perspective, just “good news” (Gospel) for Christians but for all faiths given the strong teachings in this church that any form of faith, if lived sincerely, draws one to heaven. The New Church then, in a sense, is just one of many facets of this “Second Coming”, an event far more about the gift of spiritual freedom than of dogmatic pietism squashed into an assembly of “The Elect.” Saying “Christ reigns” from a New Church angle is like saying “All are blessed.”

And that salvation entails taking on the work as individuals and institutions of continual self-critique and self-renewal, aka “resurrection.” Paradoxically, this in turn only works as we do the work of faith – the not to do list and the to-do list. Individuals and institutions, including churches themselves, can become self-centered. Faith is about moving beyond those imprisoning constructs and moving towards agapé forms of love – agapé as in “self-sacrificing.” We do that through rigorous honesty of self-critique and the loving service foundational to self-renewal.

I certainly have witnessed people living this “Second Coming” including many who would not define themselves as “Christian” or “New Church” in the traditional sense. The sign of the Second Coming really are changes in our own hearts – not “end times” or the ceasing of history. That breaking open of the world anew is an individual endeavour, true, but one we can support and celebrate as a Church. The 19th of June is a good time to celebrate it!

Spiritual Independence Day (writer undeclared)

To people of ALL religions, June 19, 1770, marks the beginning of humanity’s return to the days of spiritual peace, the long-expected age which has been predicted in essentially all ancient stories, religious literature and myths of our history.

To people of all nations, this day opened the door to true individual freedom throughout the world. Because our spiritual freedom has been restored, humanity has entered into a new era of governments. Today, progressive democracy continues to break down the lingering vestiges of repression.

To scientists and others who desire a different way of understanding the Creator, this represents the opening of access to the deeper mysteries of life – the window into the next world which will allow us to explore its wonders while in this world – before we die.

Most importantly, to all denominations of Christians, this is the celebration which marks the beginning of the long-awaited Lord’s Second Coming, and what is anticipated from these words: “I have yet many things to say unto you…”. To some Christians, this day is called New Church Day, to reflect that the New Jerusalem is descending from Heaven to usher in a new future, which will blossom into an Age of peace and enlightenment.

Two hundred and fifty years ago (in 1757), a great judgement began in the spiritual world – the place where we all go after death. Centuries of man-made misconceptions and harmful church politics managed to totally repress spiritual freedom throughout the world. As those who loved to dominate other people entered the afterlife, they continued to control and deceive as they did while on earth. Their false churches which they set up in the world of spirits appeared to newcomers to be the heaven which religions on earth have taught about. The philosophy of these fallacious heavens dominated common thought so strongly that they blocked off essentially all influx from heaven into the minds of men and women on earth. These misconceptions continued until the deceptions were exposed and humanity was able to clearly see the lies. This was done by a Divine judgement which restored equilibrium in the spiritual world, resulting in a new spiritual freedom in the minds of humanity.

Because of this, untold knowledge has been given to us about the life after death, the existence of God and our place in this universe. We have been given the opportunity to learn what the spiritual world is like and to fully understand the Judeo-Christian Bible. And what is significant, the opportunity has been provided for people of all religions to fully understand their own holy books and doctrines through the Universal Theology of the New Heaven. We can now enter into the deeper spiritual knowledges which we could not previously understand.

“For there is nothing covered that will not be revealed, nor hidden that will not be known. Therefore whatever you have spoken in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have spoken in the ear in inner rooms will be proclaimed on the housetops.”

from Divine Providence 104

Every person has an outward and an inward level of thought. This is clear to anyone who observes the thoughts and intentions of someone else as shown in his speaking and acting, and who also observes his own thoughts and intentions when he is in company and when he is alone. For anyone can talk with someone else in a friendly way outwardly and yet be at enmity with him inwardly. Anyone can talk about love towards the neighbour and love to God from his outward thoughts but within he cares nothing for other people and does not fear God.

There is a passage in the Bible which sometimes disturbs people. It first appears in Matthew’s gospel and then again in Luke, with a slight change. It says: “There is nothing covered that will not be revealed, nor hidden that will not be known. Therefore whatever you have spoken in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have spoken in the ear in inner rooms will be proclaimed on the housetops.” Another translation puts the last sentence like this: Whatever you whisper within four walls will be shouted from the top of the house.

People are sometimes terrified of this teaching because it seems to suggest that on the day of judgment all our private thoughts, particularly the shameful and regrettable, will be made public and exposed. And having these painful embarrassing thoughts publicised is also thought by some people to be a vindictive act of God. In explaining the meaning of this passage, the teachings of the New Church do indeed say this much: “After death, nothing whatever of a person’s thought, speech or action in the world is hidden but it is open to view”. And, “A person carries with him his whole memory, and nothing is so well hidden in the world that it is not brought out into the open after death, in public.”

In a broader context, Jesus said, “There is nothing covered that will not be revealed” in direct response to the hypocrisy of the Pharisees. Jesus said that no secrets would remain hidden with the person who pretended to be something he was not. You might remember that the Pharisees received the sharpest criticism from Jesus because they pretended to be something they were not. It’s interesting just to note here that the word “hypocrite” comes from a Greek word meaning ‘to play a part’ or ‘to act’.

In the spiritual world, it is impossible to pretend to be something you are not. After death, when the Lord’s angels ever so gently review a person’s Book of Life, they have absolutely no interest in broadcasting the faults of a person’s past or in raising embarrassing hurtful memories. Only those who deny their crimes or who deny their true identity will have their private thoughts broadcast in the way the passage from Luke suggests, and this is done only so that all people may enter fully into the joy of their own hearts. As a result, every person’s essential character will still become open to view in the spiritual world, which is why nothing whatever of a person’s thought, speech or action in the world is hidden but is open to view.

Only in this world do we have two sets of thoughts, one public and one private. These two sets of thoughts are distinguished by the way we act when we’re in company and when we’re alone by ourselves. As one passage says, “Every person who reaches maturity has an outer and an inner level of thought. This is clear to anyone who observes his thoughts and intentions when he is in company and when he is alone.”

Eventually, we’re told, our public open thoughts and our private thoughts will make one by correspondence. They will fully match up. They will become one because in the spiritual world everyone speaks just as he thinks and thinks like he speaks. But, by contrast, here on earth we enjoy a special kind of freedom in which we can act one way when we are in company and in a completely different way when we are alone by ourselves. This special kind of freedom serves not only as a protection but also as an essential part of our earthly life.

As long as people are in this world, they can keep their deepest thoughts and most private feelings hidden, and they can manufacture whatever kind of public image they want. Everyone is free to move through his or her life publicising as much or as little of his true thoughts and feelings as he wishes. As a result, an insincere person will say all the right things in public, flattering as many people as he or she can, and yet will privately laugh at those things when alone; whereas a sincere person will make every effort to publicly say what he or she privately thinks. The teachings of the New Church use the example of public officials and religious leaders to illustrate this point. We are told that people in these types of professions can manufacture a very convincing public image and yet privately hold very little interest for the public welfare or common good. One teaching says that public officials and religious leaders might very well perform their use from natural affection alone, which is for the sake of self, that they may be honoured and exalted to prestige, or for the sake of the world, that they may gain wealth and become rich. In some cases, these self-centred goals drive such people to perform more excellent uses than those who truly are in the spiritual affection of use. There’s another teaching which talks about the hypocritical church leader who, on returning home after his sermon laughs at all he said and expounded from the Word to his audience. And yet this same preacher, who secretly laughs at what he says, can move people ‘to tears’ with what he says in public.

So long as we live in this world we will never know whether someone is faking his public image or not. Many people are frankly disgusted by the amount of hypocrisy they see around them, particularly when hearing the honeyed phrases that seem to flow so effortlessly out of the mouths of many public officials, church leaders and corporate bosses. The general public will, most likely, always be suspicious of the lofty words spoken by many of its leaders, and this seems to be one reason why a large segment of the world population remains deeply sceptical of church organisations. Unfortunately, churches are often surrounded by scandals, and the public (understandably) has difficulty in trusting the leaders of these organisations, even the legitimate ones.

On an individual level – and as members of a church organisation – we may at times question the legitimacy of our own public image. There are many people who experience devastating hurt and disappointment in their lives, who struggle against the very ideals they try to model publicly, and who also choose to keep these struggles private. We would never call these people “fakes” or “frauds” for covering up the inconsistencies and contradictions in their own lives, and yet when we find ourselves working so hard to cover up our own troubles, we might very well think we are being a fake or a fraud. This very issue bothered an American President a number of years ago when he was in office. He once confided to his wife, “I wonder why we are made so that what we really think and feel we cover up”.

Of course, the goal of our earthly life is to invite the Lord to be present and active in every part of it as we go about our public, private and domestic duties. The following teaching adds to this by saying that the private world of our inner thoughts and feelings is actually the channel which introduces heaven to our outward, public life: “Heaven flows by way of the internal person into the external or outward person, and the outward person gains a perception of what exists in heaven. It is for this reason that the human being has been created in the way he has.”

The thoughts and feelings of our inner private world have been created to flow into our outward life, into our public world and presentation. We have all seen this process in action with little children and also with the elderly, often with humorous results. When you sit down with a little child, he will tell you exactly what’s on his mind. His private thoughts flow with complete ease into his public world; little children don’t need to manufacture a public image. And when people reach the last years of their adult lives, they too, in most cases, will tell you exactly what’s on their minds. They seem to hold little interest in keeping up appearances and seem almost relieved to let the manufactured image of their public life which has served them so well, crumble and fall away.

But having the freedom to publicly say or do what we may not privately think or feel is an essential part of our earthly life. In the book “Conjugial Love” there is a whole chapter which explains in detail why it is so important for married partners to publicly show their love toward each other during those times when they don’t privately feel it. The chapter also stresses the point that this kind of ‘role-playing’ is not hypocritical because its purpose is to heal the marriage relationship not only before the eyes of the couple but also before the eyes of any children, as well as before society.

There are also other sections in our teachings which talk about the importance of compelling ourselves to go through the motions involved in the work of regeneration even when we don’t feel like doing it. And again, this kind of ‘role-playing’ is not hypocritical since the person doing it is sincerely trying to amend his or her private life, something a hypocrite would never dream of doing.

If we were forced to give a running commentary on everything we truly thought and felt, we would find ourselves with very few friends at the end of the day. It is essential that people can be free to unravel the contradictions and inconsistencies of their life in privacy. This is a protection which every person well needs, and it is confirmed in the following teaching:

From his inner thought a person can view his outward thought, reflect on it, deciding whether it is evil or not. The mind of a person owes this characteristic feature to what he has from the Lord, which is his liberty and his rationality.

In the modern world of talk shows and public confessionals, it seems that many people feel pressurised to publicise their private thoughts. In the media, celebrities are expected to share their deepest thoughts and feelings as though the world couldn’t go on without knowing them. And we can all point to moments in our own lives when we publicised a private thought prematurely; a thoughtless comment to a co-worker, a piece of advice to a friend who really needed to hear it, or that brutally honest critique of our spouse. And even though we may regret some of the things we “let out”, we may still argue it’s better to “say it like it is” than sugar-coat every private thought.

We may also argue that if everyone speaks as he thinks in the spiritual world, as we are taught, then why waste time playing a charade here? But that teaching on the spiritual world also points out the fact that people in the spiritual world may be silent, and not publish the thoughts of their mind. In other words, while our essential character will become open to view in the spiritual world, we will still be free to maintain a level of privacy that suits our own preference.

People don’t need to be terrified or overly troubled knowing that one day what they think and feel will become public, because they are involved in the process right now. All sincere adults who try as well as they can – when circumstances and opportunities allow – to publicly say what they privately feel ought to know they are on the right track. As little children, we had no difficulty publicly saying what we privately thought, and during our final years on earth, we will, most likely, have no difficulty doing it again (if we don’t already). In fact, we might find it quite refreshing.

With the years in between, the Lord ever so carefully helps us to develop our true character and identity within the safety of our private world. While the Lord certainly encourages us to keep our struggles and concerns out in the open where they can be dealt with squarely, He knows that we also need a certain level of protection while living in this world. The Lord, therefore, helps us unravel many of the contradictions and inconsistencies that appear in our public world, again within the safety of our private world. It is also allowable – and necessary at times – to manufacture a public image that may not reflect our true character, because it takes time and patience for our public and private thoughts to make one by correspondence. But when they do, we will enter into the greatest happiness we can imagine. For when people enter heaven they come into the highest joy of their own heart.

Amen.

“There was in the days of Herod the king of Judea, a certain priest named Zacharias……” (Luke chapter 1 verse 5)

from the Apocalypse Revealed 102

In the Bible there is the command “Be thou faithful even unto death”. This command has two levels of meaning. One is natural and the other is spiritual. The natural meaning is that to the end of our life we are not to lapse from being faithful to what we know is true and good, or what we know is commanded us by the Lord. The spiritual meaning of this command is that during our life we are to receive and acknowledge what is true until by adopting them and living by them anything that is untrue or contrary to them can then be removed and put away from us.

If you enjoy reading a good story, you probably know that an author does not normally put the main things that are going to happen too early on, but instead spends quite a bit of time setting the scene and introducing various people to you the reader. And this is often done so that you will become intrigued and wonder what is going to happen later on. Sometimes the plot doesn’t start happening until you are well into the book and you are familiar with everyone and in this way you are (to use a Christmas story word) “prepared”. Prepare ye the way of the Lord…

Something like this seems to happen with the Christmas story itself. The one we all know is the second chapter of Luke’s gospel, “And a decree went out from Caesar Augustus…” but really, it all starts way back, very near the beginning of chapter one which is the longest chapter by far in the whole of the New Testament, with eighty verses, and a great deal happens in its build-up before we get to chapter two and the birth of Jesus.

And strangely, it all begins with Jesus’ mother’s relative’s husband! “There was in the days of Herod king of Judea a certain priest called Zacharias.” Then we hear that his wife is Elizabeth. And then we hear that they have no child because Elizabeth is barren and now they are both old. And if you didn’t know, you might wonder where all this is going to go. It kind of begs you to keep reading to find out.

But then it says something which is tremendously important… that these two elderly people are very good people, righteous before God, who walk blamelessly in all the commandments of the Lord. So let’s put that idea more simply and say that they were both faithful.

The point is being made very emphatically that this faithfulness is the beginning of the gradual lead up into the eventual Christmas story. Two elderly faithful people who between them might have all sorts of questions about God’s dealings with them over many years, but no, they seem to have come through it, got over it, and chosen to be faithful to what they believe and what they do.

I have no doubt that we would all be able to identify with the helpful decision to remain faithful, especially during times when we feel we have missed out, or we are troubled about something, or however life seems to be treating us. Our determination is a large part of our wish to be as good as we can be, and in choosing it, we can cope with things more because we have made a decision and decisions are helpful. It involves being faithful to what we know and believe in.

We are not able to know how life is going to unfold for us or what might happen or not, rather like Zacharias and Elizabeth who had no child but they may have always looked forward, choosing to remain faithful to God in their service. I admire that a lot.

One of my fellow ministers said to me that he much preferred the idea of living life faithfully than getting into the idea of having faith. He said that being faithful involves us. Faith can be a bit of an awkward word and hard to put your finger on to say what it means. It’s a bit intellectual, a bit detached at times from the way you live your life. Sometimes, faith can be a list of all the beliefs of the church from A to Z. But not so with faithfulness. That asks us to be in it and use it and allow it to govern our lives.

In the Bible it says that faithfulness is one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit which comes to those who believe in God and put their trust in him. In the parable of the talents, the master praised the first two servants and said, “Well done, good and faithful servant!” Jesus talked about that ‘faithful servant’ whom his master made ruler over his house and added, “Blessed is that servant whom his master, when he comes, will find so doing.” That’s very expressive and the key to our genuine faithfulness. If you work in an office and get caught up in chat and idleness you are wasting the firm’s time, but if someone says the boss is coming round this morning, well, you look like you are busy because you want to keep your job but it is all pretence, and back you go to the chatting after he’s been round.

You can see where I am going with this of course. A faithful worker is the same all the time regardless of who drops in. We have the teaching about charity or love for others which points out that we are practising our love for others when we do whatever it is we do sincerely, faithfully, honestly and well. It is another way of putting the Biblical phrase, “Be thou faithful even unto death”.

Let’s go back to the unfolding story that will eventually become the Lord’s birth. It begins with this faithfulness. So we can make a kind of equation about it. If we are faithful to our belief in God and live by that, then the Lord will be able to be born in us, in our heart and mind and life. He will because we are preparing the ground for him to be able to do so. If we don’t bother being true to what we believe, or even more if we are unfaithful, we create a kind of personal mess or chaos, and the Lord won’t be able to be born into us because there is nothing he can get hold of. And the result will be that we won’t know a thing about God and how he works with us. This is no indictment on God, only a kind of judgment on ourselves. God hasn’t given up, we did.

Now let’s move on into the story of Zacharias. It is helpful and important to note that the name Zacharias means one who remembers God, or who stays true to God. There he is, doing his roster duty as priest, faithfully, and the angel Gabriel appears to him and tells him that his wife will have a son and you are to call his name John. Zacharias takes issue with Gabriel about the impossibility of this because of their old age.

Gabriel tells Zacharias he will be unable to speak until all this happens. And much later on in the long unwinding story, Elizabeth has her son and all their friends and neighbours say that of course they will call him Zacharias in honour of his father. But Zacharias indicates he wants to write and they give him a writing tablet and he wrote that his name will be John. And suddenly he is able to speak again.

Why is Zacharias struck dumb until the birth? Looked at quickly it seems like a kind of punishment for disbelieving the word of the angel Gabriel! But as I often point out, God does not punish and neither do the angels of God. We might say that we can sometimes punish ourselves by the attitude we take, or from some wrong thing we do, but that is not God.

I think it goes like this. If you are someone who is faithful to God which means not only that you have your beliefs but that you also have your values and your spiritual feelings, then there are precious few people that you can really talk about those things with on a personal level. Maybe no one. We can talk about the weather and the cost of petrol happily for ages, but what we believe about God is private and from our experience we may have been given some strange looks. So we do not normally share it. If you have someone with whom you can comfortably talk about God and heaven and what to make of things in the Bible, then you are very fortunate. Such people are few and far between, more than ever in today’s world I suspect.

I heard a young lady years ago, someone pretty well up there in Sydney’s high life, say that when she seriously took up her own spiritual practice she very quickly found herself becoming what she called lonely. Her beliefs shut her away from her former jet-setting friends and they had nothing left in common.

Zacharias’ inability to speak could well be the same thing. Those friends and neighbours of theirs seem to be all too eager to tell them what their child ought to be called! Zacharias might have even been glad he couldn’t speak to them! But he asks for something to write on and writes ‘His name is John’ and the neighbours say they don’t know anyone who is called that, and immediately he can talk again. If you write something it is more permanent than spoken words and what Zacharias wrote made a break from the usual tradition into the world of what is new. And this is all part of the developing newness of what one carol calls ‘a new king born today’.

Here we are then today, well into this period of Advent which gives us the opportunity for preparation and reflection. In our own way we should all be struck dumb at times. Some things make me go very quiet – some of them are wonderful moments and some of them are atrocious beyond belief. Quietness and silence are the areas of our heart, yet we live in a culture of free and easy open banter. Go with you heart and your faithfulness with the developing story from Zacharias through to the manger and behold the birth of the Lord into this world and our personal world.

Amen

“And a decree went forth from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered……So all went to be registered, everyone to his own city. And Joseph also went up from Galilee.” (Luke chapter 2 verse 1, 3)

“I tell you not to resist an evil person. Whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also. If anyone wants to sue you and take away your tunic, let him have your cloak also. And whoever compels you to go one mile, go with him two.” (Matthew 5.39-41)

In our consideration of these words of our Lord I want us also to have in mind those wonderful words which constitute what is usually termed the ‘Golden Rule’:

Therefore, all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them. (Matthew 7.12)

It will readily be seen that these words set before us a certain concept of retaliation. Ordinary retaliation, that which is pagan and un-Christian, looks back to what has been done, and determines in like manner to act towards the persons who have done these things. Thus, eye shall go for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, life for life.

Christian retaliation will not, and cannot, wholly overlook evil that has been done, but its attitude towards that evil is not a desire for vengeance, but simply a desire to do what is right in the circumstances. Christian retaliation asks itself what it would that others should do to itself in like circumstances, and then, answering that question fairly, it does this with all its power as a persistent and determined retaliation.

With such thoughts in our mind, let us approach the text we have before us. The Sermon on the Mount, from which the text is taken, is quite universally accepted as the ideal of Christian conduct. But, strange to say, it is just as universally admitted that that it is an ideal quite beyond our reach: thus, that nobody is expected to live in accordance with it now.

Such an order of life is supposed to belong only to heaven or to some very far-distant state of life on the earth. Now, to the New Church person, such a position is quite untenable. “All religion has relation to life.” If these teachings be both true and good, then they are ever the best practical policy for life. In no way can we justly conclude that our Lord wishes us to take His teachings and wrap them carefully up in a napkin and keep them for some bright and better day!

Yet, one needs to say at once that one must be intensely careful that one has really gripped the Lord’s teaching. He never spoke only according to the appearance. His words are spirit, and they are life. Thus in another place we read His instruction that we should cut off the offending hand and pluck out the offending eye. Our failure to observe this injunction in a literal way is not an evidence of lack of faith and courage but is the outcome of our realisation that our Lord meant something deeper than appears on the surface. To what purpose is it to pluck out the eye – the organ of vision – if there be lust at the back of the eye, which would remain untouched by such a physical mutilation? Can we not see that our Lord speaks in the picture-language of correspondence, whereby internal truths are depicted by means of our external language?

Thus then, we say without hesitation that the supposed virtue of non-resistance is no virtue at all but is a misinterpretation of what He taught. Complete non-resistance must be rejected not only because of its impracticability but because it is immoral and, in reality, contrary to the ideal Christian life. Can it be, for
instance, seriously suggested that the bully who strikes a little child is not to be resisted? Is it more pleasing to the Lord that we stand aside and let the bully thus injure a little one than that we offer what resistance we are able? Can it be suggested that it is really in accord with the Golden Rule that we allow a thief to have his way and rob us of all we possess? Is it not a higher duty to endeavour to prevent men from doing wrong, both for the common good and for their own sakes too? There is a sacred duty of defence. The warning we do all need is to watch lest that principle of defence be violated by a slipping over to aggression. It is at a certain point exceedingly hard to discern where the actual line of demarcation comes. It is, however, just here that the real significance and practical help of our text comes in.

In the words “that ye resist not evil” the accent should be placed upon the word “ye”. We, of ourselves, from ourselves, by ourselves, are not to resist evil. If we do, the spirit of aggressiveness and revenge is sure to be there. Unless we cut right out everything of our own selfhood, the resistance offered is vain, and is of that quality which meets with our Lord’s unstinted condemnation. The situation is merely aggravated. Resistance, in which is something of our own selfhood, has in it the spirit of vengeance, it breathes forth anger and is full of the spirit of pettiness.

The Lord is the true Resister of all evil. Is there anyone prepared to deny this? Has He not right from the time of the Fall been in eternal opposition to evil? And from this we find Him so often called in the Old Testament “A Man of War”. It was solely the urge to resist the evil which was threatening the destruction of mankind that brought him into the world for our redemption. He came to fight man’s foes and to save them. Thus He says at the last: “I have overcome the world”

Were it not that He resists evil, and ever so has, there could be no hope for the human race. In this resistance He is willing to use us, and is anxious for our co-operation. He calls upon us to allow ourselves to be instruments in His hands to accomplish His Divine purposes. To do so for us means a solemn and prayerful
devotion to duty. We can then surely see good reason why we should resist evil, and yet, if we will, evil can be resisted through our instrumentality. The contrast is explicit and emphatic.

Now let us approach the details of our text. In the light of the internal sense of the Word, which is now revealed for the New Church, we may see clearly all the virtues which it has ever been felt to lie therein; and yet the futility so apparent in the literal sense now disappears.

We notice at once that the text consists of three distinct divisions, which fact is at once suggestive to the New Church person. There is reference to the person of man, in the first place. In the second place, the thought rests upon his clothing; and in the third place it is the activity or the functioning of the man that is referred to.

The cheek is an extremely delicate and beautiful part of the body. Contact with it by another is intended to be most intimate and also pleasing and mutually gratifying. Is not the cheek peculiarly intended for the receipt of the kiss of love? It is to love and to things of charity therefore that the cheek corresponds. This correspondence is further emphasised by the adjective “right”; it is specified the “right cheek”, which apart from the internal sense would seem to be an unnecessary detail.

But the term “right” in the Word always has reference to things of love. Thus we read that it is at the “right hand of God” there are joys for evermore. Again, when our Lord’s disciples had been toiling all the night in vain to catch fish, He said, “Cast the net on the right side of the ship and ye shall find.” What a spiritual message is there for those who are prepared to heed, who would be fishers of men!

Our Lord teaches here that if the right cheek is assaulted, we are to turn to our assailant the other also. If the one cheek be charity in the internal sense, it is readily apparent that the other cheek is the doctrine of charity – its companion. If then, charity is assaulted, the duty of the Christian disciple is not to rave and blame and abuse the assailant but “to turn to him the other cheek also” – proffer, by precept and example, the true doctrine of charity so that our influence shall not be merely destructive, but constructive, by means of the teaching of that truth.

Passing on to the second portion of the text, we find in the Divine parable the words “coat” and “cloak”. These, as we have already observed, are not of the very person, but are the garments which are close to the person. Garments are intended to preserve vital heat in the body and also to set forth the comeliness and beauty of the human form. Such is the function of truth in relation to man as a spiritual being – that a distinction between the coat and the cloak quickly shows itself. The former is a close and comparatively tight-fitting garment. It is nearer to the human form itself. The latter is looser and blows about in any wind that comes. The coat may be, even as the Gospel declares was the coat of our Lord “without seam and woven from the top throughout”.

Such is the essential quality of Divine Truth. Our coat may partake of something of that quality. The heavenly doctrines of the New Jerusalem, which belong to the Word, and are now coming down out of heaven, are of that Divine quality; and such a coat therefore is ours in the New Church if we will to receive it. It is surely not without significance that it is so distinctly said concerning the New Jerusalem that it was seen “as a bride adorned for her husband”. She is arrayed in a seamless coat, woven from the top, as her wedding garment.

If one by his skill in argument and debate would sue at law and take away our coat we are not to be unduly perturbed. Let it go. Don’t be drawn into heated debate, inspired by the selfhood which loves its own intelligence, brilliance and wit, but seeing that our opponent is set upon taking our coat from us, let him have his seeming victory. Thus is the least harm done; thus is he likely to be least confirmed in his attitude of antagonism. By letting him have the coat we, in reality, lose nothing, and though he cannot use the coat himself, yet he can use your cloak. Let him have that also.

The cloak corresponds to external truths which are adapted to the needs and capacity of more external states. Instead of in anger withholding the coat from a mistaken sense of loyalty, let it go. Give your opponent the apparent victory, and give him, further, your cloak. The interior truths of the New Church relating to the Divine Humanity of the Lord and the Divinity of the Sacred Scriptures are beyond the capacity for the use of many, and they consequently are opposed, and cannot be accepted. For such, there is the outer cloak of comparatively external truth, as for instance, that there is a God, that man is not a mere material organism, that it behoves him to live a decent life, and that death cannot end all.

Thirdly, the Lord speaks of the urgent call that may come to us to go a mile and the Christian response to go twain. The mile is manifestly the picture of the road of life, the plane of the natural, “the trivial round, the common task”. If one will compel us to go along his way on this outermost plane, our Lord says, “go with him”. Don’t hold aloof, wishing to live an exclusive life, wrapping your garment around yourself, saying “I am holier than thou”. “Go with him.”

He did not pray that His disciples should be taken out of the world but that they should be delivered from the evil. Herein comes the significance of the “twain” that we are to go. The ordinary man goes only his one mile, looking at life only from the one point of view, which is self-interest; that is his one mile. The Christian disciple is ever to go the twain – which is the even balance of life, things of good and truth, of faith and of charity. Like Balaam in the company of Balak, the Christian must declare that while he goes with the man of the world in the life of the world, yet he cannot go beyond – or less than – the Word of the Lord and the life of His love. “Go with him twain.” Amen

Jeremiah 6 verse 16
Thus says the Lord, “Stand in the ways and see, and ask for the old paths, where the good way is, and walk in it. Then you will find rest for your souls.”

Heaven and Hell 280
“People who are in the inmost heaven are in innocence since they above all others want to be led by the Lord the way infants are led by their father. This is why they accept divine truth directly into their intent and do it, making it a matter of life, whether they receive it directly from the Lord or indirectly through the Word. They look like people who do not know very much, even though they are the wisest of angels. They are in fact aware that they have no trace of wisdom on their own and that to be wise is to admit this and to admit that what they do know is nothing compared to what they do not know.

If we could interview all the people who have accepted the teachings of our church and ask them what prompted that acceptance, I suspect that one of the commonest responses would be something like “They answered my questions.” The first goal of the Lord’s providence, we are told, is that we should act in freedom according to reason, and while it is clear that our reason can mislead us if we want it to, it is an ability we are given by the Lord for use.

To use Jeremiah’s image, if we use our reason to ask where the good way is so that we can walk in it, we will find rest for our souls. Sometimes, though, our human nature leads us to look for shortcuts, and we skip from the first part of the process to the end without really taking the middle part seriously. That is, rather than using our reason to ask where the good way is so that we can walk in it, we ask our reason where we can find rest. We want to find answers that will relieve us of the task of asking more questions; and if we manage to convince ourselves that we have succeeded, that we “have all the answers,” then we stop walking. After all, why should we move? We have arrived.

People who share this kind of faith tend to gather in groups or churches that are closely-knit and that look on the “outside world” with suspicion. It is hard to maintain the belief that I have all the answers if no one else in the world agrees with me, so I have a profound need of a supportive community. I have a particular need for the approval of people I respect, so I welcome a relatively authoritarian structure – a catechism that I can learn, for example, and a clergy that will assure me that I am right if I believe what that catechism says. Further, the conviction that “we are right” is virtually inseparable from the conviction that “they are wrong.”

If we were to ask an angel, “Do you have all the answers?”, I have no doubt what the answer would be. We are assured time and time again that angelic wisdom far exceeds our own, but that is not the point. The point is that the more we learn, the more clearly we see how much more there is to learn. The best answers to our questions are not the ones that close off further inquiry but the ones that open new doors for us.

The very essence of angelic wisdom is the realization that “what they do know is nothing compared to what they do not know” This is not as arcane or unlikely a principle as it might at first seem. I gather, for example, that around the beginning of the twentieth century college students were being advised not to go into the field of chemistry because there was nothing new to be discovered in it. All the answers had been found.

The image was of a field in which there was a finite number of facts to be mastered, and that once that mastery was attained, that was it. In retrospect, this opinion looks just as arrogant and absurd as it actually is. Its theological equivalent is even more arrogant and absurd, because the “field” of theology is far more vast than the field of chemistry. Ultimately, that is, we might say that the subject of theology is the divine mind, which includes absolutely everything there is or was or ever will be.

There have actually been quite a few people over the centuries who believe that they have had experiences of the divine mind, and their reports are very much alike. First of all, that mind is beautiful beyond all comparison, and second, they cannot retain any of it in their own normal consciousness. They were taken completely out of themselves, so to speak, and when they returned to themselves, they returned to their own limitations. They wound up quite sure that all the answers are there, and equally sure that they did not have access to them.

The heart of the matter, the reason for this “wisdom of not knowing,” is in the very nature of our own particular church. “The reason this new church is the crown of all the churches that have ever existed on earth is that it will worship one visible God in whom dwells the invisible God, just as the soul dwells in the body.”
We can see the visible God, the Lord incarnate. We cannot see the invisible God. The ratio between them is like the ratio between the soul and the body. To claim that we “know God” is a little like saying that we know people because we have examined their medical histories or their CAT scans. We learn some things and may deduce others, but the essential person remains a mystery to us.

The visible God, though, the glorified Christ, is the self-disclosure of the incomprehensible Divinity. It is infinite Deity reduced to our scale, infinite wisdom speaking our clumsy language. This disclosure, this adjustment, is made with infinite care and concern for our own freedom and rationality as well. We are in process, capable of understanding more today than we could grasp yesterday, and looking forward to understanding still more tomorrow. We might well say that the Lord deals with us on a “need to know” basis, making sure that we have available the light we need for the steps we can actually take.

Divine Providence paragraph 60 says it very nicely: “. . . no one can become an angel or get to heaven unless he or she comes bringing along some angelic quality from the world. Inherent in that angelic quality is a knowing of the path from having walked it and a walking in the path from the knowing of it.” The knowing and the path are inseparable. If we would learn, we must do more than read. We are to “Stand at the crossroads and look.”

This means that we must ask our questions when we are faced with decisions. We are to learn not for the sake of learning alone, not for the sake of knowing more than other people, but for the sake of finding our way. Ultimately, the most important question about any theological principle is “How do I do it?” How does our teaching about the Second Coming affect the way I treat other people, or for that matter, how I treat myself?” If it makes no difference, it is a bit of intellectual property lying idle, some mental coinage buried in the field.

To stay with this particular teaching for a moment, it can make a difference. If we believe in the new freedom of thought associated with the Second Coming, if we believe that the judgment occurs by having the things that are hidden become manifest, then we are not especially concerned to keep up superficial appearances. We appreciate candour, and treat it gently. We want to be understood, and welcome the insights into ourselves that others can offer. Our lives are not lived under the cloud of apocalyptic fear but in the light of trust in the Lord’s providence. We have a sense that our own decisions really matter, a sense that leaves no room for fatalism.

All these effects and others may follow from a belief in the Second Coming, but they do not follow necessarily. They follow only if we let the light of the teaching illuminate our path, only if we “ask where the good way is.” To ask where the way is, is to recognize that we have not arrived. We have still a way to go, and we do not know what lies ahead. In fact, the way ahead leads on into eternity, which ought to give us some notion of the extent of our ignorance. It is not still enough to stand at the crossroads and ask where the good way is. Unless we “walk in it,” our view does not change very much. We may for the first time see clearly all the way to the next corner, but we cannot see around the corner.

I am reminded of my favourite climb in the White Mountains, Mount Webster. About two-thirds of the way up, you get a glimpse of Crawford Notch to the immediate west and a little of the distant lower country to the south. From then on, you keep dipping back into the trees and re-emerging, each time with a larger view. Eventually you reach the summit and can see to the horizon in all directions. You can read about all this in the White Mountain Guide Book, but you cannot see it unless you walk the path.

Our text is not just a series of commands, though. It ends with a promise: “you will find rest for your souls.” This rest, we may be sure, is not idleness. That soon turns to boredom, and eventually to a feeling of uselessness and depression. The rest we need is rest from fear and strife. It is the dynamic balance of walking rather than the static balance of standing still.

It occurs to me that the whole reason for rocking chairs is that sitting absolutely still is burdensome. Even when our physical energies are low, it feels good to have a little motion. The rest we need is essentially the assurance that we are in the Lord’s care. It is the trust that in spite of the immense range of our ignorance, we do know what we need to know. Amen

(Rev George Dole is now a retired minister in America after a very active life in all kinds of contributory ways. He is still active in the different world of retirement and keeps contributing to the church in many ways.

Very many of our more recent editions of books of the Writings are the result of George Dole’s translations where he has taken standard well-worn words and phrases and re-expressed them and given them new meaning, impact and life.)

Why do bad things happen? Why do bad things happen in our lives? One person recently made the comment that when he looked at the lives of all his friends, it seemed as if every person was dealing with some big problem or issue in his or her life, now or in the recent past. The problem could have been disease, a death in the family, marital difficulties, or emotional distress. But it seemed to him as if everyone had some big issue to deal with.

Another person made a rather cynical comment. That person worried, not about the people who had big problems in their lives, but about those who hadn't yet faced a major crisis. The concern was that those who still believed that life was peaceful and free of problems would soon have that innocence taken away.

Not all of us face a crisis. And for some of us, the issues that we deal with in life are open and public; for others, the issues we deal with are more private and personal.

But back to the question: Why do bad things happen? One recent best seller was titled, Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People? And another best seller began with the sentence, “Life is difficult.”

Sometimes when a bad thing happens, we can explain it by reasoning that bad things are a necessary part of our spiritual journey. When bad things happen, it is part of that "refiner's fire" that makes us into a stronger person. When a bad thing happens, there is a lesson to be learned, a victory to be won. And this is why the life that leads to heaven not only involves joy and comfort, but also involves pain and the anxiety of spiritual temptation. Spiritual temptation is part of our spiritual growth.

But sometimes things happen in people's lives that are so bad that this explanation doesn’t seem to work. One person said over the tragic death of a loved one, “If there is some lesson that I am supposed to learn by something as tragic as this, I’d rather not learn it.” There are events of true tragic proportion: the untimely death of a loved one, terrible and painful disease, emotional disturbance and depression, the dissolving of a marriage, abuse, hunger and famine. If we come to believe that somehow the Lord allows or even causes these to happen so that we can learn some important lesson about life, we end up with a pretty terrible idea about God. One person made the comment about such an idea: “God is a bad teacher if He uses tragedy as His lesson plan.”

And so there is one other very important truth given to us in the doctrines of the New Church that helps us to understand tragedy: Bad things, terrible tragedies, are permitted by the Lord, not just so we can learn something new about life; they often happen simply because we are in the midst of a great war between heaven and hell. We happen to live on the battleground of a great war, and that war is taking place right now. It is a spiritual war between heaven and hell. It is the very war the Lord came on earth to fight. And sometimes we, or our friends and loved ones, are innocent victims of that terrible battle.

Imagine a physical war where a bombshell goes off near us, and we suffer pain and anguish, not because of anything we did, but because there is a battle going on and a bombshell went off. The same happens on a spiritual level. The hells do inflict pain and disorder upon us, and we suffer.

Think of a little child who has a painful disease. The disease itself, the pain and suffering, come from hell. That suffering is a physical manifestation of the hatred, anger, and vengeance of hell. And that little child has a painful and disabling disease not because the child was sinful, not because his parents sinned, not because there is some lesson to be learned (although there might be a lesson that is learned), but that child has a terrible disease because the hells are indeed powerful and they wish nothing more than to cause pain and disease and suffering. All bad things physical, mental and spiritual are a result of this great battle between heaven and hell.

We said that we are often innocent victims residing on this great spiritual battleground. This thought can make us feel kind of helpless. And this is why, rather than saying that we are “innocent victims” living on a great spiritual battleground, it is more accurate to say that we are actually “soldiers” who are called by the Lord to be part of the battle. We are soldiers who live on a large battleground, and we are called to fight in the name of the Lord. And this is one of the most important concepts we need to know about our lives, because it gives us a vision of hope and purpose.

We are in the middle of a great war. (Just look around you and within you.) We are soldiers who are part of this great battle between heaven and hell. Even that little child is a soldier, called into the army of the Lord.

When a bad thing happens terrible disease, a terrible death are we just to remain passive? Are we helpless? How can we fight if the terrible thing has already happened? If a little child dies, how can we be victorious over the hells that caused that death?

And here is another key: We fight the spiritual battle as an individual, but the consequences of our victory, no matter how slight, are global. When we, as individuals, fight a spiritual battle against the hells, we help countless millions throughout this world and the spiritual world who are affected by those same hells. When we are spiritually victorious over a particular hell, we lessen the power of that hell, not just for ourselves but for everyone. When tragedy happens take for example, the untimely death of a loved one we can still fight against those very hells that caused the death. And we do this by continuing on our personal spiritual journey of shunning evils as sins against God, by living the Word of God, by not giving up hope. In this battle we fight for all. And when we fight, we fight for all in the Lord's kingdom now and in future generations.

Why can’t our life be free from pain, suffering, and the anguish of temptation? Why can’t life just be easy and enjoyable?

It is interesting to ask these questions about the Lord’s life. Why couldn’t the Lord’s life, when He was on the earth, just be peaceful? Why did He have to suffer continual temptations, as the Writings say, temptations from the beginning of His life to the very end? Why did He have to begin His ministry by being tempted by the devil for forty days in the wilderness? Why did He have to suffer the awful pain and anguish of the passion on the cross? Why couldn’t His life have been one of simple peace and joy?

When we ask these questions about the Lord’s life, the answer is obvious: He didn’t come here to have a life of peace and joy; He came here with a mission to be accomplished. He came here to fight against the hells. He came to fight for generations of men, women and children, generations yet unborn. He came to fight for all of us. There was a purpose to His life, a purpose greater than Himself.

And the same is true for us. We are here for our own regeneration, and we are here for a cause (a battle, if you will) greater than ourselves. And sometimes this battle will involve pain, hardship and temptation.

What one of us would not willingly go forth in the face of danger if it meant that we could spiritually benefit the global sphere of the whole earth? (It is interesting that some passages in the Writings suggest that just one person is all that is needed to effect the conjunction between this earth and all the heavens.)

Now this doesn’t mean that our lives are going to be plagued with tragedy every moment. No, there is a lot of joy, happiness, and peace in life. Jesus says that our yoke is easy and our burden is light. But we do need to keep in mind why we are here. We need to have more of a “war-time” mentality than a “peace-time” mentality on the spiritual level. And if we see why we are here, we can know why there is often a lot of pain and suffering in our lives and with those around us. A spiritual battleground is not a very peaceful place. If anything, the Lord gives us an oasis from the battle from time to time, time off from the battle, but the battle is our main purpose in life. In this context, it is useful to think of some of the teachings in the Writings about spiritual temptation.

First of all, we are told that a spiritual temptation is said to be an attack by the hells on some good love that we have. If you have some new, good love in your life, expect it to be attacked by the hells. And if you say to yourself, "Why, every time I have some new love in my heart, it is challenged," you are not seeing the purpose of why you are here. There is a battle going; expect spiritual temptations.

Another teaching of the Writings: Are our temptations going to get easier or more difficult as we get older? The answer: they are probably going to get more severe. And if your reasoning is, “You mean I am going to have to fight greater battles as I get older? How can this be fair? Why fight now?” If that is your response, then you have missed the point of why you are here. There is a battle going on. You are called to be a spiritual soldier. As you grow stronger, more experienced, the Lord will give you greater challenges, greater battles to fight, because strong experienced soldiers are needed in some of the battles. The Lord is preparing you for great things.

Still another teaching: Spiritual temptations cause utmost despair and anguish. There is no such thing as an easy spiritual temptation. Sometimes you feel that you are going to “lose it” during a spiritual temptation. And again, if the response of your mind is, “Why do I have to have really bad temptations? Why can’t they be easy?” then you have missed the point of why you are here.

When Jesus began His ministry, He was baptized by John in the Jordan River. And then He went into the wilderness and was tempted by the devil for forty days. He hungered. He hungered so much that He was tempted by the devil to make bread out of the stones. And His hunger was deep within Him. He hungered for the salvation of the whole human race.

The devil took Him up to the pinnacle of the temple, and asked Him to throw Himself down. He was tempted to doubt His own power to save the human race.

And finally, the devil took Him up to a great and high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world. All this would be given to Him if He would just bow down and worship the devil.

And after all these temptations, it says that the devil left Him “for a time.” The temptations were to continue. They were to continue even to the passion of the cross. And by His victory over temptation, our redemption was effected.

Let us use His victory as strength in our lives so that we may face the challenges that lie before us with courage and strength. Amen.

Rev. Tom Kline

You shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thornbushes, or figs of thistles? Even so, every good tree bears good fruit; but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bring forth good fruit." (Matthew 7:16-18)

It is the nature of love not to rest and find satisfaction except in some outward act, something practical. We know this from common experience; whatever we love or desire, we strive to achieve, and only in the achievement itself is there the fullness of delight. Because of this, the love for what is good cannot contain itself until it produces good; and if there is no production of good outcomes, then there is not any love for them. In the same way, the love for what is evil comes into its so-called pleasure only by doing evil … except that it does not call it evil.

This striving for practicality, for tangible results, is derived from the Divine proceeding, whose origin is the Divine love, whose means or law is the Divine wisdom, and whose termination is usefulness. The Divine desire for use is the salvation of the human race, and in that alone the Divine love comes into its rest or completion.

With us, the termination of love in practical things is also called use. But we have to realise that no use originates in us. We can see this when we realise that the various uses to which a wicked person or an evil spirit turns are in no way derived from the person or the spirit. An evil love can produce nothing whatever but evil; that is to say, an evil love can never do anything but harm. The turning of that harm to serve for a warning and a balance is quite another matter, and is the Lord’s doing. Similarly the use that an angel or a regenerating person service is not in that angel or person, but in the Lord.

An angel or a person by him or herself without the Lord is not life but rather death, and nothing that is dead can produce what is living or what leads to salvation. Even so, the angel and the person is given a love to be his own, a love which is imperfect, only a limited image of Divine love. Such a love is given so that we will strive to do things and bring things to fruition and completion. Like the builder feels the house is all his own work and like the guard who feels the security comes from his own vigilance, but truly,

If the Lord does not build the house, the labour is a vain one… (Psalm 127)

The fact that the Lord flows in with life into that love which is born of God brings an assurance that whatever results from that love will be in the stream of providence. The Lord doesn’t leave what is born of himself but follows it up to eternity in all the usefulness that comes from it. When we do things genuinely and with the best intentions, it comes from our love for what is good, and then we do not need to be anxious about the results because the Lord will protect and guide those as if they are his own, which of course, they are.

Conversely, the Lord is not “in” the word or action that comes from an evil love, and so it will decay. A good person’s actions are immediately useful in the kingdom of God but those of a bad person are not of “immediate” use but can only be made useful by contrast when the wrong in them is seen for what it is. This is what Jesus’ words about bringing forth fruit speak about: It is an actual truth that a good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor a bad tree bear good fruit, but a bad tree bears evil fruit.” And we, if we turn to the Lord, shall know them by their fruits and see them for what they are or they are not.

In the New Church we are taught how the fruits that are of the kingdom of use are produced, and we are also shown what they are. It is all to do with what is called “the first of charity” which is to look to the Lord and to shun evils as sins. The actual fruits themselves and their nature are called the “second of charity” which is to do things that are good because they are useful.

When we start thinking about the first of these, we see that the charity from which some usefulness is to come is born of and perfected by the Lord’s truths. This is to the same extent that any individual evil is shunned and abstained from because it is a sin, since it goes against the truths which expressly forbid them.

At the same time we will also see that unless evils are seen to be contrary to certain divine laws or truths they will not be recognised as sins.

And finally we see that the spirit of charity which gets formed from that painful process, like the pearl in the oyster forms from the irritation of grit, is the new love of the person. Now we can turn to the second aspect of charity, about doing things that are good because they are useful.

In Swedenborg’s book “Charity” (from which the above two aspects of charity are taken – see the first two headings in it) it is shown that the good or the use which are to do with the “second of charity” can be divided into five types. 1. Charity in our occupations; 2. The signs of charity; 3. Helpful acts of charity; 4. Duties of charity; 5. Enjoyments of charity.

It seems clear that these five types embrace everything that can ever be called a fruit of charity. In the same way, we cannot do without any of them; we must develop all of them if it is to be well with us. Doing that is the art of life. Longing to do so is present in the spirit of charity itself. So far as that spirit is born in a person as his or her new love, he will have nothing but delight in doing them.

Yet even then this person will be aware of needing to pay attention, striving from an awakened love to arrange his life proportionally within their heavenly framework, leaving none of them out and not letting any one of them develop unduly at the expanse of the others.

We are sometimes reluctant to be organised in regard to our way of living. Yet every love, good or evil, is systematic within the boundaries of its own purposes. A burglar is systematic in his manner, a wise leader also in his. Our soul is very systematic in sustaining and maintaining our body, so is our contriving love of ourselves in its creation of private excuses. The only system that is repugnant to us is that which opposes our ruling love, and it is from that that the love of a worldly person is opposed to the ordered life in which a spiritual person’s love would find as it were his home.

In doing what is good, we should note that all five forms of it, superficially regarded, are quite possible without anything whatever of actual charity being in them. For who cannot attend to his occupation or employment, observe the forms of worship and piety, carry out kind actions to other people, fulfil various obligations to state and society, and take part in diversions with his friends, and do all of them without shunning evils as sins. Who, in other words, cannot make a display of the second of charity and yet not be in the first?

Suppose, now, that evils are being shunned as sins, and therefore the love of the new will has been kindled by the spirit of charity. If this is so, the first and main expression of that charity will be the honest, just and faithful performance of the work of one’s occupation or employment. In fact this is the chief form of charity because it is the greatest use, for on it depends the orderliness of nations and society, and likewise the welfare of the kingdom of God. Ideally, the occupation taken up by each person is the best channel for his inclination or talent. It will be like this in heaven. But it is not always like this on earth, particularly when the state of the world is beset by all kinds of disorder.

Nevertheless, if it is seen that one’s work does add to, and not detract from, the wellbeing of society, if it is properly done, then the best application of one’s mind must be given to it. Indeed, not only is the honest, just and faithful carrying out of one’s responsibilities conducive to the general health of society, it is also the chief means of ensuring the health of one’s own mind. The Heavenly Doctrines say:

All those who in the world have loved being of use, and who have carried out uses from the love of them, think sanely in their spirits, and their spirits think sanely in their bodies. Affection for use has kept their minds entire.” (Divine Love, xv).

Second in importance are what are called “signs of charity.” These are all things that pertain to worship and piety. They are called signs because the various acts of worship and the meditation or prayer of the mind are external things; and whatever the internal person brings to sight and feeling in the external is called a “sign”. Because this is so, the quality of someone’s piety is the same as the quality of his charity. Someone’s piety or lack of it is in proportion to his charity or lack of it.

But since the forms of piety are but the signs of internal charity, so then that charity cannot sustain itself without its proper sign. It is in the nature of genuine charity to have an urge for prayer, confession and thanksgiving; for in these it shows and confirms its acknowledgment that the origin of everything good and true is in the Lord alone.

The third type of use consists in the “kind actions of charity”; and in the Heavenly Doctrines these are defined as

all the good which a man who is a charity does, in freedom, outside the scope of his occupation. (Charity 184).

Such activity ought to be done, and done prudently and plenteously, yet not for the sake of meriting heaven, for heaven is not granted for small efforts of that nature, which might even give some gratification to the benefactor’s own love of self, but for the giving up of that very love. Nevertheless, the life of society, here on earth and also in heaven, requires the rendering of services to the neighbour beyond those which are prescribed by one’s occupation or employment. In fact, a special measure of spontaneity is given to the mind in this third type of charity-

When you give alms, let not your left hand know what your right hand doeth (Matthew 6: 3).

Less free in their outward form are the “duties of charity,” which are next in order. These too are necessary uses of the kingdom. They consist in payment for common necessaries and for the various needs of one’s own household. They take the form of subordination, obedience and the like, when such things do matter. The main point of emphasis here is that all these things can either be done from charity or not. If they are from charity, then they are done willingly and gladly, and without a sense of external compulsion; they are not avoided, nor done grudgingly and with complaint.

True, the issue may become clouded in our sight when there is disorder in the country, and when legislators and other persons in the country appear to be unworthy of our trust. Nevertheless, meeting of obligations by its citizens is necessary to the life of every community or state; and this being so, there should be a ready willingness to “render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s”; and this in a spirit that springs from willingness to give “unto God the things that are God’s” (Matthew 22: 21).

Finally we have the “enjoyments of charity.” These are not, as might be supposed, a matter of delight for everyone. Certainly men, women and children alike enjoy diversions. But there is a difference, for every love has its own delight and its own diversion, and here we are concerned only with the diversions or recreations of charity. It is important for charity to have these, for a love can be replenished only by relaxation as it were in its own corresponding external form. Without such rest in the “evening” states of the heavenly mind, the love of that mind would become stale and torpid, and would eventually lose its vigour and zeal. To develop proper and delightful forms of “diversions of charity” is the purpose of what we are accustomed to call New Church social life. And there is much to be learned and achieved here by future generations, and also by our own.

These, then, are the five forms of charity. They are uses, and they complement one another, so that together they form an ordered whole into which the Divine aspect of use, the Holy Spirit, may flow. They are the delightful fruits, the fruit of a mind from which the entangling thorns and the thistles of merely worldly and bodily loves have been removed. Genuine charity and the faith of charity are their origins; and in them the Divine love and wisdom, and the love of its likeness and the faith of its image, dwell together and are conjoined.

Ye shall know them by their fruits.

Amen.

by Rev. Erick Sandstrom