Eternal Life
By
the Rev. Lee Woofenden
Bridgewater,
Massachusetts, January 31, 1999
Readings
Genesis
28:10-17 Jacob's dream of a ladder
Jacob
left Beersheba and set out for Haran. When he reached a
certain place, he stopped for the night because the sun
had set. Taking one of the stones there, he put it under
his head and lay down to sleep.
He
had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the
earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels
of God were ascending and descending on it. There above
it stood the Lord, and he said: "I am the Lord, the
God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will
give you and your descendants the land on which you are
lying. Your descendants will be like the dust of the
earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the
east, to the north and to the south. All peoples on
earth will be blessed through you and your offspring. I
am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and
I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you
until I have done what I have promised you."
When
Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought, "Surely the
Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it."
He was afraid and said, "How awesome is this place!
This is none other than the house of God; this is the
gate of heaven."
Matthew
7:21-27 Entering the kingdom of heaven
Not
everyone who says to me, "Lord, Lord," will
enter the kingdom of heaven, but only those who do the
will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me
on that day, "Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in
your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform
many miracles?" Then I will tell them plainly,
"I never knew you. Away from me, you
evildoers!"
Therefore
everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them
into practice is like a wise man who built his house on
the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the
winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not
fall, because it had its foundation on the rock.
But
everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put
them into practice is like a foolish man who built his
house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and
the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell
with a great crash.
Heaven
and Hell #493 Death is only a crossing
In
our first stage after we die, our condition is like what
it was in the world, since at that point we are involved
in the same outward concerns. We have a similar face,
voice, and spirit, and so we have a similar moral and
community life.
This
is why at that point we are entirely unaware that we are
not still in the world, unless we pay attention to the
things that have happened to us, and what we were told
by angels when we were awakened--namely, that we are now
a spirit.
So
one life continues into the other, and death is only a
crossing.
Sermon
Jacob
had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the
earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels
of God were ascending and descending on it. . . .
When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought,
"Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not
aware of it." He was afraid and said, "How
awesome is this place! This is none other than the house
of God; this is the gate of heaven." (Exodus 28:13,
16, 17)
A
little over a week ago, Gladys Wheeler, one of the
angels of our church, ascended that ladder into heaven
and disappeared from our sight here on earth. Her
memorial service on Tuesday was a tribute to the good,
loving, and useful life she lived here on earth. Of
course, we will miss her--we have missed her
since she had to move out of Bridgewater, and now we
will miss her even more, knowing that we cannot see her
anymore until we ourselves ascend that ladder. And yet,
when a person like Gladys dies, having lived a good,
long life, we also have a sense of comfort in knowing
that she has finished her work on earth, and is now
ready to move on to her eternal home in heaven.
Even
in our feelings of sadness and loss, we can rejoice in
thoughts of Gladys rejoining her beloved husband Hermon,
whom she has missed during the almost thirty years since
he died. She had recently mentioned to her family how
much she missed him; now the two of them are back
together again, catching up on everything that has
happened to one another during their time apart. (And
yet, I suspect that in spirit, they were never far
apart.) We can be happy for Gladys as she sees once
again so many of the friends and family members who have
gone before her. And we can be happy for her as she
regains the full use of her body--now a spiritual
body--and enjoys the active, useful life she loves.
Skeptics
and cynics would scoff at such thoughts, sweeping them
aside as wishful fantasies. "Who has ever gone
there and come back to tell us?" they might ask. As
it turns out, we Swedenborgians have a good answer to
that question! (Not that they would believe us anyway.)
For we believe that Emanuel Swedenborg did indeed go to
the spiritual world and come back to tell us about
it--and not just once, but for nearly thirty years, from
his mid-fifties until he died at age eighty-four. His
most popular book has always been Heaven and Hell,
in which he describes in detail both the heavenly and
the hellish realms, as well as the in-between state that
we enter when we first die, which he calls "The
World of Spirits."
This
morning, as our thoughts linger on our dear friend
Gladys and her recent departure from this world, I would
like to take you on a journey through the World of
Spirits and beyond, following in a general way the path
that Gladys is now walking along as she finds her way to
her home in heaven. In her case, I suspect the path will
be a short one, since she didn't have many rough edges
left that still need to be smoothed off before joining
the angels. Other people may take longer.
In
Heaven and Hell, Swedenborg describes three
stages that we go through after we wake up in the
spiritual world, as we make our way toward our heavenly
home. The first is a stage of living in our outer self,
the second is one of living in our inner self, and the
third is one of learning and preparing ourselves for
heavenly life. After we have gone through these three
stages, we are ready to move into a community in heaven
where we will spend eternity with those we love most. I
should mention, however, that if we have chosen a
hellish instead of a heavenly life for ourselves, we go
through only the first two stages, and skip the third as
we head downward to be among those who have destructive
motives and desires similar to our own. The reason for
this will become clear as we go along.
When
we first die, we are ushered into the spiritual world by
angels of the highest heaven--angels whose lives are
ruled by God's love in their hearts. Those of you who
have been present when someone died may have experienced
the incredible feeling of peace that often accompanies
death. It goes against many of our notions of death, but
Swedenborg tells us that this feeling of peace comes
from the heavenly angels who are with us when we die.
For a few moments, those who are with the dying person
may have the wonderful privilege of feeling that gateway
of heaven opened, and that angelic peace flow into their
own souls.
But
soon after we wake up in the spiritual world, Swedenborg
says, we go back to an outward life very similar to the
one we had in this world. We cook and eat, sleep and
wake up, work and play, and go through the same kinds of
thoughts and feelings that we do day in and day out here
on earth. In fact, in this first stage after death, our
lives are so similar to what they were here that we may
not even realize we have died! Of course, if we believe
in an afterlife, and if we paid attention to the events
surrounding our death, we will know. But those who are
not so attentive, or who don't particularly believe in
an afterlife, may continue for some time believing they
are still living on this earth.
And
yet, funny things sometimes happen to clue us in. One
time Swedenborg was in the World of Spirits talking to
someone who had recently arrived there. This fellow was
a bit of a skeptic. He kept asking Swedenborg,
"What's a spirit?" "What's a soul?"
"I don't know what a soul is." At that point
Swedenborg, with his dry wit, told the man that he
himself was a spirit--as he could realize from the fact
that he was up above Swedenborg's head, and not standing
on the ground. "Can't you tell?" Swedenborg
asked. Whereupon the terrified man rushed off yelling,
"I'm a spirit! I'm a spirit!" (Arcana
Coelestia #447)
One
way or another, we begin to realize that something
deeper is happening to us. Any outward masks of behavior
that do not really fit with what we are like inside
begin to come off. Soon we are in the second stage of
our transition to our final home: we are in the stage of
living in our inner self. As this stage progresses,
everything about us is transformed into a perfect image
of our true inner self. If we have chosen a life of
selfishness and greed, whatever outward politeness and
decorum we may have put on to fool others is now
stripped away, and we are revealed for the hellish
creatures that we are. We then rush downward to be with
people of like minds, skipping the third stage of
learning and preparation because we are unwilling to
learn or be taught anymore.
But
most of us, I believe, choose to put love, not
selfishness, at the center of our lives. And if this has
been our choice, then in our second stage after death
the rough edges that have remained part of our outward
character, the bad habits we have picked up along the
way, the confusion of goals that we sometimes experience
here, all melt away as our entire lives become a
reflection of the love for others and for God that is
the true center of our being. If we have not been sure
what our purpose in life is, and what our special gifts
and talents are, this all becomes clear during this
stage of opening up what lies deep in our hearts.
At
this point, we are almost ready for our heavenly home.
But even though we have reached clarity in our character
and goals, we still have things to learn about what
heavenly life is all about. Having spent much of our
lives on earth learning how to get along in the material
world, we need to spend some time learning how to get
along in the communities that make up heaven. So we
spend a longer or shorter time at the ultimate graduate
school, learning how to graduate into our own highest
degree of love and service.
Finally,
after a longer or shorter time spent going through these
stages, we find our way to a community of angels who
share our deepest values and our goals. And when we
enter that community, we know that we are among our
dearest friends, and that we have found our true home.
This is where we will spend eternity, not because anyone
has told us that it is where we must stay, but
because our heart and mind together tell us that this is
exactly where we love to be, and these are exactly the
people we love to be with. By this time, we have
discovered what we love to do, and we enter into the joy
of serving God and one another in our own unique way.
People like Gladys who loved to be active and
useful remind us just how good and how pleasant it is to
be doing work we truly love.
This
is our path from physical death to eternal life. We can
take comfort in knowing that Gladys and others who have
recently died are on this path to the joy of angelhood.
Yet
there is more in knowing about this journey than simply
helping us to accept death. The ideal that Swedenborg
presents to us is that we will not need to go through
these stages after death, because we will have already
gone through them here on earth. We do not need to wait
until after we die to prepare ourselves for eternal
life; we have an entire lifetime here on earth to make
those preparations. And the more we focus on preparing
ourselves for eternal life, the happier we will be, both
here and hereafter.
Our
journey after death gives us some hints on how to go
about preparing ourselves. We all start out in life
concerned more with outward than with inward things. If
we wish to grow spiritually, we need to shift our
primary focus from the worldly concerns of houses, cars,
clothes, and other material possessions to the inward
concerns of love and compassion, understanding and
kindness. When we allow those deeper values to shape our
entire lives--heart, mind, and action--then we are
entering the second stage, of opening up our inner life,
while we are still living in the material world. And as
our awareness opens up to deeper realities, we will seek
out and learn the things we need to know to become
angels here on earth. Then we will realize, with Jacob,
that no matter where we happen to be, "This is none
other than the house of God; this is the gate of
heaven." Amen.

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