John 16:12-15, 25-27 I have much more to say to
you
"I
have much more to say to you, more than you can
now bear. But when the Spirit of truth comes, he
will guide you into all truth. He will not speak
on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and
he will tell you what is yet to come. He will
bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and
making it known to you. All that belongs to the
Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will
take from what is mine and make it known to you. . . .
"Though
I have been speaking figuratively, a time is
coming when I will no longer use this kind of
language but will tell you plainly about my
Father. In that day you will ask in my name. I am
not saying that I will ask the Father on your
behalf. No, the Father himself loves you because
you have loved me and have believed that I came
from God."
True Christian Religion #774 The Lord's Coming
The
Lord is continually present with every person,
both the evil and the good, for no one could live
without his presence. But his coming happens only
for those who receive him--which are those who
believe in him and keep his commandments.
It
is the Lord's continual presence that gives us the
faculty of reason and the ability to become
spiritual. This is brought about by the light that
comes from the Lord as the sun of the spiritual
world, which we can receive in our understanding.
That light is the truth that gives us the power of
reasoning.
However,
the Lord's coming takes place in us when we
combine warmth with that light--that is, when we
combine love with truth. For the warmth radiated
by that same sun is love for God and love towards
the neighbor. The Lord's presence by itself, and
the enlightenment it brings to the understanding,
is like the presence of sunlight in the world;
unless it is combined with warmth, everything on
earth is barren. But the Lord's coming is like the
coming of warmth, which happens in springtime.
Since warmth is then combined with light, the
earth is softened up, and the seeds sprout and
bear fruit.
This
is the parallel between the spiritual environment
of our spirit and the material environment of our
body.
Sermon
"I
have much more to say to you, more than you can
now bear. But when the Spirit of truth comes, he
will guide you into all truth. . . . Though I have
been speaking figuratively, a time is coming when
I will no longer use this kind of language but
will tell you plainly about my Father." (John
16:12, 25)
We
are now living in the time that Jesus was speaking
of. You and I are privileged and blessed to be
receivers of that plain language about the divine
Father--of the Holy Spirit guiding us into all
truth. I do not say this to set us apart as a
special people, because God loves all people
equally. Instead, I say it to emphasize the great
treasure that we have in our church. I am
speaking, of course, of the spiritual writings of
Emanuel Swedenborg.
A
year ago, during my sabbatical, this church
enjoyed a series of sermons given by lay people
and visiting ministers on "Why I Am a
Swedenborgian." In that series, we shared
with one another what this church, and the
writings of Swedenborg which inspired it, have
done for us. In her sermon on this topic, which
has just been printed in the January 2001 issue of
Our Daily Bread, the Rev. Dr. Wilma Wake
tells of her excitement on finding the
Swedenborgian Church and delving into Swedenborg's
writings as a newcomer. She writes:
I
felt I had arrived in heaven when I realized
that there was a group of people whose
spirituality was formed in the context of
Swedenborg's writings. I had found a
spirituality that made sense for me, and found
it affirmed in the writings of Swedenborg. When
I learned that others had found comfort in those
writings, I was so excited! I was amazed that
some people actually grew up in this church and
with these writings!
I
remember taking a tutorial at the Swedenborg
School of Religion with the Rev. Dr. Bob Kirven
on Swedenborg's book Divine Love and Wisdom,
and coming in to our session exclaiming,
"Do those people who were raised on these
writings really understand what they say? Do
they realize how radical they are? How profound?
How they answer so many of today's complex
questions? Do they realize how lucky they are to
have had these writings always a part of their
lives, and not to have had to search to find
them?"
I
am one of those "lucky" ones who was
raised with Swedenborg's writings. Some of you in
this congregation are, too. Others have had the
"luck" of finding them later in life. I
put "luck" in quotation marks both times
because I do not believe it was luck. Rather, I
believe it was God's providence working to bring
us the great enlightenment to be found in the
writings of Swedenborg at the time in our lives
when we most needed it.
This
is the very same providence that brought the world
that enlightenment at the very time it was needed.
You see, the people of this world have been
through several great spiritual eras. Swedenborg
describes four of them. The first, represented at
its height by the Garden of Eden in the Bible, is
called the very earliest religious era, or
"the most ancient church," to use
traditional Swedenborgian language. This was the
Golden Age of mythology--a time when people led
with their hearts, and had open communication with
angels and spirits in the spiritual world. It came
to its final end with the great flood in Genesis
chapters six through eight.
Next
came the ancient religious era, or church,
represented by Noah and his descendants. This was
the Silver Age of mythology, when people led with
their heads, their intellects, and developed the
early civilizations--complete with highly cultured
and symbol-rich written languages--which still
amaze us today. It is usually reckoned to end with
the call of Abram in Genesis chapter twelve, but
there are some indications that its true end may
have been with the giving of the Ten Commandments
on Mount Sinai, along with the other laws that
formed the core and organizing principle of the
ancient Jewish Church.
The
Jewish, or Israelitish Church was the spiritual
mother through which the written Word of God was
given to humankind. It remained the
standard-bearer of monotheism and the primary
source of a relatively enlightened spiritual path
in the then-known world right up to the time when
Jesus Christ came into the world. As such, it
represented the third great spiritual era of
humankind.
From
its roots in ancient Judaism, Christianity took
over as the spiritual front-runner and primary
source of enlightenment to a dark and troubled
world, thus forming the fourth great spiritual
era.
However,
every living, growing thing on this earth has a
beginning, a middle, and an end. Everything is
born, lives out its life, and then dies. Each of
these spiritual eras went through that cycle of
birth, life, and death. They began with great
enlightenment and devotion to the ways of God, and
ended when that early enlightenment and devotion
lapsed into falsity, error, and ignorance born of
self-centeredness, pride, and greed. Swedenborg
writes:
A
church reaches its end when there is no divine
truth left in it, but only falsified or rejected
truth. . . . Truth comes to an
end, and goodness along with it, primarily due
to the two worldly loves that are diametrically
opposed to the two spiritual loves. These are
called selfish love and materialistic love. When
selfish love is dominant, it is opposite to the
love of God; and when materialistic love is
dominant, it is opposite to love towards the
neighbor. Selfish love is wishing well to no one
but ourselves, except for selfish reasons, and
materialistic love is similar. Once these loves
have taken hold, they spread like gangrene
throughout the body, and destroy every part of
it step by step. (True Christian Religion
#753, 754)
This
is what had happened to the ancient Jewish Church
by the time of the Lord's First Coming two
thousand years ago. And this is also what happened
to the Christian Church over the centuries.
When
Christianity first began, it drew much of its
character from Jesus' teachings about loving
friends and enemies alike, turning the other
cheek, being reborn in the spirit, and worshipping
the Lord alone. But as it grew in numbers and
influence, its leaders began to be turned aside by
the lure of worldly wealth and personal power.
Because of these corrupting
influences--materialism and selfishness--they soon
began to corrupt the simple, loving, and
life-centered teachings of Christ into convoluted,
fractured, and spiritually dead dogmas that had
more to do with establishing the exclusive power
of the church and its leaders than with leading
people toward living in an honest, loving, and
spiritual way.
It
was not many centuries before the church that had
been founded on teachings of loving our enemies,
blessing those who curse us, and doing good for
those who hate us had broken into warring factions
that felt they were doing God's will by
slaughtering anyone who did not hold to their
particular beliefs. The history of the Christian
Church, especially from the time of the Council of
Nicea in 325 AD, is a dismal affair, full of power
struggles, dark dealings and a continual
corruption of the teachings of Christ until there
was very little left that could truly be called
Christian. The Protestant Reformation did little
to reverse this trend, and led to even more wars
of so-called "Christians" against
"Christians."
And
so the first Christian church ran its course. It
was born, lived out its life, and died when all of
Christ's teachings had been falsified through the
greed and selfishness of the people who called
themselves Christians. Only the shell of the
institutional church was left; the spirit had long
since left the body of Christianity.
That
was when the real millennium took place.
In
human years, I'll admit my bias. I've read the
arguments that the millennium happens at the
beginning of 2001 because there was no year zero.
I still think it happened last year, when 1999
gave way to 2000. However, I haven't engaged in
those debates about the "real"
millennium because it is only numbers on a
calendar devised by human beings.
God
does not go by our calendar. And God saw that the
time was ripe over two hundred years ago for a new
spiritual era to begin. The first Christian Church
had run its course from its birth in love and
innocence to its death in greed, doctrinal error,
and murderous hatred of all who disagreed with
their own particular sect's doctrinal error.
It
was time for a new Christian Church. And the Lord
provided for that new Christian Church quietly, in
an unexpected way, just as his first coming to
earth had turned many of the ancient prophecies of
the Messiah on their head. This was not to be a
great and flashy coming to conquer worldly,
political enemies and establish an earthly
kingdom. As Jesus said to Pilate two thousand
years ago, "My kingdom is not of this
world" (John 18:36). And now, two thousand
years later, his kingdom is still a spiritual
kingdom and not a worldly one. And his Second
Coming is a spiritual one, not a physical one.
These
are the bold claims made by Emanuel Swedenborg,
who said that the Lord had chosen and especially
prepared him to carry to the world the teachings
for the people who would be a part of the new
spiritual era represented by the Holy City, New
Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven
(Revelation 21:2). And unlike the previous four
spiritual eras which all came to their end, this
one, the prophecies say, will never end. It will
continue to grow in power and glory forever
because the shadows of the old had been dispelled,
and now people can walk clear-sighted in the
brilliant new light given to the world.
This
is the same light that you and I walk in today--as
much as we learn of the teachings given us by God
through the mind of his chosen servant Emanuel
Swedenborg. This light opens up to us the deeper
meaning of God's Word, re-establishing the Bible
as the supremely sacred text that tells from
beginning to end both our own spiritual story and
the still deeper story of the Lord's inner, divine
life here on earth. This light dispels the
centuries-old confusion surrounding the Biblical
teachings about the trinity, showing in a
powerfully rational yet fully Bible-based way how
the risen and glorified Jesus Christ encompasses
all aspects of God--Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit--in one Divinely Human person. This light
assures us that God's love and mercy extends to
people of all religions and all beliefs, opening
the way to heaven for all people of faith who
sincerely practice their beliefs in their daily
lives. This brilliant new light that dawned on our
earth two and a half centuries ago is the real
millennium on God's calendar.
The
question remaining is how far that new millennium
will penetrate into the minds, hearts, and lives
of each one of us. We have been blessed with a
great light, and each one of us here in this
church, as well as those sharing with us in spirit
through the mail and through the Internet, is
thankful in our own way for the new light that
shines into our darkness. Yet as Swedenborg tells
us in our reading from True Christian Religion,
the mere presence of light in our minds does not
mean that the Lord has come into our lives. Yes,
the Lord is always present with each one of us,
giving us the ability to understand and appreciate
the divine truth offered to us. But like the light
of winter, our understanding of spiritual truth
can be cold, producing no life and growth in us.
It
is when we open up not only our minds, but our
hearts to the Lord's presence that the brilliant
light of truth is combined with the enlivening
warmth of love. Then the Lord can come into our
lives, transforming us from the inside out. And
for each of us personally, this is the real
millennium! When we have passed through our time
of darkness, error, materialism, and
self-absorption; when we have come to the point
where we are willing to let that old phase of our
lives die, and welcome God into our hearts and
minds as the center and source of our own new
spiritual era, then we have begun to build within
and around ourselves the new kingdom of God that
will never end.
The
sign and seal that we have not only let our minds
be enlightened, but have also let our hearts be
warmed by the Second Coming of the Lord is when we
express God's truth lovingly by devoting our lives
day in and day out, week by week, year after year,
to serving our fellow human beings with kindness,
love, and ever-growing joy. Amen.