A New
Vision
of the New Church
by the Rev. Lee Woofenden
New Year
Bridgewater, Massachusetts, April 9, 2000
Readings
Isaiah
65:17-25 New heavens and a new earth
I
am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former
things will not be remembered or come to mind. But be glad and
rejoice forever in what I am creating; for I am about to create
Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight. I will rejoice
in Jerusalem, and delight in my people; no more will the sound
of weeping be heard in it, or the cry of distress.
No
more will there be in it an infant that lives but a few days, or
an old person who does not live out a lifetime; for one who dies
at a hundred years will be considered a youth, and one who falls
short of a hundred will be considered accursed.
They
will build houses and inhabit them; they will plant vineyards
and eat their fruit. They will not build and another inhabit;
they will not plant and another eat; for like the days of a tree
will the days of my people be, and my chosen people will long
enjoy the work of their hands. They will not labor in vain, or
bear children for calamity; for they will be offspring blessed
by the Lord--and their descendants as well. Before they call I
will answer; while they are still speaking I will hear.
The
wolf and the lamb will feed together, the lion will eat straw
like the ox; but the serpent's food will be dust. They will not
hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, says the Lord.
Mark 12:28-34 The two greatest commandments
One
of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating.
Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him,
"Of all the commandments, which is the most
important?"
Jesus
replied, "The most important one is this: 'Hear, O Israel,
the Lord our God is one Lord. Love the Lord your God with all
your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and
with all your strength' (Deuteronomy 6:4, 5). The second is
this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself' (Leviticus 19:18). There
is no commandment greater than these."
"Well
said, teacher," the man replied. "You are right in
saying that God is one and there is no other but him. To love
him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with
all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more
important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices."
When
Jesus saw that he had answered wisely, he said to him, "You
are not far from the kingdom of God."
The Heavenly City #9 A religion based on kindness
The
perspective on kindness, which is a philosophy about life, was
the central concept in the ancient religions. This perspective
united all the religions; though there were many of them, they
all worked together, since they considered all people who spent
their lives doing good things through kindness to be religious
people. They called them brothers even if they disagreed about
what was true (what we call "faith" today).
One
of their acts of kindness was to teach each other what was true.
But they were not offended if someone did not agree with their
opinion. They knew that the more people are involved in doing
good things, the more they accept true ideas.
Since
the people in the ancient religions were like this, they had
more depth as human beings than we do now. They were also wiser
than we are. When we are doing good things out of love and
kindness, our inner self is in heaven, in a community of angels
who do the same kind of good things as we do. Our minds are led
into deeper things, and we become wise. Wisdom can only come
from heaven, which means it comes to us through heaven from the
Lord. There is wisdom in heaven because the people there do
things that are good. Wisdom is seeing truth in its own
light--and the light of truth is the light that exists in
heaven.
Sermon
I
am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former
things will not be remembered or come to mind. But be glad and
rejoice forever in what I am creating; for I am about to create
Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight. (Isaiah 65:17,
18)
It
is truly a joy and a delight to be back with you today, leading
you in worship and speaking to you again from the pulpit in this
church that we all love so much. I have missed seeing all of you
and being with you for worship. At the same time, I have had a
lot of time to think about this church--about where we have come
from, where we are now, and what our next steps might be as a
congregation. After the Easter season is over, I'll be talking
with you more about some of the steps we could or should take
together.
But
not today. Today I want to celebrate what has happened in this
church during my sabbatical. And I want to talk to you very
personally about the new vision that I see growing not only in
this congregation, but in the Swedenborgian Church as a whole.
It is a new vision that I believe will carry us very powerfully
into the new millennium. For I do believe that the Lord is about
to "create a new heaven and a new earth" right here
among us, and that we are moving into a new phase of our church
in which "the former things will not be remembered or come
to mind."
In
the last sermon I preached here, on January 2, just before I
went on sabbatical, I made this prediction:
My absence from
the pulpit will give you, the members and friends of this
church, a wonderful opportunity to share with one another what
this church means to you. . . . Contrary to the
fears that while I am away the church will lose the ground we
have gained together over the past few years, I believe that
this congregation will grow in spirit through these
three months, and come out stronger in our faith and our
vision of what the Bridgewater New Jerusalem Church is--and
what it can become.
Now
I ask you: Am I a prophet or what?!? In fact, I'd like to test
my gift of prophecy. If you feel that there is a new and
stronger spirit in this church through these three months of
sharing with one another what this church means to you, please
raise your hand now. If you really, really feel there is
a stronger spirit in the church, raise both hands!
For
me, the new spirit in this church is so strong that it reached
me even though I was not physically present with you. Each time
I read one of the testimonials about this church that you gave
while I was away, it touched my heart, and gave me a greater
understanding and appreciation of what each of you has found in
this church. Meanwhile, I'd hear about the services from Patty,
or from one or another of you by email, or when I would bump
into one of you here or there. And I could feel the appreciation
and excitement, the sense of new closeness and understanding,
that has been building in this congregation.
All
of this has been a confirmation of my "prophecy." Yet
I couldn't have predicted that after only three months, there
would be new faces in the congregation waiting to greet me on my
return! It is almost as if the growing spirit in the church has
been reaching out and drawing people to the church through some
kind of inner attraction. This, my friends, is the Spirit of the
Lord working in this congregation.
Speaking
of drawing people to the church, let me tell you about my
experience of our church this past Monday. My usual experience
of this church during the week is of having this great big
building all to myself. Not Monday evening! I had a wedding
conference at 7:00 that evening. By the time I arrived to open
the place up, the teacher for Northeastern University's Spring
Reading program had already arrived, and was setting up for the
classes she would teach that evening. I had a nice conversation
with her, in which she told me how pleased they are with our
Sunday School room--that after looking into several other
spaces, ours turned out to be the perfect one for their program.
Soon, parents were bringing their children in for the classes.
Meanwhile, the women in our crafts group started arriving to set
up in the parlor for an evening of fellowship and handcrafting.
Let me tell you, as I showed that wedding couple our beautiful
sanctuary, and then and sat down with them in my office to plan
their wedding, this church was a happening place!
After
I finished with the wedding couple, I spent some time talking to
one of the parents who was waiting for his son's class to
finish. Then I drifted over to the crafts group and had more
conversation as paintbrushes and sewing needles went about their
creative work. Amid all of this activity, I had a new sense of
what this church is all about, and what it can be. As I shared
in the life experiences of a young couple about to be married;
children coming to learn; a father concerned about his son's
schoolwork, yet proud of his son's artistic ability; mothers and
grandmothers sharing their lives around a table strewn with the
materials of creativity--as all of this activity swirled around
and within me in this sacred space dedicated to the service of
the Lord, I gained a new sense of the human reality of
what it is to be a church--of what it is to be a New Church.
"I
am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former
things will not be remembered or come to mind. But be glad and
rejoice forever in what I am creating; for I am about to create
Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight."
We
Swedenborgians have often defined our church by the
distinctiveness our beliefs compared to the beliefs of other
churches. And there is a basis in our teachings for doing that.
We call ourselves the "New Church," or the "New
Jerusalem Church," in reference to Swedenborg's
interpretation of the heavenly city, New Jerusalem, from the
Book of Revelation. Jerusalem is a city. Swedenborg explains the
symbolic meaning of the city Jerusalem as (in essence) the
"belief structure" of the church. This makes sense. A
city is something we build as a community space for living and
working. The buildings give our lives form, protect us from the
weather, and provide a familiar place in which to dwell.
This
is similar to the way our beliefs work spiritually. We build our
beliefs from the religious and cultural materials available to
us: the Bible, Sunday School, church services, sermons,
spiritual books, conversations with family members and friends,
life experience. All of these we pull together to build a
spiritual dwelling place that will protect us from the storms of
life and provide a space where we can spiritually live and work
in surroundings that feel comfortable. And just as we are a
congregation and not a single individual, we know that we do not
build our spiritual city of faith on our own, but together with
others who share a similar faith and similar spiritual goals.
In
the past, our focus as a church has tended to be on the beauty
of the "city" of teachings and beliefs that we have
been blessed with in our church. And it is a very
beautiful city. In one way or another, every one of your sermons
paid tribute to the beauty, strength, and helpfulness of the
faith we share. The teachings of our church are, indeed, a
priceless treasure that the Lord has given us as a wonderful
gift.
Yet
can we really imagine that beautiful, shining city, New
Jerusalem, without the people thronging its streets, going about
their business, living their lives, getting together for work or
for pleasure, to share both their work and their play? The city
as an organized collection of buildings and streets represents
the teachings--the belief structure--of the church. But a city
does not exist for its own sake. It exists to be lived in!
And the real heart of a city is not its physical structure, but
the human community that inhabits it.
This
is the heart of the church as well. We do have a beautiful
structure of doctrine and tradition, just as we have a beautiful
building whose very architecture expresses the way our faith
reaches upward to the Lord of the universe, while providing a
warm and inspiring atmosphere for worship and for learning and
growing spiritually. Yet it is not the teachings of the church
that truly make the church, any more than it is the building
that makes the church. It is the human faith community--the
people--associated with our building and our beliefs that truly
make us the church that we are.
And
now the Lord is renewing us as a community of faith. We have
shared our faith with one another, and we feel closer to each
other as a result. We have welcomed new people, outside groups,
and wedding couples into this sacred space, and have touched
their lives in positive ways while growing in our own love and
service to the community.
Dare
I say it? We have been moving away from our old concept of this
church as a small remnant that is doing well to keep the place
alive, to a new sense of our church as a vital and growing
congregation in which we are serving one another and our
community in new ways. Perhaps the numbers on Sunday mornings
aren't showing it yet, but our church is touching many more
people these days, in many more ways than it has in its recent
history. There is a new sense of forward movement in the church,
and a new sense of a growing spirit of hope and faith for the
future strength of this congregation.
"I
am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former
things will not be remembered or come to mind. But be glad and
rejoice forever in what I am creating; for I am about to create
Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight."
The
new vision of our church that is growing here in Bridgewater is
the same new vision that is growing throughout our denomination.
While holding to the power and beauty of our teachings, we are
adding more and more of the human element to our church. In
Swedenborgian terms, whereas we have always been strong in the
area of truth and understanding, we are now balancing more and
more that brilliant light of truth with the glowing warmth of
love, compassion, kindness, and service toward one another and
toward our neighbors outside our church.
We
are, at last, beginning to follow the direction pointed out by
our own beliefs, which assure us that it is only when truth and
love are together, equally balanced, that the church becomes
real. And it is actually love that forms the heart of the
church, while truth is simply a way of expressing love in ways
that will give joy and delight to others.
Nearly
two thousand years ago, our Lord Jesus taught us that love was
central. When he was asked which was the most important of all
the commandments, out of that great body of literature now known
to Christians as the Old Testament, he chose these two:
"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all
your soul and with all your mind and with all your
strength" (Deuteronomy 6:5), and "Love your neighbor
as yourself" (Leviticus 19:18). And when the questioner
affirmed these as the core principles of life, Jesus told him,
"You are not far from the kingdom of God."
The
entire Bible, not to mention the thirty volumes of Emanuel
Swedenborg's works, is an explanation of how to live by those
two simple, yet eternally profound commandments. The new vision
of the New Church that is growing both in this congregation and
throughout our entire denomination is one in which human love
and kindness toward others takes its rightful place at the
center of our church, while the teachings serve as a powerful
tool that we use entirely in the service of love for God and
love for our neighbor.
We
have experienced that spirit of enlightened love very strongly
in this church over the past three months. And I believe that in
future years we will look back at this very time as a new
turning point in the life of our church.
"I
am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former
things will not be remembered or come to mind. But be glad and
rejoice forever in what I am creating; for I am about to create
Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight." Amen.
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