By
the Rev. Lee Woofenden
Bridgewater,
Massachusetts, September 16, 2001
Isaiah
42:1-7 A bruised reed he will
not break
"Here
is my servant, whom I uphold, my
chosen one in whom I delight; I
will put my Spirit on him and he
will bring justice to the nations.
He will not shout or cry out, or
raise his voice in the streets. A
bruised reed he will not break,
and a smoldering wick he will not
snuff out. In faithfulness he will
bring forth justice; he will not
falter or be discouraged till he
establishes justice on earth. In
his law the islands will put their
hope."
This
is what God the Lord says--he who
created the heavens and stretched
them out, who spread out the earth
and all that comes out of it, who
gives breath to its people, and
life to those who walk on it:
"I, the Lord, have called you
in righteousness; I will take hold
of your hand. I will keep you and
will make you to be a covenant for
the people and a light for the
Gentiles, to open eyes that are
blind, to free captives from
prison and to release from the
dungeon those who sit in
darkness."
Matthew
11:25-30 My yoke is easy and my
burden is light
At
that time Jesus said, "I
praise you, Father, Lord of heaven
and earth, because you have hidden
these things from the wise and
learned, and revealed them to
little children. Yes, Father, for
this was your good pleasure.
"All
things have been committed to me
by my Father. No one knows the Son
except the Father, and no one
knows the Father except the Son
and those to whom the Son chooses
to reveal him.
"Come
to me, all you who are weary and
burdened, and I will give you
rest. Take my yoke upon you and
learn from me, for I am gentle and
humble in heart, and you will find
rest for your souls. For my yoke
is easy and my burden is
light."
Arcana Coelestia #8455 True
Peace
Peace
holds within itself trust in the
Lord--the trust that God governs
all things and provides all
things, and that he leads us
towards an end that is good. When
we believe these things about the
Lord we are at peace, since we
fear nothing, and no anxiety about
the future disturbs us. How far we
gain this state depends on how
much we grow in love to the Lord.
Everything
bad, especially trust in
ourselves, takes away the state of
peace. We may think that bad
people are at peace when they are
calm and cheerful because
everything is going right for
them. But this is not peace. It is
merely the calmness and pleasure
belonging to evil desires, which
is only an imitation of the state
of peace. Since this pleasure is
the opposite of the pleasure
belonging to peace, it turns to
unpleasantness in the next life,
because that is what lies hidden
within it. In the next life,
outward things are peeled away,
one layer after another, right to
the deepest things at the center.
Peace
is at the center of all
delight--and even of unpleasant
things, when we are governed by
goodness. So as much as we depart
from our external self, our state
of peace is revealed, and we are
filled with joy, blessedness, and
happiness, which come from the
Lord himself.
Come
to me, all you who are weary and
burdened, and I will give you
rest. Take my yoke upon you and
learn from me, for I am gentle and
humble in heart, and you will find
rest for your souls. For my yoke
is easy and my burden is light.
(Matthew 11:28-30)
We
have all been in shock after
Tuesday's attacks. All the death
and destruction they brought. The
realization that we are
vulnerable. That there are people
who hate us. And now the shock is
giving way to anger, and a desire
for revenge and retaliation. Now
there is talk of war. I was
saddened to see that at the end of
Time magazine's special
issue on the attack there was a
piece titled "The Case for
Rage and Retribution." And it
made me realize that it was rage
and retribution that led to the
attacks on Tuesday.
This
is a tragedy. But I am not here
today to speak of politics. We are
in church, where we come to seek
the spirit, and to hear of
spiritual things. This is where we
come to learn of God. And as the
children said during the
children's talk, we come here to
learn how to be nice to each
other.
So
today I want to speak, not of war,
but of peace. And not even of
external peace, but of the inner,
spiritual peace that the outward
peace comes from. Because when we
have this peace within our
souls--when we as individuals, and
we as a nation, and we as a world
have the peace that comes only
from having God within our
souls--then war, and tragedies
like Tuesday's, will be
unnecessary. When we have God's
peace, war will become a thing of
the past.
I
would like to speak of peace
today. Of a spiritual peace that
we can have even in the midst of
times of war.
Before
the Tuesday's tragedy happened, we
had already planned a theme and a
children's program on Johnny
Appleseed. And especially for the
sake of the children, I decided to
go ahead with that theme. We also,
of course, had a wonderful service
of prayer and remembrance here two
evenings ago, on Friday, sponsored
by the Bridgewater Council of
Churches. At that service our
church was filled almost to
capacity with about 250 people of
many faiths and backgrounds who
were coming together to remember
the victims, and to bring God into
this terrible tragedy.
Today
I would like to move forward and
inward, away from the wars and
rumors of war that we now are
hearing, and look at Johnny
Appleseed as a man who was a
center of peace in the midst of
very turbulent and violent times.
As it turns out, Johnny Appleseed
is actually a wonderful,
emblematic figure for exactly the circumstances that we are in right
now.
Johnny
Appleseed was popularized in our
culture by the old Disney
animation that showed him as a
happy-go-lucky fellow walking
around with a pot on his head and
seeming not to have a care in the
world. For the children, it's not
particularly harmful to present
him in that way. It is good for
children need to see the good side
of things first. And in fact,
Johnny Appleseed was a
person who had joy and peace
within his heart. He was a person
who enjoyed the people and the
world of nature around him.
But
Johnny Appleseed's reality was
quite different from the
happy-go-lucky fellow without a
care in the world presented in the
Disney movie.
First
of all, Johnny Appleseed was a
businessman. He was a little unconventional
in his business methods; but he
was a businessman. He was an
orchardist. He planted trees. He
cleared the land, he fenced them
in, he tended them, and he sold
both the trees he grew and the
land he acquired.
He
was unconventional in that he sold
his trees on a sliding scale. If
he knew that the buyer was able to
pay the going rate for apple
trees, he would charge them that.
If he knew they couldn't afford
that much, he would charge them
less. And if he knew that they had
nothing but perhaps a meal to
offer or something to barter, he
would take that in return for his
trees. Except for a brief period
of settling down and thinking that
he might become a settled
orchardist and make a business out
of it, he was an itinerant
orchardist. He was a businessman
who operated by unconventional
means, and brought great blessings
to the people he served. Johnny
Appleseed was a businessman.
Johnny
Appleseed was also a missionary,
spreading not only the teachings
of the Bible, but also the
teachings and the works of Emanuel
Swedenborg to many, many families
on the frontier. As he liked to
say when he came to the frontier
families' houses, "I come
bringing good news right fresh
from heaven." He loved to
carry around copies of
Swedenborg's books, such as Heaven
and Hell. He would sometimes
separate the books into two or
three sections and distribute them
to families who were willing to
read them--which was his only
criterion as to whether he would
give copies of his books and
pamphlets to a family. Then later,
when he came around again, he
would swap sections so that the
one who had the first half would
get the second half, and so on.
Johnny
Appleseed was a Swedenborgian
missionary. And various
Swedenborgian groups sprang up in
the places he visited. Even today,
there are Swedenborgian churches
in the Midwest that can trace some
of their early roots back to the
"good news" spread by
Johnny Appleseed.
Johnny
Appleseed was also a great story
teller, keeping children and
adults entertained, and also
informed about the events in the
surrounding communities and
states. These were the days before
radio, television, telephones, and
other means of mass communication,
so communication for those
frontier families happened on
foot. It happened through people
like Johnny Appleseed who traveled
to different areas, and brought
the news around to the frontier
families.
But
our focus today is on Johnny
Appleseed as a man of peace amid
the storm. Johnny was not
happy-go-lucky. He lived in
dangerous and violent times. Of
course, there was the untamed
wilderness that he traveled
through; the wild animals that
would just as soon eat him as look
at him. But wild animals were not
the greatest thing Johnny
Appleseed had to fear. What he
found most dangerous was the people.
Just like today, people of
different races and cultures were
often in conflict. There were the
Whites against the Indians, the
British against French, and so on.
If you look around the New World
at that time, there was a great
deal of conflict. Settlers' cabins
were getting burned down. Indian
towns were getting destroyed.
Johnny
Appleseed moved in that violent
world. It may have been more
primitive than today, but in many
ways things are not that different
now. Today we still have people of
different religions and different
races in conflict with one
another. And we have seen that
come home in a very devastating
way this past week.
Johnny
Appleseed moved in a violent and
uncertain world. He was no
dreamer. He was realistic about
war and conflict. When he knew
that there were Indians or troops
of the opposing army coming, he
would warn the settlers. He once
did a famous run of thirty miles
in one night, warning the frontier
families to flee for their lives
because there was an army coming.
Johnny Appleseed was not a
dreamer. He knew the realities of
his world.
Yet
in the midst of all of this,
Johnny Appleseed carried within
him a peace that transcended all
those outward circumstances.
Though he moved in turbulent
times, Johnny Appleseed was at
peace both with the white people
and with the Indians. Both
accepted and trusted him. He made
no distinction among the different
races and religions. He even
considered animals his friends,
and would not harm them. It is
said that he would put out his
fire if he saw mosquitoes dying in
its flames.
Even
though he lived in the midst of
nature which was often violent,
and in the midst of people who
were often violent, he himself
moved as a center of peace in the
midst of that storm of violence.
He spoke the Indians' language,
and they trusted him so much that
they allowed him to sit in on
their councils and hear their
deliberations. This was useful
when he acted as an
"ambassador" between the
Whites and the Indians. He knew
the issues that the Indians were
concerned about, or angry about,
or worried about, and sometimes
the things they were planning to
do. He could bring that knowledge
into the white settlements, and
sometimes avert hostilities that
otherwise would have taken place.
Johnny Appleseed helped to bring
peace where he could. Of course,
he was not always successful.
Human greed and the human desire
for conquest are very strong, and
one man cannot overcome that
amidst clashing cultures.
As
we look at this remarkable man--an
eccentric certainly, and yet a
person of strong conviction, and a
person who was bent on doing
good--we ask, where did this peace
amid the storm come from? Where
did he gain the peace that was in
his soul even in the midst of
these violent, difficult times? We
know that it was not external
peace, because Johnny's external
circumstances were often not very
peaceful. In fact, they were often
very difficult. He was poorly
clothed and underfed, he traveled
through difficult terrain, and at
times he had to face hostile
Indians and even hostile white
people who didn't appreciate his
presence. Not everyone loved
Johnny Appleseed.
His
peace was not an external peace.
It was an inward peace. It
was a peace of the spirit. It was
a peace that comes only from
trusting in God. I'd like to read
you a passage from Swedenborg's
work Arcana Coelestia (Secrets
from Heaven), #8455:
Peace
holds within itself trust in the
Lord--the trust that God governs
all things and provides all
things, and that he leads us
towards an end that is good.
When we believe these things
about the Lord we are at peace,
since we fear nothing, and no
anxiety about the future
disturbs us. How far we gain
this state depends on how much
we grow in love to the Lord.
Even
though Johnny Appleseed moved in
very difficult outward
circumstances, he had a peace that
came from his trust in the Lord; a
peace that came from knowing
within himself that God is guiding
all things toward what is good. He
trusted that God would take care
of him through good circumstances
and bad. And Johnny did live out
his threescore and ten years,
dying at the age of seventy-one.
From
the peace that Johnny had within
himself--the peace of knowing that
God is present, of knowing that
God governs this world--he drew
his strength, and his desire to
treat others in the same way that
God treats people. He treated
others with respect and
understanding, whether they were
Black or White or Indian, whether
they were Christian or
"heathen"--as
non-Christians were called in
those days. He tried to do good to
every living being around him.
Johnny
Appleseed, in his own rough way,
walked the path of Jesus. Jesus
was the one who would not break a
bruised reed or snuff out a
smoldering wick. Because Jesus
also knew that all things are in
God's hands. He knew that his task
was to follow the way and the will
of God--who was also his own
inmost soul. And he knew that if
we will follow the will of God,
all things will be taken care of,
no matter how hard they may seem.
He knew that God has a plan for
this earth, and that he is bending
all things toward the good.
In
these terribly difficult times,
when we are weary and burdened,
let us turn to the Lord. The Lord
will give us the answers we seek.
The Lord will guide us on the path
we need to go. And even in these
terribly difficult times, the Lord
will give us peace amid the storm,
if we will only follow God's way,
and not our own.
Come
to me, all you who are weary and
burdened, and I will give you
rest. Take my yoke upon you and
learn from me, for I am gentle
and humble in heart, and you
will find rest for your souls.
For my yoke is easy and my
burden is light. (Matthew
11:28-30)
Music: Soulsong
© 2001 Bruce DeBoer
Used with permission
Graphics by Judy Ebbe
No Right Click and
Color Scroll Bar Scripts Courtesy of:
Photographs Courtesy of
Corel Gallery
Royalty Free for Non-Profit Usage
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