Who Are We,
And Where Are We Going?
by the Rev. Lee Woofenden
Bridgewater, Massachusetts, June 1, 2003
Readings
Micah 6:6-8 What does the Lord require of
you?
With what shall I come before the Lord and bow
down before the exalted God? Shall I come before
him with burnt offerings, with calves a year
old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of
rams, with ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall I
offer my firstborn for my transgression, the
fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He has
showed you, O mortal, what is good. And what
does the Lord require of you but to act justly,
and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your
God.
Matthew 28:16-20 The Great Commission
Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to
the mountain where Jesus had told them to go.
When they saw him, they worshipped him; but some
doubted. Then Jesus came to them and said, "All
power in heaven and on earth has been given to
me. Therefore go and make disciples of all
nations, baptizing them in the name of the
Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
and teaching them to obey everything I have
commanded you. And surely I am with you always,
to the very end of the age."
True Christian Religion #3 The faith of the
new church
The particular details of faith for human beings
are:
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God is one, in whom is the Divine Trinity, and
he is the Lord God the Savior Jesus Christ.
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Faith leading to salvation is believing in
him.
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Evil actions must not be done because they are
the work of the devil and come from the devil.
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Good actions must be done because they are the
work of God and come from God.
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We must perform these actions as if they were
our own, but we must believe they come from
the Lord working in us and through us.
Sermon
"Therefore go and make disciples of all
nations, baptizing them in the name of the
Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
and teaching them to obey everything I have
commanded you." (Matthew 28:19, 20)
Ten years ago, in 1993, the theme of our annual
Swedenborgian Church Convention was "Who Are We,
and Where Are We Going?" I have often joked
since then that this has been our church's theme
all along. And yet, these are serious questions
for our church. As a denomination, we are a
church blessed with physical and spiritual
wealth--but also with so many different visions
of who we are and where we are going that we
have been unable to come together around a
specific vision and plan for our church. On the
Association and local level, we have also tended
not to have a clear vision and plan, or not to
come together around any particular vision and
plan.
I
believe this lack of a common, coherent vision
and plan for our church is one of the major
reasons we have remained a small, niche church.
There are many other reasons, of
course--including the continuing materialism of
our society and our world. We can't change the
world (at least, not directly). But we can
change ourselves.
This afternoon, many of us are heading to the
annual meetings of the Massachusetts Association
and its financial arm, the Massachusetts New
Church Union. As we prepare for those meetings,
it may be useful to revisit the question of who
we are, and where we are going. We have had a
troubled year in our Association, and still face
some major issues that must be resolved. But I
believe that if we can come together around a
common vision and plan, our church has the
potential to become a far stronger and more
effective presence in this state, and in each of
the communities where we have congregations.
First, a look at who we are. The historical
facts of our church are known and
well-documented. It all started when, as we
believe, the Lord called a man named Emanuel
Swedenborg to explore the spiritual world and,
under the Lord's personal direction, publish for
the world not only new light on the spiritual
world, but also a whole new, revitalized
theology for the Christian Church, together with
a new and deeper interpretation of the Word of
God. Over the centuries since the Lord first
came to the earth, the Christian Church had
become corrupted, both in its doctrine and in
its life. Swedenborg's task was to provide the
teachings that would be the basis of a renewed
Christianity.
Swedenborg often talked about a new church that
was now beginning on this earth. However, he
never made any move to found a church
organization. The new church as he presented it
was a spiritual entity composed of all
who believed and lived according to the
fundamental principles of genuine Christianity.
He never specified what the external form of
that church would be, and his followers have
debated the question ever since.
Still, we humans seem to need to form and belong
to organizations. And an organization was
founded within fifteen years of Swedenborg's
death, by a small group of dedicated readers of
his teachings. This organization became the
General Conference of the New Jerusalem in Great
Britain, which is the oldest denominational body
of Swedenborgians in the world. Yet even before
this body was founded, an Anglican minister, the
Rev. John Clowes, had established a New Church
society in his Anglican church near Manchester,
England. Clowes, who thus became the first
Swedenborgian minister in the world, remained an
Anglican organizationally until the day of his
death, and believed that forming a separate
organization of the New Church was a big
mistake.
We are the inheritors of the organization that
Clowes so strongly believed was an error. The
General Convention of the New Jerusalem,
covering the United States and Canada, was
organized in the early 1800s based on books and
missionaries that arrived from England, largely
sponsored by the British Conference. Other
Swedenborgian denominational bodies have spun
off from the British Conference elsewhere around
the world. And our own organization has spawned
a more conservative dissenting body in the
General Church of the New Jerusalem, which
formally separated from us in 1890, and
continues as a separate church headquartered
just north of Philadelphia.
The roots of our disparate visions go all the
way back to the beginning of our church. And
yet, there are common themes that bring us
together.
Those common themes are the reason there is a
new church in the first place. Organizationally,
we are not all that different from the various
Protestant and Catholic churches from which the
bulk of our membership has been drawn in the
West. We have even loosely been called a
Protestant church. In terms of church polity and
culture, that identification is largely
accurate. We look, feel, and act like a
Protestant denomination.
It is our theology, our beliefs, that set us
apart from our Protestant roots, as well as from
the Catholic Church against which the Reformers
were protesting. Though we share a common
Christian heritage and faith, we differ from our
friends in the Protestant and Catholic Churches
on so many fundamental points of doctrine that
we can hardly be called a variation of either
one of them. In terms of our faith, we stand
distinct from any of the previous churches. In
our theology we are, in fact, a new church.
What is this theology that we hold so dear, and
that defines our distinct existence as a church?
The opening paragraphs of True Christian
Religion, Swedenborg's extensive overview of
the theology of the new Christian church,
provide a brief summary--or should I say,
several brief summaries--of the faith of this
new church. Our reading from True Christian
Religion is the summary most focused on
human belief and life. Another summary is
contained in the statement of faith that we
offered earlier in our service. This statement
is a condensation of a somewhat longer statement
found on the back of each issue of Our Daily
Bread, the monthly devotional magazine of
our church. It reads (in the shortened form):
We believe that there is one God, known by
many names. We worship Jesus Christ as our
Lord and our God. The Christian Trinity of
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are aspects of
God just as soul, body, and activities are
aspects of each one of us.
We believe that the Bible is the inspired Word
of God. Within the literal story, there is a
deeper account of our spiritual journeys. Thus
the Bible is alive and fresh today, speaking
to us about our own spiritual growth, and
showing us the way to live better lives.
We believe that people are spirits clothed
with material bodies. At death, our material
body is put aside, and we continue living in
the other world in our spiritual body,
according to the kind of life we have chosen
while here on earth.
We believe that religion touches all areas of
our lives. Our responsibility is to put what
we believe into practice in our daily lives.
All who do this, of whatever faith, are saved,
since they are living in the spirit of
Christ's name.
These are the defining points of who we are as a
church. Let's take a brief look at the three
most basic ones of them in turn.
The core of any church's faith is its belief
about God. Traditional Christian belief, both
Catholic and Protestant, holds that God is a
Trinity of Persons, with Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit each being a distinct Person of God, yet
somehow also being one God. Our church rejects
the Trinity of Persons, believing instead in a
Trinity in the one Person of the Lord, God, and
Savior Jesus Christ. Just as we humans--created
as we are in the image and likeness of God--have
a soul, a body, and words and actions that make
us the total person we are, so the Lord God has
a divine soul, a human presence, and the words
and actions that define and express the Divine
Being.
These three aspects of God are identified in the
New Testament as "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit."
The fact that God has several names doesn't mean
that God is made up of several persons any more
than the fact that most of us have three given
names, not to mention various nicknames, means
there are several persons in each one of us.
Another way of expressing the Trinity in God is
to say that God is made of pure love, which is
formed and directed by pure wisdom, and these
together result in all the words and actions
that come from God. So we reject the traditional
wrathful, punishing God, and believe instead in
a God of pure love, wisdom, and creative, saving
action.
Our beliefs about the Word of God diverge
similarly from the currently reigning
traditional beliefs of the Catholic and
Protestant Churches. While those churches tend
to focus on the literal words of Scripture and
their literal meaning, we see the literal sense
of Scripture as a gateway to a boundless,
infinitely profound deeper meaning--or rather,
to several layers of deeper meaning. At its
deepest level, the Bible speaks wholly about the
nature and activity of the Lord our God. This is
the heavenly, or "celestial" meaning. And just
below its surface the Bible speaks of the
spiritual journey and development of all of
humankind together. This is the "internal
historical" meaning.
But the meaning that concerns us most directly
is what Swedenborg calls the "spiritual"
meaning. This is the level of meaning that tells
the story of our own individual rebirth and
spiritual growth. This is the level of meaning
that we focus on in our sermons, Bible studies,
and--whether we realize it or not--in our own
reading and living of the Bible.
The third and most practical of our church's
fundamental teachings has to do with living a
spiritual life--a life that leads to heaven.
Unlike the traditional creeds of the Catholic
and Protestant Churches, we believe--and always
have believed--that good people of all faiths
are saved, and will find their place in heaven
after their lives in this world are over. Yes,
we are Christians ourselves, and we look to the
Lord Jesus Christ as our personal Lord and
Savior. Yet we also believe that the Lord Jesus
Christ is also the one God of the universe. This
means that from our perspective, people of every
faith, when they worship God and live by God's
commandments as they understand them, are in
fact worshiping the same Lord and God that we
do, even if they perceive that God differently.
For us, though, the most important issue is not
how others believe and live, but how
we ourselves believe and live. Our church
explicitly rejects the doctrine of salvation by
faith alone, widely believed in the Protestant
Church. This doctrine is erroneously attributed
to the Apostle Paul (who never said that faith
alone saves), and is explicitly rejected by the
Apostle James, who said that we are saved by
what we do, and not by faith alone (James
2:24). So for us, faith is not a theoretical
thing to be believed in our heads, but a
practical thing to be followed in our lives.
In the Great Commission, which we read from the
Gospel of Matthew, the Lord tells us not only to
make disciples of all nations, but also to
obey everything he has commanded us. This
should be a sufficient basis for us to answer
the question of where we are going as a church.
We are to make disciples of all nations, and to
teach them to obey everything that the Lord has
commanded us.
Now personally, I will be happy if we as a
church can focus on making disciples in our own
community, our own state, and our own nation.
Everything we do will expand outward in wider
circles than we can imagine. Yet we need to
first direct our efforts to doing the work of
the Lord's realm right here in our own
neighborhood. Our church does not exist for our
own benefit, but for the benefit of all the
people whom the Lord has placed us in this world
to serve.
Our church has a wonderful, broad, warm, and
life-giving faith. We have each been blessed by
that faith. Now the Lord is giving us a Great
Commission to offer the blessings of this
beautiful faith to all people who are seeking a
deeper spiritual faith and life. Amen.
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