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Bridgewater,
Massachusetts, January 18, 2004
Genesis
12:10-20 Abram in Egypt
Now
there was a famine in the land,
and Abram went down to Egypt to
live there for a while because
the famine was severe. As he was
about to enter Egypt, he said to
his wife Sarai, "I know
what a beautiful woman you are.
When the Egyptians see you, they
will say, 'This is his wife.'
Then they will kill me but will
let you live. Say you are my
sister, so that I will be
treated well for your sake and
my life will be spared because
of you."
When
Abram came to Egypt, the
Egyptians saw that she was a
very beautiful woman. And when
Pharaoh's officials saw her,
they praised her to Pharaoh, and
she was taken into his palace.
He treated Abram well for her
sake, and Abram acquired sheep
and cattle, male and female
donkeys, menservants and
maidservants, and camels.
But
the Lord inflicted serious
diseases on Pharaoh and his
household because of Abram's
wife Sarai. So Pharaoh summoned
Abram. "What have you done
to me?" he said. "Why
didn't you tell me she was your
wife? Why did you say, 'She is
my sister,' so that I took her
to be my wife? Now then, here is
your wife. Take her and
go!" Then Pharaoh gave
orders about Abram to his men,
and they sent him on his way,
with his wife and everything he
had.
Luke
2:40-52 The Boy Jesus at the
Temple
And
the child grew and became
strong; he was filled with
wisdom, and the grace of God was
upon him.
And
every year Jesus' parents went
to Jerusalem for the feast of
the Passover. When he was twelve
years old they went up to the
feast, according to the custom.
After the feast was over, while
his parents were returning home,
the boy Jesus stayed behind in
Jerusalem, but they were unaware
of it. Thinking he was in their
company, they traveled on for a
day. Then they began looking for
him among their relatives and
friends. When they did not find
him, they went back to Jerusalem
to look for him.
After
three days they found him in the
temple courts, sitting among the
teachers, listening to them and
asking them questions. Everyone
who heard him was amazed at his
understanding and his answers.
When his parents saw him, they
were astonished. His mother said
to him, "Son, why have you
treated us like this? Your
father and I have been anxiously
searching for you."
"Why
were you searching for me?"
he asked. "Didn't you know
that I had to be doing my
Father's work?" But they
did not understand what he was
saying to them.
Then
he went down to Nazareth with
them and was obedient to them.
But his mother treasured all
these things in her heart. And
Jesus grew in wisdom and
stature, and in divine and human
favor.
Arcana
Coelestia #1461 The Lord
learned from the Scriptures
During
his childhood, the Lord wished
to take in no other religious
knowledge than what was found in
the Word of God. And the Word
was opened up to him from
Jehovah himself, his Father,
with whom he would be united and
become one. That wish was even
stronger because nothing is said
in the Word that does not relate
at its deepest level to God, and
that did not originally come
from him.
After
three days they found him in the
temple courts, sitting among the
teachers, listening to them and
asking them questions. Everyone
who heard him was amazed at his
understanding and his answers.
(Luke 2:46-47)
Our
Gospel story this morning, of
Jesus as a boy at the Temple, is
the only story we have of Jesus'
childhood. Even the story of his
birth is told only in Mark and
Luke. And none of the other
Gospels besides Luke have any
stories of his childhood at all.
We
do get a few hints of what he
was doing as he grew up. There
is a reference in Mark (6:3) to
Jesus being a carpenter. In the
parallel passage in Matthew
(13:55), it is Joseph who is the
carpenter. So apparently he
learned his adoptive father's
trade--which would have been
very common for boys of that
era. It appears that outwardly,
Jesus was for the most part a
fairly unremarkable craftsman,
living like other boys and men
of his time.
If
this were not so, more stories
of Jesus childhood would have
survived. Apparently what we
have in the two birth stories
and this one little vignette of
Jesus at the age of twelve are
the only stories of the Lord's
young life that were remarkable
enough to have survived in
people's memories to be recorded
later. The rest of our stories
of Jesus all come from the three
intense years of his public
ministry, which began when he
was about thirty years old (Luke
3:23), and lasted only three
years, until he was crucified.
What
all of this silence about the
Lord's upbringing, youth, and
early adulthood suggests is that
outwardly, Jesus' life was not
much different than anyone
else's. But the few hints and
glimpses we do get tell us that
within that unremarkable outward
life, there was intense learning
and growth going on in Jesus'
spirit. The story of Jesus as a
boy in the Temple is bracketed
by two statements that speak of
this inner growth, and its outer
effects:
And
the child grew and became
strong; he was filled with
wisdom, and the grace of God
was upon him. (Luke 2:40)
And
at the end of the story:
And
Jesus grew in wisdom and
stature, and in divine and
human favor. (Luke 2:52)
This
inner growth in wisdom and
stature is shown in our Gospel
reading for today, as well as in
the Lord's public ministry,
where he drew on all those years
of study, learning,
enlightenment, and spiritual
growth to do his work of
teaching, preaching, and
healing.
Today's
story also tells us something
else: at the age of twelve,
Jesus already had a very clear
sense that he had come from God,
and that his work in life was to
be the work of God. When Mary
said to him, "Your father
and I have been anxiously
searching for you," he
reminded her of who his real
father was: "Didn't you
know that I had to be doing my
Father's work?" Even while
learning the trade of carpentry,
he was learning his true
calling.
Still,
the New Testament gives us only
a very slim basis for any
conclusions about the inner life
of Jesus as he grew up. So we
turn once again to the Old
Testament, and Swedenborg's
interpretation of it, to gain
more insight. And when it comes
to the Lord's process of
learning and growth in
knowledge, intelligence, and
wisdom, the story is told
spiritually in the account of
Abram's stay in Egypt.
Let's
unpack some of the meaning of
our Old Testament story.
When
the story begins, Abram is
living in the southern part of
the Holy Land. As I mentioned
last week, the Holy Land
represents the spiritual side of
our life. And as I also
mentioned, Jesus in his infancy
and early childhood was already
feeling the promptings of
spiritual and divine life within
him. He had already felt God
calling him, and in following
that call, had traveled inwardly
from a life focused on the
outward things of this world and
its society to a life focused on
the deeper things of the spirit.
But
it says, "There was a
famine in the land."
Physically speaking, famines are
a lack of food, usually brought
about by a lack of water causing
crops to fail. Spiritual famines
are a lack of "food"
to nourish the mind and heart.
In other words, they are a lack
of knowledge, understanding, and
in some cases, a lack of
goodness and love. Here, though,
the famine is a famine of the
mind.
As
this famine arrives within the
Lord, he has already reached
some level of spiritual
awareness; he is already living
in the Holy Land. And he has
been traveling toward the
south--toward a state of greater
conscious enlightenment. Yet he
feels the pinch of famine: he
realizes that he does not have
the deeper, religious knowledge
that he wants and needs to
continue on his spiritual path.
He is famished for want of inner
nourishment: for want of the
basic facts of spiritual life.
And he hungers for that
knowledge so much that he leaves
the Holy Land of life focused on
spiritual things, and spends
time in Egypt, which was the
region's granary, and which
therefore represents our states
of knowledge and learning.
We
have a similar experience, both
as children and at the beginning
of our spiritual life. As
children, after our earliest
years in which we are driven
largely by promptings from
within and responses to what
happens around us, our
conscious, thinking mind begins
to wake up, and we hunger for
knowledge. We want to know about
everything around us. We begin
asking anyone who will answer,
"What's that?"
"How does this work?"
"Why does it do that?"
"Why does so-and-so do
such-and-such?" "What
does this mean?" As
children, our minds are like
sponges, soaking up all the
knowledge and experience we can
get.
We
go through a similar phase when
we take our first conscious
steps toward spiritual living.
Having decided that we wish to
refocus our lives from outward
accomplishments and pleasures to
inward goals and spiritual
growth, we quickly realize how
little we know about the worlds
of spirit. And why would
we know about the inner life? Up
to that point we had been
pursuing the world and its
knowledge. So we feel "a
famine not for food, nor a
thirst for water, but of hearing
the words of the Lord"
(Amos 8:11).
In
these early times in our
conscious spiritual life we
eagerly seek out religious
insight and inner knowledge. We
read the Bible and other
spiritual books; we attend
lectures, services, and
workshops; we seek out sources
of deeper knowledge and insight
to feed our hunger. We eagerly
soak up every spiritual fact
that we can get our hands on. We
are almost childlike in our
ability to absorb new knowledge
about this vast new field of
experience.
And
so we go to our Egypt, our
spiritual granary. And if our
path is a Christian one, that
granary is especially the Word
of God--the Old and New
Testaments--where God has stored
up an infinite supply of
spiritual nourishment for us.
When we start out as new
Christians, we want to learn all
about the life and teachings of
Jesus. We want to know also the
stories and teachings of the Old
Testament, which tell us of our
spiritual origins and the events
and battles of our long
spiritual journey toward
enlightenment and love.
Jesus
as a young child felt this
famine, this desire for
"hearing the words of the
Lord," very intensely. And
so, amid the usual routines of
daily life, he applied himself
to the study of the Hebrew
Scriptures, where the Lord spoke
to the people of his culture,
giving them the water and the
bread of spiritual life. And by
the age of twelve, he had
already gained such
understanding and wisdom that
when he was sitting among the
teachers in the temple courts,
both listening and asking
questions, "everyone who
heard him was amazed at his
understanding and his
answers."
However,
it was not necessarily a smooth
road getting from
"understanding and
answers" to true inner
wisdom. Once Abram reaches
Egypt, we have the strange story
of his saying that his wife
Sarai was his sister. (And she
was, in fact, his half-sister,
as we learn in a parallel story
in Genesis 20.) Abram, fearful
that the Egyptians would kill
him for his beautiful (though
over sixty-five-year-old!) wife
Sarai, has her tell them that
she is his sister. And they do,
in fact, take her for Pharaoh,
while making Abram rich in
"sheep and cattle, male and
female donkeys, menservants and
maidservants, and camels"
for her sake.
What
can this possibly mean? How can
this story of deception and
subterfuge tell us anything good
about our spiritual life, let
alone the inner life of the
Lord--who was supposed to be the
perfect human being?
One
of the fascinating aspects of
the Bible's spiritual meaning is
that it often tells a story very
different--even opposite--from
the literal meaning. Whenever
the Bible mention's "God's
wrath," for example,
Swedenborg interprets it instead
as God's love, which human evil
is opposed to, and therefore is
experienced as wrath by those
engaged in evil.
However,
in the case of Sarai as Abram's
wife and his sister, the
spiritual meaning is not all
that different from the literal,
though of course, it is on the
level of the mind instead of the
level of the body.
In
the Bible, men usually
correspond to truth and
understanding, while women
correspond to love and
motivation. However, when they
are specifically presented as
husband and wife, the meaning
often reverses, and the husband
stands for love, while the wife
stands for truth and
understanding.
This
reversal is based on a vital
fact of Swedenborg's gender map
that is often overlooked or
passed by in silence. Though outwardly
intellect predominates in men,
and feeling in women, inwardly
this is reversed. Men, who are
outwardly truth, are inwardly
love. And we find, as we study
the lives of the men who were
great physical and mental
adventurers, that within the
physical skills and intellectual
achievements, there is a driving
desire, a motivating force of
love, pushing them along to
their great achievements.
Meanwhile women, who are
outwardly love, are inwardly
truth. Outwardly women are much
better than men at treading he
maze of human relationships,
forming close and warm
friendships, and focusing on
human feelings and the human
heart. Yet this comes from an
inner insight into the patterns
of human and spiritual existence
that men rarely attain to.
And
so, like the ancient Eastern
symbol of yin and yang, the love
that outwardly characterizes
woman is the driving force
within men, while the truth that
men show outwardly is embedded
deep within woman.
So
here, in the story of Abram and
Sarai, we find that Abram
represents, in the Lord, the
heavenly and divine love he felt
deep within himself--the divine
love that was his inner
self--while Sarai represents the
knowledge and understanding that
was growing and developing in
his conscious, thinking mind.
This
was the contest taking place
within the heart and mind of
Jesus as he grew up, and that
also takes place within us as we
begin our spiritual life: Will
all our wonderful new spiritual
insight be a matter of mere
intellectual knowledge,
beautiful to contemplate, and a
pleasure to claim as our
own--but barren? Will our "Sarai"
of spiritual understanding
become Pharaoh's wife? In other
words, will all the spiritual
facts and understanding that we
eagerly soak in when we first
commit ourselves to a spiritual
path become mere knowledge to
adorn our minds and give us the
pleasure of intelligence,
without producing any fruits?
Or
will our inner "Sarai,"
our understanding of spiritual
reality, remain married to our
"Abram": the inner,
heavenly love that it properly
belongs with?
As
a young boy, Jesus felt the
allure of being a brilliant
intellect and highly praised
teacher. If he was already
astounding the learned teachers
of the Law at twelve, what
dazzling heights of intellectual
achievement could he have
attained as a lifelong academic?
But
that would have diverted him off
his path, just as it does for us
when we get side-tracked into
mere learning. We are not given
spiritual insight to be dazzled
by its beauty, and by our own
brilliance. The Lord satisfies
our hunger for understanding so
that we may move beyond
spiritual barrenness to rich
fruitfulness. When we have been
enriched by deeper insights, it
is time to return to our true
calling of showing God's love
every day. Amen.
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