Rev Dr. George F. Dole supply-preached while I took my first research Sunday. Here is his sermon.
JESUS ONLY
JESUS ONLY
Bath Church of the New Jerusalem
Rev Dr. George F. Dole
Feb 23, 2014
Amos 3:1-8
John 14:1-7
Divine Providence 326:10
Jesus
said to him, "I am the way the truth, and the life. No one comes to the
Father except through me. John
14:6
It is more than sad, it is tragic
that the second part of this text has so often been divorced from the first.
The insistence that only those are saved who believe in Jesus Christ, that all
others are damned to hell, may have led to some noble and self-sacrificing
missionary efforts, but it has also provided a rationalization for such
atrocities and the Inquisition and the holocaust. On a smaller scale, it has
closed minds against inquiry and learning. Eric Hoffer's description of the
mass movement mentality is painfully appropriate:
All active mass movements strive . . . to interpose a fact-proof screen between the faithful and the realities of the world. They do this by claiming that the ultimate and absolute truth is already embodied in their doctrine and that there is no truth nor certitude outside it."[1]
It is little short of miraculous,
in a way, that many Christians who believe that all non–Christians are damned
to hell are in fact thoroughly decent, caring individuals. The only way I can
explain this is to assume that they have not
divorced the second half of our text from the first. They have taken seriously
Jesus' statement that he is "the way," and have tried honestly and
humbly to follow that way, to follow that example. They take seriously Jesus' question,
"Why do you call me 'Lord, Lord,' and not do what I command you?"
(Luke 6:46). Yes, they believe that they are saved because of their acceptance
of Jesus Christ as their Savior, but they believe that this entails a call to
do his will; and they recognize that their own understanding of his will leaves
a lot to be desired. If you realize that you have a lot to learn, it makes
sense to turn to the best teacher there has ever been.
The connection between the two
halves of our text is a little clearer in Greek than in the usual translations.
In the second section, the King James version has "except by me," and
the New Revised Standard Edition has "except through me." The
preposition is question is dia, and
one of its commonest meanings is "by way of." It is the preposition
one would use to describe the route taken from one place to another—"I
came dia Route 1 rather than Route
195," "by way of Route 1." In our text, then, Jesus is saying,
"I am, the way, the only way
that leads to the Father," which clearly calls us to see both his
truth—his teaching—and his life as showing us that way, the Tao of the Gospel,
if you will.
For a description of that way,
perhaps the most obvious place to look is the Sermon on the Mount, bearing in
mind that this was delivered not to the multitudes (who would hardly sit still
for such an extended discourse) but to the few disciples who followed him up
the mountain, thirsty, we may suppose, for the amazing, gracious words that proceeded
out of his mouth (Luke 4:22).
The Sermon begins with the
Beatitudes, which stand in striking contrast to the fundamental laws of the
Torah, the Ten Commandments, without in any respect contradicting them. They
contrast not in substance, that is, but in two other respects. First, the
Commandments focus on our behavior, the Beatitudes on our attitudes. Second, the
Commandments are cast largely in negative terms, telling us what we must not do, while the Beatitudes are
uniformly affirmative.
This does not mean, though, that
the Beatitudes are all sweetness and light. Far from it, the qualities that
mark the way start with spiritual poverty, mourning, meekness, hunger, and
thirst. In a way, these qualities boil down to the single quality of
recognizing our inadequacy, acknowledging our need. This is presented in stark
terms in a familiar little parable (Luke 18:10-13):
Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee, the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood off by himself and prayed like this: "God, I thank you that I am not like other people—thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even this tax collector. I fast twice a week, I tithe all my income." But the tax collector would not even look up to heaven. He just beat his breast and said, "God, be merciful to me, a sinner." I tell you, this man went back home justified, and not the other.
On reflection, it looks very much
as though the tax collector was on the right way without realizing it. By the
same token, we ourselves may be so absorbed in trying to do and be our best
that there is no tendency to stop and think, "How'm I doing?" This
would be to stray from the way onto the detour of self-evaluation, a detour
that may lead either to despair or to self-congratulation. There may be time
for that when the task is done.
In the course of the task, this peculiar
unconsciousness does not leave us without guideposts, though. We can be quite
sure that we are not on the way if we find ourselves feeling self-satisfied. In
fact, if we look at those first beatitudes, each had an opposite that is all
too clearly recognizable. Self-satisfaction is the opposite of poverty of
spirit. Callousness is the opposite of mourning. Arrogance I the opposite of
meekness. Self-righteousness is the opposite of hunger and thirst for
righteousness. If you try to exit a turnpike by an on-ramp, you may see a very
obvious sign that says "Wrong Way." Have you ever seen a sign that
said "Right Way"? That, it seems, you are entitled to take for
granted, offering no pretext for self-congratulation. Remember Amos: "You
only have I known of all the families of the earth; therefore I will punish you
for all your iniquities" (Amos 3:2).
The next Beatitude, "Blessed
are the merciful," might be taken as a response to the preceding four. That
is, a genuine awareness of our inadequacy will necessarily press us to be
understanding and constructive in our reactions to the inadequacies of others.
"For they shall obtain mercy" conveys the message that we are all in
this together. In strictly Swedenborgian terms, wherever we may be on any
absolute scale of virtue, there is a sense in which we are all midway between
heaven and hell and therefore able to turn in either direction. We need to
recognize that we can choose only between alternatives that we can see, and
that we do not understand the choice someone else has made if we do not know
what the perceived alternative to that choice was. If we want a most extreme
example of this kind of relativism, we need only look at Jesus' words about the
one who was to betray him: "It would have been better for that man not to
have been born" (Matthew 26:24, Mark 14:21).
Then we come to "Blessed are
the pure in heart." This is the kind of purity that we mean when we speak
of "pure gold," and there is an ironic sense in which we can also
speak of "pure filth." That is, it is purity in the sense of the
absence of any inconsistency, the kind of purity of intent that rules out deceit
or hidden agendas. Here, it seems most obvious that we are talking about a
lifelong process, because the fact would seem to be that we do have mixed
feelings and that we often do not understand ourselves all that well. Thoughts
and feelings arise in us from depths that we cannot plumb, and from time to
time we surprise ourselves—sometime for better, sometimes for worse. It is
entirely natural in this noisy and confusing world that negative feelings
arise, and the clear, insistent message of our theology is that we cannot deal
with them unless we recognize them. We cannot destroy them, but we need not let
them take center stage. If we see them—and only
if we see them—we can turn away from them, centering in what we know to be
better. The "shunning" of "shunning evils as sins" is less
fighting against them than turning our backs on them: the basic meaning of the
Latin verb is "to flee."
Perhaps that is why the next
Beatitude is "Blessed are the peacemakers." We know this to be true
on the small scale of our own lives. When there is conflict in a marriage, for
example, there is no way to come to a lasting resolution by having one side win
and the other side lose. The effective marriage counselor will help the couple
identify the legitimate needs that underlie the conflict, distinguish the needs
themselves from the strategies that have been adopted to meet them, and
discover strategies that rely on mutual understanding and cooperation rather
than conflict.
This is no pipe dream. This is how
heaven works, with the joy of all being felt by each and the joy of each by
all. Experience will teach us, if we let it, that this is occasionally possible
here and now; and the true "peacemakers" are the people who nurture
this hope and seek this kind of mutual understanding. We might well bear in
mind that this applies on all scales, from the individual to the international;
for the whole human race, in the Lord's sight, is like a single individual.
To bring us down to earth with a
thud, the Beatitudes conclude by telling us that we are blessed when we are
persecuted, when we are reviled and falsely accused. Most of us, I suspect,
would have a hard time coming up with examples of times when we felt that we
were qualifying for this blessing, but we have only to look at the prevalence
of political trash-talking to realize that "reviling" is all too
often the name of the game, and that truth all too often takes a distant second
place to "spin." How may individuals have remained silent in the
presence of corruption for fear of the consequences of speaking out? There is
good reason that we have laws to protect whistle blowers, and when they remain
silent, we all suffer the consequences.
The Beatitudes are only the introduction to the Sermon
itself, and a hasty survey like this can do no more than hint at the depth of
its articles, the extraordinary way in which they enrich each other, and the
appropriateness of the distinctive rewards for each one. We could take any one
of them and apply it to a multitude of different situations; and if we were to
do so, we would soon find that they have to be translated, so to speak, into
the particular strategies that suit particular circumstances. What works for
peace in a kindergarten class may not work in a corporate boardroom. What works
in a technologically sophisticated culture may not work in a tribal one. That
is what our third reading is telling us—that the variety of people requires a
variety of religions. Our text insists, though, that all such religions must have
certain essential qualities, however different the may be the outer forms in
which those qualities are expressed. There can be no tolerance in any religion
for avarice, indifference, arrogance, self-righteousness, cruelty, deviousness,
ruthlessness, or cowardice.
There is not the slightest hint of
any of these qualities in the life and teaching of Jesus. When he told the
disciples that he was the way, he was saying that he himself had been on a
path, straying neither to the right or to the left, constantly finding and
following that narrow way where justice and mercy are at perfect peace with
each other. The apostle Paul got the message, and passed it on to the
Philippians: :"Let that same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus"
(Philippians 2:5).
Oddly, perhaps, this sounds
terribly demanding when it is put in affirmative terms, but when we look at the
pure ugliness of the alternatives, it is departing from the way that makes no
sense. "Wrong Way!" There
really is no alternative path. No one comes to the Father except by this Way.
Amen.
Divine Providence section # 326:10 Emanuel Swedenborg
We know that there are within us
not only the parts formed as organs from blood vessels and nerve fibers—the
forms we call our viscera. There are also skin, membranes, tendons, cartilage,
bones, nails, and teeth. They are less intensely alive than the organic forms,
which they serve as ligaments, coverings, and supports. If there are to be all
these elements in that heavenly person who is heaven, it cannot be made up of
the people of one religion only. It
needs people from many religions, so all the people who make these two
universal principles of the church central to their own lives [loving God and
living a good life] have a place in that heavenly person, that is, in heaven.
They enjoy a happiness that suits their own nature.
[1]
Eric Hoffer: The True Believer: Thoughts
on the Nature of Mass Movements (New York" Harper Perennial, 2010), p.
79.
For a similar sermon, see: http://alisonlongstaff.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-names-of-god-or-is-jesus-christ.html
For a similar sermon, see: http://alisonlongstaff.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-names-of-god-or-is-jesus-christ.html
