Monday, February 24, 2014

Rev Dr. George F. Dole's sermon from Sunday, Feb 23, 2014

Rev Dr. George F. Dole supply-preached while I took my first research Sunday.  Here is his sermon.

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

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