Sunday, May 18, 2014

“Teach Me to Pray”

Rev. Alison Longstaff, May 18, 2014
Bath Church of the New Jerusalem
Genesis 24: 42-48, 25: 20-21; Mark 10:46-52; HS 2535

Note:  I struggled with the pronouns in this sermon.  Sometimes I use “you” and sometimes “we.”  “We” includes everyone, communicating that we are not alone in these struggles and experiences—that we all deal with them.  But sometimes the situations I am describing are just too specific, and sounded very weird in my ears unless I went to a more singular “you.”  So just know that when I am using “you,” I am not up here pointing a finger down on YOU personally.  “You” simply worked better than “one” or “we.”

In our Scripture readings today we see three examples of prayer, not just of prayer, but of prayer answered completely and miraculously.  Prayer answered completely and miraculously.  Wouldn't that be nice?  How many of you, when you pray, expect your prayers to be answered that way?

In the first story, the servant of Abraham (we aren't told his name) asks for a very specific sign to indicate God’s choice of a wife for Isaac—and he gets it, loud and clear, with all sorts of amazing side details he never imagined.  In the second story, a blind man—Bartimaeus—beseeches Jesus to heal him, despite admonitions from the crowd to be quiet.  The more they shushed him, the louder he cried, until Jesus called him to come over.  Jesus grants Bartimaeus his prayer and heals his blindness.  Just like that.

So, today I want to talk about our prayer lives—yours and mine.  I want to explore why we do and do not pray, what we expect when we pray, who we pray to, and how we deal with disappointment when our prayers seem to go unanswered.

Swedenborg tells us that prayer is speech with God.  It is important then to explore how we actually picture God, not what we say we believe about God, because this directly affects how we talk to God.

What happens if you picture the Lord, (as is the truth) as your best friend?  What if God is right here, right now, next to you, enjoying being with you?  What if God knows everything about you and yet still loves you dearly, just like a best friend?  (As if God would stop loving us if “He” knew our uglier sides.  What part of “omnipresent” says God misses some details of our life?)

When you relax into a heart-friendship with the Lord, you discover that God is exactly that close and that loving.  The Lord is more comfortable and safe than any best friend.  There is no need to fear, because there is nothing to fear. 

So, how would you talk to a best-friend God?  With a best-friend God, prayer really does become conversation.  Have you seen the character Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof, talking to God all the time, about everything?  We can be like that too, discussing everything, our car that won’t start, our sick child, that pain in our right shoulder, our son-in-law that needs another job. Nothing is too big or too small to share.  Everything is on the table. 

The Lord wants us to be that open and comfortable with Him.  Jesus came so that He might show us that He is with us right here.  That’s what “Emmanuel” means: “God WITH us;” Right here, right now. Beside you. Surrounding you. Holding your hand, holding you up, laughing with you, crying with you, watching you when you rest, and cheering you on when you try something new.

Why wouldn't we share everything with our best friend?

There are many things that can get in the way of a healthy prayer life.  We may have been taught incorrect things about prayer, making us afraid to pray in case we do it “wrong.”  We may have some incorrect ideas about God.  Perhaps we think God doesn't care, or that prayer doesn't work.  Maybe we don’t even know what prayer is for.

Most of us, at some point, have tried prayer and had it fail. We might have asked for something as mundane as a certain toy for Christmas, or something as heart-wrenching as a dear friend surviving cancer.  When our prayers go unanswered we can feel abandoned and betrayed by God. Depending on the depth of the loss, that sense of betrayal can turn into a lot of anger—a sort of spiritual temper tantrum.  Anger at God and a refusal even to speak to God, especially after an untimely death is very common.  Is that where you are? 

The interesting thing is, we can be completely mad at God and completely desperate for God’s love at the same time.  Like a child in a tantrum, we can rage at and reject God, yet deeply rely on God’s continued love.  It is hard to wrap our brains around.  We can believe in God and not believe in God at the same time.  As one friend said to me during a rough time, “I don’t know if I even believe in God anymore.” She then finished with a wry grin, “But at least I know God will forgive me for doubting.”

Anyway, if you struggle to believe, don’t judge yourself, you are in good company—Mother Teresa did too, did you know that?  She struggled terribly sometimes.  Doubt and feelings of abandonment and anger at God are all signs of spiritual work.  Doubt and anger are also some of the bigger reasons we might stop talking to God.

We have covered who we pray to, and why we might not pray, and a little about what we expect when we pray.  What about how we pray?

There are many ways to pray: silently in our hearts, openly, speaking out loud, in song, with tears—I have even seen how yoga can serve as body prayer.  We can be meek and mild.  Or we can be like Bartimaeus who cried out and shouted for what he wanted.  (I have done that. Er, in the privacy of my home….) Bartimaeus begged for what he wanted. When everyone around him told him to be quiet—there are plenty of naysayers in life, aren’t there?—he just cried louder and louder until Jesus heard him.  Jesus always heard him, but He allowed Bartimaeus to persist in asking—in pleading—for what he wanted so that Bartimaeus would be completely prepared when his dream came true.

The story of Bartimaeus illustrates the relationship between our side of prayer and God’s side of prayer.  Sometimes we have to ask very loud and for a long time for what we want.  When this is true, it doesn't mean we are doing something wrong.  When we have to wait for an answer, it is God preparing things behind the scenes.  Think of it rather like a four-year-old praying to fly a jet-plane.  God’s answer may be “yes!” but it will still take a long time of growth and learning and development and training before that four-year-old sees that dream realized. That is nobody’s fault.  No one is wrong.  But to the four-year-old, it will look like there’s no answer to that prayer for a loooong time. 

Our job is to pray, beg, SHOUT for what we want; then do everything we can; and then TRUST. We must “pray to catch the bus”, and then “run as fast as we can”; AND we must trust there will be another bus if we miss the one we wanted.  Pray, pursue, let go. God has the much bigger job—arranging things behind the scenes—and we must trust that He is doing his part.

Do you talk to God regularly?  Just like Tevye?  Why or why not?

Well, here’s my next question for you: What if you really did ask for your heart’s desire?  And what if God said “yes?”

I think sometimes the thought of having our dreams come true is far scarier than simply accepting the spiritual scraps we find under the master’s table. 

I was part of a community once that was praying to grow.  They were doing all the right things, setting their intention, working to welcome new people, applying for grants, running fundraisers and working very hard.  Does that sound familiar?  And their efforts started to pay off!  The money came pouring in—more than they had asked for.  New members were coming and staying.  This little congregation was getting what they prayed for.  It was a beautiful time for them.

Unfortunately, as often happens in these stories, the success must have unnerved too many of them.  And for whatever reason, the leadership couldn’t stop the internal sabotage. The positive excitement became fear and manipulation. Squabbling, gossip, and politics took over. Most of the new people trickled away.  Within two years, lack of support or follow-through on the good initiatives reduced the congregation inevitably back to what they had always been—the same tiny group and not enough money. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it.  We are all capable of this sort of choice.  There is a part in each of us that would rather choose the struggle we know over the scary momentum of success.  While we always have the choice to keep moving forward, sometimes we allow fear to sabotage our efforts.  Success can be really scary.

I can only urge each of us: when God answers a prayer, try to accept the gift and say thank you; rather than running and hiding.

When we, all of us together, set our sights on a dream, and with conviction and determination fight to make it happen, the universe (meaning God) has a crazy way of responding in abundance.  The cup has a tendency to overflow, in fact.  It is one way God works miracles.  It can be kinda scary, but stay with it.  Why miss the ride of your life?

And when your prayer gets answered, stop and pay attention to that.  Notice and remember—put a bookmark in the memory—write it on your heart that God answers prayers.  It is so easy to sink into discouragement and cynicism, especially when things are not going well.  God always answers prayers, but not always with speed. However, every good thing that we ask for we will receive in time, especially when we follow our prayer with committed action.  Miracles can and do happen, despite all the naysayers. 

There is a famous quote by William H. Murray that goes: “The moment one definitively commits oneself, then providence moves too.  All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred.  A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance, which no one would have dreamt would have come their  way.”

Where would Bartimaeus be if he had listened to the naysayers and given up?  

So next time you sit down for a chat with your Best Friend, fasten your seatbelt and prepare for the ride of your life.

Radically revised from a sermon preached October 25, 2009, in Kitchener, Ontario


 Readings:
Genesis 24: 42-48, 25: 20-21  “And this day I came to the well and said, ‘O Lord God of my master Abraham, if You will now prosper the way in which I go, 43 behold, I stand by the well of water; and it shall come to pass that when the virgin comes out to draw water, and I say to her, “Please give me a little water from your pitcher to drink,” 44 and she says to me, “Drink, and I will draw for your camels also,”—let her be the woman whom the Lord has appointed for my master’s son.’
45 “But before I had finished speaking in my heart, there was Rebekah, coming out with her pitcher on her shoulder; and she went down to the well and drew water. And I said to her, ‘Please let me drink.’46 And she made haste and let her pitcher down from her shoulder, and said, ‘Drink, and I will give your camels a drink also.’ So I drank, and she gave the camels a drink also. 47 Then I asked her, and said, ‘Whose daughter are you?’ And she said, ‘The daughter of Bethuel, Nahor’s son, whom Milcah bore to him.’ So I put the nose ring on her nose and the bracelets on her wrists. 48 And I bowed my head and worshiped the Lord, and blessed the Lord God of my master Abraham, who had led me in the way of truth to take the daughter of my master’s brother for his son.
25: 20 Isaac was forty years old when he took Rebekah as wife, the daughter of Bethuel the Syrian of Padan Aram, the sister of Laban the Syrian. 21 Now Isaac pleaded with the Lord for his wife, because she was barren; and the Lord granted his plea, and Rebekah his wife conceived.

Mark 10:46-52
46 Now they came to Jericho. As He went out of Jericho with His disciples and a great multitude, blind Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus, sat by the road begging. 47 And when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out and say, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”  48 Then many warned him to be quiet; but he cried out all the more, “Son of David, have mercy on me!”  49 So Jesus stood still and commanded him to be called.  Then they called the blind man, saying to him, “Be of good cheer. Rise, He is calling you.”  50 And throwing aside his garment, he rose and came to Jesus.  51 So Jesus answered and said to him, “What do you want Me to do for you?”  The blind man said to Him, “Rabboni, that I may receive my sight.”
52 Then Jesus said to him, “Go your way; your faith has made you well.” And immediately he received his sight and followed Jesus on the road.

Heavenly Secrets #2535 Prayer, regarded in itself, is speech with God.  It involves a concentration on the topic of the prayer.  Then something flows into our perception or thought in answer, such that there is a certain opening of our interiors toward God.  This is different from person to person, according our circumstances, and according to the quality and the reason for our prayer. If we pray in loving-kindness and in trust, and for heavenly and spiritual things, then we receive something like a revelation (which is manifested in our feelings) bringing hope, consolation, and a certain inward joy. - Emanuel Swedenborg

Sunday, May 11, 2014

“The Mother Clothed with the Sun” - sermon

“The Mother Clothed with the Sun”
Rev. Alison Longstaff, May 11, 2014
Bath Church of the New Jerusalem
Psalm 104: 22-35; Rev 12: 1-9; AE 707

 “Though the human body is born complete in one moment, the birth of the human heart is an ongoing process.  It is being birthed in every experience of your life.  Everything that happens to you has the potential to deepen you.  All the possibilities of your human destiny are asleep in your soul.  You are here to realize and honour these possibilities.” -John O’Donohue- Anam Cara (pp 6,9)
               
Happy Mother’s Day.  Yes, mother’s day is a secular holiday, but my inner feminist still loves it—any chance to raise up and honor some very important people in our lives whom we otherwise tend to take for granted.  And while secular, Mother’s Day does have certain spiritual overtones; and I can use it as a great segue into the “New Church’s” birthday, which Swedenborgians celebrate on the 19th day of June.
           
There are many powerful mothers in the Bible, from Sarah the wife of Abraham, to Hannah the mother of the prophet Samuel, to Mary the mother of Jesus.  But I am choosing as our focus the Woman clothed with the Sun in the Apocalypse.  In our text from the book of Revelation this woman gives birth, which makes her a mother—a mother clothed with the sun, making her perhaps one of the most beautiful mothers imaginable.  She is clothed with the sun, which means (in Swedenborgian terms) that she radiates love.  The natural sun is pure fire, and so it represents God’s love to us: the same love that filled the disciples at Pentecost and urged them to go out and spread this love throughout the world.  That is why tongues of fire appeared above their heads.  They were lit from within by God’s love for the human race and all of creation.  And that is why they could speak in every language, because God’s love crosses all cultural barriers and longs to sweep all peoples into its loving embrace.
           
So, who is this Mother Clothed with the Sun, and what meaning does she convey?  To start with, she probably represents the same thing that all princesses, damsels, and wise women represent in all the fairy tales—she represents all that is soft and beautiful, nurturing and life-giving in the human spirit.  She represents all the gentleness, compassion, and tenderness that typify the archetypal Mother.  No, we flesh and blood mothers never achieve such a perfection of gentle beauty.  We are clumsy and goofy and we get zits.  We have PMS and bad hair days, and each of us has our emotional and spiritual stuff that we have to work through—which means we often fall seriously short of motherly perfection.   But that’s not the point.  We still honour motherhood, today and every day, for the loving care our mothers did achieve, and for that incredible, God-given, self-sacrificing love that we have all seen and long for and cherish in our human community.         
               In Swedenborg’s writings we discover that this Mother clothed with the Sun represents “the church.”  But be careful: “church” here does not mean the specific religious group to which we belong or even more abstractly, organized Christian religion.  The Mother clothed with the Sun represents the great collective of all the good people on the earth who are trying to live good and conscientious lives.  This collective crosses all denominational boundaries.  And any one group that claims they are IT, has missed the boat.   In particular, the Woman clothed with the Sun represents all those people who are able to incubate, nurture and give birth to a healthy, living understanding of what it means to live a life according to God’s Word, which means God’s love.  Sometimes, that is you and me.  And most specifically, this woman represents God’s Love Itself.  She radiates such love that the only way to describe her is “clothed with the sun.”  Have you looked at the sun lately?  It can be blinding in its brilliance.
           
So, in our story from Revelation we have a beautiful damsel in distress, she is in labour, which is probably the most vulnerable time ever in a woman’s life.  And right then, a dragon appears! (I hate it when that happens)—a big red one with seven heads and ten horns.  This dragon’s sole intent is to eat up the tiny new baby.  That’s just creepy.  What is this dragon doing in God’s Word?  What message is it telling us about our human struggle to become loving people?  This dragon is identified as “Satan” which in Hebrew means “Tempter” or “Adversary.”  The dragon represents all the things that distract us from God’s love and make us afraid.   The dragon is a natural side-effect of being born not omniscient, not omnipotent, and not omnipresent.  We can’t help it.  We just get afraid.  We worry about things, and then we try to control things and manipulate people so that we won’t be hurt.  And we tend to invent formulas and rules and we think they will be our salvation.  We are scared of the dark, and we line up our defences so we’ll be safe.  We can’t help but be sure that there is a monster under the bed.  We are afraid to trust God.  We are afraid to love.  Loving can feel WAY too vulnerable.
           
God knew this is what we would do, and that’s why the dragon is in the story.  It’s not a warning; it is just what we do while we are learning.  The dragon continues to be in the story and cause problems until it is no longer in the story.  Eventually we stop being afraid and we stop trying to control things and we open up to love.  God knows this will happen too.  That is why the dragon disappears from the story, never to be seen again.  The dragon never wins.  In the end, fear never wins.
            There are many theories out in the world about this dragon, with most of them full of fear, and asserting that this dragon is or will be some specific earthly organisation at a set time in history doing some bad things. *Sigh.* The eternal and timeless nature of God’s love and God’s Word is never so limited and specific.  God’s Word speaks to all humans of all time, and is uniquely designed to do so.  No one story, not even one abstruse and fantastical prophecy in the Bible is ever secretly about helicopters or bar codes or which nation controls the land west of the Jordan River.  God’s Word is incapable of being so limited.  The Bible is about spiritual human dynamics.  It is about the individual journey of the human heart towards God.  It is about our struggle to learn to trust God and trust the process.  We don’t need to be afraid of any story in the Bible.  Even the number 666, or “the mark of the beast” is simply describing the nature of religion when it stops teaching love.  When we are loving, we embody the best of what is human.  But when we forget compassion and loving-kindness, when we think we need to be afraid and to judge and to make religion to be about rules and a certain lifestyle, we look more like a beast.  We become inhuman.  The number 666 is a simple spiritual representation of “getting it all wrong.”  666 means we completely missed the boat.   *Buzzer sound* “Try again.”  And the beauty is, we can. 
           
Yes, sometimes we are the beast.  Sometimes we are the dragon, but God’s plan is for each of us eventually, finally and completely to become a part of the enormous, beautiful, blindingly radiant woman clothed with the sun. 
           
So, in our story, right on cue, the brave knight shows up to rescue the princess, or in this case, to rescue the new mother.  There is a great battle with swords and everything.  Swords are “truth” or in this case remembering that love and compassion are the heart of the life of religion.  You and I battle the dragon with our swords when we hold fast to the thought, “I am to treat each person with loving respect because he or she is a child of God.”  Period.  The dragon and his thinking would say something like: “There are the right sort of people and the wrong sort of people.  I don’t respect the wrong sort because they believe such-and-such, or they wear such-and-such, or they look like such-and-such.... Those people are the problem and I am okay so long as I reject them.”   I would guess we’ve all been on both the giving as well as on the receiving end of such an attitude from time to time.  It is no fun.  It does not feel good.  It does not feel like God.
           
Fortunately, the dragon has no power over God’s love.  It is finally cast out of “heaven” in the story, which means we eventually really, really learn that the fearful, judging way of doing religion doesn’t produce heaven in our lives.  We really get that it doesn’t belong anywhere near heaven.  That is when the dragon is cast out of heaven.
            This arc in the Bible that tells the story of the Mother clothed with the Sun and the Great Red Dragon has a sort of muddled, repetitive nature to it.  It seems like the dragon is cast out for good, only to show up again and make more problems.  There’s something familiar-sounding in that.  Isn’t that how it so often goes in our lives?  We think we’ve licked something, and then it shows up again in a slightly new form and all the trouble starts again.  That’s just the way things go on this epic journey.  It’s not our fault.  It’s the shape of things.  But just maybe it is in the Bible not to tell us we are losers, but to give us heart. 
            Remember, the Bible is also the story of the journey Jesus made on his path from human infant to Divine Human.  That means even Jesus had to battle this spiritual dragon, and it didn’t want to go away for Him either.  I think we see it when the devil promises him, “Just bow down to me, and all the world will be yours.”  It must have been very tempting to want to simply force us all to be good—to take control—to remove the process and zap us all into instant perfection.  We can be so slow to learn!  And we do such horrible things to each other in the process!  We did such horrible things to Jesus.  He must have been tempted to simply eliminate all the struggling and pain and suffering.
           But He also knew that to do that would not be the most loving thing, though that can be hard for us to understand.  Eliminating the struggle for us also eliminates the overwhelming joy and triumph we will feel when we finally reach the end of the race.  It eliminates us feeling like a someone, or as if we own our own spiritual life. That is important.  What does your child learn when you clean their room for them?  What do they learn when they have to clean it themselves?
This spiritual journey is a marathon, and it is worth every drop of sweat and every ounce of stamina and patience and endurance.  It draws these qualities out in us, and teaches us compassion.  It grows us up from spiritual amoebas to spiritual ninja angels (we hope)! Good things take time.  Very good things take a very long time.  If it wasn’t worth the time it takes, God wouldn’t have created this life the way it is.
            So forgive yourself when you are facing the dragon once again.  You are not alone.  And remember the goal in sight: protecting the vision and reality of the Mother Clothed with the Sun, which will be a growing collective of human hearts and minds that understand that LOVE is what matters most.
           
So, on this lovely Mother’s Day, celebrate all the forms of love in your life.  Honour everyone who has “mothered” you on your journey—old and young, male and female.  Celebrate all the ways this church and others have been a spiritual mother to your spiritual life.  And celebrate the good home this church has made—that we make for each other here by trying our best to be as kind and loving as we can be.  And as you go forward from this house, let the love of God so shine in your life, that you—that we all—will be clothed with the sun, if only for a little while.
            God’s blessing on this Mother’s day Sunday.  Amen.
Modified from a sermon originally preached May 2008

Readings:
Psalm 104: 24-35
O Lord, how many are Your works! In wisdom You have made them all. The earth is full of Your possessions—this sea great and broad, in which are swarms without number, living things both great and small. There the ships sail about; there is that Leviathan which You have made to play there. These all wait for You, that You may give them their food in due season.
What You give them they gather in; You open Your hand, they are filled with good.  You hide Your face, they are troubled; You take away their breath, they die and return to their dust.
You send forth Your Spirit, they are created; and You renew the face of the earth.
May the glory of the Lord endure forever; May the Lord rejoice in His works.
He looks on the earth, and it quakes; He touches the hills, and they smoke.
I will sing to the Lord as long as I live; I will sing praise to my God while I have my being.
May my meditation be sweet to Him; I will be glad in the Lord.
Bless the Lord, O my soul! Praise the Lord!

Rev 12: 1-9
1 A great and wondrous sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. 2 She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth. 3 Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on his heads. 4 His tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth. The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that he might devour her child the moment it was born. 5 She gave birth to a son, a male child, who will rule all the nations with an iron scepter. And her child was snatched up to God and to his throne. 6 The woman fled into the desert to a place prepared for her by God, where she might be taken care of for 1,260 days. And war broke out in heaven: Michael and his angels fought with the dragon; and the dragon and his angels fought, but they did not prevail, nor was a place found for them in heaven any longer. So the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was cast to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.


Apocalypse Explained n. 707 (my paraphrase) A woman clothed with the sun, signifies “the church” (or spirituality) with those who are in love to the Lord, and consequently in love towards the neighbor. One can see this when one knows that the “sun,” signifies the Lord, especially regarding Divine love. “Clothed with the sun” signifies living from that love.  This “woman” signifies a New Spirituality (which radiates love), which is being established by the Lord as the less mature and sometimes harmful ideologies of existing faith systems are seen to be broken and are therefore abandoned.



Sunday, May 4, 2014

"Home" a sermon

Home
"Open House Sunday"
Rev. Alison Longstaff, May 4, 2014
Bath Church of the New Jerusalem
Isaiah 33:20-22; Rev 21:1-4; Heavenly Secrets 7560

I was in one of my coffee groups not too long ago, and as is our custom, we were taking turns sharing what was on our hearts.  For some of us there, this group is one of the only safe places where we can be completely honest and be completely ourselves.  We have a group agreement that no one will judge, nor interrupt, nor give advice.  Each member is loved and accepted unconditionally.

That morning a wise and kind older woman, let’s call her “Anya” was describing her day. She and her husband have an adult child with a mildly diminished mental capacity who lives with them.  This adult child has a child who also lives with them.  The adult child has trouble holding onto jobs and trouble managing her behaviorally challenged son.  At an age when many of their peers are enjoying retirement, “Anya” and her husband are still parenting this young mother and now also needing to be the parents of her demanding little boy.  “Anya” was so weary and discouraged, and my heart ached for her.  It struck me that her home—the place where we are supposed to be able to go to rest and be safe—was regularly a place of chaos and disruption and drama.  Do to no fault of her own, nor even her daughter’s, “Anya’s”  home was not a safe haven for her.  It was not a place where she could rest.  It was full of chaos, and she saw no way to change that.

Home.  What does that word evoke in your mind?  For me it brings to mind “The Walton’s”, or that famous image of a Thanksgiving meal by Norman Rockwell.  Home should mean family, and family should mean safety and unconditional love, but all too often these things do not go together.  Too many people feel neither truly safe not truly loved.  Too many have to make a home away from their family, if they wish to feel safe.  If both your home and your family are safe and loving, consider yourself very lucky!

A church is a home too.  It is a spiritual home, and when a church runs well, it is definitely a place of unconditional love, acceptance, and spiritual and emotional safety.  That is what church should be, and that is what we should expect.  Unfortunately, all too often church is only some of these, or none of these things.  And when our church family hurts or betrays us, the wound cuts very deep.  Perhaps, while we expect our family to be crazy sometimes, we expect our church to be better, more perfect, to reflect God’s love all the time.
 
When our church gets mired in conflict, or personalities clash and start recruiting members to take sides, or when our church changes from a pastor we love to a pastor we can’t stand seem to feel good about, we can feel profoundly disillusioned, even abandoned or betrayed.  Losses such as these surrounding our church home are real and painful and occur all too often in our society.  Yet they also remain unnoticed and unacknowledged.  We understand the aching losses when someone says, “my dog just died,” or “my baby went away to college,” or “we had to sell our house,” or “he had a stroke and can no longer drive.”  But how comfortable are we in saying, or hearing with quiet sympathy, “we got a new pastor that I just can’t warm up to,” or “I can’t believe the behavior of the people at my church; it makes me feel ashamed,” or “I understand the value of the new style of worship, but I miss the old rituals so very much sometimes!”  We are more likely to placate or advise, which is never as helpful as simply listening to the pain.

Our spiritual attachments and what we find spiritually meaningful is deeply personal, yet as a culture we have a long way to go in respecting each other’s spiritual territory.  We all could afford to undergo “spiritual sensitivity training.”  Perhaps this is due to the longstanding Christian culture of dutifully attempting to invalidate and replace every spirituality the missionaries encountered.  From a pastoral and psychological perspective, that is spiritual violation.  It is profoundly disrespectful, and it is small wonder that such Christian colonization has left a trail of cultural genocide and abuse in its wake.  yes, Christianity has done a lot of good.  But I cannot gloss over the harm and abuse that is also a real part of the legacy.
 
Some visitors here today are spiritual nomads, forever wandering from group to group, taking what you like and leaving the rest, self-sufficient in your own spirituality, (which can be quite healthy).  Welcome.  May you find rest in your soul.  I certainly understand why so many choose not to trust or belong again in any church home, because of bad experiences with poorly behaved or poorly managed congregations.

Others here today were born and raised in this very church home, and can only imagine what it is like to have been deeply hurt by and lose their church home, or even what it is like to have to search and search for a spiritual home before finding one.

There are probably as many spiritual stories as there are people in this room.  What is your story?

In our scripture readings today, we heard Jerusalem called “a quiet home.” In fact the promise is that the New Jerusalem will be a place where “God will dwell with us, and wipe every tear from our eyes.”  Doesn’t that describe the spiritual home of which we all dream? That is what every church and spiritual organization should be, though many (all?) are not.
 
Emanuel Swedenborg—from whom this denomination gets its name, (rather the way Lutherans are named from Martin Luther)—prophesied that this “New Jerusalem” found in the Book of Revelation, represents a new, inclusive spirituality that will grow among all humankind.  This “New Jerusalem” will be new precisely because it will not be exclusive.  It will honor and respect the goodness and truth in all people and all religions.

Swedenborg says that we are all called to do our inner work—to undertake the metaphoric “hero’s journey,” if you will—where each one works continuously to grow in insight and compassion.  The idea is that if and when the human race can grow into such a collectively compassionate, enlightened, and responsible overall state, heaven on earth will indeed draw much closer.  What is promised in Revelation and named “The New Jerusalem” is the hope of such a universal human compassion and wisdom—a world full of millions of little Dalai lamas, if you will—only from many different spiritual origins and flavors. 

Yes, this funky little historic church is named “The Church of the New Jerusalem,” after that vision, not in any illusion that we are the embodiment of that long-awaited world state, but with the intention that we will strive towards it, day by day, step by step.  Are we a perfect spiritual home?  Not on your life, though we wish we were.  Have people been hurt here?  Yes indeed.  All we can do is express our remorse and do our best to make amends and to see that such mistakes don’t happen again.  We try to see this home like spiritual family—we love each other anyway, even if we have crazy moments and sometimes we drive each other a little nuts.  That’s what love is and that’s what family does.

Home.  What does the word mean to you? 

Does the word tug at your heart the way it tugs at mine? 

What does the ideal mean to you, and how does it compare to what you come home to every day?  No doubt everyone in this room knows at least one person whose foundation is a troubled and chaotic home, like that of “Anya” described at the opening of this sermon.  If you are so lucky as to have a home that is safe and restful, take this moment to breathe a prayer of gratitude.  And let’s all of us, stop right now for a moment to hold in our hearts and prayers all the souls who must survive somehow, day by day, in homes that are not perhaps emotionally or psychologically or physically safe.

For some of us, this church group is perhaps one of the only safe spaces where we can come and begin to be completely ourselves and be completely heard.  This congregation has a group agreement that we will not judge, nor interrupt, nor give advice (though each of us sometimes forgets).  May it ever be a place where each comer is loved and accepted unconditionally.


I have come a long way from my home in Canada to make a new home here.  I have fallen in love with this great town, and especially with this tiny, magical congregation.  Those who have lived in Maine a long time love to share the state they love with visitors, hoping they will love it too, and hoping they will fall so in love that they will stay. That’s a lot like how we feel about this little church.  We love it when others come to visit.  And we really love it when somebody decides to stay. But whether you just visit sometimes, or you move in and join us, you are welcome here, any time!  Your presence is a blessing no matter what.

Amen


Readings:
Isaiah 33: 20-22
20 Look upon Zion, the city of our appointed feasts;
Your eyes will see Jerusalem, a quiet home,
A tabernacle that will not be taken down;
Not one of its stakes will ever be removed,
Nor will any of its cords be broken.
21 But there the majestic Lord will be for us
A place of broad rivers and streams,
In which no galley with oars will sail,
Nor majestic ships pass by
22 For the Lord is our Judge,
The Lord is our Lawgiver,
The Lord is our King;
He will save us

Revelation 21: 1-4 Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. Also there was no more sea. Then I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.”

Heavenly Secrets 7560. My paraphrase of the Latin To ‘be gathered home' means to be placed in safe keeping. Spiritually a 'home' or a 'house' refers to the inner part of a person’s mind where compassion and right-thinking reside. It is the capacities for compassion and right-thinking that make someone truly human, and that essentially is the real person.   Because this inner mind is the seat of goodness and truth with a person, and the capacities of compassion and right-thinking dwell there, the Lord keeps this region utterly safe and protected deep inside each person.

By Emanuel Swedenborg