Small Joys in a Big World - a sermon for third advent

Small Joys in a Big World

Sermon for the Advent of Joy

Rev. Alison Longstaff, Dec 14, 2014

Bath Church of the New Jerusalem

Luke 2: 1-7; John 15:9-17; Heavenly Secrets 543

These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full. This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.  (John 15: 11-12)

The small, snuffling sounds of a newborn.  The solid weight of that new bundle in your arms.  All the promise inherent in that new life.  Enter the presence of a newborn and it is hard NOT to feel delight and joy.

Swedenborg says that the highest angels are with a newborn from conception.  I believe we can feel those angels when we are around a newborn. We all get a little softer.  We can’t help but smile.  Maybe we can even feel a subtle peace, an ineffable sweetness, and a gentle JOY.

If we are to believe Swedenborg, that joy is present because the angles with that baby live in constant joy.  Their sense of God’s love and protection, their absolute trust in God’s providence, and their deep wisdom from years of experience have made them able to sustain that deep, deep, peace and joy on a constant basis. 

God plans for each of us to live in that bliss—a bliss that we ALL knew once when we were newborns. We too were surrounded and cared for by the highest angels, and that experience is imprinted on our souls.  It is a gift from God.  And it contains part of the road map back to that place of deep peace and joy.
 

Because you see, that innocent joy doesn't last.  It can’t.  According to Swedenborg, as we become more and more self-aware, these highest angels must pull away from us and be replaced by lower angels and then still lower angels to respect our spiritual freedom. This protects us from being overwhelmed by the intensity of their love.  And so, as you and I grow up, our surrounding spirits are gradually exchanged from more exalted ones to less exalted ones until we are surrounded by spiritual beings much closer to our own level of spiritual development—closer to what we can tolerate.

These lower guardian beings are still angels.  They still far surpass our capacity for love and wisdom and joy, but not so much so that we are overwhelmed.  They are advanced beyond us just enough to make good spiritual mentors; and their energy invites us to advance into our own love and wisdom—towards something closer to what they have—for the sake of our own happiness.  

The paragraph I quoted before the sermon from Swedenborg’s long work “Heavenly Secrets” essentially says that even the most intense joy you and I might experience today can’t even come close to touching the dullest joy of these lowest angels.  In other words, God gives us as much joy as we can handle, but not so much that it hurts.  We are on a continual path of spiritual growth, and as we grow spiritually more adept, God grants us deeper and deeper joy.  As we grow stronger, wiser, more loving, and closer to God, we become increasingly able to sustain this heavenly joy which is our birthright.  It is God’s plan for us.  But we must undergo a lot of preparation before we can handle it in its full expression.

So on this Advent Sunday of Joy, what is it that we must do to be worthy of this joy?  How do we grow stronger, wiser, more loving, and closer to God?  How do we prepare ourselves for the birth of this incredible joy into our lives?

Our scripture reading contains the answer.  We are to keep God’s commandments, particularly the command to love one another as God has loved us.

If only it were as easy as it sounds.

“Loving one another” is both very simple and very complex.  On paper it sounds easy.  But once we try it in real-life settings—once we get down to matters of division of labor and money, issues of trust and expectation, commitment and entitlement, loyalty and betrayal, it all gets rather muddy.  We realize we must learn the difference between “tough love”—which doesn't look like love but is, and codependency—which looks like love but isn't.  We must learn how to give without resentment, and how not to give without guilt, and when each is appropriate.  We need to develop great compassion and great clarity of mind—things which only come through time and experience and lots of personal work.

One terrific aid to help us along this learning curve is the Ten Commandments.  In them, God gave us a simplified break-down of how to love God and our neighbor well. (P.S. These rules and guidelines can be found in many other world spiritualities too, with slightly different wording.  This fits with the Swedenborgian teaching that God put into each world religion all that we need to find our way back to true loving-kindness and wisdom—aka “God”). 

These basic human laws of respectful co-existence provide the path back to joy, back to that heaven we experienced as newborns, and back to God.  They help mend our relationship with ourselves, with God, and with each other.  So how come we are not all living in peace and joy and love right now? 

It would be convenient and easy to say that life is not the blissful dream it should be because “bad people out there” in the world are ruining things for all of the rest of us and we are all victims of their dishonesty and greed and fear. There is some truth in that, but thinking that way is also “playing the victim card” which tends to trap us in hopelessness and helplessness.  A stronger and more empowering truth is that you and I have many ways we are complicit in the same dishonesties if on a much smaller scale. Therefore you and I working on and healing the ways we are contributing to the problem right now DOES make a difference.  

We only have the power to change ourselves.  In fact the only way we can truly ever change any “them,” “out there,” is to look for how the things we so dislike out there are also in our own skin, and to make them better inside us first.

Indeed, many spiritualities teach that me changing myself and you changing yourself for the better right here, right now, does move the whole world toward something better in a real way.  By acknowledging and correcting the increasingly subtle ways I am lying to myself, and any way I am doing harm to those I deal with, I make things better, even if it doesn't feel like it some days.  Each one of us becoming just a little more honest and kind does make the whole world more honest and kind, period.  Our greatest potency is rarely in fixing “them.”  It is found in what you and I can do in our small ways inside ourselves right here and right now.
   

Swedenborg, in the book True Christianity, says that the potency of the Ten Commandments lies in their deep spiritual application rather than in their letter.  It is the spirit of these laws that the angels pay attention to, not the simple words. 

“Thou shalt not steal” certainly means in the concrete sense “don't shoplift or mug or break into people's homes or cars to take their stuff.”   But more deeply it means “don’t steal” in your mind and heart and attitude.  Stealing in your mind and heart and attitude shows up as entitlement, taking credit for things not ours, and generally feeling more valuable or worthy than someone else. 

The cry “black lives matter” that has arisen strongly in the US over the last several weeks is calling attention to a deeply ingrained cultural attitude that steals human worth from one group or person and hands it to another.  We must stop this stealing as a nation.  In any way any one of us individually deems ourselves better than another, we too are stealing from that other.  An attitude of entitlement breeds contempt for that other and gives us permission to take what we like from them, because they are less than us.  A very real way you and I can work to heal this sickness in our nation is to be on the alert for how you and I individually deem ourselves better than or objectify any other human or group in our personal lives.  Yes, speak out against the injustices you see in the broader world.  But also look for and work on any injustices inside your own spiritual space that may show up.  Because that is the most powerful way you can help.

The saying that “if you break one commandment you break them all” (James 2:10) has a lot of truth to it.  My sick attitudes invite me into hurtful behaviors that I then justify. And because some part of me knows that I am not in integrity, I will feel a niggling unease.  Unwilling to hear or see the truth, I will lie to myself.  Do you see the pattern? Entitlement leads to stealing behaviors, which then leads to lying and covering-up.  In fact, I will develop an entire inner “public-relations team” to protect me from seeing my own dishonesty and lack of integrity.  One bad choice can start a whole spiral of bad choices, calling me into greater and greater self-deception, entitlement and denial.  It is easy to see this when it is happening in others.  It is harder to recognize it in ourselves.

But before we get too discouraged, let me remind us all that to the extent that we keep even one commandment, we are keeping them all.  The spiral goes in the other direction too.  It depends on where our focus is.  Are we generally lying and hiding, or disclosing and coming clean?

If we are focusing on being more honest, we will be open to seeing more and more the ways we have been lying to ourselves.  This will invite more personal integrity, which will open us to more compassion, more humility, and more honesty.  If we are working on not stealing, physically or emotionally or psychologically, we will grow in respect for ourselves and others.  We will see how we have been stealing from ourselves and our loved ones as well as from others—stealing integrity, stealing security, stealing trustworthiness.  And as we stop stealing, and we stop lying to cover up our stealing, we start to grow in trustworthiness, security, and integrity.  Intentional steps toward right relationship with ourselves and others and God starts a progressive cycle of right relationship in every corner of our being.

If we intentionally set our minds to chipping away at our blindnesses, God assures us that we will reach a state like that of the angels—so pure of heart and mind that we no longer lie, we no longer steal, we no longer need to invalidate (kill) any other to ensure our own sense of well-being.   And that is when our joy will be more full than we can possibly imagine.

That is why I like to see the Ten Commandments as the Ten Promises.  Because until we are completely angelic, we are pretty much breaking the Ten Commandments in small ways all the time.  We can’t help it and we can’t see it until we are ready.  We don’t even know we are doing it.  But fear not; we are not held accountable for the things we cannot yet see.  Genuine openness to seeing what we are ready to see and changing it as we are able is all God asks.

God wants our joy.  God wants it with every fiber of “his” being.  But God will never force on us anything we don’t want or aren't ready for.  And so the invitation stands open; the path is always waiting; and joy awaits us like gold at the end of the rainbow.

Meanwhile, these holidays are likely to be a mix.  There will be moments of exhaustion, discouragement, disappointment, and despair.  There will also likely be moments of delight and magic, heart-warming interactions and joyful connections.  All the while I invite you to trust in the promise—not that this season will be perfect—but that each holiday is moving us closer to heavenly joy so long as we are doing our inner work.  Good will to all human-kind is both the destination and the journey; and so long as we are taking the steps we can today, we have in some sense already arrived. 

Joy and delight. These are our birthright and our promise. May you be open to them in the coming days in big and small ways.  Indeed, may you be overcome with such joy, that you touch the joy of the angels at the Lord’s birth, if just for a moment.

Amen.

The Readings

Luke 2: 1-7   

In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria.  All went to their own towns to be registered. Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David.  He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child.  While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child.  And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

John 15:9-17

“As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love. If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love.

“These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full. This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends. You are My friends if you do whatever I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you. You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatever you ask the Father in My name He may give you. These things I command you, that you love one another.

Heavenly Secrets 543

543. Certain spirits wished to know what heavenly joy was. Therefore they were allowed to perceive their own inmost joy, even to a point where they could not bear it. But even this was not angelic joy. It barely resembled the slightest of angelic joys. These spirits were allowed to realize this by sharing their joy. Their own joy was so meagre that it seemed rather tepid, yet they called it utterly heavenly since it was the deepest joy they could manage. From this it is clear that when we are allowed to experience our deepest joy this is for us heavenly joy. Nor can we tolerate anything deeper, as it becomes painful.