Ask Why - a sermon

“Ask Why”
Rev. Alison Longstaff, May 31, 2015
Bath Church of the New Jerusalem
Deuteronomy 4: 32-40; Matthew 10:22-30; TC 508

Judgment comes from fear.  Curiosity comes from love.

When you find yourself judging, see if you can be curious instead.

True Christianity #508

One day there appeared to me a magnificent temple. It was square in form, and its roof was in the shape of a crown, with soaring arches rising on high all round. Its walls were continuous windows of crystal and its gate of a pearly substance. Within on the south side, and facing the west was a pulpit on the right of which lay the open Word, surrounded with a blaze of light whose brightness enveloped and illuminated the whole pulpit. 

When I approached nearer I saw this inscription over the gate, "Now it is permitted" which means that it is now acceptable for people to explore with intelligence the deep questions of faith.  - Emanuel Swedenborg

Today is “Trinity Sunday” in mainstream North American Christianity.  Many Christian preachers across the continent are tackling the topic of how God can be both three and one at the same time.  I sat through a Lutheran classmate’s sermon one Trinity Sunday back in Canada and felt deeply grateful to be Swedenborgian.  What a challenging theology!

Swedenborgians simply don’t do the trinity the same way most Christians do.  We are solidly anchored in the belief in one God.  There is one God, and Jesus was that one God come down to earth.  That is orthodox Swedenborgianism, (and yes, it has gotten us into trouble with other Christians through the years).

Why do we believe what we do about the trinity?  That is a great question!

But I am not up here this morning to argue for or against the various interpretations of the trinity through the ages.  I am here to support the questioning.

“Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers,” said Voltaire.

Who here has read, The Shack by William P. Young?  I experienced a squirming discomfort with the representation of the trinity (as three distinct people) when I read it.  That representation of the trinity was simply “wrong” in my mind.  But fortunately I also felt curiosity.  Having walked beside and come to love fellow seminarians who had to work within the trinitarian model, I had developed a curiosity about how they navigated that whole puzzle.  I had seen and heard quite a few creative and redemptive interpretations, and I had to admit that The Shack’s speculative representation had a certain appeal.  I still prefer the Swedenborgian resolution of the Trinity, but within its paradigm it is a strikingly creative solution to a sticky conundrum.

Prejudice closed me to anything good that The Shack offered.  Curiosity opened me up to the story it had to tell, and left me in respect for the storyteller and the courageous tackling of some very challenging material.  In the end it was of no consequence if I “agreed” or “disagreed” with the interpretation of the trinity. Compassion for the heartbreak and deep wrestling in the story is what mattered.  Doctrinal differences over the trinity became irrelevant before the deep questions springing from the main character’s broken heart.

Fear and judgment shut us down.  Love and curiosity open us up.

“Curiosity is a willing, a proud, and eager confession of ignorance,” said S. Leonard Rubinstein.

If you are willing, raise your hand if, at some point in your life, you felt shamed or reprimanded for asking a question.  If you were asking a spiritual teacher, spiritual guilt was probably added to the shame and the reprimand.  I personally think that shaming someone for asking a theological question is a form of spiritual abuse, especially if it is a child.

Children are born asking, “Why?”  I suspect that we would keep asking “why” all through life if we were not taught to stop asking.  Somewhere along the way, we get the message that it is not okay to ask so many questions.

Too many of us were made to feel guilty if we questioned what we were being taught in church or in Sunday School.  (Perhaps not in this church, but in all too many.)  A lot of that silencing probably came from tired and frustrated teachers who thought they were supposed to have all the answers.  To stand at the front of all those questioning eyes and NOT know the answer can be terrifying.  But it is terrifying only if you believe you are supposed to know.  No human can have all the answers, but somehow too many teachers and leaders feel shame if they don’t have all the answers. 

Let go of certainty. The opposite isn't uncertainty. It's openness, curiosity and a willingness to embrace paradox, rather than choose up sides. The ultimate challenge is to accept ourselves exactly as we are, but never stop trying to learn and grow.” Tony Schwartz - writer and business productivity leader

Oh the relief when I was taught that I didn’t need to have the answers to all the questions children would ask when I taught them.  Children are not afraid of not knowing; it is adults who are.  Children are okay when a grown-up says, “Huh.  I don’t know!  Maybe we can find out together,” or even better, “I’m not sure. What do you think?” 

It is amazing what you can hear when you ask a child what they think.  It is remarkable how satisfied a child can be with their own answer, even if it sounds a bit eye-brow-raising to us. Children don’t necessarily want an authoritative factual response from adults.  They like to explore the answers for themselves.  And it is okay if they come up with a “wrong” answer because sometimes we grownups are looking at the answer through the “wrong” lens.   With the right lens, the child’s answer would make perfect sense. 

At age four, “Because it wanted to,” is a perfectly sensible answer to, “Why did the ball roll down the plank?”  It isn’t until much later that “the law of gravity” is developmentally more satisfying.  What answers make sense to us will fit with where we are on a spiritual, mental, and emotional continuum, and therefore there is no “right” or “wrong” about having different perspectives. It is okay to allow each other to be somewhere different than we are on the spiritual journey, (even if we are sure they are “wrong.” It isn’t about where they are anyway).  

Fear of asking questions shuts us down from learning; it shuts us down from a bigger world perspective; it shuts us down from practicing walking on our own spiritual feet and becoming spiritual grown-ups.

Carved over the entryway of the temple seen in Swedenborg’s vision was, “Nunc Licet,” or “Now it is permitted.”  (Actually, it would have been written in a spiritual language, but as Swedenborg wrote in Latin, “Nunc Licet” is what the Latin says.) What is permitted? “To enter into the mysteries of faith.” In other words, “It is okay now to ask theological questions;” “You are allowed to explore it all now;” or “You no longer have to be afraid of challenging the things you don’t understand.”

And so it is a foundational teaching in Swedenborgian theology that we don’t have to be afraid of probing into any aspect of faith.  Intelligent questioning and a genuine desire to understand is valued here.  My job as a spiritual leader is to support and advise, to walk beside and encourage, to offer tools and ideas and different perspectives.  My job is not to judge people or tell them how they ought to think or feel. 

Fear judges and controls, while love is curious.

My yoga teacher in Canada taught us to pay attention to our inner self talk during our practice.  Were we judging ourselves for not doing the poses better?  Were we beating ourselves up or feeling frustrated that we hadn’t made more progress from the week before?  Again and again she invited us to be curious about ourselves, not critical.  She invited us to explore and be playful with how we were approaching a pose, especially if it seemed too hard.

This invitation to be curious rather than judging continues to teach me.  When I find myself judging myself (or someone else or something) if I can just bring curiosity to the table too, the inner dialogue transforms.  Instead of thoughts that criticize and condemn I can begin to ask things like, “What is going on underneath this judging?”  “What am I afraid of?” and, “How else might I move through this with more compassion?”  From negative inner attacks it shifts to compassionate problem-solving; from a passive, blaming place it shifts to a creative optimism.

When we can become conscious that we are judging, and instead of judging, become curious, whole new possibilities and solutions open up.  Fear underlies judgment and fear shuts us down while love underlies curiosity and love opens us up.

“Curiosity will conquer fear even more than bravery will,” said James Stephens.

“Seek, and you will find,” said Jesus.

“It is okay to ask the questions now,” is apparently carved on a temple in heaven.

May we become like little children and return to fearless curiosity and never stop asking, “Why?”  Amen 

The Readings

Deuteronomy 4:32-40

For ask now about former ages, long before your own, ever since the day that God created human beings on the earth; ask from one end of heaven to the other: has anything so great as this ever happened or has its like ever been heard of? Has any people ever heard the voice of a god speaking out of a fire, as you have heard, and lived? Or has any god ever attempted to go and take a nation for himself from the midst of another nation, by trials, by signs and wonders, by war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, and by terrifying displays of power, as the Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your very eyes? To you it was shown so that you would acknowledge that the Lord is God; there is no other besides him. From heaven he made you hear his voice to discipline you. On earth he showed you his great fire, while you heard his words coming out of the fire. And because he loved your ancestors, he chose their descendants after them. He brought you out of Egypt with his own presence, by his great power, driving out before you nations greater and mightier than yourselves, to bring you in, giving you their land for a possession, as it is still today. So acknowledge today and take to heart that the Lord is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath; there is no other. Keep his statutes and his commandments, which I am commanding you today for your own well-being and that of your descendants after you, so that you may long remain in the land that the Lord your God is giving you for all time.

Matthew 10:22-30

Then came the Festival of Dedication at Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was in the temple courts walking in Solomon’s Colonnade.  The Judeans who were there gathered around him, saying, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.”Jesus answered, “I did tell you, but you do not believe. The works I do in my Father’s name testify about me, but you do not believe because you are not my sheep.  My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand.  My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.”

Earthquakes-a sermon in solidarity with Nepal

 “Earthquakes”

Rev. Alison Longstaff, May 17, 2015

Bath Church of the New Jerusalem

Psalm 104: 1-9, 31-35; Revelation 11: 13-14, 19; DLW 47

From Emanuel Swedenborg,  "The Apocalypse Explained" # 400 

“The earth tottered and quaked; the foundations of the mountains trembled.” (Ps. 18:7) This does not mean that it was the actual earth and its foundations that tottered and quaked, but that the spiritual church and the truths upon which it was founded tottered and quaked. “Earth” signifies the church as a spiritual collective, and the “foundations of the mountains” signifies the church’s foundational beliefs, which ought to be true ideas that lead to a good life.

Raise your hand if you have ever been in an earthquake.  How close was it?  What magnitude was it? 

The only one I have ever experienced was when I was in Toronto in 1986, and it was so small that at first I simply thought an extra big truck had driven by.  

One friend I know lived through the 1994 6.7 magnitude “North Ridge” quake near Los Angeles in 1994.  He had recently moved there from a region that has no quakes, and he said, “Reality is never supposed to behave that way.”  It was one of the most profoundly disorienting and disturbing experiences he had ever had.  No one he knew was hurt or killed, yet it “shook” him to his core emotionally as well as physically.

But then again, another friend who has lived in Los Angeles for years told me with a laugh what to do if there was a quake.  “Just stand in a doorway or get under the table.  Or you can go out on the porch and watch the road do this,” and she moved her arm like waves in the water.  She had experienced so many earthquakes without major catastrophe that they had become simply a matter of course.  (She does live in a sturdy house that has survived many quakes already.)

Scientists no longer use “the Richter scale” when they describe earthquakes because they measure many more aspects of their movement than they used to: direction, style, and the depth, for example. But for the purposes of us peasants, the old and new scales look pretty much the same.  Each increase of one up the scale still means “1000 times stronger.”  So the April 25, 7.8 Nepal earthquake was over 1000 times stronger than the 6.7 “North Ridge” quake in California.  I simply can’t imagine what that must be like.  The Nepal quake lasted not quite two minutes—shall we sit here for two minutes in silence and see just how long two minutes can be?  Actually, we would run outside away from all the buildings and wait.  Think of the ground moving like a washing machine on agitate or a plane in turbulence for those almost two minutes.  Think of buildings around here cracking and falling and the dust rising up.  Think of not being able to go back into your house because it has pancaked down to a pile of rubble.

The Nepal quake killed more than 8000 people. Wikipedia gives the population of Bath, Maine as 8,357 in 2013.  So more or less most of the entire population of Bath was killed in Nepal in the first quake.  I cannot comprehend it. My brain and emotions shut down.

 

Yet I think it is important that we sit with these details.  I think it is important to feel the meaning of earthquakes physically and spiritually.  Quakes that are between 7 and 8 on the scale cause “strong shaking”  which clearly can last for several minutes, and can cause major damage up to 155 miles away.  155 miles of strong shaking. That would mean strong shaking and extensive damage as far from here as Killington VT, or Sherbrook QB, Providence RI, or north along the coast of Maine all the way to the border of Canada.  That is how big the area of severe damage would be.  The quake would be “felt” much farther away than that.

Thinking about this helps us understand how there could be many hundreds of outlying villages all over Nepal, all needing aid. Most of the houses have been destroyed or rendered unsafe in all these villages.  The mountainous terrain also means that the roads that are barely accessible at the best of times have often been blocked by landslides.

I cannot imagine.  I cannot imagine.

The Swedenborgian orphanage in Kathmandu survived the earthquake and everyone is safe.  Kent Rogers and his wife Shovha oversee its running.  Since the quake their home has been a safe place for their thirteen children as well as many neighbors and friends too whose homes were destroyed.  They have all been sleeping (cheek by jowl) on the floor of the main room since that first quake.  This is because they must be able to get outside away from buildings as quickly as possible no matter the time of day or night if there is another big shaking. 

But so far, the Loving Arms Mission is blessed to have a strong house and good resources, therefore from this house and resources, they are delivering as much aid as they possibly can to their neighbors.

Kent and his wife Shovha, and many others at the mission have been doing everything in their power to give aid to those in need.  They have especially been trying to get aid to many of the outlying villages, some of which had seen no help at all until their mission van arrived.  They are using every bit of donated money to buy up sacks of food as well as tarps and other necessities and then take them out to people in need day after day.

This is from Kent on May 1, six days after the first quake, “Today, we went to Rajendra, Sunita and Sharmila's village, Bansbari in Sindhupalchowk. All the houses were destroyed and we were the first to offer aid. They were so happy to see us. Tomorrow, we go to Suman, Mina and Bina's village which is in similar condition. If anyone reading this is willing to lend or rent a four-wheel vehicle, we will take it. We very much need it. We are going where no van has gone before---and I'm not sure how much more the van can go.”

He also wrote: “Today we brought 924 pounds of rice, 132 pounds of lentils, 198 pounds of soy protein (cooked in curry and actually tasty), 300 packets of instant noodles and 300 small packets of crackers/cookies. It was all for about 300 dollars. In addition to food needs, there are shelter needs and rebuilding needs. Thank you so much to all who have donated--you are giving food to people who need it. One old man told us today he hadn't eaten in seven days.”

Kathmandu is built on a sedimentary basin.  That makes it like the sugar bin I used in the children’s talk.  When the earth shakes, the soil near the surface goes every which way ripping apart the very foundations of the homes.  There is no stability at all.  Many of the homes in Los Angeles that have survived quake after quake are built on granite—not just on the granite but drilled into the granite, so that when the earth moves, the rock moves as one.  The foundation is not ripped apart, and most houses will survive the shaking. 

In any case, the spiritual metaphors are hard to miss.  When the foundation of our whole outlook on life is “solid,” we will have a better chance of coming though life’s “earth-shattering” experiences relatively unmarked.  Unfortunately, we often don’t realize that our foundation isn't solid until it is ripped apart.

Houses are our thought structures.  Houses are the comforting and sheltering views of the world which we build on whatever foundation we have.  Sometimes we have come from a spiritually impoverished background and we build where we are with what we have.  We don’t have the time or ability to think about deep foundational meanings and what might later bring our house down around us.  We don’t have the support or the resources.

We humans cling to our political and religious beliefs with such vehemence precisely because they shelter us and make us feel safe.  They are connected to and spring from our most foundational understandings of how the universe works.  Such spiritual shelter is a basic need like spiritual food and spiritual water. 

 

If someone else’s perspective threatens to blow our spiritual house down, we will likely feel upset.  Even worse, if our own party or denomination behaves in a way completely other than what we believe it should, it can be devastating. In fact, we often will dismiss it or deny it, because truly seeing it forces us to question the very foundations of the things we have trusted in.  “But if this isn't really true, then maybe this other thing isn't either….”  Our spiritual ground starts moving every which way.  It can be deeply disturbing.

No one likes it when our very ground of being stops behaving in a trustworthy fashion.  What have been your spiritual or intellectual earthquakes?  Have they been minor, significant, or even catastrophic?  How did you recover?  What is your foundation now?

It is NOT comfortable to have “the earth move under your feet.” Sometimes we don’t even realize where we have placed our trust until it lets us down.  I have trusted in denominations, in certain people, in food, in coffee, in chocolate, in marriage, in the United States, in Canada, (and every once in a while in God.)  A lot of my life I have believed I was trusting in God, but now I am not sure I truly was.  I certainly liked to believe I was.

When we become mad at God for not behaving the way we think God should, were we trusting in God or in an idea of God that wasn't deep enough? 

Regardless, a true personal spiritual earthquake can be devastating.  It can involve tremendous loss.   Whatever it is that we have relied on is destroyed beyond repair.  We cannot even pretend to rebuild what was.  It is a form of death and birth.  There is no going back, no matter how much one might miss the old reality.  God only allows such spiritual earthquakes as a necessary part of our spiritual growth.  Sometimes there are certain sheltering thoughts and beliefs we would never leave behind if we were not forced to. 

My seminary told me they would “challenge my truth-claims.”  I somehow had expected they would try to teach me “The Truth,” so I could teach it to others.  But no.  Their job was to make my faith and thought structures living, strong, and flexible.  They pushed against my beliefs and invited me to question them again and again, not because they wanted to replace them with their own, but to enable mine to grow strong and mature, living and well-rooted.  This produced a kind of foundational examination and re-examination of why I thought or felt what I did which compelled me to throw out some old perspectives while deepening and strengthening some others.  It was an invitation to “build a better designed spiritual house” founded on a deeper rock than I knew was possible.  It also showed me that even spiritual houses and foundations need constant maintenance, re-examination, and care just like natural ones.  We can all do this.  You don’t need to go to seminary to work on your spiritual house.

And so, though we often cannot choose where we “live” spiritually;  and we cannot choose what disasters will come our way, we can work on being ready for them.  We even may not truly know whether our spiritual foundation is strong enough.  Most of us are too busy just trying to survive to worry about such things, like so many of the people in Nepal.  

But if you are inclined and have the resources, there is a way to dig deep and find your best foundation.  There is a deep peace that lives within each of us, which is “God With Us.”  We can learn to ground ourselves in that awareness and deep peace.  We can drill down into that rock.  If we can do that, we will not be shaken though the earth be moved.  It takes attention and intention, but it can be done.

And if we are blessed enough to have a solid spiritual home when disaster strikes, may we become a blessing to those less fortunate, the way the Loving Arms Mission in Nepal is managing to do.

In gratitude to those who are funding that brave little mission in Nepal; in gratitude to Kent and Shovha and Nadine and all those who work with and for the Loving Arms Mission; and with ongoing prayers for Nepal.  Amen.

The following was the interlude, with the images projected onto a screen.  It is of show the people connected with LAM and of some of the children as they are growing up well cared for. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wz4EG2rXooo

Further Notes:  These are Facebook entries from Kent Rogers, from whom come many of the pictures.

May 3, Kent Rogers.  I'd like to thank the Asplundh Foundation. Their grants provided our first home, our second home, and then our vehicles. The homes are very strong and kept us alive. They have saved us hundreds of thousands of dollars for rent. The van is unbelievable. It is a veritable tank! I can't believe some of the places it has forged through, and we've been able to reach so many people with aid due to that vehicle. Our organization wouldn't be half of what it is, were it not for your support. In addition, I want to thank all the individuals associated with the foundation who have offered personal support and encouragement.
THANK YOU ASPLUNDH FOUNDATION!

May 13, after the second quake. Kent Rogers.

I stayed home at the request of Shovha with the significant danger of post quake landslides. With the down time, the reality of what has happened has begun to set in in an emotional way. We had all begun to believe it was over. The tremors were getting less and less often as well as weaker and weaker. The feelings of terror and powerlessness are probably greater now than after the first quake even though the destruction and death are less.

Thank you all for your outpouring of support. It is a privilege and pleasure to be a conduit of your support to those in need. This is a time I will never forget. Such sorrow and joy mixed together.

Mental health is now a growing concern as the giant aftershock had a reinforcing effect on the first trauma, shredding morale and stripping even some of the most resilient of their hope and courage. Once the physical needs are addressed, LAM will begin the work of helping rebuild spirits too.

About the mental health concerns in Nepal

TO DONATE:

Go to LAMCHILDREN.ORG  and click “donate”

Or send a check marked "earthquake relief" to

Loving Arms Mission

Po Box 213

Bryn Athyn, PA 19009

The Readings

Psalm 104:1-9, 31-35

Bless the Lord, O my soul!  O Lord my God, you are very great!

You are clothed with splendor and majesty, covering yourself with light as with a garment, stretching out the heavens like a tent.

He lays the beams of his chambers on the waters; he makes the clouds his chariot; he rides on the wings of the wind; he makes his messengers winds, his ministers a flaming fire.

He set the earth on its foundations, so that it should never be moved.

You covered it with the deep as with a garment; the waters stood above the mountains.

At your rebuke they fled; at the sound of your thunder they took to flight.

The mountains rose, the valleys sank down to the place that you appointed for them.

You set a boundary that they may not pass, so that they might not again cover the earth.

May the glory of the Lord endure forever; may the Lord rejoice in his works, who looks on the earth and it trembles, who touches the mountains and they smoke!

I will sing to the Lord as long as I live; I will sing praise to my God while I have being.

May my meditation be pleasing to him, for I rejoice in the Lord.

Let sinners be consumed from the earth, and let the wicked be no more!

Bless the Lord, O my soul! Praise the Lord!

Rev 11:13-14, 19

 At that very hour there was a severe earthquake and a tenth of the city collapsed. Seven thousand people were killed in the earthquake, and the survivors were terrified and gave homage to the God of heaven.

14 The second woe has passed; the third woe is coming soon.

19 Then God’s temple in heaven was opened, and within his temple was seen the ark of his covenant. And there came flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder, an earthquake and a severe hailstorm.

Hymns:“Oh Lord Our Help in Ages Past;” “The Summons;” “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” 

Is The Church a Mother? sermon May 10, 2015

Mother's Day is the one day a year in which I use a feminist order of service. It includes the "Our Mother" and a feminist Swedenborgian affirmation of faith.  These can be found at the end of the document.

 “Is the Church A Mother?”

Rev. Alison Longstaff, May 10, 2015

Bath Church of the New Jerusalem

Isaiah 66: 12-13; Revelation 21: 2, 9-11; DLW 47

“The primal call is the call to love.  It is the call to be loving and to accept love in return.  It calls us beyond rhetoric, beyond excuses; it calls us out of ourselves.” David Spangler

Here we are in church on Mother’s Day, and I am charged with the yearly privilege of preaching a sermon that manages the confluence of Christian worship with the widely secular but not unworthy commemoration of “mother” in our calendar year.  Mother’s day as a national holiday in North America is credited to the American Anna Jarvis, who fought and succeeded in seeing a day set aside for honoring one’s mother, singular, in the American calendar year.  But the roots of “mother’s day” go back even beyond the “Mothering Sunday” found in the British isles—originally the day established by the Catholic Church to honor the Virgin Mary and the Mother Church.   Though today the British Mothering Sunday looks very much like to our North American Mother’s Day, in medieval times worshipers returned from smaller surrounding parishes to worship in the central “mother” cathedral.

But before the advent of Christianity, a day to honor mothers finds its origins in pagan traditions from Greece, Rome, and Egypt.  All of these womb countries of the birth of Christianity originally had a day set aside to honor the mother-goddess of their tradition: Cybele in Greece, Juno in Roman culture, and Isis (not to be confused with the extremist Islamic group, ISIS) for the ancient Egyptians.  It seems it is in our DNA to want to honor the “great mother.” 

So here we sit together in 2015 in this lovely Swedenborgian church building—Swedenborgians from different branches worshiping beside each other, with semi-Swedenborgians and non-Swedenborgians—on this strangely commercial yet anciently grounded day for mothers.  How do we worship well together on such a day? And how do we honor “mother church” together today?

Good question.

Let us begin by exploring deep into the origins of Christianity.  From whom did we inherit the identification of God as Father and the church as Mother?  Is such an identification a manifestation of the natural order of the universe, or a reflection of the language and thought of a particular culture in a particular time? 

There are many female images of God in the Hebrew Bible.  However, time and culture have veiled them so completely as to leave only a thoroughly male face in the Jewish narrative. This Male-Divine imagery carries forward into the Greek Testament, and is reflected in today’s Scripture reading from Revelation. We see the Divine as the Husband and the church as the bride—a metaphor which has an important resonance for us, but which has unfortunately been used to prescribe the dominance of the human male gender over the human female throughout Christendom ever since. 

Is it foundationally true that God is all-male and the church, therefore, is female?

Swedenborg tells us that neither gender was created to be nor ever should be considered superior or dominant over the other, but are one in God and perfectly balanced.  So if they are balanced in God, my guess is they ought to be balanced in the church.  And if they ought to be conjoined and balanced in both, how did they get so terribly out of balance?  Well, that was humanity’s doing.  Again and again we humans make our earthly religions reflect our own imbalance, in the name of doing God’s will.  And these sad imbalances perpetuate harm to both genders, rather like an improperly supported foot or a slight twist in the pelvis will eventually damage ankles and knees, hips and back.

With these deep unquestioned assumptions about the male and female genders in relationship to church and power and authority in the very air we breathe, how do we return to balanced thinking and feeling as a church body so that our church might reflect something closer to the Divine balance?

The early followers of Jesus, who identified as Jewish, were increasingly persecuted by their fellow Jews and were eventually banned from worshiping in the synagogues because they were so different.  They needed somewhere else safe to congregate.  It turned out that the ones who had the resources to harbor this prohibited group were primarily wealthy women of some status in society.  These women became some of the earliest leaders of the new “Way” which later began to be called “Christian.” These women, with time and assets at their disposal, embraced Jesus’ guiding principles of social justice, spending much of their time reaching out to the poor, the sick and the enslaved, as Jesus had done. 

This was the earliest expression of “mother church”. 

These early Christians, of both genders, were very “motherly.”  Unlike modern Christians, they had no great houses of worship to maintain, and they had only the simplest of worship rituals.  Their worship template consisted of Jesus’ words to be baptized and to share communion in remembrance of Him.  They spent all the rest of their time reaching out to the most broken, sick, and marginalized in their surrounding society.  This included everyone, even the slaves, which was highly unusual in those days.  Even the slaves in turn learned to feed, shelter, and comfort those even more lost and in need than themselves.  These ancient Christians were small and terribly persecuted, yet they persevered in living according to Jesus’ message the best they could. 

This is our ancestry. 

How much would you say church involvement today resembles our simple beginnings?

Not too long after Emperor Constantine legitimized Christianity in the Roman Empire, the early political leaders within what was to become the Roman Catholic Church used the dominant male imagery of the Scriptures to justify equating the male gender with God and the female gender with human weakness.  This gradually pushed the rich and educated women out of all leadership roles, claiming church leadership as the sole realm of the male.  Not too long after that, doing the Christian religion began to be about property, ambition, hierarchical power structures, and arguing over who had the right doctrines—not about helping people. 

This is not the fault of men or maleness.  This is the fault of the human condition, in which we repeatedly subvert and corrupt programs and institutions for our own personal gain, power, and advantage.  We expect so much from our religious communities, and then feel so disillusioned when they reveal themselves to be as flawed as the humans who made them.  Like a mirror, religious institutions can show us the very best of the human condition to the very worst.

There is a BBC episode from the Brother Cadfael series in which the head Abbot of Cadfael’s monastery hears that there is a plague in the nearby village.  He cries for the doors of the monastery to be shut against the throng of injured and sick peasants begging for help within their walls.  Brother Cadfael says, “But what of these poor people in need of our aid?” The Abbot replies in agitation, “What does the church have to do with helping people?”

This is unfortunately a painfully common attitude among many modern Christians.  An intellectual club with a pecking order often based on genetics is unfortunately all too often what churches can become underneath while professing Christian beliefs on the surface.  This is what happens when “faith” or ideology becomes separated from “charity” or love of the neighbor.  It is the physical manifestation of a spiritual imbalance—ideas separated from what is good for people is the same as “men” in control without the balancing input of “women”.  If “women” (spiritually or physically) were solely in charge, things would be equally imbalanced in a different way.  All too often, people hear a cry for balance as a desire to obliterate all men’s influence. So silly! We need balance.  We need shared respect for the gifts the other perspective brings.

I submit that it is only when our two genders (as with love and wisdom on the spiritual plane) work together in mutual respect that we can be the most balanced “body of Christ” in the world.

So here we are today, honoring Mother, and originally the mother-goddess—the Divine Feminine—yet I am guessing that some of you in the pews are squirming to even hear the word “Goddess” spoken in a Christian church.  As if the loving side of God was somehow unchristian.  As if there was no feminine sphere which emanates equally from the sun in heaven. 

I am here to assert that speaking of the Creative, nurturing, “congugial” side of God as “the Goddess” is not unchristian, and certainly not unSwedenborgian.  I say, “Let’s stop getting caught in stereotypes and limited thinking and acknowledge the wholeness of our Great Creator!”

We know from Swedenborg, (and possibly in our heart of hearts) that the Divine transcends gender.  The source of all that is truly masculine and truly feminine exists in the One Source of all life.  We are all made in God’s image, be we black or white, red or yellow, child or adult, rich or poor, male or female.  In fact, Swedenborg tells us that Goddess worship, while abhorred in most Christian circles, traces back to the most ancient forms of human worship, in which we honored all aspects of the Divine.  Goddess worship was an expression of gratitude and respect for the creative, abundant, nurturing, or “congugial” face of God.  Only later did humankind get mixed up, (like we always do!) and think that the feminine aspect of God was a separate entity from the masculine aspect of God.  Once we then divided God, we assumed there must be a hierarchy, and that one aspect of God must be superior to or better than another, and the mess just grew from there.  But the masculine and feminine are most perfectly one and inseparable in the Divine.  The Creator is ever and always both God and Goddess equally.  It is we who separate them and then put them at odds with each other, not God.

Our limited human understanding struggles to comprehend how both genders can become one human form.  We long for—we need—a face for the Divine that feels safe and resonant and familiar.  We need to have someOne warm and living with which to connect.  And since most of us recoil at an androgynous picture of God, we innately pick one gender or the other to embody the Divine for us.  The Divine did indeed come down and manifest in human form—in the male form of Jesus, for all sorts of correspondential and cultural reasons.  This face of God is deeply satisfactory for many.  But the incarnation of God in the form of our Lord Jesus need not limit us to thinking that both genders are not equally created in the image and likeness of God.

There is a reason Mary was virtually deified in the Roman Catholic Church.  As spiritual children we need, not just a heavenly Father, but a heavenly Mother too—one that transcends and is not limited by the flawed and imperfect face of the church on earth.  In fact, some people have been so traumatized by male caretakers or so indoctrinated by horribly twisted teachings about the the very male Christian God, that they need a female face on the Divine if they are to feel able to believe that God(dess) is even remotely trustworthy or caring.  Do you think God(dess), who is all love, really minds what vehicle we use to approach, so long as we approach at all?

So, is God male or female?  The answer is “yes.”  Is God a God of love, or of strength?  The answer is “yes.” Should the church be unconditionally loving and giving and selfless, or strive to protect its children and provide for them and its future well-being?  The answer is also, “yes.”  The Divine is neither male nor female, but transcends and encompasses ALL aspects of everything that is both loving and wise.  The Church as well, though made of mortals, still should strive to be in God’s balanced image: creative and protective, giving and guarding, loving and firm.

The church needs to be balanced and united even as God is.  The yin and yang must be balanced and connected on every level even as it is represented in art.  The church is not just a broken female; it is equally a broken male.  It can be the embodiment of a beautiful and tender spiritual mother, as it can equally reflect the strong and reassuring embrace of a good spiritual father.

I entitled this sermon “Is the Church a Mother?” to encourage us to examine the question on all levels.  Does it help us or hamper us to view ourselves as a mothering energy, or is that an old model that needs to be updated?  How motherly are we as a congregation?  How fatherly? Indeed, in this changing age, where fewer and fewer families attend church at all, when society is hyper mobile and all of us are over-scheduled, and the roles of mother and father are increasingly overlapping, do we even know what church is supposed to be anymore?  Is traditional Sunday worship more and more an out-dated old grandmother, parked in the corner in a wheelchair waiting for her last days?  Can we possibly be reborn to become something truly new—something that lives in our individual hearts and touches all the travelers we meet—something that calls in and offers respite and healing to the spiritually broken and lost of today no matter whom we encounter or where we are in our daily routine?

This congregation has been in the process of trying to answer that question for several years now.  I think we are on the right track when we choose the mandate of Love as our foundation, God’s Word as our means, and healing activity in the world as our goal.  Love is the face of the Mother, yes, but increasingly the face of Father today too.  Love, the very essence of our life and the source of all our deepest joy is the heart and soul of the Divine, and is not Love without being perfectly one with Wisdom.  Wisely loving presence in all we do, not doctrinal battles, nor even recruiting people to have heard of Swedenborg, will bring about the birth “the New Church” of which Swedenborg prophesied.  Father and Mother are needed for any birth—Wisdom and Love.  As these are increasingly united in each of use, we each become part of that great birth.

“A great 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. She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth.  She gave birth … and her child was held and protected by The Divine.”

(Rev. 12:1-2,5)  

Amen

Revised. Originally preached May 2, 2010, Church of the Good Shepherd, Kitchener, ON

The Readings

Isaiah 66: 12-13  

For this is what the Lord says:

“I will extend peace to her like a river, and the wealth of nations like a flooding stream;
you will nurse and be carried on her arm and dandled on her knees.
As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you;
    and you will be comforted over Jerusalem.”

Rev 21:2, 9-11

I John saw the Holy City, the New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. 

One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues came and said to me, “Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.”  And he carried me away in the Spirit to a mountain great and high, and showed me the Holy City, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. It shone with the glory of God, and its brilliance was like that of a very precious jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal. 

Emanuel Swedenborg DLW 47 

To be loving is to love others outside of oneself, and to be connected to them because of that love. A fundamental requirement of love is also to be loved by others, for without this, there is nothing reciprocal in the relationship. The essence of all love comes from this reciprocal connection—it is indeed its very life, and this mutual respect and warmth is the reason we feel such pleasure, enjoyment, delight, sweetness, blessedness, and happiness.” 

The Lord’s Prayer As “Our Mother”

Our Mother who is within us; we celebrate your many names. Your wisdom come. Your will be done, unfolding from the depths within us. Each day you give us all that we need. You remind us of our limits and we let go. You support us in our power and we act with courage. For you are the dwelling place within us the empowerment around us and the celebration among us now and for ever.  (Text by Miriam Therese Winter: Medical Mission Sister, Professor of Liturgy, Worship and Spirituality. Author of WomanWord and other books and resources for Ritual.)

FEMINIST AFFIRMATION OF FAITH

We believe in The Creator, The Divine Feminine, The Light of the World, whose eternal spirit moved upon the face of the waters at the beginning, and moves within us now.  To a world in darkness the Eternal Love became one of us, transcended every human frailty, overcame the hells, restored balance and saved all humankind.  Today the Divine Love comes to us anew in a global spiritual awakening within each human heart. She speaks in a new way through the Sacred Scriptures bringing a refreshing new understanding and softening our hearts to each other. Swedenborgians call this new awakening the Second Coming in Spirit. This Second Coming invites us to an ever wiser and ever more compassionate life.    As we increasingly live lives of love and wisdom, the more we walk in the light of the spiritual Holy City, The New Jerusalem.  Amen.