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.

Is There Any Hope? -a Sermon for first Advent

Is There Any Hope?

Sermon for the Advent of Hope; 
Rev. Alison Longstaff, Dec 7, 2014

Bath Church of the New Jerusalem

Isaiah 11:1-2, 6-9; Luke 1: 5-14; HS 8165:2

It was deeply profound to be writing this week's sermon about “Hope” as the nation raged and despaired in response to the acquittal of Officer Darren Wilson for the shooting death of Michael Brown. My Facebook feed was alive with outrage on the day the news broke. One cousin posted report after report about the injustices experienced by dark-skinned Americans, and the obscenely high number of unarmed black youth shot dead by police every year without any hope of justice for their families.

The despair among my friends and connections was palpable. Outrage and anguish, futility and frustration—more and more stories in the news telling tales of humankind’s regression from integrity, moral courage, or any sense of interconnectedness and accountability. While there are many voices out there speaking truths that need to be heard about justice and compassion, there seem to be just as many proclaiming a rhetoric that harnesses blame and entitlement to reinforce a fortress mentality, barricading the entitled from any sense of compassion or “there but by the grace of God go I.”

I have had to work hard to maintain a sense of optimism since moving to the United States. While I am sure there are many other factors figuring in, I genuinely believe that it is a harsher psychological climate here than I experienced in Canada. There is more fear and mistrust in the air. The news is darker, the rhetoric more polemic, and “belief perseverance” (which is rigorously sticking to one’s original beliefs despite all evidence to the contrary, and is now a known, named, and studied phenomenon in the world of psychology) is everywhere. The truth simply cannot set us free if we put our fingers in our ears and hum so that we cannot hear.

My Facebook feed shows increasing frustration and despair among my cyber friends. It is as if a great madness has overtaken this country we love, and we do not know how it has happened or how to correct our course. And as the group anxiety ramps up, our intelligence and ability to work together deteriorates. For under distress, humans regress. It is just a fact of life. Is there any hope at all?

The loss of hope is called despair. And the loss of hope is perhaps one of the most terrible losses of all. To quote modern day prophet J. Michael Straczinski:

“There is a darkness greater than the one we fight. It is the darkness of the soul that has lost its way. The war we fight is not against powers and principalities...it is against chaos and despair. Greater than the death of flesh is the death of hope, the death of dreams. Against this peril, we can never surrender. The future is all around us, waiting in moments of transition to be born in moments of revelation. No one knows the shape of that future, or where it will take us. We know only that it is always born in pain.”

I found this quote peculiarly resonant with today’s words from Swedenborg. But while Straczynski exhorts us never to surrender, Swedenborg says that the very surrender itself is the turning point in a spiritual temptation. The same way any addict must first admit powerlessness over the addictive substance before recovery can happen, God allows a spiritual temptation to progress beyond our ability to fight back, so that we might re-experience that it is God that does the fighting, not us. Because it is the ways that we separate ourselves from God that create hell to begin with, even so it is the “healing crisis” or turning point in a spiritual temptation that reconnects us to God's strength and God’s love. Though painful, this is the only way to birth us back from hell into heaven (connection with God).

Our spiritual existence is a paradox. We live as if we are independent and yet must remember that God does everything. Our sense of independence from God is a vital part of our ability to receive life and experience spiritual freedom. But it can be a curse too, for that independence is made possible by our ego, and our ego pretty much just creates hell. This is because the minute we think it is all up to us (ego), life starts to get hellish. The minute we think we have all the answers and God should just listen to us (ego), we have manufactured misery. We don’t mean to. We can’t help it. It is what the ego does until we learn to master it.

So we both feel like our life is our own and yet we need to remember it is really God’s power and strength that accomplishes everything. God allows us to experience spiritual temptation when we forget that God’s help stands ready at every second. Despair is the extreme suffering that occurs when we feel as though God is nowhere around and not helping at all. (Jesus Himself experienced this in Gethsemane and on the cross, so the next time you go through this, don’t beat yourself up. Even Jesus couldn't escape this illusion.) Despair is inevitable. But staying stuck in it is optional.

And so, on this Sunday of HOPE, let us look for the hand-grips and toe-holds we might want to use when we next find ourselves stuck in the pit of despair. On the same day that I felt bombarded by the depressing news coming out of Ferguson, such that I wanted to renounce membership in the human race, I caught the edge of an MPBN radio show devoted entirely to good news stories. So I turned it up. After less than half an hour, I had tears of joy in my eyes. In fact, some of the stories of ingenuity, collaboration, and human kindness were so beautiful they would have made Scrooge himself a bit verklempt even before the three spirits visited. I went from disgust and despair, to hope and joy in half an hour, just by changing my internet feed.

There’s a lesson in that. What we pay attention to affects our state of mind. While my morbid curiosity pulls me towards bad news like a fly to, well, things flies like—I can intentionally steer my mind towards the things that uplift and feed my soul as well. Not only did the MPBN show transform my day, its web-page had a link to the Good News Network.org—a site dedicated completely to good news stories, yes, round the clock, seven days a week. And so now, now, whenever the regular news feels too heavy for me to bear, I tune into the good news and get an instant spiritual boost. There will always be bad news. This good news site focuses on the myriad stories of hope and triumph happening in the midst of the tragedies—which stories the big networks can’t be bothered to share.

There is the story of the over $175,000 that has been donated to the tiny Ferguson Library. That library is creating "healing kits" for kids that include books dealing with trauma, and a stuffed animal that they can keep. And there is the story about Natalie DuBose, a Ferguson baker and mother of two who was left trying to clean up and figure out how to fill her Thanksgiving orders after rioters smashed her bakery windows and damaged her equipment. A friend suggested she set up a fund-raising page so DuBose decided on a goal of raising $20,000 to get back on her feet. Two days later DuBose had received $252,000 from more than 7,000 doners. “I’ve never felt such love,” she said. “The outpouring of support … has been amazing. I was in tears.”

And in these stories we see a mirror of both our scriptures: life side-by-side with death. Long after all hope is lost for Elizabeth and Zacharias, their prayer is answered. Her womb quickens with a healthy, viable baby. Where once was a long-dead dream, a complete resurrection is happening.

We see a “poisonous serpent”—the angry voices of blame, the lies, the cover-ups, and the twisted versions of events—creating confusion, and paralyzing the process of justice in Ferguson, and seeking to kill our innocence; yet somehow the innocent and vulnerable people caught in harm’s way—the “infant”—transcends and survives despite the venom and violence. Here is the lion and the lamb; the wolf and baby goat, side by side. It is telling us that life and hope will always transcend death and despair. For in God’s holy mountain, which is the realm of all that is good and true within the human spirit, nothing can be hurt or destroyed. The part of each one of us that is created by God and lives forever can never be hurt or destroyed no matter what happens to us in this physical world.

Despair, and joy; darkness and light, death and life side-by-side. The one is born in the other, like a new baby born in the midst of pain. They are actually two faces of the same thing. We would not despair so intensely if we did not love so deeply, and the depth of our love is a manifestation of God with us. In fact the comfort and consolation that God delivers after we come through a dark night of the soul will be in direct proportion to the depth of the despair. Beautiful new life after every death.

It is our old ideas and attachments that die at the height of temptation, not anything that is doing us good. This hurts. We may cry out in pain like a woman in labor, but we are undergoing the birth of a new self—a new understanding. The relief and joy and transformed life that rises from this small death will be so rewarding that we won’t even remember the pain. God puts before us death and life and says, “Choose life!”

And so, as we celebrate this advent of Hope, let us always look for the new life amidst the ashes of old dreams. It is always there, waiting to burst into vibrant expression like the sun is behind the storm clouds and the spring flowers from beneath the frozen ground.

In closing I offer you this poem by Joyce Rupp. 

It is called, 

“A Closer Look at Thanksgiving.”

If you look at a sunset, you might see only the disappearance of daylight.

If you look beneath, you may see darkness opening the splendor of stars.

If you look at illness and disease, you might see only physical diminishment.

If you look beneath, you may see it as a teacher bringing you vital wisdom.

If you look at a broken relationship, you might see only a harsh ending.

If you look beneath, you may see the courageous seeds of new growth.

If you look at lost dreams, you might see only disappointment and doubt.

If you look beneath, you may see the stuff that new dreams contain.

If you look at the death of a loved one, you might see only pervasive sorrow.

If you look beneath, you may see that love lives on forever in the heart.

If you look at the planet’s pain and creatures’ woe, you might see only despair.

If you look beneath, you may see hope woven in the compassionate care of many.

If you look at yourself, you might see only tarnished unfinishedness.

If you look beneath, you may see your basic goodness shining there.

If you look for the divine being, you might see mostly unresolved questions.

If you look beneath, you may be astounded at the availability of divine love.

Amen

References:

Good news MPBM November 14: http://news.mpbn.net/post/good-news-stories-being-thankful

The Good News Network http://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/ https://www.facebook.com/thegoodnewsnetwork

The Readings

Isaiah 11:1-2, 6-9.  A shoot shall come out from the stock of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the baby goat, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the poisonous snake, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den. They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be as full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. 

Luke 1:5-14. There was in the days of Herod, the king of Judea, a certain priest named Zacharias, of the division of Abijah. His wife was of the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. And they were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless. But they had no child, because Elizabeth was barren, and they were both well advanced in years.  So it was, that while he was serving as priest before God in the order of his division, according to the custom of the priesthood, his lot fell to burn incense when he went into the temple of the Lord. And the whole multitude of the people was praying outside at the hour of incense. Then an angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing on the right side of the altar of incense. And when Zacharias saw him, he was troubled, and fear fell upon him.  But the angel said to him, “Do not be afraid, Zacharias, for your prayer is heard; and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John. And you will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth.

Heavenly Secrets 8165 [2] Paraphrase

The final phase of spiritual temptation is despair. During this phase we feel as if we cannot stop ourselves from sliding into hell. Temptations compel us to experience our powerlessness, for a temptation pushes us beyond our endurance until we cannot hold on any more, at which point we begin to tumble into hell. But the Lord catches us right at that point, stopping our descent. This brings relief and comfort and even joy. The only reason God would allow us to experience such terrible despair is so that our beliefs and our attachments can be reformed, and then by means of new insights and a deeper sense of interconnectedness, we are strengthened, and become even more deeply integrated.