Fear Not - sermon for June 14

Today we welcomed new members, celebrated communion, celebrated "New Church" day, and celebrated the end of the Sunday School year with a pageant.  It took a few minutes extra, but we managed it!

This comes to you with blessings and love.

“Fear Not”

Rev. Alison Longstaff, June 14, 2015

Bath Church of the New Jerusalem

Psalm 27:1-5; Revelation 1:12-19; Apocalypse Explained 431:6

Apocalypse Explained 431:6

“The New Jerusalem” does not mean a new earthly city called “Jerusalem,” nor does its “wall and gates” mean a physical wall and gates, nor do “the twelve tribes and apostles” mean the actual original twelve tribes and apostles. Something completely different is meant by each one of these things. “The New Jerusalem” means a new spirituality with a new understanding; “angels,” “tribes,” and “apostles” mean all the ways humanity will increase in benevolence and mutual understanding, and live from principles that are both deeply wise and deeply compassionate.

Today we will be welcoming two new people into this congregation—two terrific people who are choosing to walk beside us and with us here at Bath Church of the New Jerusalem. Robin and Rick are honoring us by making this commitment.

One reason so many people no longer attend any church is because they have been hurt or disappointed by a religious community in the past. To choose to try again when one has been hurt in the past takes courage, and I stand in honor of anyone who makes such a choice.

Robin and Rick, I cannot promise you that you will never feel hurt or disappointed at some point as you walk with us here. I can only pray that we as a community can walk with courage and compassion through the hurts together, so that we may keep healing and growing as a spiritual family.

To quote (the fictional) Father Timothy Cavanaugh (from At Home in Mitford by Jan Karon), “My friend, if you keep your eyes on Christians, you will be disappointed every day of your life. Your hope is to keep your eyes on Christ.”

We sometimes mistakenly expect perfection from each other just because we are a church. At such times I implore us all to remember that we are a community bounded by our need for God in our lives, not because in any way we have already arrived at some kind of special status.

It takes courage to break into a long-standing tradition such as this congregation represents.  And it takes courage on the part of those who have been running things for many years to step aside and allow new energies in, because new energies mean change.  So I commend all of us for not allowing fear to run the show.

           

Today we are also celebrating “June 19^th” or “The New Church’s birthday.”  We typically have a pageant featuring some story from the Book of Revelation, because Swedenborgians see the book of Revelation as a metaphor about the spiritual temptations that we go through on the way to heaven. A whole lot of people find the Book of Revelation scary. So today, I am going to talk about fear. I am especially going to talk about fear in relation to religion and God.

Looking in the Hebrew and Greek Bibles, one important thing to notice is that every time an angel of the Lord shows up with a message for someone, the very, very first thing he or she says is . . .

“Fear Not.”

The first thing said is: “Fear Not.” Sometimes it is worded “Do Not be Afraid,” but the message is the same. “Fear Not.” The angel brings these opening words of comfort to Hagar, to Isaac, to Rachel, to Jacob, to the People of Israel, to Moses, to Joshua, to Gideon, to Daniel, to Joseph, to Mary, to Zacharias, to the women at the tomb, and last but not least, to John on the isle of Patmos. As well as these 14 direct words of comfort, the followers of the Lord frequently say it to each other; Moses, Joshua, and the prophets say it to the children of Israel; and Jesus speaks these words of reassurance to the disciples and to the man whose daughter was dying.

In the Word, the first thing said is pivotal. It sets the tone. It shapes the entire rest of the message. Maybe we should pay attention to this, “Fear not.”

Why would “Fear not” be the first thing God would communicate to us? After all, won’t we all become lazy, selfish lumps if we’re not afraid? If we get too relaxed about our salvation, isn’t it possible we might miss the boat? Didn’t God also say in Psalm 111, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom”? ( vs.10).

Well, yes and no.

You see, the fear of the Lord, spoken of in the Psalms is not the anxious, grovelling uneasiness we often think of when we hear the word, “fear.” The “fear” in the Psalms isn’t fear at all in that sense of the word. The “fear of the Lord” spoken of in Psalm 111 is a deep respect and reverence for the Lord born of deep love. And that sort of “fear” we do indeed want.

When the Word says, “Fear not,” it is calling us to release any grovelling, cowering, “please don’t hit me!” kind of fear. The Lord is not the angry, judgmental God we “fear” He is. He doesn’t want us to be cowering and grovelling and afraid of the Divine. He says, “Fear Not!” And, coming from the Lord, these words say a thousand more things too.

God speaks to us the words, “Fear Not,” but knows that we will often still feel afraid anyway, or at least mildly uneasy. We can’t change our feelings on demand simply by force of will. We might change feelings over time by changing our perspective, but mostly, feelings just are. Therefore, maybe these words from the Lord are not a command, “Thou shalt not fear! (and if you do, I will judge you)” but a reminder. God is reminding us that, though we may still experience fear, we do well to remember that the omnipotent, omniscient, benevolent God of the whole universe has things well in hand, all the way down to the hairs of our head.

It is a reminder to hold before our eyes: “Fear Not,” because God is in charge!

“Fear Not” can also be a promise. When God says, “Fear Not,” He is giving us a promise that some day, if we persevere along the path of spiritual growth, we will stop being afraid. Eventually, when we reach the spiritual state described as the Holy City, we will never truly fear anything again. We will know all is well, and feel only immense love.

So then the words “Fear Not” are a reminder and a promise. And there’s more.

           

The dragon and the harlot of Babylon in Revelation symbolize two unhealthy ways of doing religion. We all tend toward one or the other by nature, and these show what they can do to our lives if we let them get out of hand. These two unhealthy ways are the “Ideas Alone” approach (dragon) and the “sheer self-determination, I’ll just try hard enough” approach (works).  It is no coincidence that the tower of Babel (Babylon) is a story about humans trying to climb up to heaven by their own power.

These two unbalanced approaches are actually two sides of the same coin found within each of us. Where you find one, the other is not far away. They don’t actually compete with each other, they mirror and balance each other in a dysfunctional sort of way. In fact, in Rev. 19, the harlot of Babylon is seen riding the dragon. But the answer is not to find a middle ground between them, we need a shift to a higher order of unity in ourselves. We don’t want a dragon and whore married inside us (arrogance and control)—we want a bridegroom and bride (wisdom and love.)

A recent poll discerned whether people in any given congregation believed salvation was due more to our personal effort (works-based) or due to believing the right stuff regardless of effort (belief-based). What they discovered was that in any given congregation, no matter what denomination, the people tended to fall along a 50/50 or 60/40 split in their view of salvation. This study did not ask people directly what they thought they believed about salvation.  Instead it asked people to judge and assign responsibility or merit given certain hypothetical scenarios—a much more accurate way to measure what they actually believed. 

It looks as though all of us have a tendency to lean one way or the other in our approach to religion no matter what our denomination may teach.  We worry a lot and can’t do enough and feel a lot of guilt OR we live in our heads and rationalize everything and hold an aloofness from the feeling and doing side (response-ability) of life. (They sound a bit like Virginia Satir's coping mechanisms.)

This also reminds me that just because Swedenborg said the “new church” will have a perfect balance (represented by the Holy City), people who like to call themselves “New Church” (lots of Swedenborgians identify this way) are mistaken to think they automatically have that internal marriage by virtue of joining the external club. Every one of us on this planet has the same path to walk, and the Lord doesn’t play favorites. No one is a Navy Seal by virtue of calling themselves “a Navy Seal.” And no one is “New Church” just because they might call themselves “New Church.” You have to let yourself be changed.  You have to wake up and “do the work” which involves learning and humility and honesty.  It involves letting God work in your spirit while letting go—which often feels like hard work and sometimes feels too easy.

Now, having said that we all lean toward one spiritual imbalance or another, should it worry us that we tend subconsciously to lean more towards “ideas will get me there” or towards “sheer determination will get me there”? Not at all. In fact, the process described in Revelation through all the scary imagery is the process of how this imbalance gets corrected for us (and how apocalyptic this process can sometimes look and feel). The things that die or are cast down in the story aren’t you and me or anyone we love, they are broken and dysfunctional parts of us. Those things will be cast down as we are ready to be lifted up.

The Lord can and does and always will do everything He can to help you and me and every one of us rise up from our divided internal state into the heavenly marriage. He knows how we are made! He formed each one of us in the womb. He doesn’t expect perfection today or even any time soon. He doesn’t judge us for being tiny, imperfect, stumbling newbies at this whole regeneration thing. In fact, in His eyes, we are precious beyond compare. And He knows just how to lead each one of us. We need to be open to Him.

The Book of Revelation is written the way it is, not as a warning, but as a reassuring description of what the final stages of personal regeneration can look like. Yes, this process can look and feel like the stars are falling and everything we rely on and trust in are in flaming ruins. But God says, “Fear Not.” Perhaps this is why the birth process for our race looks so messy, dramatic, and well, frightening to the uninitiated. If you ask a new father, he might talk of blood and screaming, and the woman in labor might talk of pain and even sometimes wanting to die. But if you ask a midwife, she will tell you that the birth of a child is the most beautiful thing on the whole earth.

So, which one is telling the truth about the birth of a new human being?

The Book of Revelation describes the last final push—the moment of transition from a previous, incomplete spiritual state to a whole new, triumphant reality. And just about anyone associated with the human birth process will tell you that the phase called “transition” is the hardest and most apparently “out of control” or “chaotic” phase there is. The Last Judgement in the Word is describing a final transition in our spiritual rebirth.

And any spiritual midwife worth his or her salt will tell you, “Fear Not,” no matter how melodramatic the process feels to us. The spiritual soul in labor might not feel so sure at that moment, but that’s okay. All of it, ALL OF IT, is okay. This is simply what the process looks like for us messy beings—cataclysmic, earth-shattering, and beautiful beyond our wildest dreams.

So, “Fear Not.”

After all, we were born to become angels, so what have we to fear? And if you think about it, fear is the actual opposite of love. It isn’t hatred, it is fear that closes us off from loving others. “Hate” is simply one face of fear—fear of pain, fear of lost love, fear of all things that have hurt us in the past. So “Fear Not” is another way of saying “remember love.”

“Fear not,” says God. “Trust me.” “Choose love,” says God. “I’ve got you.” “Fear Not.”

“Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God. Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Don't be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.” (Luke 12:6-7)  Amen

Revised from a sermon originally preached November 4^th, 2007 Pretty Prairie Kansas

Readings:

Psalm 27: 1-5

The Lord is my light and my salvation; Whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the strength of my life; Of whom shall I be afraid?
When the wicked came against me To eat up my flesh, My enemies and foes,
They stumbled and fell.
Though an army may encamp against me, My heart shall not fear;
Though war may rise against me, I will be confident.

One thing I have desired of the Lord,
That will I seek: That I may dwell in the house of the Lord All the days of my life,
To behold the beauty of the Lord, And to inquire in His temple.
For in the time of trouble He shall hide me in His pavilion;
In the secret place of His tabernacle He shall hide me;
He shall set me high upon a rock.

Revelation 1:12-18

Then I turned to see the voice that spoke with me. And having turned I saw seven golden lampstands, and in the midst of the seven lampstands One like the Son of Man, clothed with a garment down to the feet and girded about the chest with a golden band. His head and hair were white like wool, as white as snow, and His eyes like a flame of fire; His feet were like fine brass, as if refined in a furnace, and His voice as the sound of many waters; He had in His right hand seven stars, out of His mouth went a sharp two-edged sword, and His countenance was like the sun shining in its strength. And when I saw Him, I fell at His feet as dead. But He laid His right hand on me, saying to me, “Do not be afraid; I am the First and the Last. I am He who lives, and was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore. Amen.

“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 19^th 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, ⁸ but they did not prevail, nor was a place found for them in heaven any longer. ⁹ 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.