Divine or Human? - Communion sermon Sept 20, 2015

“Divine or Human?”

Rev. Alison Longstaff, Sept 20, 2015

Bath Church of the New Jerusalem

Psalm 8; Matthew 16:13-17; Doctrine of the Lord 29 

 I am going to say a big word.  Brace yourself.

“Christology.”

 

We learned lots of big words in seminary.  Christology was one of them. All of those big words annoyed me at first, because I felt left behind whenever someone used one.  If didn’t know the meaning, I felt stupid.  I didn’t want to have to ask, and honestly, in that first year there were so many new words, I got tired of asking what they all meant again and again and again.

Hold on. Here it comes again: “Christology.”

 

Big words are invented for a reason.  They don’t exist just to make some people appear super educated in relation to everybody else, though sometimes it may seem that way.  Big words sum up a complex concept under one name. 

For example, instead of saying, “That flower that represents love and has thorns and sometimes has a long stem,” when we want to talk about one of those things, we just say, “Rose.”

 

So “Christology” is a fancy word that just means “how we understand who Jesus Christ was.”  Was Jesus more Divine or more human?  Was Jesus more Human or more Divine?  This debate has existed since the very beginning of Christianity—yes, all the way back to the disciples.  This debate is summed up under the word “Christology” and the two apparently opposing perspectives are called, “High Christology” and “Low Christology.”  Both perspectives have good aspects and not-so-good aspects.  Listen up.

High Christology likes Jesus to be as Divine as possible.  It puts distance between Jesus and the human condition.  Baby Jesus smiles with eternal wisdom from the manger.  Teenager and adult Jesus moves serenely and calmly through his already-wise life.  High Christology art has Jesus looking mildly uncomfortable in Gethsemane and a bit unhappy on the cross.  In movies, Jesus is played with almost no emotional expression. In one movie, his hair didn’t even move when the wind blew. 

High Christology shows up in the Vertical beam of the cross. The Vertical beam represents the Divine in relationship with humankind.  God is “up there” and we are “down here.” High Christology architecture has lofty pulpits from which the preacher looks down upon the people.  The churches tend to be linear in architecture with straight-backed pews and straight lines.  The buildings are straight and narrow.  There is often high ritual, with incense and statuary, pomp and circumstance—illustrating the exalted status of God as our Divine ruler.  After all, how else does one venerate the King of heaven?  How does one approach the royal court?  What does one wear?  How does one behave?  Disapproving stares teach children and fellow church worshipers to keep themselves in order, because “heaven forbid” one should be poorly dressed or wiggle or cough when the Great King passes by.

 

While the reformation pared down the fancy dress, pageantry, and gilded accessories of High Christology worship in favor of simplicity, nevertheless it still kept God on high and humanity down low. “Worm” theology appears during this time period.  Rather than emphasizing the Glory of God, worm theology focuses on the sinfulness of humans. We are “worms,” therefore sinners, filth, excrement, and nothing but evil in relationship with God.  A lot of shame and guilt and “fear of the fires of hell” enter the discourse at this point.  Corrective doctrine, extreme reverence, and purity of life become the path to salvation.  Striving for perfection in the face of our human depravity become the stark black and white focus of this perspective.  It is so important to be in right relationship with God that service to the neighbor becomes almost irrelevant. It is in there somewhere, but it is not a big focus.

Very few churches are this extreme.  Most have a blend of High and Low Christology.  Do you have any sense of where you would be most comfortable?

The things that I treasure about High Christology is the respect and reverence for all things Holy.  I love the vaulted ceilings and soaring stained glass windows of the ancient cathedrals.  I love how the very movements of the bodies in the high ritual communicate respect and reverence for the Creator.  I love listening to Gregorian chant in a dim and cavernous cathedral. I love the way a great organ work vibrates right through my body as though the earth itself was moved to praise God.

 

High Christology produced some of humankind’s most remarkable buildings. That grandeur—that imposition of the sacred on our senses was born from a focus on the Divinity of God.  Where would we be without our great cathedrals, or even the sacred peacefulness evoked by this graceful and airy space?

A down-side to high Christology is that Jesus can be kept so Divine that his temptations become an intellectual exercise.  Feelings are too human for this most perfect man.  He was born from the Divine, walked around already Divine and went back to the Divine.  This sets up Jesus’s human experience as something other than what we experience, which misses the most fundamental significance of his incarnation. If we push Jesus too high up, there really is no “God with Us.” We must watch out for this pushing away of God. When we hold God far away, religion stays as an intellectual exercise—rather like doing jigsaw puzzles—satisfying in some way, but having little effect on how we live.

Low Christology sees Jesus as right down at our level. With low Christology Jesus is someone just like us, who laughed and cried, was confused sometimes, sweated, bled, and even needed the latrine. In low Christology paintings, Jesus looks like he is suffering.  In the movies he has human feelings and does human things.  He smiles, dances, laughs, and plays with the children. His hair moves in the wind.  And during the whippings and torture and crucifixion, he bleeds and he cries out in pain. Mel Gibson’s “The Messiah” is so very low in its Christology the viewer is wading in the blood and gore. The Divine purpose was so far removed from the story that the resurrection was the merest whiff of an afterthought—it is barely acknowledged.

  

Low Christology is shown by the horizontal beam of the cross.  That beam symbolizes the human plane and human interconnection—“we are all in this together.”  Where the vertical beam represents our relationship with the Divine, the horizontal beam is our call to live in good relationship with each other.  That beam represents Creation, in all its messiness and imperfection and beauty. Low Christology architecture tends to be circular and communal.  If there is a pulpit at all, it is lower or right down at ground level with the people. The circular arrangement of the pews allows worshipers to see each other’s faces as they worship together. 

In Low Christology Jesus is seen as our friend.  He is right down here in the muck with us, and completely understands what we go through in this life.  Low Christology Christianity doesn’t care so much what someone wears to church.  It tends to emphasize social justice and service to our fellow human beings.  There is a strong sense of connection to Jesus as he walked among us—with an emphasis to do as he did and live as he lived.  There is no need to hold God at arm’s length or to feel unworthy or to worry about our sinfulness.  That is not where the energy and attention go.  It goes toward service to the neighbor and toward connection and community as the Body of Christ.  It is not about whether people feel “worthy or unworthy” in relationship to God.  Helping each other is the purpose.

I treasure the warmth and, well, the humanity of low Christology.  I almost never see disapproving stares.  Having spent so much of my life in a very high Christology, the relaxed and kindly lack of perfectionism has been a refreshing and healing corrective for an overly worried and “uptight” spirit.  I love the focus on service and the easing up on the constant self-flagellation and soul-bleaching efforts that was part and parcel (for me!) of feeling forever not good enough, as a result of the long-term effects of my high Christology childhood.

A down-side to low Christology is that Jesus can become so human that we lose any sense of his power to make a difference in our lives (save).  He is so “down here with us” that He is in the same sinking boat with us, unable to calm the wind and waves.  We can make Jesus “just another human,” which loses the most fundamental aspect of this ancient story.  If there was no miraculous birth nor resurrection, he was just a really good guy, but no more special than any other great prophet.  We can become so comfortable with Jesus, that he ceases to be able to perform miracles in our lives, because we have no sense of his Divinity.

The main reason to learn about Christology is that how we understand God affects how God can come into our lives.  Any recovering addict can tell you the powerful effect of asking God into one’s life. No matter what name or face you give that Higher Power, that Love awaits your simple invitation.  God will sweep you off your feet, or move you gently along a quiet river of transformation, according to your need, but you must ask.  God will wait forever for you to ask. A simple, “Yes please,” will invite that extraordinary power down into your ordinary life.

The two beams of the Cross: the vertical beam—Divine, and the horizontal beam—Human.  Only where these two meet do we have that potent point of intersection—when the Divine breaks into our human experience.  That powerful moment, that “Big Bang,” is where it all happens.  It happens every single time we invite God into our imperfect lives.  But if Jesus is too Divine, we won’t let Him near.  If Jesus is too mortal, we don’t believe he has the power to save.

The Divine/Human tension shows up even in the two creation stories.  In Genesis 1, God thinks, things happen, and God is pleased.  It is a sort of remote-control creation—very tidy. Male and females are created in one “poof”.  God thinks, and we are, and it is very good. 

In the second creation story, found in Genesis 2, God is down in the muck, shaping things with the Divine hands.  (Notice, the Divine has hands.) God tries things out, tips his head, and then makes improvements.  It is a process, and it evolves. Humans are shaped from the dust (and perhaps some Divine spittle) and called “AdAM” (dust) because he was made from the “AdaMAH” (dust of the earth).  But the Man is “lonely.” (Did the Divine make a mistake?) So God throws together a solution on the spot.  God creates a woman from a spare piece of the man and fixes things.

Which of these stories would you say aligns with high Christology and which with low Christology?  It is a pretty big difference, and most people are not even aware that there are two creation stories.  And yet the tension between the different ways we understand God is right there, at the beginning of the Bible—one might say, “From our very creation.”

These two general perspectives, these two ways of seeing the Divine, are not meant to oppose each other.  Like the left and right sides of the body, we need both all the time and we function best when they are balanced and working as one.  Like maleness and femaleness, High and Low Christology can often seem to be completely different animals, and it is only from the point of their union that the Divine can burst on the scene with transformation and new life.

The Divine IS Human.  The Human IS Divine.  When we invite God into our run-of-the-mill lives day after day after day, our very ordinary lives increasingly sing of something Divine.  When we allow God’s transformative love to crack us open, we become increasingly ready to say, “Yes please!” again and again to the Divine, drawing closer with each encounter.

As we celebrate the Holy Supper following the sermon, I encourage you to invite the Divine into your life, however you might understand that.  Each one of us that comes to this table understands the symbolism differently.  Whether you believe the elements are truly the body and blood of Christ, purely symbolic, or some version of a blend of those, you are welcome at the table.  You are not just welcome, God waits, God asks, God desires to come into your life through the bread and the wine.  However you understand it, the Holy Communion is an enactment of the Divine entering into its beloved Creation. It enacts the Infinite touching the finite, with all the impossibility of that.  As you feel the bread and wine change your body, know that God desires to change your life for the miraculous, that you might be blessed.

Welcome to Christology.

The Readings

Psalm 8

Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!

You have set your glory in the heavens.
Through the praise of children and infants you have established a stronghold against your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger.
When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars,
    which you have set in place, what is humankind that you are mindful of them, or human beings that you care for them?

You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor.
You made them rulers over the works of your hands; you put everything under their feet:
all flocks and herds, and the animals of the wild, the birds in the sky, and the fish in the sea,
    all that swim the paths of the seas.

Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!

Matthew 16:13-17

Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?”  And they said, “Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”  He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?”  Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”  And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven has revealed it.”  

The Doctrine of the Lord #29

a.       The Lord from before time, sometimes called Jehovah, took on a human body to reconnect with the human race and turn us back to goodness. 

b.      The Lord turned that human body into something Divine because He was Divine.

c.       The Divine became human by taking on human mortal temptations through that body.

d.      He then completed the uniting of the Divine with that Human by the last and fiercest temptation which was the passion of the cross. 

e.       Step by step, through his life on earth Jesus transcended the merely physical/animal aspect of human nature, and this way united his human body with the Divine within Him. This is the Divine Human, and this is what we call the Son of God. 

f.       This is how God became fully Human, from the most initial elements, all the way down to this very flesh and blood existence.

Easter Reflections 2014

Easter Reflections

We had a "family service" this Easter at Bath Church of the New Jerusalem.  That means instead of a sermon, I had created a children's talk, which I do from notes.

The only child in the church this year was an adorable baby girl, under one year old.

So we had Kylie's mother bring her forward, and I pretended she could respond to my questions.  

Well she grinned away, chewing on her pacifier, as happy as could be, representing renewal and new life and joy far better than any words I could have put together.  Just her presence was the best Easter sermon ever. 

My cousin, Amanda Rogers Petro, posted this reflection on Facebook, and granted me permission to share it with you:

"I often identify with Mary Magdalene, who stands there talking to the risen Jesus, but doesn't recognize him because she's been looking for somebody dead. Love keeps happening, and it's always alive. I sometimes miss the Divine because I'm looking for it in the tomb of my own limited ideas about where it should be and what it should look like.

What if the risen Christ is alive in every living being, in every space, in all time? What if everything, everything is overflowing with holiness?"

Exactly.

What if we realize that the Risen Christ is everywhere, and it is we that cannot recognize this Divine Love due to our limited sight and understanding?

The following song expresses the joy we feel when we recognize the Divine Love, ALIVE and Present in our lives, when we thought all was lost.

This is a whole bunch of Swedenborgians performing this Easter song written by Swedenborgian scholar and amazing musician Rev Dr. Jonathan Rose (at the keyboards). I am related to a good half of these singers. This is my roots. A Happy and Joyful Easter one and all!

And finally, here are the readings and notes from Sunday.  May you find something nourishing within. 

Easter “children’s” talk, note form.

What is today?

Why is it special?

Have you ever had anything die or be ruined?

What sorts of things can die?

In “Princess Bride,” Wesley died.  Except he was just “mostly” dead. Not all the way dead.

He was able to come back to life.

In “Heaven Can Wait,” a new “angel” took Joe’s soul before he got hit by a car. But Joe wasn't going to have died, and wasn't supposed to be dead yet.  So he came back in someone else’s body. Because he looked and sounded so different, it took a while for his friends and family to realize it was still him.

There are lots of stories about those who loved Jesus best not recognizing him after He rose from the dead.

Nothing that is good ever really dies.  Ever.  The external trappings go away, all the time.  And sometimes, well, LOTS of times, it feels like that person or pet or thing we loved will never be seen again.  And that is very sad.  It feels terrible.

But nothing created by God—nothing made out of love, can ever cease to exist.  It may change form or shape, and we may have trouble recognizing it at first, and it may be a LONG time before we realize we have it again, but every good thing we love will come back. EVERYTHING.

It might not look like what we expect, but our hearts will recognize it.

Our hearts will “burn within us” even if our eyes and minds are slow to understand.

That is one of the biggest and best messages of Easter.  Nothing that is God-With-Us can ever die.  Ever.

from Heavenly Secrets aka Arcana Caelestia by Emanuel Swedenborg, 

paragraph number 5114:4 (a paraphrase)

In the case of human beings, the Divine Love flows into and inhabits our inmost being. We can accept this Love and make it our own it by acknowledging it and loving this Divine in return.  What is eternal and infinite dwells within a person’s soul, not simply because it flows in but because we welcome it in return.  Indeed, because every human being has this Divine implanted within, one’s internal, or soul, or truest self can never die. 

John 11: 25-26

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. 

John 20:11 – 18  

But Mary stood outside by the tomb weeping, and as she wept she stooped down and looked into the tomb. ¹² And she saw two angels in white sitting, one at the head and the other at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain.¹³ Then they said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?”

She said to them, “Because they have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid Him.”

¹⁴ Now when she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, and did not know that it was Jesus.¹⁵ Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?”

She, supposing Him to be the gardener, said to Him, “Sir, if You have carried Him away, tell me where You have laid Him, and I will take Him away.”

¹⁶ Jesus said to her, “Mary!”

She turned and said to Him, “Rabboni!” (which is to say, Teacher).

¹⁷ Jesus said to her, “Do not cling to Me, for I have not yet ascended to My Father; but go to My brethren and say to them, ‘I am ascending to My Father and your Father, and to My God and your God.’”

¹⁸ Mary Magdalene came and told the disciples that she had seen the Lord, and that He had spoken these things to her.

Psalm 30 NKJV

I will extol You, O Lord, for You have lifted me up,

And have not let my foes rejoice over me.

² O Lord my God, I cried out to You,

And You have healed me.

³ O Lord, You brought my soul up from the grave;

You have kept me alive, that I should not go down to the pit. 

⁴ Sing praise to the Lord, you saints of His,

And give thanks at the remembrance of His holy name.

⁵ For His anger is but for a moment, His favor is for life;

Weeping may endure for a night, But joy comes in the morning. 

⁶ Now in my prosperity I said,

“I shall never be moved.”

⁷ Lord, by Your favor You have made my mountain stand strong;

You hid Your face, and I was troubled. 

⁸ I cried out to You, O Lord;

And to the Lord I made supplication:

⁹ “What profit is there in my blood, when I go down to the pit?

Will the dust praise You?  Will it declare Your truth?

¹⁰ Hear, O Lord, and have mercy on me;

Lord, be my helper!” 

¹¹ You have turned for me my mourning into dancing;

You have put off my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness,

¹² To the end that my glory may sing praise to You and not be silent.

O Lord my God, I will give thanks to You forever.

A Blessed and Joyful Easter season to you all,
Rev Alison Longstaff

"Great Expectations" - sermon from Sunday, March 30th

Great Expectations

Rev Alison Longstaff, March 30, 2014

Bath Church of the New Jerusalem

Habakkuk 2: 18-20; Luke 7: 24-35; HS 3857:6-7 Portions

Happiness is equal to reality divided by expectations. - Jodi Picoult from the novel, 19 Minutes

My happiness grows in direct proportion to my acceptance, and in inverse proportion to my expectations. - Michael J. Fox

Did you know that “all true yoga instructors should be vegan”?  Well, actually, there is a yogic principle called “Ahimsa” and it means non-violence” or “do no harm.”  This is a broad principle with many applications.  But, because people are people, in our North American yoga culture “Ahimsa” has become narrowed down in meaning until it has become the expectation “be vegan.”  My favorite yoga teacher in Waterloo, Ontario—a top-notch instructor and excellent human being—gets judged regularly by other yoga practitioners when they discover she’s not vegan.  She’s not even a vegetarian, shockingly enough, though she dabbles in both from time to time.  This teacher lives and breathes and works diligently at non-harming in all aspects of her life, especially in her relationships and business practices; yet some yogis judge her for not living according to their rules, which is that “all true yoga instructors should be vegan.”

Brilliant author, life coach, and writer for O Magazine, Martha Beck, experienced a similar collision with other people’s expectations.  In her book, Expecting Adam, she describes her experience when she discovered that she was carrying a Down’s syndrome child.  She was working on a degree at Harvard at the time and suddenly found herself a political pawn, caught between warring expectations.  Many of her fellow academics and professors assumed she would abort, reacting with horror and judgment when they discovered that she was going to go ahead and “bring an idiot child” into the world.  One doctor even went on a campaign to convince her that she was doing herself, the world, and her unborn child a heinous disservice by not aborting immediately.

Conversely, once word got out that Martha was not going to abort, she was besieged by folks who wanted to make her the poster child for the pro-life movement.  They rushed up with all sorts of expectations about what she believed and what she would be willing to do for their cause, and they got very angry with her when she wanted just to be left alone with her decision.  She did not want to be telling anyone else what they should or shouldn't do in a similar situation.  On top of having to deal with her own grief and loss in discovering her baby’s special needs, she found herself battling insults and arguments from both sides of an ideological war by people who were trying to force her to behave according to their expectations.

In the gospel stories we see the clash between what Jesus was expected to be and do for his people, and what His actual mission was.  The Jews of the day had long been expecting a Messiah—a Messiah that would free them from Roman dominion, restore their Temple to its former glory, and establish an earthly kingdom of unassailable power and might.  The disciples themselves expected to be elevated to positions of power alongside Jesus when He became “King.”

But Jesus’ purpose was to teach and model that the important things are not physical power and might but the spiritual realities of love, service, humility, and compassion.  But the incredibly dense disciples kept mishearing Jesus’s actual message, deafened to it by their overriding expectations of what they thought He was supposed to be.   “Yeah, yeah, ‘love,’ okay.  But seriously, can I sit at Your right hand in the Kingdom?  I asked first!”

The thing about expectations is that the more attached we are to what we imagine something should be, the more blinded we will be to what it really is.  The more attached we are to our expectations of anyone or anything, the more likely we are to be disappointed or angry when that person or group or event doesn’t measure up to what we expect.  There is a direct correlation between our expectations in relation to reality and our happiness.

We live in a world full of expectations.  We all have them.  Expectations are not bad things.  We need expectations or we couldn't function.  We expect the floor to support us when we get out of bed.  We expect the air we breathe to be relatively safe and life-sustaining. We expect our hearts to beat and our blood to circulate.    

It is good to become aware of how some of our expectations affect our own and each other’s happiness.  Our default setting is to project our expectations onto others, and we do it all the time.  We can’t help it.  We just do, without even thinking.  We expect others to have the same “script” we do.  Then when someone inevitably doesn't behave or speak or choose the way they are supposed to, we tend to get rather grumpy with them and possibly quite judgmental.

Have you ever gotten annoyed with someone for not doing what you thought they should do?  Conversely, have you experienced someone being mad at you for not doing something they expected you to do, and you had no idea they expected it of you?

How recently have you found yourself thinking something along the lines of, “If that person really loved me, he or she would have known or done ...” Or perhaps something like, “All good church members (or committee members or family members or spouses, etc.) should know that we always … (fill in the blank)”?

And now realize that each one of those thoughts is rich with information about you and what you expected, and not-so-much information about what someone else should have said or done.  It can be uncomfortable work to unearth our expectations and realize that the things we have assumed are not the global, universal rules for everyone that we think they should be. But I promise you: the more you uncover and identify the expectations you place upon yourself and others, the more you will be able to realize how you have contributed to past miscommunications and disappointments in your relationships, and the more you will be able to both avoid, and/or navigate wisely such miscommunications and disappointments in the future.  You will have much more space to choose your responses, and be much more aware of your own expectations and be able to communicate around them rather than just project them onto others and then be disappointed.

 

All of our unacknowledged, hidden expectations have the potential to do harm to the health and well-being of all our relationships.  The spiritual work of getting to know oneself and learn about one’s own expectations pays off big time when it comes to managing personal happiness and having healthy relationships.  It simply pays to become more self-aware, because then we can own and manage our expectations, and reduce the potential harm we might do by speaking and acting from them without thought.

How tragic that Martha Beck had to defend her decision not to abort her baby from warriors on both ends of the abortion divide. 

How ironic that the principle of Ahimsa (or non-harming) is used as a justification for judgment, contempt, and exclusion.

How naive it was for the disciples to expect Jesus to overthrow the Roman government, and make the Jews great again in the land of Canaan.

And yet that is us.  It is what we do, again and again, until we learn better.

We have expectations of ourselves, of those we love, and of God; and unless examined, they can all get in the way of healthy relationships.

When someone is letting you down, know that it is connected to your expectations.  The part you can control and change is what you expected.  Sometimes our expectations are justified; sometimes not.  Regardless, it is reality that we must embrace, not what should have been.

Go easy on yourself and others.  Do no harm.  Assume the best when you can.  Try, try not to get mad at others for not living their lives according to your conscience.  And know that God’s plan is always bigger than we can envision, more wise than we can imagine, and more loving than our wildest dreams.  It is okay if we can’t see the Big Picture yet.  Isn't it cute that we expect we can?

The Readings:

Habakkuk 2: 18-20  “An idol does no good, because a human made it; it is only a statue that teaches lies.  The one who made it expects his own work to help him, but he makes idols that can’t even speak!  ¹⁹ How terrible it will be for the one who says to a wooden statue, ‘Come to life!’  How terrible it will be for the one who says to a silent stone, ‘Get up!’  It cannot tell you what to do.  It is only a statue covered with gold and silver; there is no life in it.
²⁰ The Lord is in his Holy Temple; all the earth should be silent in his presence.”

Luke 7: 24-35

²⁴ When John’s followers left, Jesus began talking to the people about John: “What did you go out into the desert to see? A reed blown by the wind? ²⁵ What did you go out to see? A man dressed in fine clothes? No, people who have fine clothes and much wealth live in kings’ palaces. ²⁶ But what did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, and I tell you, John is more than a prophet. ²⁷ This was written about him:

‘I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare the way for you.’ (Malachi 3:1)

²⁸ I tell you, John is greater than any other person ever born, but even the least important person in the kingdom of God is greater than John.”

²⁹ (When the people, including the tax collectors, heard this, they all agreed that God’s teaching was good, because they had been baptized by John. ³⁰ But the Pharisees and experts on the law refused to accept God’s plan for themselves; they did not let John baptize them.)

³¹ Then Jesus said, “What shall I say about the people of this time? What are they like? ³² They are like children sitting in the marketplace, calling to one another and saying,

‘We played music for you, but you did not dance; we sang a sad song, but you did not cry.’

³³ John the Baptist came and did not eat bread or drink wine, and you say, ‘He has a demon in him.’ ³⁴ The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Look at him! He eats too much and drinks too much wine, and he is a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ ³⁵ But wisdom is proved to be right by what it does.”

HS 3857:6-7 (Portions) HuSuch also was mankind was such when the Lord came into the world that we had grown even more concrete-minded, especially those who were members of the Church. This is illustrated by the disciples who were unable to understand things in a metaphorical or abstract manner, even though they were with the Lord constantly and hearing so many teachings about His kingdom. They were unable to have any other concept … of the Messiah than that He would promote their race to a position of power and glory over all the nations of the world. Even after hearing so many things from the Lord about the heavenly kingdom, the disciples were still unable to think anything else than that the heavenly kingdom would be like an earthly kingdom, where God the Father would be supreme, after Him the Son, and then themselves the twelve.

[7] If they had been told that the word 'disciples' was not used to mean themselves but all people who are truly good and are living a conscientious life, or that in the Lord's kingdom there are no thrones and no positions of government and dominion, and that they would not be able to pass judgment on even the smallest aspect of any other person, they would have rejected those teachings, and each would have left the Lord and gone back to his own employment. The Lord spoke in the way He did so that the disciples would receive what He said and gradually be lead to think more spiritually or abstractly. Spiritual or internal truth always lies stored within the Lord’s external words, and in course of time can be laid bare.