Tearing Down the Walls - Supply sermon

“Tearing Down the Walls”

By Rev SarahButeax

Supply preached by Kippy Rudy, November 9, 2014

Bath Church of the New Jerusalem

Joshua 5:13-14, Joshua 6: 1-5, 10-11, 12b, 15-16, 20-25, HS 8815

“The walls of Jericho” mean the falsities that defend evils.  Secrets of Heaven (AC) 8815

I'd like you all to relax, open your minds, and imagine something with me for a moment. Now, this may be a stretch, but I want us to imagine that we are all part of a small, no scratch that, very small—all right let's be honest, compared to everyone else we're minuscule—I want us to try and imagine that we are all part of a teeny, tiny, and yet vibrant, extremely vibrant, spiritual community. Do you think you can do that with me? Good, then let's continue.A community with its own unique language and rituals and understanding of God, a community with a long and venerable history, a community with so much to offer the world, and yet a community that could easily disappear into the annals of history if we can't somehow find a way to hold it together and face the seemingly insurmountable challenges ahead of us with absolute courage and unwavering faith—you got it? Are you with me here? Do you feel it? Good.

Then you know exactly how the Israelites felt as they entered the Prom­ised Land. After years of wandering, this tiny little band of chosen people has finally crossed the river Jordan and entered the land of Canaan. And they are ready—ready and willing to receive their divine inheritance and take possession of the land that was prom­ised to their forefather Abraham. Only, there's a slight problem. Peo­ple already live there: namely the Canaan-ites, the Hittites, the Hivites, the Perizzites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, and please don't forget the Jebusites, and, well, these people haven't gotten the divine eminent do­main memo.

So if the Israelites want this land, they're going to have to take it, and under the leadership of Joshua, this is precisely what they set out to do. They may be small and scrappy, they may have their own peculiar way of doing things and their own peculiar way of talking about the things that they do, but with God on their side there is no battle they cannot win, no people they cannot conquer, no city they cannot take.

And so the Israelites march right up to the first city, the city of Jericho, the gateway city that stands at the base of the Promised Land, and set up camp around the great wall. In accordance with the Lord's instruction, they do not attack, but rather they march.

They march around the city every day for six days. The priests carry their trumpets, the soldiers carry their swords, but no one says a word or makes a sound. Then on the seventh day, the Israelites march around the city seven times, and at the very last moment the priests blow their horns, and the people shout with all their might; the walls of the city come crashing down and Jericho is given like a gift into the hands of the Israelites is a complete and utter triumph.

But then something happens, something absolutely, unspeakably horrible. The people rush forward and put every living being—all the kings soldiers and all the kings men, yes, but also all of the civilians, the men, the women, the little children, and the tiny babies, all of the animals, the oxen and the sheep and the donkeys, the horses, the cats, and the dogs, (people, if there was so much as a hamster in Jericho that day . . .)—every living being, except for one woman and her household, are put to death by the sword.

It is a heartbreaking story, absolutely horrible, and I wish I could say it was an isolated incident within scripture, a bizarre little aberration in an otherwise unsullied narrative of divine love and mercy, but it's not. There are several such stories in the Bible, not just sto­ries of war, but stories of war wherein God commands the complete and ut­ter destruction of every living being in an enemy's territory, no matter how young or weak or vulnerable those be­ings might be.

But do you want to know what is unusual, what the really crazy thing is about this story in particular? People love it. Pastors lift the Battle of Jericho up in their sermons as a story of God's favor and awesome power. Congrega­tions and choirs sing some great songs about it. (Thank you very much by the way. Can we have a hand for the Con­vention Choir?)  And as if that weren't strange enough, we read it to our kids in Sunday School, in much the same way we read the story of Noah's ark, as if genocide was the most natural thing in the world.

Yeah. It's all a little strange when you really start to think about it, isn't it? Wipe life as we know it off the plan­et and you have the makings of an epic tragedy, but save just two of every ani­mal and you've got all the material you need for the most popular children's play set of all time. Who knew? But seriously, once you start to look at the finer details of a story like this, it re­ally is disturbing. Scholars and theolo­gians have labored long and hard to try and make sense of this one, and I could tell you a bit about what they say, only I have the strange suspicion that you would all promptly tune out.

We're Swedenborgians after all, and we already know that there's a spiritual sense imbued within these letters full of a higher, more personal, and surely more useful meaning. Why slum about in the historical realm when you can soar and play in the celestial one? Why torment one's self trying to make sense of the lit­eral when one can revel in the spiritual?

Why? Because real people died that day in Jericho. Real mothers lost real babies, real hus­bands lost real wives, real people lost their homes, their livelihoods, their very lives in the face of an army that thought it was carrying out God's will. And if we dismiss those people as no more than a means to an end, the literal fodder for a great spiri­tual interpretation, the only difference between us and Joshua's soldiers is not one of kind but of degree.

That is, if we look at this story and somehow convince ourselves that our ability to draw a spiritual meaning from this literal historical event some­how makes the event itself okay, then what we are effectively doing is justify­ing the slaughter. Furthermore, when we jump right to the correspondences and begin playing with spiritual inter­pretations, we miss the opportunity to question the event itself, to question what it says about God, and what it says about us, to question whether or not Joshua was even right, whether or not the slaughter was necessary.

And I'm afraid that if we miss that opportunity, then our understand­ing of Swedenborg's correspondences, however interesting they might be, is bound to become corrupted in the process.

Because, you see, if Joshua was actually wrong on the literal level to cause such destruction, then simply trans­ferring his methodology up the correspondential ladder, if you will, prob­ably won't yield better or more last­ing results for any of us. So let's take a closer look, first, at how this story is traditionally understood on the literal level, and see how a few well-placed questions on that end can add nuance to our standard spiritual understanding of this most troubling text. Are you with me? Wonderful. A little nervous? Me too, but here we go.

Traditionally, on the lit­eral level, the genocide that takes place during the Battle of Jericho is understood as an unfortunate but neces­sary means to an end. When you are as small and as unique as the Israelites were, when you have so much to pro­tect and so little to work with, then when you strike you must strike hard.

They couldn't afford to fail, nor could they afford to be compromised, so when they conquered a people they showed no mercy. They wiped out ev­ery last person they could find, every last trace of culture or religion that could possibly lead their people astray. Only then, in their minds, could they truly be safe and prosper in the prom­ised land.

And you know, on the one hand I can see their logic; however, there are still some pretty strange inconsistencies in this story that I'd like to point out to you, the first having to do with the promise itself. You'll remember that a big part of the promise given to Abra­ham back in Genesis involved the Is­raelites not just inheriting the land of Canaan but being a—what to the na­tions? A blessing.

Now, I don't know about you, but I can't quite see how killing first and blessing later is a really good strategy for fulfilling this promise. Does that seem a little off to you? Me too. And speaking of killing—and this is my sec­ond problem with the story—it's one thing to kill those who have the poten­tial to kill you—I mean even the poor, little, innocent babies could theoreti­cally grow up to exact revenge some­day—but killing all the animals seems like a needless waste to me. How could the animals have corrupted the Israel­ites I wonder?

Likewise, destroying the city itself with all its temples and art and liter­ature seems a good plan if you don't want the people to get seduced or tainted by falsities, but it's exceedingly ironic, in my humble opinion, that in their mad dash to purge the city of all corrupting influences, be they animal, vegetable, or mineral, that the one per­son they do save is—anyone remember her name?—Rahab, yes. And what did Rahab do for a living? She was a har­lot. Rahab and all the members of her "household" were spared because she had helped the Israelite spies escape, a household that included her father and mother and brothers, I'm sure, but a household that in all likelihood prob­ably included an unusually large num­ber of "sisters" as well, if you catch my drift.

And finally, there is the issue of God's part in this whole debacle, our God who we understand to be all lov­ing and all wise. I have a really hard time understanding how our God could ever approve of genocide, and, truth be told, I see a number of little signs that indicate that, at least in this story, the all-out slaughter wasn't really God's idea at all. For one thing, when God says he will give the city to Josh­ua, he does so, but he brings down the walls with music rather than warfare. Victory is achieved without one drop of blood being spilt.

For another, although God does command the Israelites in other parts of the Bible to wipe out entire cities, in this particular passage, if you read it closely, he never once tells Joshua to kill all of the living creatures inside of Jericho. God says, "See, I have given Jericho into your hand, with its king and valiant warriors," but it is not God who commands that the Israelites put all of Jericho to death, it is Joshua.

All of which sends me back to re­consider that strange little exchange Joshua engages in with an angel days before the battle even begins. Joshua asks the angel, "Are you for us or for our adversaries?" And the angel says, "No," which is kind of a strange answer to an "either/or" question. "Rather, I indeed come now as captain of the host of the Lord," says the angel. That is, "I'm on God's side, human, not theirs, but not yours either." Joshua wanted to know if God was on their side, but what he should have been asking each step of the way is not whether God was on their side, but whether or not they were on God's.

Now, I bring all of these little quirks to your attention because I think it is extremely important for us to question scripture, to have enough respect for the literal sense of the word to wrestle with it and not accept it as simply a text for imitation or as a spring board we can utilize uncritically to reach a more interesting spiritual interpretation.

The Bible isn't always showing us who we ought to be. Sometimes it is only showing us who we already are. And in those instances, our job is not to meekly accept the charge, but to wres­tle with the image before us and, God willing, strain for something higher.

Unfortunately, most of the Swedenborgian literature that deals with this passage in particular fails to question whether or not Joshua was even right. It plows right ahead and concludes that if Joshua dealt with the evils of Jericho in this way, then we ought to deal with the evils in our own lives this way as well. But what if Joshua went overboard?

Now please understand, I'm not calling the correspondences themselves into question, but I'm questioning what we ultimately do with them. I think the correspondences Swedenborg out­lines actually stand up very well. In Se­crets of Heaven (8815) he explains that the walls of Jericho represent the lies, half truths, and rationalizations we use to justify our own evil actions, and it is clear that those walls really do need to come down if we are going to live our lives to the fullest as God intended.

If we truly want to overcome our evils, then we must, with the help of God, examine the defensive strategies we have built up around them to keep them safe, just as the spies appraised the defenses of Jericho. We need to be patient and obedient to what we know is good even when it doesn't feel right yet, just as the Israelites did when they walked about the city each day for six days wondering what the heck they were doing. And finally, we need to trust not in our own power, but in the power of God to bring the walls down on our behalf.

These correspondences are powerful and exceedingly useful. Indeed Swedenborgians, and Grant Schnarr in par­ticular in his very helpful little book, Return to the Promised Land, have put them to good use, especially around is­sues of addiction and spiritual recovery. How many of you have benefited from his work? I'm not surprised.

   

He makes it clear in his book that

if you're caught up in a web of sin or addiction, the only way to break the chains that bind you to destructive be­haviors is with the truth. With the help of God you can tear down the walls of lies that keep you going back to the bottle for solace or drugs for happiness or pornography for love, just to name a few examples.

But I think we get into trouble when we follow Joshua down the road of be­lieving we can not only rid ourselves of all the lies that give evil power over us, but succumb to the belief that with enough determination we can actually rid ourselves of evil itself once and for all. It would be nice if we could, but I don't think evil works that way any­more than God does.

At the end of Grant Schnarr's chap­ter on Jericho he writes:

After the walls fell down Israel wiped out the enemy so as not to be perverted by their immoral spiritual practices. Spiritually, the lesson is one that cannot be overstated: we must wipe out that hideous evil complete­ly. Once we expose the defect, we must show no leniency. When the walls of illusion crumble, it's time to destroy those defects before they can re-arm and destroy us. Knock them out with the sword of truth and an­nihilate them. Not until then will there be peace, (pp. 165-166)

Well, that sounds really good, and I can see a lot of usefulness in what Rev. Schnarr is saying, except for one small but pesky detail: war never leads to peace, at least not the true, just, lasting peace that we all long for.

In my experience you can make war on drugs, you can make war on ter­ror, you can make war on poverty, you can make war on most anything that is harmful, but war is, at best, only a temporary solution. Peace is not what you get when you finally destroy everything or everyone who could potential­ly harm you because that battle never ends. Peace only comes from the hard work of making peace.

Add to this the fact that, as it says in Divine Providence, the Lord does not annihilate the evils in our lives when we repent of them, but simply removes them to a place where they have no power over us, and you start to won­der, "Hey, if God doesn't destroy evil, who are we to think that we should or even could, if we wanted to?”

So perhaps the story of Jericho is here to tell us that ultimately Joshua was wrong, as are we if we think that the best way to combat evil is to obliter­ate it rather than neutralize it. War did not eternally secure the Promised Land for the Israelites back then, anymore than war is securing it for them right now. Maybe the most powerful spiri­tual lesson to be found in this passage is the knowledge that our job is not to wipe out evil, because evil doesn't work that way, and when we go after evil, too often what we really end up going af­ter is each other. No, our job is not to fight evil with force but to join with God in peacefully dismantling the lies that give evil power over us and over others. "Peace," in the words of Frederich Beuchner, "is not the absence of conflict, but the presence of love."

And believe it or not, there is actu­ally a little bit of love in this story, a modicum of mercy, if you will, an ex­ception made in the midst of Joshua's headlong rush to obliterate a people he feared would corrupt his own, and it is in her that we find redemption, not just for Joshua but for all the world. Remember Rahab, who we mentioned before, Rahab the harlot?

If there was a top ten list of people most likely to corrupt the purity of the Israelites, Rahab and her "household" would have been in the top five. But Joshua made a curious exception for Rahab and showed her mercy. He compromised to save a person of dubious character, and it was this very compro­mise that ultimately led to the great­est in-breaking of the divine upon our world.

For you see, Rahab was taken in by the Israelites, and, in time, she had a son named Boaz who grew up and married another compromised gentile girl by the name of Ruth, whose great grandson was none other than King David, whose line eventually culmi­nated in the birth of a tiny baby boy in a little town called Bethlehem by the name of Jesus. Because Rahab the prostitute was allowed to live, Jesus the messiah was able to be born.

Coincidence? I think not.

Providence? You better believe it.

So maybe the battle of Jericho is not a story that glorifies war after all, but a story that lifts up the true blessing that comes from showing mercy and mak­ing peace.

My friends, preserving one's identity as a small people and protecting one's integrity as a people set apart for God is a high calling. As such we are called to dismantle the walls of lies that pro­tect and nurture all that is evil and cor­rupt in this world. But when we do so at the expense of one another, when, in our headlong rush to destroy evil we destroy one another, then we have lost our way.

For our highest calling is not the tearing down but the building up of a new city. Not a new Jericho, but a new Jerusalem, a city built not with bricks and mortar, but with hands reaching out to one another, especially those who are other, hands that build up with love and reach out with mercy, and hands that make room, no matter what the cost, for God's love and God's light to break in upon our world. This is our calling. Amen and Amen.

Originally preached at the 184th Annual Convention, Saturday morning, July 5, 2008 at Bridgewater New Jerusalem Church, in Bridgewater, Massachusetts.

As published in “The Messenger,” by the Swedenborgian Church of North America; Volume 230 • Number 7 • September 2008

At the time of this writing, Rev. Sarah Buteux was pastor of the First Congregational Church of Hadley, Massachusetts.

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The Readings

Joshua 5:13-14, Joshua 6: 1-5, 10-11, 12b, 15-16, 20-25

¹³ And it came to pass, when Joshua was by Jericho, that he lifted his eyes and looked, and behold, a Man stood opposite him with His sword drawn in His hand. And Joshua went to Him and said to Him, “Are You for us or for our adversaries?”

¹⁴ So He said, “No, but as Commander of the army of the Lord I have now come.”

Now Jericho was shut up inside and out because of the Israelites; no one came out and no one went in. ² The Lord said to Joshua, “See, I have handed Jericho over to you, along with its king and soldiers. ³ You shall march around the city, all the warriors circling the city once. Thus you shall do for six days, ⁴ with seven priests bearing seven trumpets of rams’ horns before the ark. On the seventh day you shall march around the city seven times, the priests blowing the trumpets. ⁵ When they make a long blast with the ram’s horn, as soon as you hear the sound of the trumpet, then all the people shall shout with a great shout; and the wall of the city will fall down flat, and all the people shall charge straight ahead.” 

¹⁰ To the people Joshua gave this command: “You shall not shout or let your voice be heard, nor shall you utter a word, until the day I tell you to shout. Then you shall shout.” ¹¹ So the ark of the Lord went around the city, circling it once; and they came into the camp, and spent the night in the camp.

14 b They did this for six days.

¹⁵ On the seventh day they rose early, at dawn, and marched around the city in the same manner seven times. It was only on that day that they marched around the city seven times. ¹⁶ And at the seventh time, when the priests had blown the trumpets, Joshua said to the people, “Shout! For the Lord has given you the city.  ²⁰ So the people shouted, and the trumpets were blown. As soon as the people heard the sound of the trumpets, they raised a great shout, and the wall fell down flat; so the people charged straight ahead into the city and captured it. ²¹ Then they put to the sword all in the city, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and donkeys.

²² Joshua said to the two men who had spied out the land, “Go into the prostitute’s house, and bring the woman out of it and all who belong to her, as you swore to her.” ²³ So the young men who had been spies went in and brought Rahab out, along with her father, her mother, her brothers, and all who belonged to her—they brought all her kindred out—and set them outside the camp of Israel. ²⁴ They burned down the city, and everything in it; only the silver and gold, and the vessels of bronze and iron, they put into the treasury of the house of the Lord. ²⁵ But Rahab the prostitute, with her family and all who belonged to her, Joshua spared. Her family has lived in Israel ever since. For she hid the messengers whom Joshua sent to spy out Jericho.

Secrets of Heaven (AC) 8815

“The walls of Jericho” mean the falsities that defend evils.  

Finding Your Destiny - sermon Oct 26, 2014

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“Finding Your Destiny”

Rev. Alison Longstaff, Oct 26, 2014

Bath Church of the New Jerusalem

Joshua 24: 1-2a, 14-18; Rev 21: 1-4; HH 402

There’s a gravestone somewhere near London England that reads, “Here lies Jeremy Brown, born a man and died a grocer.”

Now, this is humorous, but it is also a commentary on how one can become so identified with one’s job that one loses the self that one was created to be.

You see, every one of us hungers to live a life of purpose and meaning. But misfortune, setbacks, cynicism, or even societal expectations and pressures can silence that hunger, but it never truly goes away. We long to feel special; we long to feel that there is a reason that we were born. The book stores are full of self-help guides on how to discover our purpose in life—books with titles like: “Finding Your Own North Star,” “Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose,” “Manifest Your Destiny,” “Just Who Will You Be?” and “Excavating Your Authentic Self,”—and they sell well for a reason.

We are complex beings. We live in the space between responsibility and possibility, between duty and dreams, pulled ever and always between the two. It can be a precarious place to live in this tug of war, faced with daily choices between creative playful risk and the heavy harness of obligation. We cannot simply abandon our spouse or children or work responsibilities to indulge some impractical dream—“I will move to Hollywood and become a famous actress!” (No matter how much appeal that might have some days). Yet it is a terrible shame when we allow ourselves to succumb to the “shoulds” and judgments in our culture, letting our creativity wither and our dreams die.

There is a balance we must strike in life between time in the harness of duty and out of it, yet many of us in adult life let go completely of our ability to play and dream, and it is then that we risk “dying a grocer.”

Let me read to you from Irish poet and priest, John O’Donahue:

“For millions of years, before you arrived here, the dream of your individuality was carefully prepared. You were sent to a shape of destiny in which you would be able to express the special gift you bring to the world.

If you can awaken this sense of destiny, you come into rhythm with your life. You fall out of rhythm when you renege on your potential and talent, when you settle for mediocre as a refuge from the call. When you lose rhythm, your life becomes wearyingly deliberate or anonymously automatic. Rhythm is the secret key to balance and belonging." (Anam Cara, p 84)

O’Donahue speaks a very Swedenborgian truth here: that we all were indeed created with a special purpose in mind—that God made you and me with an eye to eternity and an intention for a unique job in heaven that will fulfill us beyond our wildest dreams. We can begin to awake to that purpose here and now, but the key lies in being willing to be open to finding a sacred rhythm to our life, and being willing to dig deep into our courage and love. Developing this awareness can require some introspection, often in the form of meditation or journaling—undertakings many of us avoid like the dentist. I personally believe in the transformative power of daily journal writing with all my heart, and yet have an amazing ability to postpone it, neglect it, and forget it all together.

You see, the journey of opening up our inner selves is work. It is not easy. But it is immeasurably worth it. Still, building time and space in our lives for our own spiritual development is like trying to convince a budget-challenged school board to keep a full arts and music program. For some reason, spiritual work is always the first to get dropped and forgotten in our busy lives.

And we do lead busy lives. All the time-saving devices we have invented have simply given us permission to cram more activity into our days. We are frightened to miss any opportunity, and even with all the things and activities we have already packed into our ridiculously privileged North American lives, we have a hard time saying no to anything. One of the hardest, hardest things for us to do today in our culture is to slow down. It is as if the speed itself holds the key to our salvation, and taking any time to simply be, can bring up enormous anxiety for souls accustomed to living in top gear.

Listen to this ancient bit of wisdom: Once there was a man exploring Africa. He was in a desperate hurry on a trip through the jungle. He had three or four native Africans helping him carry his equipment. He urged them forward at great speed for about three days. At the end of the third day, the Africans sat down and would not move. He insisted that they get up, telling them of the pressure he was under to reach his destination before a certain date. But they refused to move. He could not understand this. He tried all sorts of persuasions, yet they still refused to move. Finally, he got one of them to admit the reason. This native said, "We have moved too quickly to reach here; now we need to wait to give our spirits a chance to catch up with us."

Many of us chuckle at this quaint-seeming wisdom.  And yet I bet each one of us has experienced the consequences of not “letting our spirits catch up” in one way or another. We can become so disconnected from the rhythm of the spiritual process, that we can no longer sense when we need to stop and care for our souls. And so we get sick, or in some other way are forced to slow down, no matter how outwardly inconvenient. We know that slowing down and looking inward through yoga, or meditation, regular journaling, or perhaps attending a church that feeds our inner life will do us good, but do we let ourselves do it?  Accomplishing one more task can be so compelling….

Believe it or not, our Scripture passage from Joshua today was speaking to a similar dynamic in the spiritual journey. In fact, the more I study the Bible through a Swedenborgian lens, the more I am amazed to see that it is full of the psychology of the human spiritual journey.

The Bible says the same thing, over and over again in all sorts of ways: that this life is a journey with a divine purpose; that there will be challenges, struggles, and tremendous blessings; and that, though we seem to lose Eden, we are destined at the end of the journey for a place even better—the Holy City.

So what did I find in the scripture from Joshua? Well, let’s take a look.

Joshua assembles all the people before God at Shechem. Shechem, says Swedenborg, symbolizes ancient wisdom. He calls it our “first real inner light.” Gathering at Shechem then, is describing a time when we remember or re-collect our early, innocent trust in God. The children of Israel have come a long way by this point. They have travelled through the wilderness and entered Canaan. They have fought many battles, and are now settled in the land with a system of cities and laws, divided into tribes by region. Joshua is coming to the end of his life, and is preparing the people for life without him.

So he brings them before the Lord in a place that reminds them of all the Lord has done for them so far. He reminds them of their history—of what life was like before they began their journey following the Lord. When he says, “beyond the river and in Egypt” this is a metaphor for the time before we begin our spiritual work. Egypt means head-knowledge; it means living an external or relatively shallow life. It also symbolizes times when we think our thinking will be our salvation. Egypt is “beyond the River” because we have not yet started the true spiritual journey. God may be in our head, but is not yet in our heart. Having God in our head can be a foundation for a spiritual life, but it becomes slavery until and unless we allow God to move into our hearts.

Keeping God in our heads is the idolatry that Joshua is warning against. Keeping God in our heads can be sacrificing ourselves on the altar of duty; it can mean hiding behind our careers and our family obligations to avoid the work of excavating our souls. Are we living a role because it is safe? Are we following someone else’s formula for what being a good grown-up looks like, while slowly dying inside? That is idol worship. That is not following a living God. That is the slavery of Egypt. But God offers us the chance to come out of Egypt, from the land of slavery, any time we are ready.

To do so, we need to be willing to make some changes. It can be scary to leave Egypt. In Egypt we have structure, we know our place. Leaving Egypt requires a plunge into the wilderness, where every day we must trust God to take care of us.

We leave Egypt every time we choose to live in our hearts and not just our heads. When Joshua dies, the Children of Israel are facing a whole new journey—life without their fearless, triumphant leader. It is time for them to grow up a little more and step into a greater level of spiritual maturity. That is why Joshua calls them to assemble at Shechem. He is preparing them. “Remember,” he says, “the God that brought you out of Egypt?” He reminds them of all that God has done for them so far, leading them every step of the way. Then he says “Choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve.”

Why is this story important? Haven’t they already chosen to follow God again and again? This story is here, because a big part of the spiritual journey requires a constant recommitment to the work. Our human nature, which loves safety and security, will face a repeated impulse to run back to known territory, even if “known territory” involves “slavery.”

We all long to live passionately and follow God’s call and find our inner purpose, don’t we? And yet we all long to be safe and stable and secure; and often those two things look mutually exclusive, like duty and dreams.

But stepping into the self that we were made to be, or choosing to “serve the Lord,” will become the deepest security we could ever know, if we are willing to make the journey. It is a different kind of security that trades the external trappings of security for deep spiritual peace. When we choose to pursue and excavate the self that God created us to be, we are choosing to live on a spiritual foundation, not a material one. And choosing that is choosing life.

The spiritual journey is not for the faint of heart. Yet is also invites far greater magic and joy than you will ever know in Egypt.

Who here has seen the Harry Potter movies or read the books? Well, there comes a moment of crisis in one story-line where Harry has a life-or-death task. To be sure he succeeds, he drinks a magic potion that brings incredible good fortune to the one who drinks it. After he swallows it he marches off in the opposite direction from where everyone—viewers, readers, and characters in the story itself—thinks he should go. But he throws off the protesting hands of his friends and follows the deep inner knowing of what he needs to do, following a path that makes no sense, but which ultimately brings him to exactly what he needed to save the day.

All I can say is, that when one steps into the flow of God’s providence, and truly listens to the inner promptings of one’s heart, life begins to feel and act like this. You will drink in God’s promise of abundant life, and find yourself sometimes making choices that make no sense and do not fit anything your head thinks. Yet somehow, the actions taken under this gut-level guidance can bring answers to prayers that were unanswerable. I will attest to this without reservation.

Raise your hand if you have had experiences like this.  One of my best friends bought a house under such circumstances.  It made no sense in so many ways, and yet something in her gut told her—and so many odd signs pointed to—that move being exactly what her family needed to take the next step in their lives. Many years later that move has proved to be a great blessing.  Living in that house has made many things in their life easier and has supported them through some very tough circumstances in ways they could never have anticipated.

She reports that it was terrifying to trust that gut feeling, and yet something told her she had to trust it.  And it brought good outcomes in ways she never could have envisioned.  I believe that this is a manifestation of a spiritual law or dynamic: when we follow that deep inner knowing from God and trust it, no matter how crazy the choice may look on paper, we do indeed find increasing magic and good outcomes in our lives.

First we must align ourselves with God, then we must undertake some spiritual discipline that invites our spiritual growth, and then we open ourselves up to the still small voice. When we can do these things, we will keep a balance between the health of our souls and the responsibilities of our outer life.

And that is when magic happens.  When you can do these things, the person you were created to be will begin to emerge bringing increased joy and happiness and fulfillment.

I will close with this quote from John O’Donahue:

“If someone else could fulfill your destiny, they would be in your place, and you would not be here. It is in the depths of your life that you will discover the invisible necessity that has brought you here. When you begin to decipher this, your gift and giftedness come alive. Your heart quickens and the urgency of living rekindles your creativity.” (Anam Cara, p 84)

Amen.

The Readings

Joshua 24: 1-2a, 14-18 Then Joshua assembled all the tribes of Israel at Shechem. He summoned the elders, leaders, judges and officials of Israel, and they presented themselves before God. Joshua said to all the people, “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: “Now fear the Lord and serve him with all faithfulness. Throw away the gods your ancestors worshiped beyond the Euphrates River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”

Then the people answered, “Far be it from us to forsake the Lord to serve other gods! It was the Lord our God himself who brought us and our parents up out of Egypt, from that land of slavery, and performed those great signs before our eyes. He protected us on our entire journey and among all the nations through which we traveled. And the Lord drove out before us all the nations, including the Amorites, who lived in the land. We too will serve the Lord, because he is our God.”

Revelation 21:1-4 Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. Also there was no more sea.  Then I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.  And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with humanity, and God will live among them, and they shall be God’s people. God will be within and among them and be their God.  And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.”

Heaven and Hell 402. All the delights of heaven are brought together and are present in one’s purpose or form of service, because service, springing from one’s created purpose, is the natural result (good outcome) of the very love and goodwill in which angels dwell. Everyone feels delight according to his or her purpose and according to his or her dedication to that purpose.