Love Wins - sermon July 5th

Opening Prayer 

Lord, you love us into existence, and wish only that we are free to love you in return.  We are here on this weekend of celebration, grateful for freedom. We are grateful for the sacrifices of all those who have struggled to establish and protect this freedom.  God of love, even so, somehow so many of us are still not free.  We are enslaved by debt, or trapped in hurtful relationships; we are oppressed by prejudice and injustice and the abuse of power; and we are so often imprisoned by our own bad habits.  In every way that we are blocked from experiencing and living in wise love, we are not free.  Our prisons are sometimes of our making, but often from an unjust world too.

And so today we meditate on all the ways we as a country and as members of the human race have yet to become free. We set our hope on the unstoppable mercy of your great Love—Your Love that seeks only to set us free and teach us the ways of peace.  Including the whole world as one community, hear the prayers of our hearts.

Love Wins

Rev. Alison Longstaff, July 5, 2015

Bath Church of the New Jerusalem

Isaiah 55:10-13; Matthew 13:1-9; Heaven and Hell 57

These readings are included at the end of this document.

“As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.” Isaiah 55: 10-11

When I sat down with today’s text, a bounty of meaning spilled out like so many jewels scattering across the floor.  I had to work to select only one or two gems to lift up and display, or we would be here for days. Still, I hope that somehow through this talk you will get a sense of the tremendous storehouse of beauty that lies hidden in the words. 

For a start, today’s text raises the age-old question about God’s power.  Just how powerful is God?  Since God is Love, the question becomes also, “Just how powerful is Love?”

The short answer?  “Pretty darn powerful!”

In a now, somewhat infamous incident, the Rev. Rob Bell, then pastor of the Mars Hill mega-church on the outskirts of Grand Rapids, Michigan, found that a quote by Gandhi displayed in his church had a note pinned over it.  The notice blocking the Gandhi quote said, “Reality check: He's in hell.”

This incident threw Bell into a crisis of faith.  On the one hand he well knew the traditional Christian teaching that only those who confess belief in Jesus Christ “go to heaven.” On the other hand, he had his own inner conviction that the God of love, the creator of every human soul, could not be so simplistic and exclusive. 

So, what was the truth?  Do only confessing Jesus-believers go to heaven, or do all good souls?  After much meditation, questioning, and research, Bell published his conclusion in what would be the controversial best seller, Love Wins. 

Bell’s book outraged many Christian conservatives, because in it he concludes that the God of Love opens heaven to every one of all faiths.  There is a reason he called his book “Love Wins.” According to all his best research and the voice of his heart, Love triumphs in the end, not ideology.

I think he’s on to something.

“So is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, it will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.”

This small verse from Isaiah promises big things.  It tells us that God’s word will accomplish God’s will. God’s word will accomplish God’s will.  And what is God’s will?  Well, according to Swedenborg, it is that every created soul should go to heaven.  Every created soul.  Every one.  Sit still with that a minute.

It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.”  I ask again, Just how powerful is God’s love?

“You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands. Instead of the thorn-bush will grow the pine tree, and instead of briers the myrtle will grow.”

I love to dig into the Hebrew and Greek of the Bible.  I love to see what treasures come into view.  In today’s text, the Hebrew for “thorn-bush” sounds like “not-suits” literally meaning “the thing that pricks.”  Since everything in the Bible is speaking about our own lives and our own spiritual journeys, this “thorn-bush” then is anything in our life that scratches, stabs, and sticks into the spirit like a thorn.  “Pine” in the Hebrew here sounds like bear-oash, and means any noble, stately evergreen tree indigenous to the holy land.  Not only are these trees good for shade, they were the sort used to build their houses of worship. 

“Instead of the thorn-bush will grow the pine tree, and instead of briers the myrtle will grow.”

“Brier” or "sar-pad" is some unknown desert plant, something like a nettle.  It is something low and stinging, similar to a thorn-bush, but not the same.  “Myrtle” or "hadas" however could grow up to twenty feet tall when well watered.  It produces dark, scented leaves, star-shaped flowers, and an edible berry.  The myrtle signifies God’s blessings.  Which would you rather have in your spiritual life?  Nettles or these amazing myrtle trees?

What do you think this text is promising?  I believe it the promise of what happens when God’s will is done in our lives.  Tangles and prickers become shelter and sweetness.  Stinging nettles become lush fruit trees.  This isn’t an old promise about a long ago and far away desert and some random plants, but about your life and mine, right here, right now. This is God’s promise to each of us that though we may encounter spiritual brambles in our spiritual journey—brambles which tangle and tear at our feet, and impede our way—we will eventually enter a land of giant, shady trees—trees which shelter our way, offer strength and protection, and all we could need to build spiritual homes. 

God’s word will bring about God’s will. This is what the text seems to be saying.  “So is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire, and will achieve the purpose for which I sent it.”

Let’s look closer.  The text talks about God’s word; about God’s word from God’s mouth.  Think of the mouth.  Think of all the things it is used for.  It is the way through which we communicate—through words and songs, through smiles and laughter, through touches and kisses.  From the most sublime words, to the silliest sayings, to the most intimate gestures of love—all this is the effected by the mouth. 

Have you noticed how babies bring everything to their mouths?  This is not because they have an eating fixation, but because at that stage the mouth and the lips are the most developed area on their bodies.  They explore with their lips the way a blind person explores with their fingers.  Later, their hands will catch up in sensitivity, but at the infant age and stage, it is all about the mouth. 

The mouth.  This passage is about God’s mouth.  What a powerful image!  What is God’s mouth?  It is the means by which God speaks to us; it is the means by which God laughs with us, sings with us, and the means by which God kisses you and me and every created soul.  “God’s mouth” represents all the ways God finds to communicate love.  It is Sacred Scripture, yes!  But it is also nature, creation, great art and music, the sound of a happy child, that certain lyric running through your head, that picture, that spoken word. It is every way God finds to touch our hearts both directly and through each other—that awakens our hearts to the reality of God’s great love.

“So is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and will achieve the purpose for which I sent it.”

Whew!  That’s pretty intense.  God is coming to you and to me, and there is no stopping that gentle, insistent love.

Let me tell you a story.  It goes back to when I was in seminary, and I was working on one of my first sermons.  Now, I can’t speak for other seminary students, but a mood had come over me while writing this sermon.  It was as if something slowly rose up inside me, and I felt very important.  I was going to do what a good minister should do—I was going to be sure to remind everyone that they were a little bit evil and ought to worry about it.  It was my job, you see, to point out all the ways people might be being selfish in life, so they could be warned and feel bad and do something about it.  Because they might otherwise go to hell!  So my sermon had a definite warning and scolding section, because that was my duty.

I brought this terrific sermon to a meeting with a supervising pastor. I showed it to him proudly, fairly sure of his approval.  He read it through, and looked very thoughtful.  He found a few positive things to say, and then said something which stopped me in my tracks.  He said something like, “It is always good to remember that it is our job to preach the gospel, which is the good news, which is that God is Love.”

My ego went down like a house of cards. But along with the crash of my ego came an overwhelming sense of relief.  This mentor had given me permission to stop needing to be one of the world’s jail wardens and watchdogs. I had picked up a burden God had never asked me to carry and never wanted me to carry. Once I set that burden down, what emerged was an amazing, bubbling joy.

It wasn’t as though I hadn’t heard this message before, I just hadn’t really understood it.  Suddenly a huge weight was lifted from my heart.  I didn’t have to scold and warn, I could preach all about the miracle of God’s love—and I could absolutely trust God’s love to do the rest.

There is an old saying that a preacher’s job is to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable.  But in my experience, just about everybody is afflicted.  Some may hide it better than others, but there is plenty of affliction to go around.  Most hearts are heavy—just look at the state of the world!  I think a healthy dose of God’s love is just about always the best medicine.  God’s love can accomplish all that it sets out to do.

Before this, I had been trapped in a common misconception.  This misperception is that THE TRUTH is somehow not really THE TRUTH unless it hurts.  Haven’t we all encountered that idea at some time or other?  “Tell me the truth” so often means “tell me the harsh, uncomfortable bit that I don’t want to hear,” eh?  In fact, one pastor I know, in another denomination, made his lead article in a church newsletter about telling visitors “THE TRUTH."  His message was about how we so often want to be nice to visitors who come to the church, but that eventually our job is to tell them “the truth,” which is that they are full of sin and need to repent and to work relentlessly not to be evil.  His main question in the article was how one might navigate that bait and switch.  He knew we wanted to be nice, and that niceness attracts people, but deep down he believed that the main “truth” people needed to hear is that they are full of evil and must remain vigilant to fight the dreadful darkness within.  That was essentially his message. 

I would say he was thoroughly trapped in the false belief that truth has to hurt.  Where is the gospel?  Where is the good news?  I have to say, I am helped by remembering that God’s love is far more powerful than the darkness any day. Please don't point at the darkness and tell me to be afraid; point at the light and offer me hope.

That notion—that the way to heaven must be hard and full of struggle, and that we haven’t had a spiritual experience unless we’ve been made to feel bad about ourselves—is rampant throughout the Christian world.  But it is a false notion. 

Suffering and feeling bad about ourselves is an inevitable part of our human condition. But it isn’t innately spiritual. Suffering is just suffering.  It can help deepen our spiritual experience, but it isn’t necessary in order for us to become deeply spiritual.  Neither is deprivation of comfort somehow spiritual, nor is poverty, nor is celibacy. And self-loathing blocks us from feeling God's love unless it can be healed back to neutrality. Every experience life brings us can teach us, but negative experiences and suffering do not need to be sought to prove we are spiritual.  They will find us, regardless!

This is the same false principle that says that a “real truth,” like a “real man,” must be battling something or conquering something or punishing something to be REAL truth, just like the (senseless and hurtful) idea that a man must be rough and hard and a bit of a bully to be a real man. 

Boys of all ages continue to tease and bully other boys if they show any signs of softness in our culture. This is a practice so deeply ingrained in our male culture that it is hardly even questioned, yet it is pervasive and deeply damaging to the male psyche. I believe that this is a reflection of our false idea about what truth is supposed to be. If you asked, “What would Jesus teach our boys?  I’m guessing “Turn the other cheek” would be a lot more like it, not “Have bigger guns than anybody else.”

It is love, not harshness that conquers all.  Listen to our text: “[The] word that goes out from my mouth…will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.”

Those are phrases of absolute power, yet they are devoid of intimidation or coercion. 

Love and wisdom together accomplish God’s purpose.  The Word, proceeding from Gods mouth, which is everything and every way God communicates love and wisdom with us, will accomplish all it sets out to do, with gentleness, persistence. 

I hope you collected even a few gems from the bounty in today’s text.  The more time I spend with God’s Word, the more I see that the Bible is one big love letter from God. Every single phrase in today’s passage overflowed with the story of the God’s great love for us, and of that love’s infinite power to effect God’s will. 

Without bullying or force, without harshness or brutality, Love will do what it sets out to do.  However you understand that, it is the gospel. 

Love wins indeed!  : D

Amen

Originally preached July 10, 2011, Kitchener, Ontario. Revised

Closing Prayer

We have gathered together in the spirit of love and freedom. We have rested our cares in God’s strong and powerful hands.  We have reflected on the way God’s Love sweeps us all towards heaven as gently and relentlessly as the sun calls the seeds to grow. May we remember this as we go forward into our week ahead, that though life may wrap brambles around our feet, God is working powerfully to turn them into shade trees and shelter.  May we remember that every prickly person and stinging word we encounter can some day be transformed into compassionate angels and warm encouragements.  May we seek to see the ways we sting and ensnare others, that we might be healed, and instead give smiles of encouragement and a helping hand.   For what we give we will receive, and what we would receive we must give.  In gratitude for all that You give us, Lord—for freedom, for love—may we learn to give freely in return.

The Readings

Heaven and Hell 57

You were created that you might come into heaven and become an angel. Anyone who has goodness from the Lord within is a kind of angel-on-earth.  What you have in common with an angel is that your inner nature is designed in the image of heaven, and so far as you are living from good will guided by a faith in God, you become an image of heaven. Mortals on earth also have an outer nature shaped by the culture of the world around you; yet so far as you are living from genuine good will toward others, your outer nature will be subordinate to heaven and will serve heaven. When this happens, the Lord is present with you in both worlds, just as if you were in heaven. 

Isaiah 55:10-13

As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it. You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands. Instead of the thorn-bush will grow the pine tree, and instead of briers the myrtle will grow. This will be for the LORD's renown, for an everlasting sign, which will not be destroyed.

Matthew 13: 1-9

That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat by the lake. Such large crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat in it, while all the people stood on the shore. Then he told them many things in parables, saying: “A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop--a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. He who has ears, let him hear.”

"Don't Kill Isaac" - a sermon

Don’t Kill Isaac!

Rev. Alison Longstaff, Feb 9, 2014

Bath Church of the New Jerusalem

Genesis 22: 1-14, Jeremiah 28:7-9, Selections from Arcana Coelestia 1492 and 3839:4

“And … God tested Abraham. He said to him, ‘Abraham!’ And he said, ‘Here I am.’ He said, ‘Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you.’”

According to today’s text, God commanded Abraham to “offer his son as a burnt offering.”  In the next fifteen or so minutes we will explore the history of this disturbing scripture passage, and explore what if any relevance it may have for readers today.  We will discover if and how this Scripture might speak to you, and what it might tell each of us about our spiritual journeying in the 21^st century.  We will discover that this passage has tremendous relevance today, in a deeply ironic and almost humorous way.

Many scholars through the ages, including Swedenborg, have approached this story as a spiritual metaphor, not historic fact.  Some believe it to be a primitive oral parable depicting how our earliest ancestors transitioned from human sacrifice to the less barbaric animal sacrifice.  Indeed, many Hebrew scholars have assumed all along that Abraham here misunderstood God’s will. They say the story is written as if God actually commanded the sacrifice of Isaac, but the true God of love would never have wanted this. Since primitive human cultures wrote the Bible, these early biblical stories reflect what the primitive peoples thought God wanted, not necessarily what the God of love actually wanted for them.

And Swedenborg agrees, saying that God never tempts us.  He didn't tempt Abraham and he doesn't tempt us.  A spiritual temptation is a conflict between what we love and what we believe.  God doesn't send them.  They occur naturally as we mature.  What we love is never all the way pure, and what we believe often has some fault-lines in it, so God allows the conflicts that arise from these impurities and fault-lines to refine us, little by little into wiser, gentler spiritual beings.  Abraham’s story amply illustrates a clash between what he loves and what he believes.  In this case, it was his belief that was faulty, not his love.

Abraham was born and raised in Ur, where they practiced human sacrifice at the time.  They offered young maidens, little children, and especially newborn babies as burnt offerings to try to win the favor of the gods.  Abraham grew up with this as the norm, and so it would have been built into his deepest psyche that human, and especially child sacrifice was the most powerful way to prove his devotion to God.  Knowing this, we can understand why Abraham could have thought God wanted him to sacrifice Isaac.  He was very devout, so he set his intention on obeying this command.  What a mixture of innocence and false beliefs!

Now remember, Abraham is a part of you and me.  In this part of the story, he is showing us what we are like when we have a genuine desire to do God’s will mixed with false ideas about God’s will.  Swedenborg says it is when we are still “worshiping other gods.” In other words, false ideas of what is right are leading us.  Abraham here represents the times in our life when we may be full of good intentions but have very little actual wisdom.  This part of us is most likely to cling to religious dogma and to follow it blindly from fear.  This ignorant innocence is pretty much spiritually unconscious, yet it is the beginning of all that we can be.  God honors Abraham’s innocent quality—his devout and sincere intent to do what he thinks is right—even though God would never, ever have commanded such a terrible act. 

The book of Genesis is about a very early part of our spiritual journey. It shows a step of growth from a more primitive spirituality into increasing love and enlightenment.  The mountain called Moriah here is actually mount Zion—the mountain upon which Jerusalem is now built.  It is the mountain upon which Jerusalem is now built.  This tells us that this story is about our first steps toward a genuine and living spirituality.  The fact that the divine being is here called “God” (Elohim) and not “The Lord” (Jehovah or YHWH) means that this story is describing our relationship with our (faulty) beliefs or our understanding, not our loves.   

Now, the way this story was taught to me throughout my childhood was this: God commanded Abraham to sacrifice Isaac.  He did, but it was just a test.  God never meant for Abraham to actually kill Isaac, and Abraham passed the test, so it was all good. 

No adults around me ever questioned the violent content of this story, nor considered the trauma this experience would have brought on Isaac.  No one expressed alarm over what it would really have meant for Abraham to have to murder his only child.  It was as if Abraham just lowered the knife, untied Isaac, dusted him off, and they had a good laugh about it all.  “Just kidding. Now let’s really go barbecue that ram over there.”  As far as I saw modeled around me, this story was a lovely and unquestioned illustration of how important it is to be obedient to God, no matter what. Don’t question.  Don’t think.  Just obey

It wasn't until I had children of my own that the emotional impact of this story began to hit.  However, obedient and devout Christian that I was, I jammed my discomfort and unease out of sight, because I didn't dare question what my religious leaders and teachers had taught me with such solid authority.  “Obey without question!” was the moral of the story.  If I was questioning, I wasn't doing the good thing Abraham did. Right?

The blind and devout me pictured Isaac lying there, all tied up on the wood, serene and trusting, docile as a—well—lamb.  But when my reason kicks in I can’t help but ask, is that really how it would have happened?  Didn't Isaac have a few problems with this scene?  Maybe there is a good reason he was bound up tight before being laid on the wood.  He must have put up a fight, the same way our reason objects to being sacrificed on the altar of religious dogma. And this detail changes the whole feel of the story. 

Swedenborg tells us that that emotional content of a Bible story contains important clues as to what meaning the story holds for us today.  Imagine Abraham’s inner torment as he looked down at Isaac.  Imagine Isaac struggling and crying out, “Dad!  Dad!  Don’t do this!!”  Imagine Abraham, torn between his intense desire to follow God’s will and his breaking heart.  See him lifting Isaac’s chin in order to slit his throat.  Can he really kill this precious, long-awaited son of his old age?  This is Isaac, his only child with Sarah—the son whom God promised to him, whom Sarah bore to him when she was in her 90s! The anguish, the conflict that Abraham would have felt, is just what we feel when our love challenges old and deeply held religious beliefs.

“But the angel of the LORD called to him from heaven, and said, ‘Abraham, Abraham!’ And he said, ‘Here I am.’” (‘Here I am,’ Swedenborg tells us, represents a person coming spiritually awake, or coming to ones senses.)  “12 He said, ‘Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.’  13 And Abraham looked up and saw a ram, caught in a thicket by its horns. Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. 

There is a way out of this temptation.  Abraham faces a temptation we all face, and in this story chooses the love of his son over the religious dictates of his upbringing.  When we bump up against deeply buried religious fears, and yet are courageous enough to make the choice for love, we also choose as Abraham did.  When we do, we stand in the space between the old culture and the new, between death and life.  After we choose for love, we may even hold our breath, waiting for lighting to strike.  But when nothing dire happens, we breathe, and breathe again, and begin to relax into our new way of being.  On the other side of this temptation, when we choose for love, there is always a new dawning.  We find a fresh new start, things look different, more spacious.  There is a greater light, and deeper peace.

Meanwhile, all around us may be those who still cling to the old beliefs.  They cannot help but judge us for our choice.  They cannot see what we see until they are ready to make that step too.  Perhaps that in part is why Abraham left Ur. Practically, spiritually, and correspondentially, he didn’t fit any more.  He didn’t belong.  Perhaps he needed to get away from those who judged him for letting Isaac live.

This story is about the stage of our spiritual awakening when we first move away from a dogmatic, inherited, or “historic” faith towards an intelligent, thoughtful, and internalized faith—one that springs from an ongoing spiritual dialogue with an intelligent God, not one that involves strict obedience to what religious authorities told us God said.

And here is where the deep irony comes in.

The devout and ignorant mind encountering this text believes it telling us to value staying devout and ignorant.  The importance of complete obedience is what it draws from this story, not the importance of the exercise of reason.  The story is actually about allowing our reason (Isaac) to live, yet many use it to glorify blind obedience.  Irony of ironies.  It is about allowing our intelligence to live, and yet it is used to exhort believers to blind obedience.  If wasn't so twisted, it would be funny. 

But this is the human condition.  We draw from the Word what we expect to draw from it.  That is why Abraham believed God said to sacrifice Isaac.  From his culture and upbringing He expected God to command it, so that is what he heard.  When we are in a state of devout and unquestioning allegiance to religious “law,” that is the sort of thing we hear also.

Ooh.  Problem.  So, if we draw from the Word what we expect to find in it, how does anyone ever get free from false understanding?

Well, here is how it works: Abraham represents you and me taking the first baby steps of our spiritual walk—which is most commonly to learn the religious “rules” around us and to try to follow them perfectly.  There is comfort and safety in following rules.  There is safety in going with the crowd.  Obedience without intelligence is not what God intends for us, but it is all we've got at this stage.  It feels good. It makes us feel safe.  This is Ur. We start there, and we are meant to start there.

BUT: obedience without intelligence is not all that we've got.  God has given us Isaac.  Isaac, who is flesh of our flesh; Isaac, who is our birthright and our future.  Isaac, representing our intelligent and rational side, whose very existence challenges ignorant and blind faith.  Isaac, who is from God, and is meant to be in our future. 

God intends for us to grow by means of Isaac—which is to develop an intelligent and rational relationship with religion.  But that can feel scary.  How many religious communities think that reason is the enemy?  Rational intelligence, (Isaac) threatens dogmatic beliefs. Our first fearful impulse is to kill the questions that arise because they challenge the traditions as we have been taught them.  This is the heart of the conflict, and this is the irony.  God gives us the very questions necessary to challenge our primitive beliefs so that we can grow, if we just have the courage to let those questions live.

Do you think this ancient parable is irrelevant to our modern problems? We see Isaac sacrificed again and again, every time Christians burn the Koran, every time a suicide bomber succeeds, every time a Sunday school child is scolded for her questions; every time someone who is gender variant or loves someone of their same gender is spurned, shamed, shunned, or cut off.  It is indeed any time you or I feel compelled in any way to judge or cut off another human heart just because they do not believe the same things that we do.

Make no mistake, Abraham is you and me, and everyone else who makes the spiritual journey.  You very likely will never believe that the best way to prove your love of God would be through murdering another human being.  But would you sacrifice a human relationship?  Would you cut off someone you love because of a lifestyle choice, or a different religious path? Each one of us does indeed hit regular choice-points like this in our spiritual walk—points at which we must choose between the religious expectations we inherited or that make us feel safe, and the call of our beating heart.

Can you recall any such choice points in your life?  A time when you hung between two futures—one which conformed to the religious rules around you and one which bucked them and made a daring choice for love? 

I can think of several times in my life when I felt myself at such a crossroads.  The day my middle sister told me she was in love with a woman was one.  I was faced with rejecting her “for her own good” because I had been taught that God considered homosexuality an abomination, or continuing to love her for all the fine qualities and gentleness that she embodied.  It tore me up inside to consider this decision.  I was caught between fear of transgressing “God’s law” (as taught to me) or losing my sister and hurting her deeply by rejecting her.

In this case, my love for my sister and my love for the unmistakable goodness in her character trumped the “rules.”  I dared make a mistake in God’s eyes, because I simply could not slay my relationship with her nor reject the innocence I saw in her soul.  My heart won over my head.

Now, before I go further, I caution anyone against believing that choosing a personal relationship over a cut-off is always the better choice.  That would simply be making a new religious rule that exempts us from needing to discern and choose on a case by case basis.  True faith is living faith, which means it must adapt and discern moment by moment, case by case, using the best it has of love and wisdom at the time. 

In truth, choosing to continue to lovingly accept this sister and her partner was also choosing a cut-off in another area of my life.  It meant I would no longer be in the good graces of all those who continue to believe that homosexuality is a sin.  In choosing this sister, I lost, in part, my other sister, one of my brothers and my father.  Those losses were not easy and continue to ache, but for me the choice for greater and more inclusive love was the only choice that sat well with my soul.  The lesson here is about using ones heart with ones intelligence and conscience, and not simply allowing other people’s rules to choose for you.

Regardless of what you may feel about my personal choices, I submit that today’s Scripture speaks with tremendous relevance to issues still very active in our modern world.  Christians and many other faith communities across the world face modern issue after modern issue calling us out of dogma and into a more loving, well-reasoned belief system.  This is the story about the parts of us that we think we need to kill to prove we love God. This is about the regular confrontation of our heads with our hearts.  Fear makes us cling to absolutes and blind obedience.  Loves gives us the courage to step away from a rules-alone approach to faith, and to engage in the discussion with heart and intelligence.

Isaac must live. He is our only path to a mature spiritual life.  It is scary to allow our questions to challenge our beliefs, but we need not let that fear control us.  Isaac is our birthright.  God gave us Isaac and intended him to live, to give Abraham (which is our spiritual beginnings) a hope and a future. When we, like Abraham, let our hearts speak and over-rule our fears, love wins.

And when love wins, we all win.

Amen

The Readings

Gen 22: 1-14 1 After these things God tested Abraham. He said to him, "Abraham!" And he said, "Here I am."  2 He said, "Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you."

3 So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and his son Isaac; he cut the wood for the burnt offering, and set out and went to the place in the distance that God had shown him.

4 On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place far away.

5 Then Abraham said to his servants, "Stay here with the donkey; the boy and I will go over there; we will worship, and then we will come back to you."  6 Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. So the two of them walked on together.

7 Isaac said to his father Abraham, "Father!" And he said, "Here I am, my son." He said, "The fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?"

8 Abraham said, "God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt offering, my son." So the two of them walked on together. 

9 When they came to the place that God had shown him, Abraham built an altar there and laid the wood in order. He bound his son Isaac, and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood.  10 Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to kill his son. 

11 But the angel of the LORD called to him from heaven, and said, "Abraham, Abraham!" And he said, "Here I am."  12 He said, "Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me."  13 And Abraham looked up and saw a ram, caught in a thicket by its horns. Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son.  14 So Abraham called that place "The LORD will provide"; as it is said to this day, "On the mount of the LORD it shall be provided."

Jeremiah 28:7-9.   But listen now to this word that I speak in your hearing and in the hearing of all the people.  The prophets who preceded you and me from ancient times prophesied war, famine, and pestilence against many countries and great kingdoms.  As for the prophet who prophesies peace, when the word of that prophet comes true, then it will be known that the LORD has truly sent the prophet."

Two selections from Arcana Coelestia (aka Heavenly Secrets)

From paragraph 1492 The internal sense is such that it is the emotion itself lying hidden within the words which constitutes the internal sense.

From paragraph 3839:4 This being so, angels are acquainted with the emotion enclosed in the subject-matter of the Word; and this entails every variation according to the types of emotions present in the angels. From this it becomes quite clear how holy the Word is, for Divine love, that is, love coming from the Divine, is utterly sacred, and since the subjects within the Word spring from the Divine love, this means they are utterly sacred because they are full of the Divine Love.

Revised from a sermon called “Love Wins” By Rev. Alison Longstaff, preached June 26^th, 2011