Peace on Earth - a sermon for fourth advent

Peace on Earth

Sermon for the Advent of Peace

Rev. Alison Longstaff, Dec 14, 2014

Bath Church of the New Jerusalem

Isaiah 9:2, 6-7; Luke 2: 8-14; Heavenly Secrets 8455

Heavenly Secrets 8455

Peace has within it confidence in the Lord, that He is in charge of everything, and is taking care of everything, and that He is leading to a good outcome.  Those who practice this confidence experience this peace; they fear nothing, and no worry about the future disturbs them.  So far as you and I grow in love to the Lord, so far do we experience this state of peace.

The angels proclaimed to the shepherds, "Peace on earth and good will toward all human kind." Some translations render this, "Peace to all whom God favors," but this implies a sort of "gonna find out who's naughty and nice," God—a God who has favorites and who leaves coal in the stockings of the rest of us. That doesn't align with a God of radical grace and love.

It is we humans who expect God to exclude some of us from His love. It is we humans who like to think that some of us are more worthy of God's favor than others. But worthy/unworthy doesn't apply to God's immense and all-encompassing love. God's love is available always and without condition, the way the sunlight shines unceasingly in the heavens. It is barriers inside and around us that make it seem as though God's favor is inconstant. Things in our life can block our ability to feel God's love just the way the clouds sometimes block the sunlight; still God's love shines perpetually and without ceasing, just waiting for our clouds to dissipate once again.

So I believe God desires "Peace on earth, and good will for all human kind," not just a few lucky ones.

But unfortunately current events show that peace and good will toward all human kind is far from the status quo in our world. Indeed it is even far from the status quo in our nation. Would you say that peace and good will exist in this state? In this town? This congregation? How about in your home? What about inside your very heart?

Because they are all connected.

When I think about the decided lack of "peace and good will toward all human kind" on earth, I can get very discouraged. Listening to the news and the choices being made by some of the world's leaders, I can get impatient and frustrated and angry. I want to shout at the idiots who are making the choices that create all the strife and cause so much harm.... Surely we know better by now! Surely we should have learned from our past mistakes and stopped doing such idiotic things to our planet and each other?

But one fact of human kind is that the more anxious we get, the less "mindful" or enlightened we behave. The more threatened we feel, the more the rational mind shuts down, and our less evolved coping strategies take over. It doesn't matter what I may know "with my whole head;" all wisdom will go out the window the minute I am under duress unless I have made an intentional practice of mindfulness and peace-keeping. Peace requires deep trust in the Lord, deep compassion for the neighbor, and intentional peace-keeping behaviors.

So as much as I might enjoy blaming the idiots "out there" for their choices, this probably isn't my most helpful response. It serves the purpose of giving vent to the hurting I feel inside over the human suffering and injustice, but it probably also just contributes to the problem. To quote loosely a Canadian radio comedy, "Tom, Tom, Tom. Do you really think you're going to get greedy, short-sighted, and arrogant people to amend their ways by calling them 'greedy, short-sighted, and arrogant'?" (Dead Dog Cafe) In other words, accusations and name-calling rarely evokes the response we desire. Shouting indignant accusations is often our most immediate response to injustice, but it just makes people defensive, and defensive people are not good listeners.

Now, before I proceed further, I want to talk about true peace and fake peace. True peace comes from a heart at rest—one without malice, that trusts completely in God's providence. There is a reason we call peace "resting in the Lord."

Smiling and saying things are fine when they are not is not true peace. Not allowing dissenting voices does not allow true peace. Covering up unhappiness and silencing complaints creates only a false peace.

True peace requires that all sides have the courage to address the conflict. True peace can be found when all sides probe with compassion the deep sources of the pain and then work to resolve them. True peace can only be found when we become willing to see our own part in the conflict and to make the necessary changes in our response. It requires that we be trustworthy, even when we are not sure the other parties will also be trustworthy.

I am sure we have all had encounters with the person who smiles to our face and then complains to everyone else behind our backs. Perhaps we have even been this person?

It is the default human response to discuss our outrage with anybody but the offender, to lick our wounds and bolster support. It feels much safer to do this. But it is a problem. It takes real courage to address the issue with the one who offended us and try to work it out before we start recruiting others to fortify our side. Taking our problem to a third party and recruiting them against the other "side" is called "triangulation," in counseling circles. This behavior is common, but it is rather unenlightened. Triangulation is by definition a conflict-escalating behavior because it reinforces the impression of opposition. It asks for loyalty to one's own story against the other side's story sometimes before the other party even knows there is a problem.

When you or I are the one who is being whispered about, we may have no idea there has been a problem until a whole army shows up on our doorstep, so to speak. By that time the triangulator may have such an investment in being the injured party that it is often too late to defuse the misunderstanding or make easy amends. By that time we already have a sort of war on our hands whether we like it or not. Poorly chosen words have become a cherished wound, the defenses are up, and the injured party is taking no prisoners.

Does this dynamic sound familiar? Has this happened to you? I know I have experienced both sides of this dynamic. I have been the outraged triangulator (I hope I have learned since then!) and I have been the one who has had no idea there was a problem until it was far too late and the grudge was well and truly entrenched.

What versions of this scenario have you experienced? How did you like it? Were you the triangulating injured party or the oblivious offender? Or perhaps you have been sucked into the conflict of one triangulator against another triangulator and you didn't know how to get out of the middle. In any case, triangulation creates a mini war. It is different from big war only in scale. It is not the way of peace.

The hardest part of divorce on children is not the divorce itself, but the ways the parents can try to recruit the children against the other parent. This is deeply unfair to the children and creates a terrible inner conflict for them. In some cases, it is a form of abuse. Yet until we discipline ourselves into more enlightened behaviors, triangulation is our first go-to coping mechanism when we are hurt or threatened. We humans tend to "go to war" as a default, and in war innocents get killed. They are the first and worst casualty of every war whether global or personal.

Sometimes our wars are cold or silent. We may be so conflict-avoidant that we choose to dodge all interaction with the "problem" person. Perhaps we harbor resentment towards that person, holding arguments with them in our heads, though we would never actually attempt the imagined conversation in reality. Resentment feels like we are getting back at the other person, but it actually only harms us. "Resentment is like eating rat poison and expecting a rat to die," they say. It eats us up inside, not the one we are mad at.

Bearing a grudge, holding resentment, pretending everything is fine, and simply avoiding the problem all create a false peace, because the conflict remains inside us. There is a knot of unresolved negative energy that stays with us wherever we go, affecting us, and not the one with whom we are in conflict. And it will not go away until we change ourselves—not the other, ourselves. Passive aggression is still aggression. It is just pretending to be nice. It is fake peace.

To quote Jeremiah 6:14: "They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. 'Peace, peace,' they say, when there is no peace."

So how do we change our default response of attack and defense to something entirely other—to something that transcends the war impulse and taps a deeper wisdom?

Today's reading from Swedenborg says that peace comes from trusting God. We must cultivate a deep confidence in God's all-powerful and benevolent providence that is so strong we cannot be shaken "though the earth be removed, and the mountains be swept into the midst of the sea" (Psalm 42:6). In fact, I believe today's verse from Luke is also showing us the way to peace. When it says, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will to all humankind," I believe we can read it as when we "glorify" God in the highest (which is to adore and put our absolute trust in the most-powerful and most-high God) the result is peace in our natural lives ("on earth") which comes from a cessation of ill-will. When we deeply trust that God has everything under control, we realize we have nothing to fear. When our soul is at peace and we have nothing to fear, we truly do begin to wish well to all of God's created children, not just the ones who have pleased us. This is the Prince of Peace born in us indeed.

It is the nature of our earth-bound mind to be attached to temporal outcomes and worry about short-term goals. It can't help it. It can't help but think it is alone, and that every outcome is its responsibility. It is run most often by the ego. Resistance and struggle and "victim" are its default.

But according to the 'Borg, (Swedenborg) "Resistance is futile." We can fight the flow of Providence or relax into it. It will carry us toward the happiest outcome that we will allow, regardless.

When you go from this place today, I ask you to cultivate an attitude of peace. I ask you to work on an ever-deepening trust in providence, no matter how much the ego-mind scoffs.

Yes, this life may sometimes give us very scary situations. Trusting Providence does not mean this life will be easy. Rather, trusting in providence changes what we pay attention to. It shifts our attachments from earthly values to spiritual ones. It makes earthly disappointments much easier to bear, and opens our eyes to coming joys we never even imagined before. So, no matter what comes our way in this life, we are at ease, because we know that God is always turning everything into the best possible spiritual outcome, no matter how things look temporarily in this life.

To quote the mystic Julian of Norwich, "And all will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well. Trust in God, and all indeed will be well.

Let the Prince of Peace be born in your heart, and then you will find "peace on earth and good will toward all human kind." Amen.

The Readings

Isaiah 9:2, 6-7

The people walking in darkness have seen a great light;
on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned

 For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders.
And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
    Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Of the greatness of his government and peace there will be no end.
He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it
    with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever.
The zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this.

Luke 2: 8-14   Now there were in the same country shepherds living out in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. And behold, an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were greatly afraid. Then the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which will be to all people. For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.  And this will be the sign to you: You will find a Babe wrapped in swaddling cloths, lying in a manger.”

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying:

“Glory to God in the highest, And on earth peace, goodwill toward all humankind!”

Small Joys in a Big World - a sermon for third advent

Small Joys in a Big World

Sermon for the Advent of Joy

Rev. Alison Longstaff, Dec 14, 2014

Bath Church of the New Jerusalem

Luke 2: 1-7; John 15:9-17; Heavenly Secrets 543

These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full. This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.  (John 15: 11-12)

The small, snuffling sounds of a newborn.  The solid weight of that new bundle in your arms.  All the promise inherent in that new life.  Enter the presence of a newborn and it is hard NOT to feel delight and joy.

Swedenborg says that the highest angels are with a newborn from conception.  I believe we can feel those angels when we are around a newborn. We all get a little softer.  We can’t help but smile.  Maybe we can even feel a subtle peace, an ineffable sweetness, and a gentle JOY.

If we are to believe Swedenborg, that joy is present because the angles with that baby live in constant joy.  Their sense of God’s love and protection, their absolute trust in God’s providence, and their deep wisdom from years of experience have made them able to sustain that deep, deep, peace and joy on a constant basis. 

God plans for each of us to live in that bliss—a bliss that we ALL knew once when we were newborns. We too were surrounded and cared for by the highest angels, and that experience is imprinted on our souls.  It is a gift from God.  And it contains part of the road map back to that place of deep peace and joy.
 

Because you see, that innocent joy doesn't last.  It can’t.  According to Swedenborg, as we become more and more self-aware, these highest angels must pull away from us and be replaced by lower angels and then still lower angels to respect our spiritual freedom. This protects us from being overwhelmed by the intensity of their love.  And so, as you and I grow up, our surrounding spirits are gradually exchanged from more exalted ones to less exalted ones until we are surrounded by spiritual beings much closer to our own level of spiritual development—closer to what we can tolerate.

These lower guardian beings are still angels.  They still far surpass our capacity for love and wisdom and joy, but not so much so that we are overwhelmed.  They are advanced beyond us just enough to make good spiritual mentors; and their energy invites us to advance into our own love and wisdom—towards something closer to what they have—for the sake of our own happiness.  

The paragraph I quoted before the sermon from Swedenborg’s long work “Heavenly Secrets” essentially says that even the most intense joy you and I might experience today can’t even come close to touching the dullest joy of these lowest angels.  In other words, God gives us as much joy as we can handle, but not so much that it hurts.  We are on a continual path of spiritual growth, and as we grow spiritually more adept, God grants us deeper and deeper joy.  As we grow stronger, wiser, more loving, and closer to God, we become increasingly able to sustain this heavenly joy which is our birthright.  It is God’s plan for us.  But we must undergo a lot of preparation before we can handle it in its full expression.

So on this Advent Sunday of Joy, what is it that we must do to be worthy of this joy?  How do we grow stronger, wiser, more loving, and closer to God?  How do we prepare ourselves for the birth of this incredible joy into our lives?

Our scripture reading contains the answer.  We are to keep God’s commandments, particularly the command to love one another as God has loved us.

If only it were as easy as it sounds.

“Loving one another” is both very simple and very complex.  On paper it sounds easy.  But once we try it in real-life settings—once we get down to matters of division of labor and money, issues of trust and expectation, commitment and entitlement, loyalty and betrayal, it all gets rather muddy.  We realize we must learn the difference between “tough love”—which doesn't look like love but is, and codependency—which looks like love but isn't.  We must learn how to give without resentment, and how not to give without guilt, and when each is appropriate.  We need to develop great compassion and great clarity of mind—things which only come through time and experience and lots of personal work.

One terrific aid to help us along this learning curve is the Ten Commandments.  In them, God gave us a simplified break-down of how to love God and our neighbor well. (P.S. These rules and guidelines can be found in many other world spiritualities too, with slightly different wording.  This fits with the Swedenborgian teaching that God put into each world religion all that we need to find our way back to true loving-kindness and wisdom—aka “God”). 

These basic human laws of respectful co-existence provide the path back to joy, back to that heaven we experienced as newborns, and back to God.  They help mend our relationship with ourselves, with God, and with each other.  So how come we are not all living in peace and joy and love right now? 

It would be convenient and easy to say that life is not the blissful dream it should be because “bad people out there” in the world are ruining things for all of the rest of us and we are all victims of their dishonesty and greed and fear. There is some truth in that, but thinking that way is also “playing the victim card” which tends to trap us in hopelessness and helplessness.  A stronger and more empowering truth is that you and I have many ways we are complicit in the same dishonesties if on a much smaller scale. Therefore you and I working on and healing the ways we are contributing to the problem right now DOES make a difference.  

We only have the power to change ourselves.  In fact the only way we can truly ever change any “them,” “out there,” is to look for how the things we so dislike out there are also in our own skin, and to make them better inside us first.

Indeed, many spiritualities teach that me changing myself and you changing yourself for the better right here, right now, does move the whole world toward something better in a real way.  By acknowledging and correcting the increasingly subtle ways I am lying to myself, and any way I am doing harm to those I deal with, I make things better, even if it doesn't feel like it some days.  Each one of us becoming just a little more honest and kind does make the whole world more honest and kind, period.  Our greatest potency is rarely in fixing “them.”  It is found in what you and I can do in our small ways inside ourselves right here and right now.
   

Swedenborg, in the book True Christianity, says that the potency of the Ten Commandments lies in their deep spiritual application rather than in their letter.  It is the spirit of these laws that the angels pay attention to, not the simple words. 

“Thou shalt not steal” certainly means in the concrete sense “don't shoplift or mug or break into people's homes or cars to take their stuff.”   But more deeply it means “don’t steal” in your mind and heart and attitude.  Stealing in your mind and heart and attitude shows up as entitlement, taking credit for things not ours, and generally feeling more valuable or worthy than someone else. 

The cry “black lives matter” that has arisen strongly in the US over the last several weeks is calling attention to a deeply ingrained cultural attitude that steals human worth from one group or person and hands it to another.  We must stop this stealing as a nation.  In any way any one of us individually deems ourselves better than another, we too are stealing from that other.  An attitude of entitlement breeds contempt for that other and gives us permission to take what we like from them, because they are less than us.  A very real way you and I can work to heal this sickness in our nation is to be on the alert for how you and I individually deem ourselves better than or objectify any other human or group in our personal lives.  Yes, speak out against the injustices you see in the broader world.  But also look for and work on any injustices inside your own spiritual space that may show up.  Because that is the most powerful way you can help.

The saying that “if you break one commandment you break them all” (James 2:10) has a lot of truth to it.  My sick attitudes invite me into hurtful behaviors that I then justify. And because some part of me knows that I am not in integrity, I will feel a niggling unease.  Unwilling to hear or see the truth, I will lie to myself.  Do you see the pattern? Entitlement leads to stealing behaviors, which then leads to lying and covering-up.  In fact, I will develop an entire inner “public-relations team” to protect me from seeing my own dishonesty and lack of integrity.  One bad choice can start a whole spiral of bad choices, calling me into greater and greater self-deception, entitlement and denial.  It is easy to see this when it is happening in others.  It is harder to recognize it in ourselves.

But before we get too discouraged, let me remind us all that to the extent that we keep even one commandment, we are keeping them all.  The spiral goes in the other direction too.  It depends on where our focus is.  Are we generally lying and hiding, or disclosing and coming clean?

If we are focusing on being more honest, we will be open to seeing more and more the ways we have been lying to ourselves.  This will invite more personal integrity, which will open us to more compassion, more humility, and more honesty.  If we are working on not stealing, physically or emotionally or psychologically, we will grow in respect for ourselves and others.  We will see how we have been stealing from ourselves and our loved ones as well as from others—stealing integrity, stealing security, stealing trustworthiness.  And as we stop stealing, and we stop lying to cover up our stealing, we start to grow in trustworthiness, security, and integrity.  Intentional steps toward right relationship with ourselves and others and God starts a progressive cycle of right relationship in every corner of our being.

If we intentionally set our minds to chipping away at our blindnesses, God assures us that we will reach a state like that of the angels—so pure of heart and mind that we no longer lie, we no longer steal, we no longer need to invalidate (kill) any other to ensure our own sense of well-being.   And that is when our joy will be more full than we can possibly imagine.

That is why I like to see the Ten Commandments as the Ten Promises.  Because until we are completely angelic, we are pretty much breaking the Ten Commandments in small ways all the time.  We can’t help it and we can’t see it until we are ready.  We don’t even know we are doing it.  But fear not; we are not held accountable for the things we cannot yet see.  Genuine openness to seeing what we are ready to see and changing it as we are able is all God asks.

God wants our joy.  God wants it with every fiber of “his” being.  But God will never force on us anything we don’t want or aren't ready for.  And so the invitation stands open; the path is always waiting; and joy awaits us like gold at the end of the rainbow.

Meanwhile, these holidays are likely to be a mix.  There will be moments of exhaustion, discouragement, disappointment, and despair.  There will also likely be moments of delight and magic, heart-warming interactions and joyful connections.  All the while I invite you to trust in the promise—not that this season will be perfect—but that each holiday is moving us closer to heavenly joy so long as we are doing our inner work.  Good will to all human-kind is both the destination and the journey; and so long as we are taking the steps we can today, we have in some sense already arrived. 

Joy and delight. These are our birthright and our promise. May you be open to them in the coming days in big and small ways.  Indeed, may you be overcome with such joy, that you touch the joy of the angels at the Lord’s birth, if just for a moment.

Amen.

The Readings

Luke 2: 1-7   

In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria.  All went to their own towns to be registered. Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David.  He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child.  While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child.  And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

John 15:9-17

“As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love. If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love.

“These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full. This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends. You are My friends if you do whatever I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you. You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatever you ask the Father in My name He may give you. These things I command you, that you love one another.

Heavenly Secrets 543

543. Certain spirits wished to know what heavenly joy was. Therefore they were allowed to perceive their own inmost joy, even to a point where they could not bear it. But even this was not angelic joy. It barely resembled the slightest of angelic joys. These spirits were allowed to realize this by sharing their joy. Their own joy was so meagre that it seemed rather tepid, yet they called it utterly heavenly since it was the deepest joy they could manage. From this it is clear that when we are allowed to experience our deepest joy this is for us heavenly joy. Nor can we tolerate anything deeper, as it becomes painful.

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.