What Does Love Require? - Guest talk

What Does Love Require?

 June 1, 2014

Bath Church of the New Jerusalem 

Rob Lawson, guest speaker

Luke 10: 38-42; John 12: 1-3;  Heaven and Hell, Para. 564

           

On the surface, the New Testament story of Martha and Mary might be summed up as an example in life of the practical vs. the impractical—of Martha busily getting the house in order for her guests and Mary sitting at her Teacher’s feet, apparently oblivious of the chores required. Put yourself in Martha’s shoes (or sandals) for a minute. When Jesus came knocking, He brought 12 disciples with Him. Imagine opening your home to 13 hungry and thirsty men who had been traveling on foot all day. If you didn't make dinner preparations, set the table, offer them an opportunity to wash up, who would? Martha represents the pragmatic, boots-on-the-ground individual. When there’s a crisis, thank God for the Marthas of this world who step up, give directions, and provide solutions. Mary, on the other hand, is the dreamer, the impractical one. Her priority is to focus on one guest—Jesus. She sits still to listen to His teaching, and then before the meal, she washes His feet with expensive oil, using her hair. There is no doubt about Martha’s frustration with her sister’s behavior; she complains directly to Jesus. And when Jesus takes Mary’s side? I can just hear a din of complaints from the sidelines—foul! No way! Get out of here!!

The story of Martha and Mary depicts an ageless, human situation. What do we do when someone pushes our buttons? How do we respond to strangers, neighbors, even friends and family, who annoy us? We can choose to ignore the crying baby at a restaurant. Perhaps shrug off the heedless driver who passes us too fast. Every day we encounter situations we turn away from and do not confront. But some events, some circumstances should not and cannot be ignored. Such was the case in the very building we are sitting in, months after its consecration in 1844.

In April of that year, the Bath congregation was faced with a dilemma: How to respond to a parishioner whose presence had created tension and discomfort within the society for over a year. The lady in question was Mary Waldron. Her full name was Mary Elizabeth Augusta Chandler Prescott Welch Waldron. Crazily, she preferred to use her first initials M.E.A.C. with her current married name. When she joined our congregation, her name is in our minute book as M.E.A.C. Waldron.

Mary was the older daughter of Dr. Benjamin Prescott, one of the then town’s leading doctors. Prescott, a successful practitioner of homeopathic treatment, moved to Bath with his family in 1825 from Dresden, Maine. He had inoculated the townspeople in 1832 during a feared imminent outbreak of cholera. Nineteenth-century histories typically relate the exploits of men. So the fact that Bath historian Parker McCobb Reed describes Mary as a “popular lady” and another chronicler records that she was “a fascinating woman who married younger husbands,” indicates that Ms. Prescott was no shrinking violet.

At 20, Mary married a wealthy young Bostonian, Captain Benjamin Welch. Welch’s family was in the merchant shipping business. The young couple lived in Charlestown, where their only child, Frank Welch, was born in 1835. Shortly afterwards, they relocated to Bath. Capt. Welch died two years later at the age of 29. After her husband’s demise, Mary met Charles Waldron, a Bowdoin College medical student and the son of a Bath doctor. One of the prerequisites of Bowdoin’s two-year course of medical studies was to be apprenticed to an area doctor. In his final year, Charles studied under Dr. Prescott, and fell under the influence of Prescott’s daughter, the widow Welch. Charles and Mary were married in September 1840, while he was still in medical school. A year later, Mary gave birth to her second child, Charliana Waldron. Charles died the following spring at the age of 24. (Frank Waldron Pictured above)

Weeks after Charles’s demise in 1842, the widow Waldron and another Bath doctor, the young Dr. William E. Payne, came to an “Enquiring” meeting held by the Rev. Samuel Dike, the young minister of the Bath Society. The purpose of these meetings was to answer questions and to invite those interested to join the church. To appear in public, as innocent as it may have been, in the company of one of the town’s most eligible bachelors and just weeks after the death of her husband, would have been viewed in those days as indiscreet. Dr. Payne joined the church that April, followed by M.E.A.C. Waldron.  (Dr William Payne, left)

            By spring 1843, a year after joining the church, Payne and Waldron were a cause célèbre. Dr. Payne had broken off his engagement to a Miss Betsy Ann Hatch and had “transferred” his affections for the twice-wedded Mrs. Waldron. The uproar that erupted within the Bath congregation over how to deal with the indiscretions of widow Mrs. Waldron with Dr. Payne and the shame brought on the jilted fiancée Miss Hatch could not have come at a worse moment for the church. The youthful congregation was inexperienced in handling such matters, and the turmoil coincided with the much-anticipated construction of our current church.

Dr. Payne attempted to defuse the situation, writing to withdraw his membership, as recorded in our church minutes, “from the society in consequence of the reproach brought upon it by his late conduct.”

           

By July 15, Zina Hyde, one of the founders of the Bath Society, was on the diplomatic offensive. He notes in his journal, “Long talk with Mr. Sewall respecting the care of Mrs. Waldron and Dr. Payne who have now broken off their engagement but not until they have the means of bringing the society into a very disturbed state.” Hyde recognized the dangerous waters the church was navigating. If the society should act as his Old North Congregational Church had acted—excommunicating readers of Swedenborg’s work—the society’s conduct would be no better than the “Old Church” they left. However, there had to be order. The church must stand up to bad or inappropriate behavior.

            Zina especially must have been aware of the scrutiny the Bath Society was under. In 1816, as a young widower and an enthusiastic receiver of the New Church doctrines, he had been the target of gossip. In a penciled note I found last summer while researching this story at the Maine Maritime Musem, he states that after the death of his first wife, a story spread in Bath that he daily set the table for her, lit a candle, and conversed with her ghostly spirit. No doubt the rumors were encouraged by knowledge of Zina’s belief in the immediacy of the spiritual world around us. Confronting his accusers, Zina published a letter to the contrary in the local paper.

Public outcry and gossip surrounding Mrs. Waldron, Miss Hatch, and Dr. Payne threatened to implode the Bath Society. At first, the volatile situation was diffused through Zina’s intercessions and diplomacy. The penitent Dr. Payne corrected his course over the summer, patching things up with his fiancé Betsy Ann. But what were they to do with the irrepressible Mrs. Waldron?

The unrepentant Mrs. Waldron’s continued presence at church and her refusal to admit to any improprieties gnawed at the forbearance of several church members. Even one church member who had come to the defense of the widow and the young Dr. Payne and who believed both had already suffered much, admitted that their conduct, “has been such that the Society cannot regard them as innocent.”

On the evening of April 30, 1844, while Hyde was in Boston for medical treatment, Brother Sewall, another founding member of the Bath Society, presided over a special meeting in the newly constructed church to deal with the troublesome Mrs. Waldron. The stated purpose of the meeting was “to confer upon the difficulties which have agitated (and do now agitate) the Society for this past year.” Sewall’s motion read: “Whereas the members of the Society have regarded the course of conduct pursued by our Sister Mrs. Waldron during the last fourteen months as giving offence to the true and vital principles of Religion which must constitute the church of the Lord, consequently feeling that an internal Separation had already taken place between us. It is hereby requested that Mrs. Waldron withdraw from the Communion table of the Society.”  (William Sewall, above left)

A vote was taken. Now before you hear the outcome, let’s take our own vote. Everyone close your eyes . . . no peeking! Knowing what you know of her conduct, all those in favor of suspending Mary’s right to communion, raise your hands. [Note: Only one individual voted in the affirmative.] OK. Now all those not in favor of suspending Mary’s right to communion, raise your hands. [Note: Everyone but one member of the congregation, voted not to suspend Mrs. Waldron’s right to communion.] Well, that wasn’t even close! Zina Hyde would be proud of this congregation! How much more tolerant we have become.

And what happened 170 years ago? A bomb of dissension was detonated, setting into motion the very event Hyde had skillfully avoided the previous summer in dealing with Dr. Payne. A slim majority of men and women voted to suspend Mrs. Waldron’s right to communion. It was not a unanimous decision. Many members were absent, including more than 12 women. Several present abstained, and Mrs. Farnham, the wife of A. B. Farnham, the builder of the church, voted no. She was joined in the negative vote by two of the Church Committee members, (people in authority we might call in another denomination Deacons).

As a result of the church’s action, the Prescott family sent letters of resignation. This was a large group of Mrs. Waldron’s mother, Mrs. Waldron’s sister and brother-in-law, and others sympathetic to the Prescotts. John B. Swanton Jr., one of the church “pillars,” questioned the authority of the Society to suspend Mrs. Waldron’s or anyone’s right to the sacraments and refused to continue serving as Secretary and as Treasurer. The Rev. Dike was pressed into service as Secretary Pro-tem.

From his sick bed in Boston, Hyde met one-on-one with Swanton and corresponded with Sewall and Swanton trying to find a way to neutralize Sewall’s headstrong action. The three men went back and forth with suggestions. Swanton was championing Dr. Payne and Mrs. Waldron. Sewall was representing the Allens’ and possibly his own and his wife’s hostility toward Mrs. Waldron. Hyde was brokering for compromise. As he pointed out to Sewall, “Your motion I could have agreed to, had it been somewhat modified and made to imply only temporary suspension, whereas now it seems to amount to excommunication.” (Rev. Samuel Dike, right)

Swanton and Hyde encouraged Sewall and others to make amends by speaking with the injured parties. Swanton (his beautiful Greek Revival house still stands and is next to the church) proposed a resolution to quench the gossip: “Resolved: That we regard it the duty of all in the society together with our Brother [Dr. Payne] and Sister [Mrs. Waldron] to seek by a life of charity and mutual good will to blot out all memory of our past difficulties. That it is our duty to avoid all allusion to the subject ourselves and to close our ears against any allusions to the subject by others. And all such in the Society or out of the Society as are disposed to allude to the subject to the prejudice of the parties cannot be regarded otherwise than as enemies of the church.”  (Miriam Dike, left, wife of Samuel)

Hyde’s indefatigable spirit would not give up on reaching a compromise. His resiliency and determination to preserve the struggling congregation, his “Jerusalem” on earth, prevailed. In May 1845 at an afternoon meeting at his home, the congregation voted to modify Sewall’s resolution from the previous spring. Citing “the injunctions of our Lord as given in the 22nd chapter of Matt and adopted as our rule of conduct,” the congregation charitably offered the widow Waldron its love and affection. “Resolved, that said vote be and hereby is not regarded as designing excommunication or unlimited but limited suspension and only until such time as the person shall manifest a desire to return to the confidence and affection of the society by expressing such a desire to the Pastor.” In effect, Mrs. Waldron’s right to take Communion was left to her “freedom and sense of propriety.”  All that was needed was her initiating a discussion with the Rev. Dike.

           

And so our young society weathered the stormy seas of human relations. Brother Payne corrected his errant ways, married Ms. Hatch, and eventually became one of the pillars of the church. The Payne children would be baptized in the church, and in 1847, Dr. Payne became a loyal and steadfast church officer. His rapid handwriting, as secretary, records in our church minutes nearly thirty years of events. In 1846, Widow Waldron found another young husband, James Lemont Brown, and left Bath. They were married in Trinity Church, NYC (left) , and then relocated in Boston where Brown ran a wholesale jewelry business until his untimely death.

            This brings us back to the story of Martha and Mary. How do we choose to work with difficult people in our lives? Do we take the initial response of the majority and confront the situation with strong language and actions to punish the offender? Or do we take that famous passage from Matthew to heart, as Zina Hyde did, to love our Lord above all others and to love our neighbor as ourselves?

           

At a deeper level, we all have within us the practicality side of Martha and the impracticality tendency of Mary. Finding the right balance between these two inclinations is an everyday reality. Think of accommodating Zina’s more loving approach when reigning in that impractical but endearing urge to take the untrodden path. Down deep inside we know we’ll get there faster the tried-and-true way, but the allure of the unknown cannot always be denied. For me, the answer to the opening question: What Does Love Require? is clear. It is charity to our neighbor. And we can begin close at home by being kinder, gentler with ourselves.

Heaven and Hell (Dole), Para. 564

There are two ways of being in power. One comes from love for our neighbor and the other from love for ourselves. In essence, these two kinds of power are exact opposites. People who are empowered by love for their neighbor intend the good of everyone and love nothing more than being useful—that is, serving others (serving others means willing well and helping others, whether that is one's church, country, community, or fellow citizen). This is their love and the delight of their hearts. As such people are raised to high positions they are delighted; but the delight is not because of the honor but because of the constructive things they can now do more abundantly and at a higher level. This is what empowerment is like in the heavens.

What’s In A Name?

a sermon on the error of Christian exclusivity

I dug this out to post in reflective response to last Sunday's guest speaker at The Church of the Good Shepherd. It was the gentle and well-spoken Carol McMullen from Temple Shalom. One question she raised was how we address our various exclusive texts when it comes to interfaith dialogue. I could write it better now, but I will let it stand as is.

Rev. Alison Longstaff

May 3rd, 2009

The Church of the Good Shepherd, Kitchener, Ontario

Mark 9: 33 -40, John 10: 11 - 18

Our notion of God is deeply personal. It starts forming when we are very little and resides in a deep place within our hearts. This inner concept of God is very sacred ground. To mess with it in another person without their consent can be to commit spiritual violation. This explains why we find religious recruiters so distasteful. This can also explain why we might feel hesitant to talk about our own beliefs with others.

Today, I plan to push the boundaries of our God-image a little bit. This is intended to be a kind of spiritual massage-therapy or yoga. It is intended to soften and loosen what can be tightly held spiritual muscles, and it may feel a little uncomfortable. Just breathe. I promise to be gentle.

In the summer of 2001 I was up in Owen Sound, Ontario researching first nations’ spirituality. I was granted permission to sit with one of the tribal elders. I was delighted and honoured. I took a seat next to a lady with glasses and short curly grey hair, who was wearing a typical baggy “old lady” polyester dress. Somehow I had expected braids and buckskin. In any case, I said I was there to ask her about her spiritual beliefs. She asked me earnestly if had been saved by Jesus.

I was heart-sick. This was a tribal elder. It turns out that I knew more about her traditional tribal beliefs than she did. European colonialism did this. “Christian” colonialism, with its arrogant assumption that its religious beliefs trump those of all others, especially those of “savages,” had systematically dismantled, disbanded, and exiled her culture. Many tribal traditions and languages in North America are lost forever. Many more teeter on the brink of extinction, and are requiring deliberate governmental and tribal interventions to try to recover and restore what bits and pieces of what is left that they can.

Whatever gave Christians such arrogance? History will tell us that the earliest Christians sought simply to survive, and to spread the good news, which was to tell the story of Jesus, and invite people to live a life of social justice and mutual service. But somewhere along the way, in fact, once Christianity became the dominant religion, Christians—we—switched from a mindset of service to an attitude of entitlement. From there it was an easy step into certainty regarding our religious superiority. We stopped being about living love, and started being about being right. We started believing that forcing people to agree with us, and to become like us was our Christian obligation.

Religious arrogance can do so much damage. Now, NOW we know how sacred and precious aboriginal spirituality is. Yet we Christians nearly obliterated it in our arrogance.

And it was that shift from heart to head, from love to ideology, from humble service to “possessing the right truth” that was the key to our arrogance. It was this shift from love to “truth” that was so profoundly destructive of the health and well-being of the spiritual communities Christianity invaded. It was truth without humility, truth without respect for God in the other, (which isn’t truth at all) that did such damage. This is because truth when separated from love, becomes false. It has no internal integrity. It loses its connection to the Source of all. History has shown that any denomination that assumes it has a duty to impose its “superior” God-view on the cultures it encounters leaves spiritual violation in its wake. Current events continue to tell the tale of the all the violence enacted and justified by religious attitudes that claim exclusive access to “Truth,” ultimate superiority, and the right to exterminate alternate spiritual views. Such attitudes are only and ever destructive and divisive of the very things that bind us together.

Now, I’m going to ask you to go inside yourself. Think, (and feel if possible) about times you have felt religiously arrogant, or ideologically arrogant, or simply powerfully self righteous.  Go inside and ask yourself, “What attitudes and emotions underlie those feelings of arrogance and certainty?

Let’s sit with that a bit.

As for me, I can say it feels really good to be sure I am right. It creates in me an uprising energy that longs to spread itself. I can feel excited and empowered, and I long to go on a crusade to fix someone else with my great insights. Fixing someone else feels good! When I’m fixing someone else the attention isn’t on me and what I may have done wrong, but on the other, and how I might correct what they are doing wrong, or even simply how they are thinking wrong. I have actually found myself urgently wanting to fix someone else’s idea of the trinity (because it was “wrong”), when, as to quality of life, that other was busy serving the neighbour humbly and kindly. And I? I couldn’t step over the bodies fast enough to go correct the Good Samaritan’s ideology. (---metaphorically speaking. I don’t think I’ve ever actually stepped over a body in order to correct someone….)

But I’m sure you see the problem. Whenever you or I are on a mission to fix someone else, we have lost our way. Twelve steppers call it, “Taking someone else’s inventory” when we are cataloguing our neighbours’ faults and not our own. Our job is to work on our own regeneration, not someone else’s. That can be one of the hardest, hardest things for us to learn. It can feel much more fun and interesting to take stock of how someone else should change. It’s not nearly as fun, (not fun at all?) to take stock of how I should change.
But when you or I are focused on someone else’s foibles, we have left no room for respect. No room for reverence of the sacred spiritual ground in the other. Each person’s spirituality, no matter how different from yours or mine, is sacred ground. Sacred ground! And there is no humility when we are on a mission to fix someone else. There is no awareness that we all live in glass houses. We all have a massive rafter in our eye and have no business correcting someone else, especially when they haven’t asked for help. Christians aren’t the only ones on a mission to fix the whole world, but we certainly are high in the running.

It is this righteous arrogance that has given religion a bad name. But the thing is, religion isn’t the problem. Having a spiritual, God-centered paradigm isn’t the problem. Arrogance is the problem. Certainty, entitlement, and the desire to dominate are the problems.

Having said all that, what do we do with the very common, very strong teachings that "only through belief in Jesus Christ" can a person be saved, and that Christians are to go and teach this throughout the whole world?

I have titled this talk “What’s In A Name?” for a reason. I have especially tried to avoid too much “God-He” talk in this service and in our hymns today precisely so as to offer a little spiritual yoga for our minds. I want us to stretch our God-concept a little.

It is easy to get stuck on what name to call the God of Love, and what face to give—Him? (Her?) (You or I might like to reassure ourselves that our pronoun is the rightest one, but “rightest” doesn't apply to an all-inclusive God.) The bible tells us that God made all people, all humans, in the image of God. That includes all colours and genders. Swedenborg, if we want to believe him, tells us that God made all the religions too---ALL of them, each one uniquely suited to the people and region in which it is found. And each one provides a path to “salvation” which means a path to true humanity, true humanity—or to become a person full of wisdom and kindness. Each religion in its original form and at its heart has this intention. But over time, the human race has cluttered religion up with so many rules and exclusions, that the very religions which are supposed to be paths to God have become stumbling blocks.

In our Scripture reading from Mark we find the disciples arguing about who would be God’s favourite. That’s us. That’s you and me. That’s the human race fighting over which religion is better, which perspective is better. They are walking with Jesus right there with them and they are wasting time bickering over who is the best.

Isn’t that just like us? So Jesus, to wake them up, turned reality on its head. He proposed that the one who would be greatest was one who wanted to be the servant of all.  I’m guessing that this statement was a real stumper for the disciples. "Be the servant? Be the lowest?" Human arrogance never wants to hear that!

But it is never, never about the pecking order. It is never about status, or right skin colour, or right family name, or right sexual orientation, or right religious club. It is about what is in our hearts.

In this church, we are Swedenborgians. We always look inside a thing. We are about the spirit, the essence, the inner quality, not the external shape or size or colour. The spirit of God. The spirit of love and goodwill—this is our salvation.

Swedenborg tells us that every name in the bible represents a spiritual quality. The name of Jesus Christ, means the quality of great love—great love and great wisdom in service in the world. Every religion that is true has some version of this at its heart.

Whenever we remember that it is about compassion, not rules, Jesus is Lord. Whenever we refuse to dominate or control our neighbour, Jesus is Lord. When we focus on how to be of service, not how to be the best, we are acting "in the name of Jesus Christ," which in the bigger picture is to act "in the spiritual quality of love and wisdom in service to others."

What kills “Jesus” (or a life of loving, humble service) is this very competing over whose God is best—whose God will rule—be we Catholic, Protestant, Swedenborgian, some other Christian or a non-Christian spirituality. In this sense then, any religion that supports people in becoming more enlightened, compassionate, and useful is a religion with “Jesus Christ” at its heart regardless of what name they give God. If the spiritual value that is love and wisdom is at the centre of any spiritual path, “Jesus Christ” by another name is at the centre, period. Let’s stop fretting about names and faces and different rituals. Let us look to the heart and the life of any given spirituality, for that is where we will find “Jesus” or their “way of love.” That is where we will find the Holy Spirit in a slightly different skin colour or garment, but the Holy Spirit, nonetheless.

"Teacher," said John, "we saw a man driving out demons in your name and we told him to stop, because he was not one of us." "Do not stop him," Jesus said, “for whoever is not against us is for us.”

“The Ancient Church, which was spread throughout many kingdoms of the earth, was of such a character that, though doctrinal teachings and religious practices differed, there was nevertheless one spiritual community. This is because respect and kindness were the essential things. At that time one could say the Lord's kingdom did exist on earth as it did in heaven, for such is the character of heaven. If the same situation existed now all would be governed by Love as though they were one person; for they would be like the members and organs of one body which, though dissimilar in form and function, still depended on one heart. Everyone would then say of another, No matter what form their doctrine and external worship take, this is my neighbour; I observe that he or she worships the God of Love and lives a good life.” Emanuel Swedenborg Heavenly Secrets (paragraph #2385:5)

There is but one fold and one Shepherd. Can we stop arguing about who is best and just love each other? Amen