The Lord Brings Order to Our LIves

Rev. Jared Buss

Pittsburgh New Church; February 25, 2024

Readings: Genesis 43:24-34; Arcana Coelestia §5703.2

Today’s sermon is about the Lord bringing order to our lives. Order is one of those things that can sound appealing, and can sound very unappealing. Order can feel like the opposite of freedom. But on the other hand, life sometimes feels messy—it sometimes feels quite out of our control—and the idea that the Lord can bring sense and wholeness and stability to our lives sometimes sounds really nice.

The story we’re going to look at gives us an illustration of how He brings order to our lives. Two specific ideas that are illustrated by this story are that the Lord works with us gently—after all, He doesn’t want to trample our freedom—and that He can bring order to our lives even when we don’t see that He is present. After we’ve talked about what He does, we’ll look at what we have to do, to receive or to participate in the order that He is creating.

The story we’ll look at is the next part of the Joseph story. Joseph told his brothers that they would not see his face unless they brought Benjamin with them when they returned to Egypt (Gen. 43:3, 5). At first Israel didn’t want to let Benjamin go, but he changed his mind. So Benjamin and the others went down to Egypt.

The tone of this second trip to Egypt is completely different from the tone of the first trip. The first time the brothers came down—when Benjamin was not with them—Joseph spoke roughly to them and put them in prison (Gen. 42:7, 17). This time, because Benjamin is present, the brothers are taken to Joseph’s house, to share a meal with him (43:16). While they wait for Joseph to arrive, they express the fear that they’ve been brought to that place to be turned into slaves, but Joseph’s servant reassures them (vv. 18-23). And then we read: [vv. 24-34].

This scene has a softer tone; and that softness is a suggestion of the order that the Lord is creating. Throughout this story, Joseph represents the Lord, and also the Lord’s presence in the truth that we know (AC §5574, see §5696). Joseph’s ten brothers represent “truths known to the church and present in the natural” (ibid.). So they represent the true ideas that we know, but may or may not be applying to our lives. This story is about the way that the Lord works with our minds, and teaches us to use the truths that we know. When we use the truth for the sake of the good of our neighbors, we find the Lord within it: we find the Lord’s life and spirit within the teachings of the Word. Until then, the Lord is hidden from us, which is why Joseph’s brothers don’t recognize him.

But because Benjamin is present, Joseph begins to draw nearer to his brothers. He eats a meal with them. He and his servants speak gently to them. Good things are happening, though the brothers clearly have no idea just how much Joseph loves them. Benjamin, who makes this conjunction possible, stands for truth that looks to what is good (AC §§3969.3, 4592, 5586, 5600, 5686, 5689). We can think of him as the recognition that all of the truth in our heads exists to serve what is good, and as an effort to put the truth to work in the name of something good.

When that Benjamin quality is with us, the Lord draws near. And when the Lord draws near, He brings order to our lives. What Joseph does, in the story, is seat his brothers at the table in their birth order (Gen. 43:33). In other words, he arranges them from oldest to youngest. He orders them from oldest to youngest. This astonishes his brothers, because it means that he knows their birth order—he knows things that no stranger should know. Here’s what the Heavenly Doctrine has to tell us about the internal meaning of this moment in this story: [read AC §5703.2].“When the Lord is present, His very presence arranges everything into order” (ibid.). Order flows from Him wherever He goes. And to the degree that we’re willing to receive Him, His order extends into our lives.

What is order anyway? The story gives us a wonderful illustration of it. Joseph’s brothers are arranged before him, and Joseph’s brothers represent truths. So one way to understand order is as the proper arrangement of truths. The Lord unsnarls the things we know. He puts first things first and last things last.

To make this clearer, let’s use a specific teaching from the Word as an example. In Luke the Lord says, “If your brother sins against you, rebuke him” (17:3). This teaching comes from the Lord’s mouth—it is a true and useful teaching. When people hurt us, it’s useful to say something about that to them. But it’s pretty obvious that a religion built exclusively on this teaching would be an unpleasant religion. If we made it our life’s purpose to rebuke other people for their sins, our behavior would be harsh, and that harshness would be disorderly. This teaching needs to be put in its proper place. To begin with, it should be read in context. The Lord says, “If your brother sins against you, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him. And if he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times in a day returns to you, saying, ‘I repent,’ you shall forgive him” (vv. 3, 4). The context changes the tone of the Lord’s words. And of course, this teaching needs to be read in light of everything else that the Lord says about charity and forgiveness. It needs to be subordinated to the truths that He identifies as leading truths, such as “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:31, et al.). First things need to come first, and last things need to come last. The things that come last are still important. “If your brother sins against you, rebuke him” is a useful teaching. But it has to follow other principles; it can’t lead them.

The Lord does this with all of the truths that we know. Not just with truths from the Word, but with all of the information that we know—everything that we’ve ever learned. He orders all of the ideas in our heads. Little by little, He resolves the conflicts between truths that seem incompatible. He unsnarls thoughts that cause confusion and anxiety. And He gives us a sense of purpose—because little by little, everything we know is ordered underneath the will to do what is good. The reading said that the aim of the Lord’s order is “to see that truths are properly arranged beneath good” (AC §5703). That’s why this process can’t take place until Benjamin—who represents truth that looks to good—is present.

What’s striking about this whole process is how gentle it is, and how the Lord is willing to conceal the part He plays in it, until we’re ready to see Him. In the story it’s clear that Joseph is the one who arranges His brothers in their birth order, but the story doesn’t say that he’s the one who does this. It says, “And they sat before him, the firstborn according to his birthright and the youngest according to his youth” (Gen. 43:33). It’s as though this ordering just happens, on its own. When the Lord is present, order “just happens.” His presence simply arranges things the way they’re meant to be arranged, much as the warmth of the sun makes plants grow the way they’re meant to grow.

And as I said before, when we’re willing to let Him be present with us, this ordering of our minds takes place even if we don’t know that it’s happening. Even if we don’t see that the Lord is present with us. Throughout this story, Joseph is hidden from his brothers. This symbolizes a state in our lives in which the Lord isn’t really seen. In the story, Joseph weeps for his brothers, but He actively hides his tears from them. He goes into another room to weep, and before he comes out again, He washes His face (Gen 43:30, 31). His tears symbolize the mercy of the Lord, who loves us ardently (AC §§5691, 5693). The Lord is willing to conceal the intensity of His love for us, because if we feel the full force of His love before we’re ready to feel it, it will only feel forceful (AC §§5694-5697). And that’s not what love is meant to be.

“Order” can be a very forceful word. “Order” has connotations of heavy-handed, authoritarian government. The bad guys in the newest Star Wars trilogy are called “the First Order,” which tells you everything you need to know about what this word can mean. But “order” can also have a very different tone. The Lord’s order isn’t oppressive. Obedience to Him is extremely important—yet our freedom is more important to Him. We know this because He gives us the freedom to disobey Him.

It can help to think of order not in terms of rules but in terms of health. Order is to the spirit what health is to the body (note AC §4839.2). The human body consists of countless parts and pieces, and all of those pieces need to be arranged in a specific order. The humerus is meant to go above the radius; if that order were to be reversed, that would be bad. When things in our bodies are out of order, we call that being sick or injured. If the body is too severely disordered, it dies. When the pieces of our bodies are in order—or as they are meant to be—we say that we are healthy.

In the gospel we see that the Lord brings health with Him wherever He goes. The gospel is filled with stories in which He heals people of their afflictions, and there are some stories that give us the impression that health simply radiates from Him to everyone around Him. We read:

And He came down with them and stood on a level place with a crowd of His disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea and Jerusalem, and from the seacoast of Tyre and Sidon, who came to hear Him and be healed of their diseases, as well as those who were tormented with unclean spirits. And they were healed. And the whole multitude sought to touch Him, for power went out from Him and healed them all. (Luke 6:17-19)

This is an illustration of what He does for our spirits. “When the Lord is present His very presence arranges everything into order. The Lord is order itself, and therefore wherever He is present order exists, and wherever order exists He is present” (AC §5703.2).

            That last sentence tells us what we need to do to receive Him—to make room for the presence that restores us to order. “Wherever He is present order exists, and wherever order exists He is present.” As with so many aspects of spiritual growth, there’s a give and take here—a back and forth, like breathing in and breathing out. We need to ask the Lord to be present, so that He can create order in our lives; and we need to put our lives in order, so that He can be present. We have to recognize that we need His power, and pray to Him to be present with us, just as the multitudes in the gospel prayed that He would touch them and heal them. And we need to hold ourselves responsible for obeying the laws of order. When we’re confronted with the mess that life sometimes seem to be, it becomes obvious that we’re not strong enough to simply snap our lives into order. But we can start with the basics. The Ten Commandments are the basic laws of order: if we strive to shun revenge and adultery and theft and blasphemy and deceit, in the name of God, our lives will be in a basic state of order. At least external order. And where there is order the Lord is present; and from His presence flows a deeper kind of order. And the cycle repeats itself.

            In John He says:

He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him. (14:21)

Amen.

Joseph Is Hidden from His Brothers

Rev Jared Buss

Pittsburgh New Church; February 11, 2024

Readings: Genesis 42:1-15 (children’s talk), 14-24; Arcana Coelestia §5422

In today’s story we’re told outright that, “Joseph recognized his brothers, but they did not recognize him” (Gen. 41:8). And he didn’t tell them who he was. What we’re going to look at now is why Joseph chose to remain hidden from his brothers. In the deeper sense of this story, Joseph represents the Lord—so what we’re really talking about is why the Lord sometimes seems to be hidden from us. Another way of saying the same thing is that Joseph symbolizes truth that comes from the Lord, and sometimes we don’t see that truth. Sometimes we don’t have that insight from heaven that shows us what we need to do and guides us through the thorny parts of our lives. We look up to God and say, “Where is Your truth? Where is the guidance that I need from You?” And we get no answer. It’s as if there’s a thick cloud between us and the Lord. He is hidden from us.

            But the Lord doesn’t actually hide Himself from us. That would be a heartless thing to do—and that’s not who He is. So what’s really going on here?

            The first thing we’re going to do is look more closely at the literal sense of this story. The easy explanation is that Joseph hides himself from his brothers because he’s angry with them. And he sure does seem angry with them. But if he was purely angry—if he wanted nothing but revenge—why would he hide himself? Why wouldn’t he tell them, “Guess who has power over you now?” The fact that he conceals himself from his brothers suggests that he is conflicted. He isn’t ready to forgive them, but he isn’t ready to denounce them either. Part of him wants to be their brother again, but he doesn’t know how to get past the bad history that stands between them. All of this becomes much more evident if we look at the next piece of the story. This reading picks up right where the reading to the children left off [read Gen. 42:10-24]. In what follows the brothers are sent home with their grain, and Joseph secretly returns the money that they paid for their food to their bags (vv. 25, 26).

So at first he accuses them of being spies (vv. 9, 14), which makes it seem like he is simply out to get them. He locks them up, and says that one of them needs to go home and bring Benjamin down to Egypt, so that he can verify their story (v. 16). But he knows their story is true. Part of what’s really going on here is that he yearns to see his brother Benjamin again.

            But after the brothers have been in prison for three days, Joseph seems to relent. Instead of sending one brother back to Canaan while the rest remain in prison, he says that he’ll keep one of his brothers in prison, and let the rest go home (vv. 17-19).

            And somehow—even though his brothers have no idea that the man they’re dealing with is Joseph—they recognize that the bad things that are happening to them are because of what they did to Joseph. For the first time, the story talks about the anguish that Joseph felt when they threw him into the pit. His brothers remember how they saw his anguish and did not heed him. They say, “we are truly guilty concerning our brother” (v. 21). And then Joseph turns away from them and weeps (v. 24).

            Why does he weep? One obvious explanation is that it’s a massive relief for him to hear his brothers acknowledge that what they did to him was wrong. His tears are the part of this story that shows us most clearly that he wants to be reconciled with his brothers. He wants to be their brother again—but the evil that they did to him still stands in the way. The passage from the Heavenly Doctrine that we’ll read in a moment says outright that Joseph’s tears are a sign that he loves his brothers.

            To understand this reading from the Doctrine, we need to know a little bit more about the inner meaning of this story. Joseph, as I said, represents the Lord, but he also represents internal truth—that is, truth that comes directly from the Lord (AC §§5417, 5444, 5459). Joseph’s brothers, on the other hand, represent the external truths that are known to the church (AC §§5409, 5419). And Benjamin, who isn’t present in this story, represents the intermediary—that is, he represents the thing that is able to connect external truth with internal truth (AC §§5411, 5413). We’ll say more about this intermediary a little later on. The point that this passage is making is that when that intermediary is not present, external truth sees internal truth as a stranger. We read: [AC §5422].

            Internal truth—or truth coming directly from the Lord—is seen as a stranger by people who are interested solely in external truths. And that’s why Joseph’s brothers don’t recognize him. They represent external truths, or people who are only interested in external truths; and people like that don’t get internal truths. They just don’t see them.

And what are these internal truths that the external doesn’t get? The reading used the Lord’s love as an example. The Lord is love itself, and is never angry. But people who are living a life of evil find the Lord’s love—and the truth that goes with it—uncomfortable. They react to His love with hostility, and project their own hostility onto the Lord. So the Lord appears angry to them. And the letter of the Word speaks according to this appearance, because the Word is designed to reach people where they are. People who are only interested in external things see this anger, but the deeper truth—the truth that expresses the Lord’s love—is lost on them. It’s invisible to them.

            The Heavenly Doctrine gives us a few more examples of internal truths that a merely external mentality just doesn’t get. The truth is that the angels of heaven possess incredible glory and power, but their glory is the glory of wisdom, which comes from their recognition that they know nothing without the Lord. And their power comes from their acknowledgement that they can do nothing without the Lord. To the merely external mind this is gibberish. To the merely external mind, glory means fame and money and power means telling people what to do (AC §5428.2) It’s the same with freedom: the angels of heaven live in incredible freedom, because they love to do what the Lord says. But to the merely external mind, freedom means doing whatever we want to do, and heavenly freedom sounds like slavery (AC §5428.3).

When we’re in a merely external state, the internal seems hostile: the internal is like an Egyptian shouting at us in a language we don’t understand. But the reality is that there is no hostility in the internal. The Lord is love: the Lord’s truth is not harsh or oppositional at all. The hostility actually belongs to the external. This is illustrated in today’s story. Joseph loved his brothers. The problem was that they had sundered him from themselves. They had turned on him, thrown him into a pit, and sold him as a slave.

Let’s look a little more closely at the symbolism of Joseph’s brothers. They stand for external truths known to the church. The external truths known to the church are teachings from the Word—teachings like, “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy,” (Ex. 20:8); “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:31 et al.). But if teachings like these are what Joseph’s brothers stand for, then why are they a problem? Aren’t we supposed to learn and to believe the teachings of the Word?” This takes us back to the problem that we looked at right at the beginning of the sermon. Sometimes we try to reach out to the Lord, and we feel like He’s hidden from us. We ask for guidance or for answers, and we feel like we get nothing. And we look at what we’re doing and we say, “Aren’t I doing this the right way? I’m praying, I’m going to church. I’m trying to use the truths that I’ve been taught. Isn’t that what I’m supposed to do? Why isn’t it working?”

This is a bit like Joseph’s brothers protesting to him, “we are upright men—your servants are not spies!” (see Gen. 42:11). Being upright and being in the truth are the same idea (AC §5434). Joseph’s brothers saw themselves as righteous people, so when he called them spies they felt falsely accused. But if they were truly upright men, they wouldn’t have sold their brother into slavery. Sometimes when we try to approach the Lord, we allow ourselves to be convinced that the act of approaching Him makes us righteous. Or we allow ourselves to be convinced that the truth we know makes us righteous. That belief that we’re already righteous blinds us.

Joseph called his brothers spies, and what that means, in the internal sense of the Word, is that they stand for people who do indeed know the truths of the church, but who value those truths for selfish reasons (AC §§4332, 5433). They value the truth because it makes them look smart, or seem devout. They value the truth because it makes them feel spiritually superior. Truths that we value for selfish reasons cannot rise up. They can’t be anything more than facts in our brains. They don’t hold the spirit of the Lord. They don’t help us see the Lord.

What’s missing, throughout this story, is Benjamin. Benjamin is the intermediary; he’s what connects the truth we know with the spirit of the Lord. In the Joseph story we see very clearly that Joseph is not willing to reveal himself to his brothers until Benjamin is present. That intermediary, in a nutshell, is truth that looks to good (AC §§3969.3, 5586, 5600). It’s truth that we hold with affection—truth that we value because we want it to change us (see AC §§5433.2, 5639). We want it to lead us to the good of life.

It’s obvious that we’re supposed to do what the Lord says. But it’s also easy for us to drift, in the quiet of our minds, from a desire to be led by the truth to a desire to know the truth for the sake of feeling good about ourselves. Because being led by the truth is hard. To be led by the truth we have to hold our feet to the fire. We have to be willing to change the way we live, in the name of what’s right, even if that’s inconvenient. Teachings like “remember the Sabbath” and “you shall love your neighbor” have to become more than just words that we nod to. In the Heavenly Doctrine we’re told that truths remain nothing more than factual knowledge until a person:

… begins to use his own ability to look at those truths and see for himself whether they really are truths, and—having seen that they are such—to act in conformity with them. That ability to look at such truths and this willingness to act in conformity with them cause them to be factual knowledge no longer. Now they are commandments to be obeyed in life, till at length they are his life; for they then pass into the life he leads and are made his own. (AC §5432)

To accept the truths of the Word as commandments that are to be obeyed in life is simple enough in theory. But the difference between doing that in theory and doing that in practice is everything.

The bottom line is that until we’re willing to take responsibility for doing what the Word says to do, the truths that we know will remain external. And merely external truths can’t show us the things that the Lord wants us to see. They can’t show us the power of heavenly love or the glory of heavenly wisdom. They can’t show us the spirit of the Lord. When external truths are all we have, the Lord will seem far away from us. When we aren’t willing to live as He teaches, the Lord will seem far away from us.

And all the while, the Lord will love us. Joseph loved his brothers, even though he wasn’t able to close the gap between them and himself. We’re told that his tears symbolize the mercy of the Lord. Mercy is love that is grieving (AC §5480). It’s love that feels far away from the people that it loves, and yearns to close that gap. Sometimes the Lord really does seem to be hidden from us. But He says, “the mountains shall depart and the hills be removed, but My mercy shall not depart from you, nor shall My covenant of peace be removed” (Is. 54:10).

Amen.

Joseph is Lifted Up

Rev. Jared Buss

Pittsburgh New Church; February 4, 2024

Readings: Genesis 41:1-16 (children’s talk), 37-52; Arcana Coelestia §5246.2, 3

            So at the beginning of today’s story, Joseph is in prison. Then, out of the blue, he’s put in front of the king of Egypt. I talked to the children about Pharaoh’s dreams, so we aren’t going to focus on those now. Our focus is on Joseph’s experience. This slave is brought before Pharaoh after years of sitting in prison… and he doesn’t just interpret the king’s dreams, he proceeds to tell him exactly how he should prepare for the famine that is coming (Gen. 41:33-36). Our next reading describes how Pharaoh responds when Joseph is finished speaking [read vv. 37-52].

            So in the space of a few hours, Joseph goes from being a slave in prison to being the administrator of Egypt—effectively the ruler of Egypt. Pharaoh puts his signet ring on Joseph’s hand, and that’s really significant (v. 42). That ring was a symbol of Pharaoh’s authority… and he puts it on Joseph’s hand (see AC §§5316, 5317). All of Egypt bows to Joseph (v. 43). And Egypt was a powerful nation—so Joseph had suddenly become one of the most powerful people in the world. And the story emphasizes the suddenness of this transformation. When Joseph is taken out of prison, we’re told, “they brought him quickly out of the pit” (v. 14).

            What we’re going to reflect on now is this sudden change from bad to good. The story consistently refers to Joseph’s prison as a “pit,” which implies that when he is taken out of prison, he is physically lifted up. He is lifted out of the confines of the pit into the free air. He is lifted from wretchedness into glory. And of course, in the internal sense of the Word, Joseph symbolizes something that exists within us. This story is about a kind of lifting up that the Lord can accomplish within our spirits. And He can accomplish it suddenly.

            It’s not like we can be “saved” in an instant. There isn’t a magical formula that will make all of our troubles just roll up and disappear. A lot of things in this world get falsely advertised as miracle cures. “Buy this big TV, and you will be truly happy.” Then, lo and behold, we buy the big TV, and our troubles remain. Many people are—justifiably—suspicious of anything that’s supposed to be a “miracle cure.” Sometimes people do assert that the Lord will take all of our troubles away in an instant, but it doesn’t work that way. He invites us to grow with Him forever.

            But, with all that said, He can lift us out of the pit. And sometimes He does seem to do that all at once. Sometimes our spirits are filled with clouds and gloom, and then He breaks the clouds open. This doesn’t mean that all of our troubles are gone forever. This sudden deliverance from darkness, or from evil, doesn’t mean that we’ll never to have to fight evil again. The point is simply that the Lord can deliver us. He can lift us up.

            And what we need to do is hold on to this truth. We need to believe it. When we’re in the pit; when we’re in a state of spiritual temptation, or hopelessness, or loneliness; when we’re fighting with an evil that we just can’t seem to beat, it means something to believe that the Lord can lift us up. He isn’t a pill that we pop. We can’t say His name and expect that evil will vanish like we just woke up from a bad dream. But we don’t have to crawl out of the pit, one excruciating inch at a time, either. The Lord can deliver us.

            We’ll turn now to the Heavenly Doctrine of the New Church, to a passage that talks about the symbolism of bringing Joseph out of the pit. The Doctrine says clearly that Joseph’s time in the pit symbolizes a state of temptation (see AC §§4728, 5037, 5246). We read: [AC §5246.2, 3].

            This reading emphasizes the uncleanness of “the pit.” Prisons aren’t known for being clean places; and prisons in the ancient world were surely worse than modern prisons. That uncleanness is what this reading especially associates with temptation. When we’re in temptation, we carry an oppressive sphere around with us. Other people can’t necessarily detect it, but we know it’s there. We feel as though we’re trapped in a dirty place. The reading says that while we’re in this state, our spirits are in the midst of an unclean cloud. Which is interesting, because when people are in a bad mood, we’ll say that they’ve “got a black cloud hanging over them.”

            But when the state of temptation comes to an end, that cloud is dispersed. A temptation is a spiritual battle between the things within us that are good and true and the things within us that are evil and false. The purpose of temptation is to enable us to know and to reject the things within us that are evil and false. That’s why we enter into that unclean state: we have to face evil in order to reject evil. We’re allowed to feel the uncleanness of evil, because when we do, we gain the ability to say—more clearly than ever before—“Lord, I don’t want this.”

            And at some point, when the Lord knows that we’ve made our choice, the temptation comes to an end. The cloud is dispersed. The Lord lifts us up. He shows us something beautiful that we had forgotten, or He feeds our hearts with love—and we feel the wonder of that love. He restores our hope. He gives us peace.

            What do we have to do to get there? Well, what did Joseph do right? What enabled the Lord to bless Joseph so richly? If we look to the literal sense of today’s story, we find a simple answer: Joseph trusted in the Lord. When he was brought before Pharaoh, he said that he wasn’t the one who would interpret the dreams—“God will give Pharaoh an answer of peace” (Gen. 41:16). In spite of the bewildering circumstances, Joseph was confident that the Lord was present, and that the Lord would speak through him. And the really amazing thing is that Joseph was holding on to that confidence in God after years of slavery. We read that he was thirty years old when he stood before Pharaoh (v. 46); he was seventeen when his brothers turned against him (Gen. 37:2). He was a slave for thirteen years. He was in prison for at least two of those years (Gen. 41:1). It’s reasonable to assume that he struggled to hold on to his faith in God as he went through this. But he did hold on. That’s what the Lord needs us to do: He needs us to put our faith in Him, and hold on.

            The internal sense of today’s story adds a layer of depth to this idea. Egypt symbolizes the natural mind—the part of us that faces and interacts with this world, as opposed to the spiritual mind, which faces and interacts with the spiritual world. Pharaoh, as king of Egypt, also symbolizes the natural mind (see AC §§5079, 5080, 5244). But Joseph stands for something much higher. He stands for “the heavenly of the spiritual,” which means the goodness, or the joy and the power, of the truth that comes from the Lord (AC §5331, compare §5307). Joseph stands for something from the Lord present deep within our souls. In the literal sense of this story, Pharaoh transfers his authority to Joseph. What this means, in the internal sense, is that the natural mind—the mind that busies itself with worldly thoughts—submits to the heavenly of the spiritual (AC §5310, 5311) It submits to the spirit of the Lord. The natural mind permits itself to be ruled by something higher. When we go through this process, it can feel like we’re losing something. But what’s really happening, when we transfer our authority to Joseph, is that we’re giving the Lord permission to save us. We’re telling Him, “Thy will be done.” And His will is to lift us up.

            Our reading from the Heavenly Doctrine compared deliverance from temptation with being lifted out of a pit, and with the disappearance of a filthy cloud. We didn’t read this part, but the same passage also compares deliverance from temptation with escaping from robbers. We read:

One may also compare the state in which temptation takes place to a person's condition when he falls among robbers. When he gets away his hair is disheveled, his face is rough, and his clothes are torn. If he yields in temptation he remains in that state; but if he overcomes in temptation his condition is happy and peaceful once he has attended to his face, combed his hair, and changed his clothes. (AC §5246.4)

The fact that this passage gives three different illustrations of what it’s like to be released from temptation seems a bit like an invitation to look for more illustrations—more passages from the Word that show us what deliverance feels like. And passages like this aren’t hard to find.

            When the Lord was crossing the Sea of Galilee with His disciples, their boat was caught in a storm that threatened to sink it. That storm is a picture of hell’s will to drown us with falsity (AE §§419.24, 514.22). We read:

And a great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that it was already filling…. And they awoke [the Lord] and said to Him, “Teacher, do You not care that we are perishing?” Then He arose and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Hush, be silent!” And the wind ceased and there was a great calm. (Mark 4:37-39)

Later, the Lord was met by a man who was possessed by a legion of demons—a man who lived naked among the tombs, a man so wild that even chains could not restrain him (Luke 8:27, 29). That man’s condition is a picture of a spirit oppressed by hell. But those demons cowered before the Lord (vv. 28, 31). At His command, they fled from the man that they’d possessed, and entered the bodies of pigs and threw themselves into the sea (v 33). And when other people came running to see what had happened, we’re told that they “found the man from whom the demons had departed, sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind” (v. 35).

            And then there’s the story of the prodigal son. The prodigal son left his home and wasted his money, and ended up destitute. He got a job feeding pigs, and would happily have eaten the pigs’ food, but no one gave him anything (Luke 15:12-16). His condition is a picture of the wretchedness of a selfish life. But when that man chose to go home, and ask for forgiveness and submit himself to his father, his father ran to him. “But when he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him” (v. 20). And then his father—who clearly represents the Lord—said, “Bring out the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet” (v. 22).

            The turning point, in all of these stories, is a moment in which somebody looks to the Lord. The disciples cry out “Teacher, do You not care that we are perishing?” (Mark 4:38). The possessed man meets the Lord at the shore (Luke 8:27). The prodigal son goes home (15:20). And in all of these stories, deliverance comes suddenly. The storm is hushed. The possessed man returns to his right mind. The father runs to his son. Joseph is lifted up.

            When we experience deliverance—when the clouds break, when we feel the forgiveness of the Lord—we aren’t meant to conclude that our troubles are gone for good. But on the other hand, if God can save us once, then God can save us as many times as we need to be saved. His hope is that sooner or later we’ll learn to believe that. If we hold on to Him, sooner or later every night will end, and the morning will come.

Amen.

The Stream of Providence

Rev. Jared Buss

Pittsburgh New Church; January 28, 2024

Readings: Psalm 46; True Christian Religion §766

Today’s sermon is about the stream of providence. We’ll begin by reading forty-sixth psalm [read].

This psalm is a psalm of reassurance—a promise that the Lord is God, and that because He is God, it’s okay if we aren’t strong enough. Often when we turn our thoughts to religion, we end up focusing on what we need to do—or on what we’re supposed to do. We hear God’s ideals, and we try to measure up to them, and we worry that we can’t. It’s easy for us to feel inadequate, or overwhelmed by what we have to do; it isn’t as easy for us to recognize the power of the ally that we have in God. His providence is overall—everywhere, in all things (AC §8478.4). “His providence” means everything that He does to provide for us, everything that He does to care for us. If we want to, we can be in the stream of that providence.

The words “the stream of providence” come from the Heavenly Doctrine, from the book Arcana Coelestia, in which we read, “People in the stream of providence are being carried along constantly towards happier things…. Those in the stream of providence are people who trust in the Divine and ascribe everything to Him” (§8478.4). Another passage from the Heavenly Doctrine says: “The Lord does not clearly appear in His Divine providence, but draws a person along by it as silently as a hidden current or favorable stream draws a ship” (DP §186). There’s a lot that this image suggests to us, if we unpack it. If you’ve ever had the experience of being carried by a river current, you’re off to a good start. That feeling of being borne along by something bigger than you that’s all around you is evocative. The question is, how powerful is that current? When we say “stream of providence” we can be picturing a mountain brook or a mighty river. How strong is the stream of providence?

            Another way to ask the same question is to ask, how persistent is the Lord? In the book of Revelation He says: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me” (Rev. 3:20). How persistently does the Lord knock? How long will He wait outside the door before He gives up and goes away? The underlaying question here is, how hard does the Lord try to have things go His way? How long does He knock? How hard does He push? How strong is the current that flows from Him?

We’re taught over and over in the Heavenly Doctrine that our freedom is sacred, and that the Lord guards it fiercely. He will not let anyone make our spiritual decisions for us, and He certainly won’t overrule or overpower them Himself. He keeps our spirits in a state of equilibrium, so that the forces pushing us towards hell are perfectly matched by forces pushing us towards heaven; and that means that we are totally free to go whichever direction we choose. This teaching sometimes leaves us with the impression that the Lord is hanging back—that He’s staying out of our lives, letting us work it out on our own.

What the Doctrine actually tells us is totally different. Our next reading is from True Christian Religion. We read: [§766].

This idea that the Lord is urging and pressing to be received is connected with the idea that He is knocking. In another passage we read, “That the Lord continually urges and presses a person to open the door to Him is apparent from the Lord’s words in the book of Revelation: ‘Behold, I stand at the door and knock’” (DP §119). He is urging and pressing at the door. He isn’t hanging back, waiting to see if it occurs to us to get up and check the door. He is making Himself known, making Himself felt. In the Word He teaches us to be persistent, and knock until we’re answered (Luke 11:5-8). Surely He’s going to take His own advice. And because He’s God, He is endlessly patient. If you were waiting on a doorstep and no one was answering, how long would you stand there before you gave up? Two minutes? The Lord is truly willing to stand on our doorstep for our entire lives. He is not going to give up on us.

He’s also never going to open the door without our permission. He always honors our freedom, and that idea is so important. Without freedom we’d be nothing. He could break down the door in an instant. The stream of providence could be a flood that washes everything away. But who wants their door to be broken down, or to be swept away in a flood? If the Lord were to force His will on us, He’d destroy His relationship with us, and that’s the opposite of what He wants. So He always honors our freedom.

Besides, it would be too easy for Him to break down the door, or turn the stream of providence into a tsunami. When you’re God Almighty, blunt force isn’t impressive. What is impressive is His ability to guide us powerfully and constantly without ever forcing our hand. He never pushes us to take a step that we haven’t consented to. It’s that combination of power and precision, strength and a tender willingness to yield, that makes His providence astonishing.

Our freedom is so important to Him that by default He leaves us with the appearance that the ball is in our court—that it’s on us to take the initiative. The truth is that He’s always seeking us, always knocking at our door, but in the Gospel of Matthew He says, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you” (7:7). He tells us to seek Him out. The truth is that He always acts first, but He doesn’t force us to see that. He doesn’t reveal the power of His presence in our lives until we have freely chosen to seek Him out, to open our eyes to Him. And in the meantime He’s willing to be invisible, for the sake of our freedom.

This idea is important, because it explains why we tend not to see the hand of God at work in this world. The thing is, because we tend not to see Him, we also tend to forget just how much He wants to save us. He loves us too much to overturn our freedom; He also loves us too much to give us up without a fight. In the Heavenly Doctrine we’re told:

[The Lord is] love itself, to which no other attributes are appropriate than those of pure love and so of pure mercy towards the whole human race, that mercy being such that it wills to save all people, to make them eternally happy, and to impart to them all that is its own—thus out of pure mercy and by the mighty power of love to draw towards heaven, that is, towards Itself, all who are willing to follow. (AC §1735)

We know that the Lord is love. We also know that love is gentle. How often do we acknowledge what a force to be reckoned with love is? Think of your own deepest loves—they don’t back down. Not when the thing you love is at stake. The Lord’s love is as patient and as gentle as we need it to be; but His love is also a mighty stream, an unstoppable stream. All that power is striving to save us. He wants what He wants; He’s not going to back down, not going to quit just because we’re stubborn. He’s going to stand at the door and knock; He’s going to wait at the edge of our experience, pressing and urging to be received.

            When we look at the world, we see a lot that isn’t what God wants. We see wars and greed and corruption. We see people who are hurting, and often we’re among them. The arc of our lives doesn’t always look great. And sometimes, when we’re looking at the messes, the only true thing that anyone can say is, “the Lord didn’t want this.” There are a lot of things that happen in this world that He doesn’t want.

But is it possible that, in spite of that, the Lord’s will is done far more often than not? Because if a person struggles in this world, dealing with heartache and loss, but underneath it all the Lord is making them into an angel, then is there more sorrow or more joy at the end of that story? Is that story a tragedy or a triumph? When we look at the world it’s easy to see the things that God doesn’t want; it isn’t as easy to keep sight of the things that He does want. His goal is to teach us to love. His goal is to heal our souls. His goal is to lift us up from the dust of this world and make us angels. And how much of that is going on right now, right before our eyes, while we’re distracted by traffic and taxes? Isn’t it possible that most of the time He’s taking us exactly where we need to go, in spite of all the pieces on the outside that are out of place?

            After all, He is Almighty God. He wants to save us—He wants it very much—and He’s good at what He does. He is willing to admit defeat, as it were—willing to let us go, if that is truly what we choose. But how often do you think He has to?

            For our part, we do have work to do. Religion is about what we do. We have to seek the Lord; we have to get up and open the door for Him. But it’s also true that this world is in really good hands no matter what we do—no matter how badly we mess up—and sometimes what we need to do is let go and fall back on the knowledge that God has got this, and He is good at what He does. Sometimes we need to hold still and feel the current that is carrying us. That’s why Moses, at the edge of the Red Sea, told the Children of Israel, “Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord” (Ex. 14:13). And in the forty-sixth psalm the Lord says, “Be still and know that I am God” (v. 10).

            That Psalm also says, “There is a river whose streams shall make glad the city of God” (46:4). That river flows through our lives from the moment we’re born, even to eternity. It’s a river of truth, a river of mercy, a river of love flowing out from God, and the current is strong. It’s stronger than politics, stronger than war, stronger than death; it’s stronger than our griefs and our failures. It’s sweeping by those things, passing them by on its way to something far more permanent. It will carry us, as long as we’re willing; and the Lord will never stop urging us to step into the stream. He says:

Listen to Me, O house of Jacob, and all the remnant of the house of Israel, who have been upheld by Me from birth, who have been carried from the womb: Even to your old age, I am He, and even to gray hairs I will carry you. I have made, and I will bear; and I will carry, and I will deliver you. (Is. 46:3, 4)

Amen.

Sometimes Temptation Means that You’re Doing it Right

Rev. Jared Buss

Pittsburgh New Church; January 21, 2024

Readings: Genesis 39:1-23; Arcana Coelestia §§5036.3, 4274

Our next reading is a continuation of the story of Joseph in Potiphar’s house. As we’re starting to see, the whole first half of the Joseph story is made up of a series of rapid ups and downs. His brothers sell him as a slave, but he rises up and becomes Potiphar’s greatest servant. Now, in the part of the story that you’re about to hear, Joseph is cast down again. We read: [Gen. 39:7-23].

The teachings of the New Church tell us—unsurprisingly—that this story is about temptation (AC §4961). So today’s sermon is going to be about temptation. And the idea that we’re going to focus on today is that if we find ourselves in a state of temptation, that doesn’t have to mean that we’re doing everything wrong or that our lives are a mess—though we may feel that way. Strange as it may seem, temptations often arise because we’re doing the right thing. When we’re in temptation, we might feel like our spirit is in a hopeless condition. But the truth is that that temptation probably means that at some point we started doing something good—and we need to hold on to that good thing.

People sometimes speak as though the word “temptation” means “feeling naughty feelings,” or “being seduced by naughty desires.” But temptation is both simpler and more serious than that. A temptation is a spiritual test, or a spiritual conflict. To put it simply, if we’re in a state of temptation, that means that good loves and evil loves are duking it out inside of us. These battles are uncomfortable; they’re attended by feelings of anxiety and unrest. But they need to happen. Temptations are about making choices. Good and evil are clashing within us, and we’re put on the spot: which side are we going to put our weight behind? The purpose of temptation is to enable us to confront and reject our evils. If we don’t confront our evils this way, they stay with us. So, in the Heavenly Doctrine of the New Church, we’re told that “no one can be regenerated unless he also undergoes temptations” (AC §5036.2, see §8403.2). Temptations aren’t fun, but they’re a necessary part of spiritual growth. They’re also a sign that spiritual growth is happening.

We’re going to use the story of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife to illustrate two different aspects of temptation. First we’re going to look at “the bad guys”—or what it is that we fight against in temptation. Then we’re going to look at the course of temptation, or the way that temptation tends to unfold within us.

As far as the “bad guys” are concerned, the thing to note is that temptations aren’t about fighting evil in theory—they’re about making actual changes in our lives. Which means that temptations are likely to center around specific patterns or behaviors that we need to change—specific evils that we need to shun, specific ideas that we need to let go of, and so on. The enemy—or the changes that we need to make—might be really obvious, or they might not. The evils that we need to fight might be behaviors that are visibly wrong, or they might be more subtle.

In the literal sense of today’s story, Joseph has to resist an obvious evil: he is invited to commit adultery with Potiphar’s wife (Gen. 39:7, 12). Lots of people have fought that battle, and it’s a good battle to fight. Or they’ve fought to quit pornography, or to control their temper and stop yelling at people, or to escape an addiction, and so on. Sometimes the battle is about an action that we wish we could take.

But in the internal sense of today’s story, Potiphar’s wife stands for something much more subtle: she symbolizes “unspiritual natural truth” (AC §4988). What this means is that she stands for ideas that were good enough, or true enough, once upon a time, but aren’t good enough or true enough anymore. The Heavenly Doctrine gives us two examples of unspiritual natural good: the first is getting married to someone because you’re physically attracted to them, and not for any spiritual reason (AC §4992.2). The second example is doing good to someone because they’re your friend, without giving any thought to what this friend is like—whether they’re a good person or a bad person (ibid.). In both of these examples, there’s room for growth, but the problem is subtle. You don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. If you realize that your marriage is founded on a shallow kind of attraction, the solution isn’t divorce—the solution is to invite the Lord to bring new life to your marriage. If you realize that your relationship with a friend is persuading you to endorse that friend’s bad behavior, the solution isn’t to shun your friend—the solution is to learn how to love someone’s good qualities, while at the same time resisting their bad qualities.

In the internal sense of the Word, Potiphar’s wife stands for truths—or ideas—that support the old patterns that we need to let go of. So she might stand for the assumption that physical attraction and physical intimacy are the “point” of marriage. She might stand for the belief that friendship involves absolute loyalty to your friends, no matter what those friends do (see AC §5008.3). At a certain point in our lives, ideas like these are acceptable. But then we grow a little more, and we find that they aren’t acceptable any more—they’re unspiritual, and they’re holding us down. We have to let go of them. But that involves separating ourselves from our old way of thinking, and that’s hard. So we fall into temptation.

A lot of temptations are centered around these kinds of internal shifts. Often we don’t even see what it is that our spirit is wrestling with—we just know that something’s going on. One takeaway from all of this is that we shouldn’t expect temptations to look a certain way. They come in all shapes and sizes. Sometimes we’ll know exactly what they’re about, and other times we’ll feel lost. One way or another, the point of temptation is to give us the opportunity to reject our own junk and turn to the Lord. We can’t go wrong with choosing to put it all into His hands.

But now I want to look at what the story of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife has to teach us about the course of temptation, or the way that temptation tends to unfold within us. If we look at this story superficially, it’s the archetypal temptation story—a story about seduction. Potiphar’s wife tempts Joseph with her beauty. But if we look more closely at the story, it becomes obvious really quickly that Joseph isn’t tempted by Potiphar’s wife’s beauty. He flat-out refuses her the first time she approaches him (Gen. 39:8, 9). When she physically takes hold of him, he physically runs away from her (v. 12). This isn’t an illustration of temptation—this is an illustration of rejecting evil. The part of this story that illustrates temptation is the part that comes next—when Potiphar’s wife accuses Joseph of approaching her inappropriately (vv. 14-18), and Potiphar’s anger is aroused (v. 19), and Joseph is thrown in prison (v. 20). Being falsely accused, having someone else be angry with you, and being put in prison are three things that symbolize temptation—three things that illustrate what temptation feels like (AC §§5035-5037).

The point is that this story isn’t about Joseph doing the wrong thing—or even wanting to do the wrong thing—and plunging into temptation as a result of that. On the contrary, this story is about Joseph doing the right thing, and getting put into a situation that represents temptation because he did the right thing. If Joseph had done what Potiphar’s wife wanted him to do, she wouldn’t have gotten him in trouble. When we do what the hells want us to do—that is, when we do evil—they do their best to keep quiet. They don’t want to interrupt us. They don’t want us to reflect on what we’re doing.

But when we do the right thing, they attack us. If they can’t lead us into evil, they try to at least tear down our efforts to do good. If they can’t find any actual dirt on us, they start inventing dirt—they come at us with false accusations. They dredge up every bad inclination and every unclean feeling that we’ve ever had, and treat us like we are those bad desires. In fact, the Heavenly Doctrine says that evil spirits will plant evils and falsities within us, and then turn around and accuse and condemn us for the very evils and falsities that they whispered to us (AC §§761, 1917). Which is pretty much what Potiphar’s wife does: she tries to commit adultery with Joseph, and when he refuses her, she turns around and accuses him of trying to commit adultery with her.

So if we find ourselves in a state of temptation—if we find ourselves being persecuted by evil spirits—that probably means that we’ve been doing something right. The hells wouldn’t feel so threatened if they liked the direction that we were moving in. Of course being in a state of temptation doesn’t mean that we’re saints. Temptation is a conflict between good and evil—a real conflict, a conflict that could go either way. If we’re in temptation, that means that hell still has power in our lives. But it also means that heaven has power in our lives. Here are two different passages from the Heavenly Doctrine that speak to this idea. Both of these passages are printed in the worship handout. First we read: [AC §5036.3].

What we’re being taught in that passage is that we aren’t allowed to enter into temptation until we’ve experienced enough spiritual growth that it’s possible for us to actually “win.” That is, we aren’t allowed to enter into temptation until it’s possible for the angels to defend us in temptation; and they aren’t able to defend us until something spiritual has started to take hold within us. The next reading from the Heavenly Doctrine makes this idea even clearer: [AC §4274].

If we don’t care about anything good or true, we won’t be tempted. If we don’t care about anything good or true, then there’s nothing to fight about. Hell will just have its way with us. If we find ourselves in a state of spiritual turmoil, that means we’ve got some work to do. But it also means that something good is putting up a fight within us.

And this is why the Lord, in the New Testament, tells us over and over to endure, to carry on, even in the face of persecution. When we start trying to do the right thing, hell will try to stop us. And the Lord’s message is “stay the course.” He says, “Now brother will deliver up brother to death, and a father his child; and children will rise up against parents and cause them to be put to death. And you will be hated by all for My name’s sake. But he who endures to the end will be saved” (Matt. 10:21, 22). And in the Sermon on the Mount He says: “Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven” (Matt. 5:11, 12).

            As for Joseph: Joseph was put in prison, and in that prison the Lord was with him (Gen. 39:20). The Lord was able to make him a blessing to the people around him, even while he endured the tribulations that he had to endure (vv. 21-23). And the Lord had no intention that Joseph should move backwards—that he should go back to being a slave in Potiphar’s house. The path forward took Joseph through that prison to something better on the other side.

Amen.

The Power of Simplicity

Rev. Jared Buss

Pittsburgh New Church; January 14, 2024

Readings: Genesis 37:18-36; Arcana Coelestia §589

            To begin with, I’m going to read the next part of the Joseph story, picking up exactly where the reading for the children left off. This next part of the story is about Joseph’s brothers breaking the news to their father. We read: [Gen. 37:29-36].

            This story is sad. There really isn’t anything happy about the passages we’ve heard today. Of course Joseph is liberated much later on, but we’re not there yet. One of the challenges of doing a long series, like the series we’re doing on Joseph, is that you have to dwell on the sad parts of the story as well as the happy parts. As I said to the children, it’s hard to find any moral or lesson in today’s readings other than, “don’t do any of the things you see here.”

Joseph’s brothers go to some lengths to conceal the crime that they’ve committed. They want to make Joseph disappear—they want to be done with this dreamer, this boy who dares to tell them that they will bow down to him (Gen. 37:5-9, 20). They also want to appear innocent after the crime is over. Which is what criminals usually want. We aren’t going to focus on the evils of murder or slavery, because we already know how we should hold those things. Today’s sermon is about the deeper meaning of this story, which is, in a nutshell, that people sometimes treat the truth the same way that Jacob’s sons treated Joseph.

Last week we talked about what Joseph symbolizes, in the internal sense of the Word. Broadly speaking, he stands for the internal person, or the higher regions of our minds; his brothers, on the other hand, stand for the external person, or the lower levels of our minds. More specifically, Joseph stands for truth from the Lord, also called “the Divine Spiritual” (AC §§4669, 4724). And more specifically still, he’s said to symbolize “the heavenly of the spiritual” (AC §§4286, 4592, 4675). When the teachings of the New Church use terms like this, the word “heavenly” refers to something that has to do with goodness, and the word “spiritual” refers to something that has to with truth. So Joseph stands for the goodness or the blessings that flow from the Lord’s own truth.

If all of this sounds kind of lofty, or if we look at our own lives and wonder where this thing that Joseph represents actually shows up, that’s to be expected. The whole point is that Joseph stands for something higher, something heavenly, something transcendent. The natural mind—which is the mind that most of us live in most of the time—doesn’t “get” Joseph. Joseph’s brothers, who represent the natural mind, don’t get Joseph. They don’t realize that God has chosen him to rule over them; they think he’s just a kid with delusions of grandeur. Joseph stands for something that most of us probably don’t see very often—a flash of heavenly light and heavenly warmth that our minds aren’t always open to.

And the story we read today is about what happens to that higher truth when our natural minds are full of falsities. Those falsities don’t just fail to understand the spiritual thing that Joseph symbolizes: they are actively hostile to it. They actively try to bury it, and erase the memory of it. The thing is, these falsities then try to pass themselves off as innocent, just as Joseph’s brothers did. They concealed what they had done from their father. When we’re in a state that’s hostile to the Lord’s truth, we conceal that hostility from ourselves. We convince ourselves that we’re blameless.

What’s so tricky about this is that Joseph’s brothers stand for things that should be true. They stand for truths known to the church (see AC §§5403, 5409, 5741)—that is, they stand for ideas that come from the Word. These ideas are true… unless they’re separated from the thing that Joseph symbolizes. Joseph stands for the Lord’s truth, or the Lord’s presence within the truth—the Lord’s spirit infilling the truth with heavenly goodness. When ideas from the Word are used against Joseph, they become falsities.

In order to understand all of this properly, we need a more grounded idea of the kind of truths that Joseph symbolizes. The passages from the Heavenly Doctrine that discuss today’s particular story associate Joseph with two specific truths (see AC §§4723, 4747). The first of these is that the Lord’s Human is Divine. Jesus Christ, who is revealed to us in the Gospel, is God. In other words, as He Himself says, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Him (Matt. 28:18). If we let that truth soak in and carry weight with us, then that’s a “Joseph” truth: it opens the door to heaven and to God Himself. The other truth that comes up again and again in the explanation of today’s story that the works of charity do contribute to our salvation. In other words, what we do matters. Religion can’t just be a spiritual thing—it has to “show up.” The Christian church has a history of attacking these two truths, which is one of the reasons why the Heavenly Doctrine focusses on them. You may also have noticed that these two truths resonate with the two great commandments, which are that we’re to love the Lord above all things, and our neighbors as ourselves (Matt. 22:37-40; Mark 12:29-31; Luke 10:27). Joseph is connected to the two great commandments. These two commandments are the soul of the Word and the soul of the church; so if we take a truth from the Word and use it against the great commandments, that truth becomes a falsity (AC §4776).

The world we live in likes to celebrate love—which makes it easy for us to champion the two great commandments, which are all about love. But love as the light of heaven reveals it to us and love as we understand it aren’t always the same thing. Teachings or messages about what we call love can be falsities, such as Joseph’s brothers represent. The Lord says, “If you love Me, keep my commandments” (John 14:15). If we wave the banner of love to the Lord, and yet live a life that goes against His commandments, we’re burying the light of heaven.

We can do the same thing with love for the neighbor. Love for the neighbor is one of the things that the world around us celebrates the most loudly—and it’s worthy of every bit of that celebration. “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” can feel like a tired message, but it’s still exactly what we need to hear. The thing is, the Lord says that the first step on the road to loving the neighbor is to cease to do evil to the neighbor (see Is. 1:16; TCR §435). Sometimes we convince ourselves that we want to love people, yet we reject the Lord’s definition of love. If we, for example, were to say to ourselves, “the Lord told us not to judge, because judging is unloving; and that means that no one is allowed to judge me; and that means that I’m allowed to live whatever life I want, even if the Lord says otherwise,” that would be taking something that once was true and using it to throw Joseph into a pit.

As I said before, when we do this kind of thing, our reflex is to hide it from ourselves. Joseph was hidden in a pit; out of sight, out of mind. When we do this kind of thing, we argue with ourselves until we’ve convinced ourselves that what we’re doing is just; and anything that speaks out against our conclusions gets buried. The symbolism of what Joseph’s brothers do to his tunic is especially interesting. That tunic—or coat of many colors—stands for the external truths that clothe the heavenly truth that Joseph symbolizes. The Heavenly Doctrine says that the tunic stands for appearances of truth: in other words, the tunic stands for those higher truths once they’ve shone down into the external mind, and appeared to us in ways that we can see and understand (AC §4677, 4741). To put it simply, the tunic stands for everything that confirms and supports those higher truths.

Joseph’s brothers strip him of his tunic (Gen. 37:23). To strip Joseph of his tunic is to hide the evidence—to get rid of everything that confirms that higher truth that we don’t want to listen to. And later on, his brothers paint the tunic with blood (v. 31): they paint it the color that they want it to be. This stands for taking the truth and making it look the way we want it to look: making it mean what we want it to mean (AC §§4769, 4770). When we do this sort of thing, we do violence to the Lord’s truth. We do violence to the spirit of the Word. The bloodstained tunic is a representation of that violence.

What’s the remedy to all this bad stuff? Well, the rest of the Joseph story is about the remedy to the problem that emerges in today’s story. As I said before, the trouble with moving slowly through this story is that it’ll take us a while to get to the happy parts. But who comes to church to hear exclusively about problems?

Today’s readings do give us a hint of a way forward. When Joseph’s brothers sell him, they sell him to some Ishmaelites. What happens next is a little confusing, but it seems that those Ishmaelites then sell Joseph to some Midianites, who sell him to Potiphar in Egypt (Gen. 37:28, 36). In the literal sense, these Ishmaelites and Midianites don’t seem like such great people, since they’re buying and selling slaves. But we can also think of them as the people who take Joseph away from his brothers—or even, the people who rescue Joseph from his brothers—and if we hold the story this way, then the symbolism of the Ishmaelites and Midianites makes a little more sense.

In the internal sense of the Word, the Ishmaelites and Midianites symbolize people who are in simple good and simple truth (AC §§4747, 4756, 4788). That is, they stand for people who are a bit simplistic—people who don’t have an expansive or nuanced understanding of the teachings of the Word. What these people have going for them is that, in their simplicity, they accept the authority and the basic message of the Word.

Most people would prefer not to be simplistic. Most of us want to learn and understand. After all, here we are in church; people come to church for lots of reasons, but one of them is to learn. Clearly learning and understanding are good. But there is an inherent danger in being learned, which is that we’ll get carried away by our own cleverness. The Heavenly Doctrine regularly makes statements like, “It is a common and well-known fact that the learned have less belief than the simple in a life after death, and that in general they see Divine Truths less clearly than the simple do” (AC §4760.4). Of course, this statement was written a long time ago; whether or not it’s still true today is something that we’re left to ponder on our own.

What certainly is true is that all of the mental gymnastics that we looked at earlier—hiding Joseph in a pit, painting his tunic with blood—everything that Joseph’s brothers do to hide their crime, relies on cleverness. Everything that twists the message of the Word away from the Lord, away from the two great commandments, and away from the Lord’s definition of love and charity relies on cleverness. If we simply assert that the Lord is God; that our job is to obey Him; and that the Word is His Word, and is therefore true, whether we understand it or not, then we can’t hurt the truth that Joseph represents. We might not fully grasp that truth; but we won’t hurt it either.

But it can be difficult for people—especially for educated people—to make their peace with this kind of simple faith. Maybe we want to insist that we’re too smart to accept something just because somebody else says it’s true. And yet, the smartest people of all are the ones who are able to recognize when they’re out of their depth. There is more truth in this world, and especially in heaven, than we can possibly comprehend. And as we’ve all experienced, we don’t always know how to make ourselves happy. The smartest thing of all is to recognize that we need a teacher, and to put our faith in the right Teacher.

And of course the Lord wants to open our eyes—we will get there. For now, accepting that He is the Shepherd and we are the sheep is a good start. Our final reading for today is about this kind of simplicity [read AC §589].

Amen.

Keeping Watch

Rev. Jared Buss

Pittsburgh New Church; December 17, 2023

Readings: Luke 2:8-20 (children’s talk); Isaiah 21:11, 12; Apocalypse Revealed §158

            As far as we know, the shepherds were the only ones who received the joyful news on the day that the Lord was born. The angels didn’t sing to the whole of Bethlehem: they sang to the shepherds. This must have been because the shepherds were ready to receive this news in a way that the rest of Bethlehem wasn’t. In this sense we want to be like the shepherds: when the Lord makes His advent—when He draws nearer to us—we don’t want to miss it. We don’t want to sleep through it. The Lord is offering us heavenly gifts all the time; wouldn’t it be wonderful if we actually heard that good news?

            The quality that probably stands out the most in the shepherds is the simple joy that we considered during the children’s talk. When the angels went away from them, the shepherds didn’t discuss what they should do: they went into the city “with haste” (Luke 2:16). And then they told everyone what they had seen (v. 17). There’s something wonderfully innocent about their eagerness and their lack of self-conscious doubt. And it’s clear that when it comes to receiving the Lord, innocence is the most important quality. The mind does matter; but in the end it is the heart that receives Him or doesn’t receive Him. The angels came to the shepherds because the shepherds’ hearts were open.

            But we talked about this during the children’s talk. There is another dimension to the shepherds, and that’s what we’ll be focusing on for the rest of this sermon. In the deeper sense of the Word, the shepherds stand for people who are paying attention. At the start of their story, we’re told that the shepherds were, “living out in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night” (Luke 2:8). They were literally awake when almost everybody else was asleep. And they weren’t just awake: they were watching over their flocks. They were protecting something. They were standing vigil in the darkness.

            There are a lot of passages in the Word that associate watching, or being watchful, with the coming of the Lord. For starters, in the Gospel the Lord says over and over that His people should watch, because they do not know the day or the hour in which He is coming to them (Matt. 25:13; cf. 24:42; Mark 13:35; Luke 12:40). And He says, “Blessed are those servants whom the master, when He comes, will find watching” (Luke 12:37). These teachings are associated with the Lord’s second coming. But if we go back to the Old Testament, we find teachings about watching that were given long before the Lord had even made His first advent. For example, here’s a prophecy from the book of Isaiah: [read 21:11, 12].

            By themselves these words are fairly mysterious; but in the Heavenly Doctrine of the New Church we’re told that this is an advent prophecy (AC §8511.4; TCR §764). Specifically, the morning that comes symbolizes the coming of the Lord. He is the morning. As Zacharias says, He is “the Dayspring from on high” (Luke 1:78). In the second book of Samuel He is said to be “like the light of the morning when the sun rises, a morning without clouds” (23:4; cf. AC §§22, 2405; DLW §233; TCR §§109, 764). When the Lord was born on earth, He created a new morning for the whole human race. Ever since then, this process has played out over and over on an individual scale. Sometimes our hearts and minds are in darkness. When the Lord breaks through that, there is a morning within us.

In the prophecy from Isaiah, the watchman is the one who sees that the morning is coming. Which makes sense: a watchman on a city wall would be able to see that daybreak was near before the people below him, in the shadow of the wall, could see this. Besides, the watchman would be awake as day began to break; almost everybody else would be asleep. This prophecy seems to be set at nighttime: it begins with that cry, “Watchman what of the night? Watchman, what of the night?” (Is. 21:11). This watchman is standing vigil in the darkness, waiting for the coming of the morning.

            The watchman has a lot in common with the shepherds from the Christmas story. Both were protecting something: the shepherds guarded their sheep, and the watchman guarded the city. Both had to peer out into the darkness. And both were awake when almost everybody else was asleep. And these qualities have something to do with being able to recognize the presence of the Lord. This state of mind is connected with the ability to receive good news from heaven.

            What does this really mean? Surely the Lord isn’t saying that He wants us to be suspicious—that He wants us to fixate on the shadows because bad things might be coming. Being watchful isn’t the same as fixating on the bad stuff. Being watchful just means paying attention—to the good and the bad. What the Lord wants is for us to be spiritually awake. We’ll turn now to our next reading, which is from the Heavenly Doctrine, from the book Apocalypse Revealed [read §158].

            To be watchful—or to be spiritually awake—is to have truths and live in accordance with them. But what’s the point of saying that we should do that? Isn’t that what everybody who comes to church is already trying to do? The contrast that this passage sets up is between those who do these things—those who learn truths and live them—and those who think that they’re doing these things, but in reality are only going through the motions. The reading says that the ones who are “asleep and dreaming” are the ones who lack truths, and are “engaged simply in worship” (AR §158). Another passage from the same book says that the kind of worship that’s being talked about here is “lifeless worship,” and that lifeless worship is what we’re engaged in when we go to church and do churchy things, “yet without desiring to know any truths of faith or wishing to do any goods of charity” (§154).

            In other words, lifeless worship is the state of just not wanting to go very deep. It’s a state of more or less doing what we’re supposed to do: doing enough stuff that looks good on the outside that we can convince ourselves that we’re good people—or at least, convince ourselves that we’re doing fine—even though, on the inside, we have no interest in learning about spiritual things, no interest in changing the way we see the world, and no real interest in letting our hearts be changed either. We’re just going through the motions. We’re like sleepwalkers: our spirit—the part of us that’s actually alive and conscious—is not present in the things that we do.

            This state is called a state of “lifeless worship,” but obviously it isn’t the “worship” part that’s the problem. Going to church and praying and reading the Word are never bad things to do; it’s just that these things don’t do much for us if we aren’t awake while we do them. It should be obvious as well that we can be spiritually asleep—or sometimes people say “dead inside”—even if we virtually never do churchy things. If going through the motions of a religious life isn’t enough to wake us up inside, then not even bothering to go through the motions probably won’t be enough either. The less thought we give to spiritual things, the less likely we are to realize that the world in front of our noses is only the outmost edge of the real world, and that we were designed to engage with spiritual reality, and that there’s just no way for us to be truly happy as long as most of what we are is mothballed or sound asleep.

            To wake up is to realize that there is more—more than the shell that is life in this natural world—and to want to understand it. This is why the reading says that “watchfulness… is obtained only through truths” (AR §158). Truth is light; truth is what reveals the world within. Of course merely hitting the books isn’t enough to wake us up: the reading says that to be watchful is to have truths and live in accordance with them (ibid.). Truths that are never allowed to be more than ideas are inert and dead: we discover the power of spiritual truth when we try to live it, when we step into the stream, as it were. The reading says that truths “appear in their own light and in their own clarity when a person lives according to them” (ibid.). When we try to live as though we are spiritual beings—as though we are God’s creatures—and we seek the truth that makes that life possible, that’s when we wake up.

            This is what it really means to be watchful. This quality is what we’re meant to understand by the watchfulness of the shepherds and the watchman from the prophecy. These figures stand for people who are spiritually awake—and especially for people who choose to remain awake even when much of the world around them goes to sleep. And it just makes sense that these are the ones who recognize the Lord when He draws near. He won’t appear before the eyes of our bodies; so if the eyes of our spirits are shut, how will we ever see Him? When we’re spiritually asleep, the truths of the Word are just ink on a page, or like boring presenters mumbling over the radio. But if we’re awake, the truths of the Word are like messengers from heaven—and sometimes they sing together, like a multitude of the heavenly host.

            There are two more things that I want to say about watchfulness. First, I said earlier that being watchful isn’t the same thing as being suspicious or paranoid. That’s a true and important distinction. Being watchful doesn’t mean that we see evil where it doesn’t exist; but it does require us to be honest about evil when we do see it. Sometimes night falls. When that happens, we can either go to sleep, or we can look boldly into the darkness. For the most part the darkness that we need to be concerned with is the darkness within. But that stuff is hard to think about; that’s the stuff that makes us feel that we’d rather just remain sleep. The natural mind says, “Why would I be spiritual if being spiritual is hard? Why would I be spiritual if that means that I have to reflect on evils within myself?” But is hiding our faces really better than facing the darkness? Besides, if we can’t acknowledge the night, how will we ever notice the coming of the morning?

            The second thing that I want to say about watchfulness is that the shepherds and the watchman from the prophecy weren’t just watching out for themselves. They were protecting someone else. They were watching over their flocks—or their people—by night. In addition, the Heavenly Doctrine says that both shepherds and watchmen symbolize those who teach and lead other people (AC §§343, 8211.5). The significance of this is that being spiritually awake goes hand-in-hand with living for more than just ourselves. When we’re asleep we live in a small world: we see ourselves and our own desires, but everyone else is more or less hidden by a fog. Waking up involves recognizing the real humanity of the people around us, and with that recognition comes a certain responsibility: a shift from looking to be fed to being the one who tries to feed someone else; a shift from always asking, “how do I get through this” to looking up and asking “what does this person need?”

            Waking up is a slow process. And maybe when we do wake up, we’ll discover that we’ve woken up in darkness—that the spirit we’re now aware of is a spirit that needs help—and that the morning is only a promise. But the morning always comes. And those who keep watch are those who see the break of dawn.

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.” (Luke 2:9-11)

Amen.

The Messiah We Expect

Rev. Jared Buss

Pittsburgh New Church; December 10, 2023

Readings: Isaiah 9:2, 6, 7 (children’s talk); Luke 1:67-79; Mark 14:55-64; True Christian Religion §205

Our topic today is waiting for the advent of the Lord. Before He was born there were so many people who longed for His arrival. Yet when at last He did make His advent, so many people were disappointed. There were people who believed in Him—who recognized Him for who He was. But there were others who felt that He wasn’t what they’d been waiting for. So what we’re really talking about today is expectations. Many of us, in one way or another, are waiting to feel the presence of God. But how often do we end up waiting for the wrong thing—for a Savior that we’ve invented, instead of the one who is actually coming to us? Maybe sometimes we long for the Lord to come to us, even though He is already here.

Our next reading is the prophecy that Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist, delivers after his son is born. This prophecy is all about the recognition that the moment has come: the promises are being kept. The Messiah is about to be born. We read: [Luke 1:67:79].

Clearly, Zacharias gets it. He says that the Lord has “visited and redeemed His people” (Luke 1:68); he says that the Lord has “raised up a horn of salvation in the house of His servant David” (v. 69). That horn of salvation means Jesus Christ—the Savior, who came to deliver His people from the hand of their enemies (v. 74). And Zacharias says that the Lord is doing as He has spoken by the mouth of His holy prophets, who have been since the world began (v. 70). Zacharias recognizes that thousands of years of prophecies are now being fulfilled. The Lord is doing what He said He would do. This is the moment.

This prophecy gives us a picture of the way that the world was meant to receive the Lord. Zacharias’s words are full of joy and hope, and that’s what everyone should have felt. Of course, Zacharias wasn’t the only one who “got it.” His wife Elizabeth got it. The wise men who crossed desserts to find the Lord got it. So did the shepherds and Simeon and Anna. And obviously Mary and Joseph knew that a miracle had happened. But that list might be it; as far as we know, the rest of the world had no idea that anything special had happened.

When Jesus was born, His mother laid Him in a manger, “because there was no room for them in the inn” (Luke 2:7). In the internal sense of the Word, an inn symbolizes a place of instruction; so it symbolizes the church (AE §706.12; De Verbo §7.5). When the Lord was born, there was no room for Him in the church.

And the fact that the church that had longed for Him also wasn’t ready to receive Him only became clearer after He began His public ministry. There were people who believed in Him. But others complained that His teachings were too hard (John 6:60). For the most part, even those who did recognize something good in Him weren’t quite sure who He was; they scratched their heads and said, “Could this be the Son of David?” (Matt. 12:23). On Palm Sunday a crowd sang and shouted for the Lord, and all of Jerusalem was stirred up (Matt. 21:9-11; John 12:12, 13). But a short while later the crowd turned against Him, and the people of Jerusalem shouted out that He should be crucified (Matt. 27:20-22; Mark 15:11-14; Luke 23:18-23; John 19:13-15)

And the fact that the Lord was crucified is the final proof that the church He was born into didn’t to receive Him as its God. The movement to get Him crucified was spearheaded by the leaders of that church. Our next reading is part of Mark’s account of the Lord’s trial before those leaders. The thing to bear in mind, as you listen to this, is that these people trying the Lord knew all of the prophecies. They’d heard the reports of Jesus’ mighty works. They’d been given every opportunity to know that the Man before them was the One whose coming had been foretold. We read: [Mark 14:55-64].

The moment described here is tragic. Jesus, standing before the high priest, is asked a direct question: “Are you the Christ?” (Mark 14:61). And He answers, “I am” (v. 62). In just two words He tells those men that the One they’ve been waiting for is standing in front of them. Everything has been fulfilled; the Son of God is before their eyes. And they don’t just fail to recognize Him: they decide that He has told a blasphemous lie, and is deserving of death (v. 64).

How did these people miss the mark so completely? The Gospel paints a pretty clear picture of their mentality, so it isn’t too hard to figure out where they went wrong. But here’s a clear, succinct statement from the teachings of the New Church, from the book True Christian Religion. This is describing the general state of the people of the church at the time the Lord was born. [Read §205].

The Lord’s people missed Him, when He came to them, because they were waiting for someone who would lead them to worldly glory, not someone who would lead them to heaven. They wanted a Messiah who would exalt them above all the nations of the world (TCR §205)—and the key word there is “wanted.” They missed the truth, not because they were incapable of seeing it because they had set their heart on something different. To be fair, many of the prophecies of the advent are hard to understand, and many of them do seem to speak of the Messiah establishing a glorious kingdom. So it’s hard to blame the people—especially the common, uneducated people—for having some misguided expectations. The real problem was that so many of them refused to adjust their expectations after the Lord came to them, and showed them who the Christ really was. And of course, Zacharias and other learned people, like the wise men, were able to recognize that Jesus Christ was the fulfillment of those prophecies. So people like the chief priests and the Pharisees, who were also learned, could have understood a little better. But they didn’t want to.

It might seem like we’re picking on a specific group of people who lived a long time ago. But this problem isn’t unique to a specific group of people—this is a human phenomenon. Not the part about hating the Lord, per se, but the part about false expectations. Surely all of us have, at one point or another, been disappointed by a good thing, because we were expecting something different. This can happen in small ways and in big ways. Children are sometimes disappointed with their Christmas presents, if they don’t get what they wished for. Maybe this happens to adults too—though if we step back and think about it, it’s absolutely outrageous to be disappointed with a gift. Expectations are also notably problematic when it comes to relationships, such as marriages. It’s easy for people to form unreasonable expectations for their partners, or to expect their partners to be someone other than who they are. It’s not that all expectations are bad: there are things that we should expect of the people who are close to us. It’s just that we human beings are good at taking what we want—what we wish for—and turning it into an expectation.

And we certainly can do this to the Lord. He made His advent two thousand years ago, but on another level His advent is ongoing. He is constantly reaching out, pressing and urging to be received; and when we receive Him, it’s as though He comes to earth all over again (TCR §766, see §774). Just on a smaller scale. From time to time, in varying ways and to varying degrees, we recognize that we need Him. We feel like we’re out of answers, and we long for light. We feel tired, or grief-stricken, or just plain overwhelmed, and we long for comfort. We celebrate Christmas, and we long for that special feeling—that warmth that let’s us know He’s here.

Sometimes we get what we want. Other times we wait and wonder. God alone knows what we really need, and He alone knows the plan for getting it to us. Maybe sometimes we just need to wait a little longer. But it’s perfectly possible that God is already here—that what we need is knocking at the door—and that we’ve been missing it, because we’ve been looking for the wrong thing. We’ve been waiting for the Savior we want, the Savior that we’ve fashioned in our heads, instead of the Savior who is actually coming to us.

There are lots of different ways that we might do this. We might be waiting for a Messiah who will dazzle us with holy feelings—a Savior who will hurl out the old and usher in the new with spiritual thunder and lightning. When yet God might be speaking to us not with thunder, but with a still small voice (cf. 1 Kings 19:12). Or it could be the other way around: we could be waiting for a quiet God, a God who will pat us on the back and say that everything is okay, when in fact God is here, but what He’s saying is, “You need to take up your bed and walk; there’s something you need to do, before your heart can be at peace again” (cf. John 5:8). We could be waiting for God to show up and fix everybody else, and be completely tuning Him out because He’s trying to tell us that our energy and attention need to be directed within. We could be waiting for a God who cares just as much about worldly things as we do, or a God who is all about our cause—who sees the world through the lens of the political campaign or social crusade or even the religious mission that we’re invested in. When yet God might be saying, “This cause is worthy, but there are good things beyond this, and My kingdom is not of this world. The place where you will meet Me face-to-face is deeper within” (cf. John 18:36).

The list could go on. We could invent a thousand different saviors; but there is only one Lord. If we’re waiting for the wrong thing—if we’re being blinded by our expectations—how do we recognize that? How do we penetrate that fog? The answer, for good or for ill, is that it’s a process. Zacharias, John the Baptist’s father, recognized that the prophecies were being fulfilled and that the Lord was about to be born. But before that happened he was punished for being unwilling to believe the angel Gabriel: for nine months he was unable to speak (Luke 1:20) In that time he must have learned some humility, because when at last he spoke, he spoke out in praise of God (v. 64). People tend not to learn much without hitting some bumps in the road. That’s part of the process; we go through our trials and tribulations. There is no silver bullet. As we keep trying, the Lord leads us into clearer light.

But trying means doing. We won’t “get” the Lord just by sitting around and pondering Him. If we want to recognize Him when we find Him, we need to live as He teaches. The life that fills the teachings of the Word is the Lord Himself; when we’re in that life, we know the Lord. One thing to bear in mind is that the life He calls us to live certainly does involve serving our neighbors, but it also involves giving Him some of our time. We need to do good things; but we also need to stop, and hush the voices of the world, and listen to Him. We need to practice setting our stuff aside, so that we can simply receive what is. This is exactly what church is for: church services are meant to be moments in which the Lord speaks more clearly than we do. This is why it’s so important to spend time reading the Word, and talking to God. You can’t get to know someone without putting some effort into getting to know them.

Mercifully, the Lord has no desire to remain hidden. He is reaching out to us; and if we reach out to Him, and stay the course, we will meet Him. In a prophecy of His advent from the book of Isaiah we read: “And it will be said in that day: Behold, this is our God; we have waited for Him, and He will save us. This is the Lord; we have waited for Him; we will be glad and rejoice in His salvation” (25:9).

Amen.

Our Intentions vs. Our Impact on Others

A sermon by Rev. Michael Gladish

Pittsburgh, October 18th, 2020

“If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone.  If he hears you, you have gained your brother.  But if he will not hear, take with you one or two more, that ‘by the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established.’”   – Matthew 18:15-16

Maybe you’ve heard the expression, “What you think of me is none of my business.”  It’s a catchy phrase and it seems like a reasonable concept, but think about it.  If I made a true but critical comment to someone without regard to their feelings about it, would that be none of my business?  Or if a woman were to dress in a revealing or suggestive manner in a gathering of men, would their responses be none of her business?  What if I paid what to me was a genuine compliment to someone in a way that the other person considered to be flirting, or even harassment?  Would that be none of my business?  Finally, if I said something clever, or even brilliant, and someone misunderstood me, would that be none of my business?  What do you think?

The question raises all sorts of issues about personal responsibility, judgment, ethics, decorum, psychology, communication, and, yes, plain old hypocrisy!  In short, it’s complicated!

Certainly, we know that our intentions are critical in any evaluation of our spiritual states – which is why it’s so hard for us to make authentic judgments about other people’s spiritual states.  Even in civil law motives are considered important, and can seriously affect the judgments in a court of law.  For example, first degree murder is homicide committed with intent, and may result in life imprisonment, whereas second or third-degree murder may be accidental, and may result in a much lighter sentence, or even a judgment of innocence.

On the other hand, people with really good intentions can do a lot of harm.  For example, as is illustrated in a couple of stories in the Word, a man may be cutting wood with an axe only to have the axe head fly off the handle and kill somebody.  The intention is good and useful, but the lack of appropriate caution has a devastating effect.  Again, many books have been written recently about intentional and unintentional, systemic racism in our country.  Like it or not, the lack of real, personal awareness of how our speech and actions can affect people coming from different racial or cultural backgrounds can be hurtful and insulting.  Whose problem is that?

Will and Understanding Work Together

Before you answer, remember what the Writings say about the vital importance of the conjunction of the will with the understanding, so that real uses can be performed.  We surely can be saved and get to heaven based on our good intentions, but in the end, where knowledge has been lacking, this can only occur after a period of instruction in the spiritual world.  Meanwhile, in this world, in order to serve others well, it is imperative that we know and understand what we are doing, including its possible impact on others.  In other words, we need to be able to anticipate the outcome of what we say or do, and that requires two things, education and an abiding sense of humility.

This is not a novel concept.  All commercial advertising, for instance, is premised on this principle: how can we come across to potential customers in ways that will make our product or service attractive to them?  So, in preparing an ad, the writer or producer will first think carefully about what the prospects might be willing and able to hear, and then try VERY hard to set aside any personal bias about what approach seems smart to the company.  The same applies to the product or service itself.  It’s all very good to have a fine idea, but if people don’t see it that way then it’s all for naught.  After all, as a colleague once put it, you can make the best dog food in the world, but if the dogs don’t like it, you’re not going to sell much of it.

Likewise, a young man seeking the attention of a young woman will take care to consider how he comes across to her.  He will not just blurt out anything that comes into his head, but he will present himself to her in ways that he thinks that will appeal to her, and he will try hard not to do anything that might upset her, make her nervous, or drive her away.

Since racism is such a hot topic these days, let’s pursue it a little further – as another illustration.  Many people evidently don’t know that centuries of legislation right up until recent decades, included laws that effectively perpetuated segregation of blacks in low-income neighborhoods with low civic budgets for education and many other services, and these neighborhoods in turn were red-lined by lending institutions as bad places to offer mortgage loans.  The result was not just segregation but an almost hopeless perpetuation of black poverty, since one of the primary ways people gain financial equity is through home ownership.

This is not to suggest that anyone hearing this sermon is to blame for that situation, but it’s a fact of life that influences all our impressions of our neighbors (and theirs of us), whether we realize it or not.  So we all need to be very careful about any assumptions we might make about whether someone knows enough, cares enough, or has tried hard enough to be successful, and whether or not some systemic bias has provided advantages to some over others.  Learning about all this will inform our speech and actions in ways that can build community through mutual respect – provided that we hold the information with humility and a willingness to understand.

Practical Considerations

This all raises the issue of self-examination, one of the key steps in our spiritual growth or regeneration.  But – and this is important – whereas we often think about this as a process of examining our motives and trying to discover and ask the Lord to improve our ruling loves, there’s another side to it that would be easy to neglect, and that is the business of examining the effect our speech or actions have on others.  Now, this is complicated, but really no more – nor less – difficult than looking at our motives.  Of course we can’t control what other people think of us, or of what we say or do, but we can at least observe the impact we have on them and consider whether we may have some responsibility for that reaction.

Seeing that it is often very difficult for us to recognize our own faults – or even our accomplishments – objectively, it is also important for us to learn how to accept the counsel of others about that impact.  As we all know, this can be embarrassing, and a very natural response to anything negative is to become defensive, to make excuses, or to try to explain why our words or actions may have been misunderstood.  Sometimes this can be really helpful, but sometimes it can just make matters worse by implying that there’s something wrong with the other person involved, putting him or her on the defensive and so increasing rather than decreasing the stress and concern.  In fact, getting back to race relations, this may be one of the big problems we’re facing in America today.  But it also applies in our everyday lives at home, at work and in the church.

To combat this risk one of the best things we can do is simply, calmly, as dispassionately as possible, ask a lot of questions.  Perhaps surprisingly, this is one of the things that is clearly implied in our second lesson about how to deal with someone who offends us.  First of all, if we are to go and tell a person his (or her) faults, that means that when we offend, we must be prepared to hear their complaints.  But something else that most people don’t realize is that the word, tell, in this lesson, which can also be translated show, or, point out, is closely related to a word that means to examine or to question.  The point is, when we go to a person to complain about some offense, our position should be one that invites a dialog, a mutual consideration of what has happened so that we can gain back a “brother,” that is, a relationship of love and respect.

But the really important thing is that when we are on the receiving end of this confrontation we need to be prepared to listen, and not just hear the initial complaint, but give the extra garment, go the extra mile, and inquire further as to what else might be involved.  “Can I ask what you mean by [this or that]?  Is there anything more you’d like to tell me, that might help me understand this better?”  Or “Is there anything I can do now to make this better?”  The farther back we can go into the history of the issue the better we will be able to understand the context and our own role in the problem.  That said, when we are confronted it’s important that we simply apologize, and not try to make excuses or explain ourselves unless we are clearly invited to do so.  If we do it may send the message that we’re more concerned about ourselves than about the other person, or that we don’t value his or her input.  This is part of the problem referred to in our lesson today from Heaven and Hell, namely, that we can’t know our faults if we are full of ourselves, but if we are willing, we can know them from others.  The problem is, we are all naturally full of ourselves, and we need help to get over it.

All this may seem pretty intense, and, yes, of course it is.  Which is why we need to choose the appropriate time and place to have such conversations.  Choosing a time also gives us an opportunity to reflect in preparation, and not come on with too much anger or resentment.  It also gives us a chance to pray for the other person, which the Lord has pointedly told us we must do even for our enemies and those who persecute us.

Why What Others Think of Us Matters

No doubt one reason for saying that what others think of us is NOT our business is the concern about hypocrisy.  We all know we should not be putting on a show for the purpose of misleading people, and by the same token we need to have some confidence that others will have the integrity to see our words and actions in the larger context of our lives, and not judge us for some unintended slight.  But if what others think of us truly is “none of our business,” how can we escape the idea that nothing we say or do really matters to anyone but ourselves?

In fact, nothing could be much clearer in the letter of the Word and in the Writings for the New Church than this: what other people think of us does matter, and we have a responsibility to help them think about us charitably.  Why?  Because true charity is not just love for the neighbor, it is love for the good in the neighbor, and so in order to facilitate that love we have to present something worthy of it.  This is what the parable of the good Samaritan is all about: the story in Luke, chapter 10 is about loving one’s neighbor, and was told in answer to the cynical question, “But who is my neighbor?”  The Lord’s response was that it was not the robbery victim, but the Samaritan who helped the robbery victim who was the neighbor to be loved.  In saying this He was not at all suggesting that we should not help those who suffer misfortune, rather, just the opposite: He was saying that when we do something truly helpful we become loveable.  And this inspires everyone.

It is often said that it’s important not just that justice be done, but that it be seen to be done.  But again, why?  Well, one simple reason is that we all have a natural tendency to judge situations by appearances, and it’s just not fair to expect or demand that other people overcome this in order to get along with us, especially knowing that we have the very same tendency.  In any case we can’t control them, we can only try to inspire them, and we do that mainly by doing our own work to make our speech and actions reflect a genuine state of charity.

It’s all very well to say that we should assume the best of one another, but when we send signals – even unintentionally – that can easily mislead, we show a dangerous disregard for other people’s feelings.  This can even include misguided humor.  Obviously, what’s funny to one person may be confusing at best, and quite possibly hurtful to another.  – Not that we can’t have some fun with each other, but we need to be careful, especially when crossing linguistic or cultural or even gender boundaries.

In the end, taking care for another person’s thoughts and feelings reflects a real concern for a number of the moral virtues listed in the heavenly doctrines, including modesty, sincerity, courtesy, generosity and prudence, among others (CL #164).  It lets the Lord’s light shine through us, it builds trust and a sense of community through unambiguous communication, and it makes real co-operation possible.  But most of all it reflects the humility that recognizes: we have a LOT to learn about others AND ourselves, we do not live in isolation from others, we are not perfect communicators, and in order for civil society to work we need to cultivate mutual understanding.

And again, this is hard work!  Our pride and sense of self can easily get in the way, even when we’re not conscious of it.  But doing it is important.  In fact our lives depend on it.

Speaking of life, remember Cain’s reply when the Lord asked him about Abel, whom he had just killed?  He said - and it wasn’t really a question, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” (Gen 4:9).  In the spiritual sense this passage shows that faith at that time despised charity and did not wish to serve it (AC #370-372).  And so it is in our lives today when we think we know the truth, but we have no patience or concern for helping other people see it, or for their sensitivity about our speech and actions.  In short, the lesson is that what other people think of us is very much our business, as is what we think of them, for without the sincere effort to promote mutual respect and understanding society as we know it breaks down, and there can be no heavenly life.

Amen.

Lessons:          Genesis 4:1-13

                        Matthew 18:1-20

                        Heaven and Hell #487 (see next page)

Heaven and Hell #487

“Only from a knowledge of correspondences can it be known into what spiritual delights everyone's natural delights are changed after death, and what kind of delights they are.  In general, this knowledge teaches that nothing natural can exist without something spiritual corresponding to it.  In particular, it teaches what it is that corresponds, and what kind of a thing it is.  Therefore, anyone who has this knowledge can ascertain and know what his own state after death will be, if he only knows what his love is, and what its relation is to the universally ruling loves spoken of above, to which all loves have relation.  But it is impossible for those who are in the love of self to know what their ruling love is, because they love what is their own, and call their evils goods; and the falsities to which they incline and by which they confirm their evils they call truths.  And yet, if they were willing, they might know it from others who are wise, and who see what they themselves do not see.  This, however, is impossible with those who are so enticed by the love of self that they spurn all teaching of the wise. 

“On the other hand, those who are in heavenly love accept instruction, and as soon as they are brought into the evils into which they were born, they see them from truths, for truths make evils manifest.  From truth which is from good anyone can see evil and its falsity; but from evil none can see what is good and true; and for the reason that falsities of evil are darkness and correspond to darkness; consequently, those who are in falsities from evil are like the blind, not seeing the things that are in light, but shunning them instead like owls.  But as truths from good are light, and correspond to light (see above, n. 126-134), so those who are in truths from good have sight and open eyes, and discern the things that pertain to light and shade. 

“This, too, has been proved to me (Swedenborg) by experience.  The angels in heaven both see and perceive the evils and falsities that sometimes arise in themselves, also the evils and falsities in spirits in the world of spirits who are connected with the hells, although the spirits themselves are unable to see their own evils and falsities.  Such spirits have no comprehension of the good of heavenly love, of conscience, of honesty and justice, except such as is done for the sake of self; neither of what it is to be led by the Lord.  They say that such things do not exist, and thus are of no account.  All these things have been said to the intent that a person may examine himself and may recognize his love by his delights; and thus, so far as he can make it out from a knowledge of correspondences, may know the state of his life after death.”

A Prayer for this Service

Heavenly Father, grant that we may truly recognize and honor You as the source of all the good in our lives, and the one who alone can show us the way to lasting peace and blessing.  Teach us, we pray, about ourselves, and what we can do to receive a little more perfectly each day the love and wisdom You provide for us – directly through Your Word and indirectly through the people You send to help us.  Grant that we may be patient and genuinely thoughtful of those around us, that we may serve them well as an expression of our love for You.

Amen.