Pillars of the Church

Rev. Jared Buss

Pittsburgh New Church; May 26, 2024

Readings: John 13:3-17 (children’s talk); Revelation 3:7-13; Apocalypse Revealed §§178, 191

            Today’s sermon is about the strength that we receive from living the Lord’s truth. The connection between the sermon and the children’s talk is the idea that when we live His truth—when we live as He teaches—we minister not only to our neighbors’ worldly needs, but to their spiritual needs as well. The strength that He creates in us is able to strengthen our neighbors. One way to put it is that if you’ve been choosing to stand for the Lord, the difference that you’ve been making in other people’s lives is probably greater than you know.

            For the last several weeks we’ve been studying the seven churches from the book of Revelation. These seven churches were historical Christian communities, but if you read what the book of Revelation says about them, it’s clear that they stand for something more. They stand for qualities or mentalities that exist throughout Christianity as a whole. In the Heavenly Doctrine of the New Church we’re told that they symbolize, “all states of reception of the Lord and His church” (AR §41). What this means is that all Christians belong to one or more of these churches; odds are that all of us belong to one or more of these seven churches. All of the seven churches have strengths and weaknesses, and the Lord makes promises to all of them. Today we’ll be focusing on the Lord’s letter to the church of Philadelphia, which seems to be the strongest of the seven churches. This church was located in an ancient city in Turkey called Philadelphia, not in Philadelphia Pennsylvania. Here is the Lord’s letter: [read Rev. 3:7-13].

            If you were to simply read through all seven letters to the churches, odds are that you’d come away thinking, “Okay, Philadelphia is the good church. This is the one that the Lord wants me to belong to.” Earlier I said that all of the seven churches have strengths and weaknesses—but Philadelphia actually breaks that rule, in that it doesn’t seem to have any weaknesses. The Lord doesn’t rebuke this church for anything; all of His words to it are words of praise. That really stands out when you compare this letter with the letters to the other churches.

            The Heavenly Doctrine affirms this idea that Philadelphia is the good church. In the Heavenly Doctrine we’re told that Philadelphia symbolizes “people who are in truths from good from the Lord” (AR §172). These are people who live the Lord’s truth because they are motivated by goodness that they receive from the Lord. Again, that sounds like the kind of person that we’re supposed to be.

            Certainly, the people who are symbolized by the church of Philadelphia are people who have got something right. But something we should remember is that the Lord offers heaven to all seven churches. His promises to all seven churches are printed on the back of the worship handout. No matter which of them we belong to, if we overcome—if we rise above the falsities and the evils that we incline to—the Lord will give us the blessings of heaven. This is important to know, because not everyone looks like they belong to the church of Philadelphia, and not everyone feels like they belong to the church of Philadelphia. Sometimes we do have spiritual strength to share with others, other times we can barely stand on our own feet. But the Lord works with all of our states. And He isn’t trying to funnel everybody into one way of thinking, either. He isn’t trying to make us all into copies of whichever human being happens to be the goodest. He’s trying to raise everybody from where they are to their own place in heaven. So we don’t need to look like “those perfect people:” we need to follow the Lord.

            That said, the strength of the church of Philadelphia is something to aspire to. The people symbolized by this church are those who live the Lord’s truth because of the love that they receive from Him. They’re people who keep His commandments with integrity, and, at the same time, are moved by His compassion and His love. That’s a good way to live. When we live this way, the Lord is able to bless us with freedom and power. That’s why, in His letter to Philadelphia, He says, “See, I have set before you an open door, and no one can shut it” (Rev. 3:8). It’s pretty clear that this door is a door that leads to heaven (see AR §176). When we do what the Lord says, heaven is opened to us. That’s no surprise. The part of this statement that stands out is the second part: “and no one can shut it.”

            When we live in the Lord, no one can take heaven from us. Take a moment to think about the doorway in your own mind, or in your own spirit. What lies on this side of the doorway—the worldly side? And what lies on the other side? What impressions of heaven has the Lord given to you? What tastes of peace and innocence? And what things are hiding in the shadows on this side of the doorway? What tricks do the hells use to try to get you to slam that door shut? What do they wrap their fingers around in order to pull you away from the door?

            The evil spirits are evil. They do not want you to be happy. They want to board up the door that the Lord has set in your mind, so that the light of heaven cannot flow in to reveal that the “joys” they offer you are miserable. It’s easy to slip under their thumb. But when we walk with the Lord, He shows us a door that leads to happiness, and hell cannot shut that door. The world may not do what we want it to do, our lives may not be what we want them to be, but hell cannot take the Lord’s joy away from us. If we are walking with the Lord, then no matter what sort of shadowland we’re walking in, that open door is somewhere up ahead—and if we look up, we can see what’s on the other side.

            In the next part of the letter to Philadelphia, the Lord explains why He’s been able to set an open door before this church. He says, “for you have little strength, have kept My word, and have not denied My name” (Rev. 3:8). It’s obviously good to keep His word, and to not deny His name. Why is it good that the people called Philadelphia have “little” strength? And if the Lord says that they have “little” strength, then why have I been going on about how strong Philadelphia is? The answer is simple: when we know that our own strength is “little,” then we stop trying to do everything ourselves. We get ourselves out of the way, and let the Lord act through us—and His strength is real strength. This is explained in the first of our readings from the Heavenly Doctrine of the New Church, which is printed in the worship handout. We read: [AR §178].

            The next statement in the letter to Philadelphia is a little harder to understand, if we’re looking simply at the letter of the Word. The Lord says, “Indeed I will make those of the synagogue of Satan, who say they are Jews and are not, but lie—indeed I will make them come and worship before your feet, and to know that I have loved you” (Rev. 3:9). Part of what makes this confusing is that good people don’t want anyone to come and worship at their feet. But in its spiritual sense, this statement isn’t about people worshipping other people: it’s about the impact that good people can have on the lives of those around them. A life that is lived in the Lord is powerful, because the Lord is able to shine through that life into other people’s lives. The strange, terrible, wonderful reality of being human is that our choices affect other people. It has to be that way—if our choices had no impact on anything outside of our own heads, they would be meaningless. Our freedom of choice would be a mockery. The Lord has given us the ability to make choices that actually matter. This means that if we choose evil, we hurt more than just ourselves. But the reverse must also be true: if we choose good, we strengthen more than just ourselves.

            When the Lord speaks of “those of the synagogue of Satan, who say they are Jews and are not,” He’s referring to the church of Smyrna. He uses almost exactly the same words to describe the Smyrnans in His letter to that church (Rev. 2:9). In the Heavenly Doctrine we’re told that the Smyrnans symbolize people who want to be good, but whose doctrine is false (AR §§91, 97). The Lord says that people like that will worship at the feet of the Philadelphians, and will know that He has loved them (3:9). What this means is that those who walk with the Lord will help other people see what the Lord teaches, and what He really loves (AR §§186, 187). This is partly because people who walk with the Lord are people who will find the courage to teach His truth, and testify to His truth, when that is what’s called for. But it isn’t all about verbal teaching: people who walk with the Lord are people who show the world compassion and integrity. And compassion and integrity are arrows that point to God. Of course the Smyrnans aren’t actually meant to worship the Philadelphians: the idea is that the Smyrnans will worship the Lord when they recognize His truth (AR §186).

            The next thing the Lord says in His letter is that He can make the people of the church of Philadelphia into pillars in the temple of His God (Rev. 3:12). We know what it means when someone is called a pillar of the church: a pillar of the church is someone who dedicates their life to the service of the church. Someone who consistently shows up, consistently contributes, consistently supports the uses of the church. Churches on earth depend on people who are willing to serve that way, just like this building depends on its pillars. But when we walk with the Lord, our choices uphold more than just our local congregation. Good people on earth are pillars of the kingdom of heaven. We turn, now, to our final reading, which is also printed in the worship handout [AR §191].

            The last bit of that reading says that what sustains the church is the Divine truth in the Word—so it isn’t people who do that. It’s obvious that the Lord’s kingdom can’t possibly depend on us as individuals. That’s too much weight for us to bear. We can’t put the church on our backs. We can’t save anybody’s soul. Our strength is little. But the first part of the reading said that what sustains the church is the truth from good from the Lord that abides with people. Really it’s the Lord who does the heavy lifting. But when we live His truth, we give Him something He can build on. We give Him a resting place for His power. So His light is able to shine through us; His love is able to move through us. And that column of light and love connects heaven and earth. That’s what it means to be a pillar in the temple of God.

Every time we choose to do what the Lord says, because we know that He is good, we bring heaven and earth a little closer together. We draw a little nearer to the Lord—we take a step towards that open door. And He draws a little nearer to us, and through us He does more good than we realize. In Matthew He says:

Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven. (5:16)

And in John He says:

By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another. (13:35)

Amen.

Holy on the Outside

Rev. Jared Buss

Pittsburgh New Church; May 19, 2024

Readings: Matthew 23:1-7, 13, 14 (children’s talk); Revelation 3:1-6; Apocalypse Revealed §154

            Today we’ve been talking about the Pharisees… but anyone who has any familiarity with the New Testament at all already knows that we shouldn’t be like the Pharisees. The Pharisees are paragons of hypocrisy. “All their works they do to be seen by men” (Matt. 23:5). They cover themselves with this veil of righteousness, but all they want is power and adulation. They don’t actually care about spiritual things at all, and they are not nice people. For two thousand years, Christians have been preaching that we should not be like the Pharisees. What else is there to say?

            Of course, just because the Word tells people that they shouldn’t do something doesn’t mean that they won’t do it. And while, on the one hand, it’s obvious that we shouldn’t be hypocritical, on the other hand, hypocrisy has a certain fundamental appeal. Hypocrisy is all about looking good without actually being good. Everyone wants to look good. There are always rewards that go along with looking like a morally and spiritually good person. But being good takes work. To be good, we have to soften our hearts in the presence of God. That requires humility, and repentance, and other unpleasant things. The desire to skip that stuff, and simply put on a veil of goodness, is always going to present itself to people.

            And if we look at what history has to teach us, it’s pretty plain to see that lots of Christians have posed as pious people, and have nonetheless behaved selfishly. We’ve been working through a series of sermons on the seven churches from the book of Revelation, and today’s sermon is about the fifth church, called Sardis. Each of the seven churches symbolizes a different state of mind, or a different kind of person—and all of the kinds of people symbolized by the seven churches are called to the Lord’s New Church. The teachings of the New Church say that Sardis stands for people who are in lifeless worship (AR §154). Lifeless worship is worship that looks good on the outside, but doesn’t have anything spiritual within it. The people symbolized by Sardis aren’t necessarily as corrupt as the Pharisees were—they aren’t necessarily total hypocrites. But, like the Pharisees, they emphasize the external things of worship and religion, and neglect spiritual things. Here is the Lord’s letter to the church of Sardis: [Rev. 3:1-6].

            The first thing the Lord says to Sardis is, “I know your works, that you have a name that you are alive, but you are dead” (v. 1). In other words, He tells the people symbolized by this church that, though they present themselves to the world as people full of spiritual life, the truth is that they are not spiritually alive (AR §157). He then tells them that He has not found their works full before God (v. 2). Their behavior looks good, but it’s empty; there is little or nothing that is true or good within their works (AR §§154, 160). In a word, these people are in a state of lifeless worship.

            In the Heavenly Doctrine of the New Church, the Lord gives us a really straightforward explanation of the meaning of “lifeless worship.” That explanation will be our next reading; this passage comes from the book Apocalypse Revealed [read §154].

            This passage is so clear that there isn’t much else that needs to be said. It’s just obvious that no one is saved by worship alone, or by ritual alone, when there is no faith or charity within their worship. As the reading says, worship that holds no faith or charity within it is liable to be filled with falsities and evils. Our spirits are never actually empty: when heavenly things are absent, hellish things fill the void (see AR §160e). It’s just obvious that covering up our selfishness with shows of devotion does not make us into selfless people.

            Of course, these days we don’t necessary receive a lot of external rewards for our shows of devotion. It seems fair to say that the secular culture around us is pretty sick and tired of religious hypocrisy. In the Gospel the Lord tells His disciples not to be like the hypocrites, who pray on the corners of the streets, “that they may be seen by men” (Matt. 6:5). Presumably, in New Testament times, society would reward people for that sort of behavior. These days that tends not to be the case. It’s unlikely that any of us have thought of praying loudly on the street as a quick and easy way to make people admire us. To be fair, sometimes it only takes approval from a few people to make a religious performance worthwhile. A religious person might put on a show of devotion in the face of an irreligious world, in the hope that at least a few other religious people were watching—and the fact that the performer was braving the slings and arrows of the irreligious world would be part of the performance.

            But on the whole, being ostentatiously religious is less rewarding than it used to be. Which is probably a good thing. But we should be aware that we can be showy about how good we are without being overtly religious—indeed, without being religious at all. Perhaps the world won’t reward us for praying on the street, but it might reward us for our heroic statements about serving the underprivileged. If we’re actually laboring to serve people who need help, that’s obviously a good thing. The point is that the person who talks a big talk about serving the needy, and censures others for failing to serve the needy, and does nothing to serve the needy themselves, is a hypocrite—just like the person who prays long prayers and never practices charity. That desire to look good without actually putting in the work it takes to be good can show up in lots of different ways.

            It would seem that if we’re in a state of lifeless worship, then what we need to do to restore life to our worship is make an effort to live our faith—and a lot of the time we equate “living our faith” with “doing charitable deeds.” Of course the Lord wants us to do good deeds! But when our problem is that all of the good-looking actions that we take are empty, doing more things that look good on the outside isn’t the solution. When we’re in a state of empty worship, what we need is to look up. We need to let the Lord lift us up, so that our worship and our charity can flow from something that is actually alive. In Apocalypse Revealed we read:

For spiritual life, which properly speaking is what life is, is not simply a matter of worship, but of what is present in the worship, and present in it must be Divine truths from the Word. Then when a person lives those truths, there is life in his worship. (§157)

What the people of the church of Sardis need to do first is learn the truths of the Word. Then they need to live those truths. The truths of the Word are what show us that there’s more to life than what we do with our bodies. Without the truths of the Word, we just can’t see anything that is really alive. Life comes from above; everything in this world is merely a vessel. Our bodies are just vessels made of clay. Without the truths of the Word we can still bump into good things in the dark; we might have a vague impression that what really matters is something we can’t see. But in the light of the Word we see what it is to be alive. The Lord says, “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life” (John 6:63). In His letter to Sardis He says, “Remember … how you have received and heard; hold fast and repent” (Rev. 3:3). He tells these people to remember what they’ve heard from Him, and to hold on to that truth (cf. AR §161). In Apocalypse Revealed we’re told: “It follows then that to repent is to give life to their lifeless worship through truths from the Word and by a life in accordance with them” (§162).

            One important thing to remember is that permitting the Lord to open our eyes, permitting Him to teach us through His Word, doing the work of repentance, and so on, is not supposed to replace external worship. The reading from Apocalypse Revealed gave us a long list of things that the people of the church of Sardis are good at doing: going to church, listening to sermons, partaking of the Holy Supper, and so on (§154). These actions are lifeless if there is no faith or charity within them, and if they’re lifeless then they aren’t worth very much—but that doesn’t mean that we aren’t supposed to do these things! But New Church people sometimes seem to have the idea that external worship is something we can take or leave. And this idea seems to come from the assumption that it’s either internal thing that matter, or external things. We reject the notion that external things are all it takes to worship God, because we know that internal practices—like repentance—are more important. And then we retreat to the opposite extreme, which is the notion that internal things are all that matter.

            When we do that we’re missing the point: the Lord’s message throughout the Word is that internal things and external things should make one. We need both. The question isn’t whether we’re focusing on internal things or external things—the question is whether we’re separating the two or conjoining them. We’re called to love the Lord, and love is spiritual—and as the Lord said, it’s the spirit that gives life. The flesh profits nothing. But the practices of worship—such as praying and going to church—are actions that testify to our devotion to the Lord. If aren’t willing to make time for those actions, what does that say about how much we actually love Him?

            Take giving someone a birthday present as an illustration. Something that people say about gifts is that “it’s the thought that counts,” and that’s true. If you try to get someone a nice gift, but it isn’t quite right—perhaps it’s too similar to something that they already have—the receiver of the gift should still recognize the thought that you put into it, and they should recognize that the gift is still a sign of your love for them. But even if it’s the thought that counts, thought clearly isn’t enough all by itself. If you tell the birthday boy or birthday girl, “I thought about getting you something really nice…” they will not feel especially loved. But putting no thought into the gift isn’t the solution—if it’s clear that giving gifts just a motion that you’re going through, the recipient of the gift will not feel especially loved. There needs to be a conjunction of thought and action, internal and external. There’s a passage from the Heavenly Doctrine that compares external worship with the breathing of the lungs, and internal worship with the beating of the heart (NJHD §125). It’s pretty clear that we need both. In the Gospel the Lord tells the Pharisees, “You pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. These you ought to have done, without leaving the others undone” (23:23).

            The people represented by the church of Sardis are good at external worship. What they lack is internal worship—the internal life that comes from seeking the Lord’s justice and His mercy. In His letter to this church, the Lord says: “You have a few names even in Sardis who have not defiled their garments; and they shall walk with Me in white, for they are worthy” (Rev. 3:4). Garments—especially white garments—symbolize truths (AR §166). And to walk means to live. To walk with the Lord in white is to live as He teaches in His Word (AR §167). When we walk with the Lord, our spirits are with Him; then, and only then, do we meet Him in our acts of worship.

Amen.

Real Faith

Rev. Jared Buss

Pittsburgh New Church; May 12, 2024

Readings: Matthew 7:24-27 (children’s talk);

Revelation 2:18-29; Doctrine of Faith §36; Apocalypse Revealed §132

            Today we continue our sermon series on the seven churches from the book of Revelation. Our focus today is on the fourth church, which is called Thyatira. All seven of these churches take their names from historical cities that were centers of the early Christian church. But in the spiritual sense of the Word, the seven churches symbolize everyone throughout the Christian world who is called to the Lord’s New Church (AR §§41, 68, 69, 88, 153). So they symbolize all of the different qualities or states of mind that will be found within the Lord’s church. In the descriptions of some of these churches we might recognize portraits of ourselves. Some of them might strike us as portraits of our neighbors. One way or another, all of the people described in the Lord’s letters to the churches are called to His kingdom.

            In the Heavenly Doctrine of the New Church, in the book Apocalypse Revealed, we’re told that Thyatira symbolizes, “people who are governed by a faith arising from charity, and so are engaged in good works; and also … people who are governed by a faith divorced from charity, and so are engaged in evil works” (§124). What stands out right away is that Thyatira encompasses two really different kinds of people. The three churches that we’ve looked at in previous sermons have each symbolized a single, homogenous, mentality. Ephesus stands for people who value doctrine more than charity. Smyrna stands for people who value charity, but whose doctrine is false. Pergamos stands for people who want to do good, and have little time for doctrine. But in Thyatira you have people with charity, who do good works; and you have people with no charity, who do evil works. What they have in common is faith. Faith is the defining characteristic of this church. When we talk about Thyatira, we’re talking about people who place great value in faith.

            With that in mind, let’s turn to the book of Revelation, to hear what the Lord says in His letter to the church of Thyatira. We read: [2:18-29].

            The letter to Thyatira starts on a really good note. The Lord says, “I know your works, love, service, faith, and your patience; and as for your works, the last are more than the first” (v. 19). The people of Thyatira are praised for their love, service, faith and patience—if the Lord tells you that you’re doing all of those things well, that means you’re in good shape. The bit about Thyatira’s last works being more than her first means that her good works are increasing and improving. Her love and faith are more than they were at first. That’s another really good sign. Thyatira—or at least the good half of Thyatira—is alive and growing (AR §130).

            Thyatira’s failing is that some of her people are under the influence of Jezebel. Jezebel was a queen of Israel. She was the wife of Ahab, and Ahab and Jezebel were infamously wicked rulers. In the first book of Kings we read, “But there was no one like Ahab who sold himself to do wickedness in the sight of the Lord, because Jezebel his wife stirred him up” (21:25). Of course, Jezebel was never literally present in Thyatira—by the time the book of Revelation was written, she had been dead for a thousand years. So it’s clear that she symbolizes some sort of spiritual force that sways the minds of the people of Thyatria. In the Heavenly Doctrine of the New Church, we’re told that she stands for faith that is divorced from charity (AR §132).

            We’ll talk about why she has this symbolism in a little while. For now I want to paint a picture of Thyatira as a whole. Thyatira is defined by its faith, and you could say that the point of the letter to Thyatira is that faith can be a heavenly thing or a seductive and destructive thing—and that for this reason, we need to look closely when we encounter something that calls itself faith. Faith that is divorced from charity, or faith alone, is an evil queen that leads us into evil. But faith that is joined to charity is heavenly. In the light of heaven there’s no confusing the two, but we don’t always see in the light of heaven. It can be difficult for our eyes to see the difference between real faith and the faith that is called Jezebel.  

This applies to the way we look at our fellow Christians: people who say that they believe in salvation by faith alone might be in a faith that is divorced from charity, but they might not be. They might be people who preach faith and do the works of charity. The Lord says “you will know them by their fruits” (Matt. 7:16).

But what we really need to pay attention to is the character of our own faith, and to the things that we might be hiding under the cloak of faith. We all know that someone who willfully does evil in the name of God, or in the name of faith, is not a genuinely faithful person. Nobody wants to be in faith that is divorced from charity—which is the same thing as faith that is joined to evil. No one choses to identify as a servant of Jezebel. But we could be under her influence anyway. It’s easy for God-fearing, church-going people to tell themselves that because they are God-fearing, church-going people, the evil they do doesn’t really carry any weight. “Yes, I lied when I did my taxes, but that doesn’t actually mean that I’m a liar and a thief.” “Yes, I spoke to that person with anger and with no self-restraint, but that doesn’t actually mean that I was motivated by selfishness or by cruelty. I’m a good person, because I’m a faithful person.” Something to bear in mind is that the faith called Jezebel presents itself to us as something legitimate. The historical Jezebel was the queen of Israel, which means that the evil she did was done in the name of the law, under a veneer of righteousness. A lot of the evil that happens in this world has a veneer of righteousness painted over it. When we reflect on our own behavior, we need to make an effort to look past the veneer.

But anyone who has any familiarity with the teachings of the New Church is well aware that divorcing faith from charity is a problem. The Heavenly Doctrine makes this point over and over and over. Because of this, people who are familiar with the teachings of the New Church might be good at rejecting Jezebel—and they might be inclined to go too far in the opposite direction. They might be inclined to hold faith too lightly, because they might be under the impression that whenever we treat faith like it’s important, that’s separating faith from charity. But that doesn’t actually follow. Faith in the Lord really matters. Why else would the Lord tell us in so many different places in the Gospel that we can be healed if we believe in Him, or that we will be saved if we believe in Him? Our next reading is from the Heavenly Doctrine, from the book Doctrine of Faith: [§36].

Believing in the Lord brings about conjunction with the Lord, and that conjunction is what makes salvation possible. In other words, the Lord is the one who saves us: the Lord is the one who delivers us from evil, and causes us to be born again. We can’t possibly do these things on our own. We didn’t “make” ourselves be born, and we can’t “make” ourselves be born again. We need the Lord. And faith is the recognition of that truth. Faith is the recognition that we need our God. And more than that, faith is the recognition that if we go to Him, we will be okay. Without Him we’re lost, but if He is present in our lives, He will lead us to joy. So the reading said that “to believe in Him is to be confident that He will save” (Faith §36).

Faith is important because it’s what impels us to look up and call out to the one person in all the universe that we need the most. But of course, faith in God that stays tucked away in a corner of our heads is really just a mockery of faith. Believing something means nothing if we don’t act on that belief. How can we claim to believe in God if we don’t live as He says to live? He says, “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven” (Matt. 7:21). So the reading from the Doctrine of Faith says that believing in the Lord also means living rightly (§36). The church of Thyatira is praised for its faith in God—and also for its love, its service, and its patience (Rev. 2:19). Because real faith is inseparable from those things.

Earlier we heard the parable of the man who builds his house on the rock. In the Psalms we read that the Lord is our Rock (e.g. 62:6). So building on the rock must symbolize believing in Him. In the teachings of the New Church we’re told that the rock stands for the Lord’s Divine truth (AE §§411.11, 644.24). So building on the rock must symbolize believing in His truth. And it does. But He says, “whoever hears these sayings of Mine, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock” (Matt. 7:24). The Lord is the Rock; to build on the rock is to believe in Him. But we can’t build on the Rock unless we also do as He says. Then—and only then—are we safe from the storms of hell.

With this description of real faith fresh in our minds, we’re going to go back to what the Word says about Jezebel, and look at why she symbolizes the thing she does. We read: [AR §132].

Jezebel symbolizes faith that is divorced from charity. It’s easy to get the impression that faith becomes divorced from charity when we fail to do charitable things. To a certain extent that’s true. But according to the passage that we just read, Jezebel doesn’t symbolize faith divorced from charity because of the nice things that she failed to do, or because of the false things that she taught people. She symbolizes faith that is divorced from charity because she did evil things.

Everyone who is trying to follow the Lord will sometimes fail to be who they want to be. Everyone who is trying to follow the Lord will sometimes feel that they don’t love their neighbor the way they should. That gap between where we are and where our faith says we should be isn’t what makes us servants of Jezebel. Jezebel symbolizes a voice within us that gives us permission to overlook our own evils. The historical Jezebel served Baal, and the reading says that to serve Baal is, “to serve lusts of every kind… by giving no thought to any evil lust or any sin” (AR §132). Faith is a powerful thing, and for that reason, evil likes to co-opt it and use it as a shield. Faith is never the problem; there’s no such thing as too much faith. We need the Lord, and to know it and call out to Him is a blessed thing. But evil likes to use faith as a cloak. If we want to escape from Jezebel, the question to ask is, “What bad things am I doing, and giving myself permission to ignore?”

In His letter to Thyatira, the Lord urges those who follow Jezebel to repent (Rev. 2: 22). But to the rest in Thyatira—those who do not have Jezebel’s doctrine—He says something different: “Hold fast what you have till I come” (vv. 24, 25). If we live our faith, and shun evils as sins in the name of God, then faith in God is all we need. All we need to do is hold on to Him. The Lord says, “And he who overcomes, and keeps My works until the end, to him I will give power over the nations… and I will give him the morning star” (Rev. 2:26, 28).

Amen.

The People Who Walked in Darkness

Rev. Jared Buss

Pittsburgh New Church; April 28, 2024

Readings: Luke 10:38-42 (children’s talk); Revelation 2:12-17; Apocalypse Revealed §110

            We’re in the midst of a series of sermons on the seven churches from the book of Revelation, and today we’re looking at the third church—the church called Pergamos. Here’s a quick refresher on what we’ve covered already. These seven churches take their names from seven cities in modern-day Turkey: Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamos, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea. These cities were centers of the early Christian church. But in the spiritual sense of the Word, these seven churches symbolize all of the different mentalities or different kinds of people that are able to receive the Lord, and be part of His New Church, which is a spiritual church, and isn’t bound to any earthly organization (AR §§41, 68, 69, 88, 153)

            As I’ve said in a previous sermon, looking at the seven churches is useful for at least two reasons: For one, we might recognize ourselves in what the Lord says about some of these churches. And if we do, we can probably learn something about what we should and shouldn’t be doing. But nobody is going to resonate with all of the seven churches—and that’s the second reason why it’s useful to learn about them. The Lord’s church—the true church—is full of people whose strengths and weaknesses are different from our own. But all of them are called to the kingdom of heaven—and we need to know that. And if we want to love our neighbors wisely, it’s useful to understand how their spiritual needs might be different from our own.

            As I said, today we’re looking at Pergamos, the church of the doer. We’ve already looked at Ephesus—the church of those who understand the truth, and fight for the truth, and value truth more than love (cf. AR §73). And we’ve looked at Smyrna, the church of those who value doing good, and don’t recognize that the good they do is colored by their false beliefs (cf. AR §§91, 97). Now we come to Pergamos. Here’s what the Lord says to this church: [read Rev. 2:12-17].

            The teachings of the New Church say that Pergamos symbolizes people who “place everything having to do with the church in good works, and not anything in doctrinal truths” (AR §107). In other words, these are people for whom being good, or being religious, equals doing good deeds. They aren’t interested in doctrine. Maybe they’re the sorts of people who have no time for heady stuff. They’re doers. This emphasis on doing is even more blessed and powerful than it might seem to be. In the end, our lives will be measured by what we’ve done (or tried to do). The Lord tells every one of the seven churches “I know your works” (cf. Rev. 2:13), because that’s what counts. Our actions reveal our true character. As the Lord says in our recitation, a good tree produces good fruit, and a bad tree produces bad fruits (Matt. 7:17); so, He says, “You will know them by their fruits” (v. 16).

            There’s also something admirably solid about the action-oriented Pergamos mentality. These are people who aren’t interested in contemplating the truths of the church—so they don’t question the truths of the church. They accept that the Lord is the Lord and the Word is the Word. So the Lord says to them, “you hold fast My name, and did not deny My faith” (Rev. 2:13; cf. AR §111).

            But the Lord’s letter to Pergamos gets off to a rough start. He says, “I know your works, and where you dwell, where Satan’s throne is” (Rev. 2:13). That doesn’t sound so good. These words describe the effect of being totally disinterested in doctrinal truths. Action-oriented people sometimes dismiss doctrinal truth as “ivory tower stuff.” But truth is much more real than that: truth is spiritual light. And being disinterested in light is a problem.

            Our next reading, which is from the Heavenly Doctrine of the New Church, from the book Apocalypse Revealed, describes the spiritual meaning of the first part of the Lord’s letter to Pergamos. We read: [§110].

            The people represented by Pergamos do good works—or try to, at any rate—and that’s very much to their credit. But they walk in darkness. The doctrine that they have so little time for is the very thing that would show them how to do the good they wish to do. People like this are essentially gentiles, though they might call themselves Christians. They know the Lord, but they do not turn to Him; they have the Word, but they do not look for any truths in it (AR §110). And in the absence of the Lord and His Word, there is no light to guide our spirits.

            It might be helpful to clarify the distinction between Pergamos and Smyrna. They’re pretty similar to each other: they’re both strong on the “good” side and weak on the “truth” side. Smyrna symbolizes people who try to do good works, but whose understanding of doctrine involves some fundamental falsities—falsities that foul up their efforts to do good deeds. Pergamos, on the other hand, symbolizes people who don’t bother trying to understand doctrine in the first place. So their minds aren’t tangled up in falsities, but they don’t really see any spiritual truths either. They don’t care about that stuff—they don’t go there. Those part of their minds are like unused rooms.

            As I said last week, spiritual darkness is a problem not because the Lord judges us on the basis of what we know and don’t know, but because we need the light of truth in order to do good that is really good. Truth is just the servant of love: it is not supposed to be in charge. But it’s a servant that love relies on. This becomes overwhelmingly obvious if we accept that truth does for our spiritual lives what physical light does for our natural lives. If you try to put away the dishes, or to change the oil in your car, or to stitch up a wound while you’re in total darkness, you are probably going to do something wrong—and maybe something harmful.

            The Lord tells the people of Pergamos that they have among them those who hold the doctrine of Balaam (Rev. 2:14), and also those who hold the doctrine of the Nicolaitans (v. 15). Balaam and Nicholas symbolize the kinds of good that we can end up doing when we don’t have the truth to guide us. We’re told that the doctrine of Balaam symbolizes hypocritical works (AR §114). In the book of Numbers we learn that Balaam wanted to curse the children of Israel, but that the Lord required him to bless them instead (Numbers 22-24). Balaam did what the Lord told him to do, but he held on to his intention to destroy the children of Israel, and later on he found ways to lead them astray (Num. 25:1-3, 31:16) So Balaam did good on the outside, but intended evil on the inside—and that’s the definition of hypocrisy. Without the light of truth, we can’t see the selfish and destructive motivations that might lie within the ostensibly good deeds that we’re doing. But the people around us will feel the effects of those motivations. Hypocritical good leaves a bad taste in the recipient’s mouth.

            The doctrine of the Nicolaitans symbolizes merit-seeking works (AR §§86, 115). Merit-seeking good isn’t as bad as hypocritical good—it isn’t deliberately evil, it’s just self-absorbed. To seek merit is to take credit for the good that we do, instead of acknowledging that all good is a gift from the Lord. When we seek merit, we end up doing good to prove how good we are—so the good things that we do are actually all about ourselves. Again, without the light of truth we can’t see that merit-seeking quality within ourselves. In the letter to the church of Ephesus, the Lord praises the Ephesians for rejecting the deeds of the Nicolaitans (Rev. 2:6). The Ephesians understand that merit-seeking good is not really good. Where the Ephesians fall down is in the practice of goodness. They’re so busy understanding it that they don’t do it.

The Pergamites might not understand as clearly as the Ephesians, but they know that action is what counts. And that emphasis on action is powerful. If the people who are represented by the church of Pergamos are willing to let the Lord’s light shine on their spirits, and are willing to repent of the merit-seeking and hypocritical motivations that that light reveals in them, they will be powerful servants of the Lord (cf. AR §116).

It’s easy to see the connection between the things that the Lord says about Pergamos and the story of Martha and Mary. Clearly it’s Martha who is the Pergamite in this story. The story says that she was “distracted with much serving” (Luke 10:40). What she was doing was good: she wasn’t sitting around on her cellphone while Mary listened to the Lord. She was serving. Dinner wasn’t going to cook itself. And if Mary sat around thinking about the Lord all of the time, while Martha did all of the work all of the time, it’s clear that Mary would be in the wrong. Martha’s willingness to serve was good. What she didn’t see was that if we’re to truly serve our neighbors, we have to sit at the Lord’s feet some of the time.

Martha’s behavior in this story illustrates how we sabotage our own good deeds when the Lord’s spirit is not with us. We all know why Martha was frustrated; we probably all relate to her, to one degree or another. But it’s also clear that she was feeling resentful and somewhat entitled. Instead of asking Mary for help, she complained about her sister in front of her sister. That wouldn’t have made Mary feel loved. Martha had tunnel vision: the chores were all she saw. She was serving people without paying attention to the effect that she was having on them. The Lord wants to open our eyes, so that we can see these kinds of things. He wants to lift up our faces, and teach us to see His children as He sees them. This is why we need to hold still sometimes—why we need to sit at His feet. This is why we need to read His Word, and go to church, and so on. We need to let Him teach us how to love His children, so that we don’t step on them in the name of getting the chores done. The good news, for the Marthas of the world, is that it’s so much easier for Him to teach us when we intend to use what we’re taught—when our spirits bend towards action. A Martha who also sits at the Lord’s feet from time to time becomes a powerful angel.

It’s clear that all of the different kinds of people described in the letters to the seven churches are able to be saved and go to heaven, if they listen to what the Lord says to them. But the book Apocalypse Revealed makes a point of saying that the people represented by Pergamos have the potential to become angels of the third or highest heaven—the heaven that is home to the wisest and most loving angels. The book doesn’t say that the people represented by the other churches can’t go to the third heaven; it simply makes a point of saying that if the people called Pergamos read the Word and turn to the Lord, they will be angels of the third heaven (AR §123).

In the letter to Pergamos the Lord says, “To him who overcomes I will give to eat of the hidden manna” (Rev. 2:17). And in Apocalypse Revealed we read:

The hidden manna that people will have who are engaged in good works and at the same time add doctrinal truths to the works, means a private wisdom, such as people have who are in the third heaven. For as these were focused on good works and doctrinal truths simultaneously in the world, they enjoy a wisdom beyond that of other angels, but a private wisdom, for it is engraved on their life and not so much on their memory. Therefore people of this character are such that they do not talk about doctrinal truths but practice them, and they practice them because they know them and also see them when others talk about them. (§120)

The will to do that characterizes Pergamos is a powerful thing. It’s clear that we need to seek the truth. The Lord is the light of the world (John 8:12, 9:15), and we need His light. But in the end, words are just words. Talk carries little weight. The Lord says, “You will know them by their fruits” (Matt. 7:16).

Amen.

Good is From God

Rev. Jared Buss

Pittsburgh New Church; April 21, 2024

Readings: Matthew 26:6-13 (children’s talk); Revelation 2:8-11; Apocalypse Revealed §97.2, 3

            Today we continue our sermon series on the seven churches from the book of Revelation. These seven churches symbolize all of the different qualities or characteristics of the people who are called to the Lord’s New Church (cf. AR §§68, 88, 153). In the book of Revelation the Lord dictates letters to each of these churches, and we’re going to be looking at each of these letters in turn. Last week we looked at the letter to Ephesus; today our focus is on the letter to Smyrna.

            We can learn a lot by looking at the spiritual meaning of any one of these letters. But we can learn even more if we also compare the Lord’s message to one church with His messages to the other churches. The church of Ephesus, which we looked at last week, is strong on the truth, and its weakness is that it puts the truth above goodness of life. It values being right more than being loving. The church of Smyrna is kind of the inverse of Ephesus. The people described in the letter to Smyrna are people who emphasize goodness of life, but cling to false beliefs. If you looked at what the Lord says about either one of these churches in isolation you might start to get an unbalanced picture of the relationship between love and truth. But if you put His messages to both churches side-by-side, you get a more complete story.

            Here is the Lord’s message to the church of Smyrna [read Rev. 2:8-11].

            Before I get into the details of the letter to Smyrna I want to point out a few things about the structure of these letters—because there’s a pattern that they follow, and that pattern says something about the way that the Lord talks to His people. All of these letters start with a salutation from the Lord, and in that salutation the Lord associates Himself with a specific part of the vision of Himself amidst the seven lampstands (Rev. 1:12-20). To Ephesus, He says, “these things says He who holds the seven stars in His right hand, who walks in the midst of the seven golden lampstands” (2:1; cf. 1:12, 16). To Smyrna He says, “These things says the First and the Last, who was dead and is alive” (2:8; cf. 1:17, 18). The Lord identifies Himself differently to each church because each church sees Him a little differently—or focusses on a different aspect of who He is (cf. AR §93).

            Then the Lord tells every single church, “I know your works.” In other words, “I know what you do.” Because that’s the bottom line. He doesn’t say, “I know your thoughts.” He doesn’t say, “I know your feelings.” In the end it is our actions—or better yet, the actions that we try to take—that are the measure of who we are.

Then there’s the body of the letter. In this section the Lord tells each church what it’s doing well, what it’s doing poorly, and what will happen if it does or doesn’t change what it’s doing. Then there’s the conclusion, and the conclusion always features two parts. The Lord says, “He who has an ear to hear, let Him hear what the spirit says to the churches.” This is a plea from the Lord. He’s urging us to listen—to make use of the truths that He is holding out in front of us.

And then, in every concluding section, the Lord says that he who overcomes will receive a blessing. To Ephesus He says, “To him who overcome I will give to eat from the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God” (2:7). To Smyrna He says, “He who overcomes shall not be hurt by the second death” (v. 11). All of these blessings symbolize an aspect of heaven. So every letter ends with a promise of heaven. And that says something about the Lord that we must not forget. All of the different kinds of people described in the letters to the seven churches are called to the kingdom of heaven. If they listen to what the Lord says, eternal life will be theirs.

Now for the details of the Lord’s letter to Smyrna. We’re told in the Heavenly Doctrine of the New Church, in the book Apocalypse Revealed, that the church of Smyrna symbolizes, “people who as to life are engaged in good endeavors, but as to doctrine are caught up in falsities” (§91). These are people who want to be good—people who value living a good life. They understand the importance of good works. They know that putting charity into action is what matters. And all of that is very much to their credit. Charity—which is spiritual love in action—is the soul of the church. As we heard last week, that’s the vital principle that the church of Ephesus struggles to take to heart. The Ephesians are strong on the truth, but they fail to see that truths must be the servants of spiritual love.

The Smyrnans get that part right—and their weakness is the opposite of the Ephesians’ weakness. The Smyrnans are people who have baked false ideas into their fundamental religious beliefs. This means that the good that they do has falsity within it. To a significant extent, their good deeds are the product of falsity. And this means that their goodness isn’t as good as they think it is. Their charity isn’t as charitable as they think it is.

This is why the Lord refers to them as, “those who say they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan” (Rev. 2:9). Throughout the Word, Judah—one of the twelve sons of Israel—symbolizes the goodness of love. So we’re told that the Jews, who take their name from Judah, symbolize “people who possess the goodness of love from the Lord” (AR §96). The Smyrnans say that they are Jews: they say that they are loving people. But the Lord says that they are not. They are a synagogue of Satan. Satan symbolizes falsity that come from hell (§97).

It might feel like the Lord is being really hard on the Smyrnans. If they stand for people who are trying to do the right thing, then so what if some of their ideas aren’t correct? Part of the Lord’s message in this letter is that the truth matters more than we might think it does. And our attitude towards the truth really matters. Our ability to do good that is actually good depends on the truth.

But the Lord knows that a lot of the time it seems to us that our ability to do good has little or nothing to do with our beliefs. Our next reading, which is from Apocalypse Revealed, speaks to this directly. For now I’ll read just the first part: [§97.2].

Goodness without truth is not good, and truth without goodness is not true. If our beliefs are false, then the good that we do is the good of falsity, which isn’t actually good. It might look good on the outside, but it doesn’t hold heaven inside of it (cf. AR §97.4).

As long as we’re thinking about spiritual good and spiritual truth, this principle can be hard to understand. But it actually becomes pretty obvious if instead we reflect on ordinary, worldly good deeds. If you want to do something that’s actually useful—something that someone else will actually appreciate—you need to know what you’re doing. No one wants to be helped by a doctor who didn’t go to medical school. And if you bake a cake for someone, but if you don’t know what you’re doing, so you use a teaspoon of flour and a cup of baking soda, they aren’t going to enjoy the cake. The “good” thing that you made won’t actually be good.

Of course the Lord forgives us if we try to do what’s right, but we make a mistake. He never judges anyone on the basis of what they know. And if we believe the wrong thing because we were taught the wrong thing, that isn’t our fault. But if we can’t be bothered to learn, or to listen to those who could teach us, that’s a little different. The Smyrnans stand for people who are part of the Lord’s church, and have the opportunity to learn from His Word. He doesn’t expect anyone to understand everything that He teaches. But if we choose not to approach Him with a spirit that’s willing to be taught, that’s a little different.

And when the Lord says that the Smyrnans stand for people who are in falsities as to doctrine, He isn’t talking about people who get the details wrong. The passage I read earlier goes on to give us some examples of the kinds of falsities that prevent us from doing good that is really good. As you’ll see, these falsities are about our fundamental relationship with the Lord and with the goodness that comes from Him. Here’s the second part of the reading: [AR §97.3].

In our recitation from John the Lord says, “Without me you can do nothing” (15:5; cf. AR §97.3). He is love itself, and all love that is really love belongs to Him alone. We can’t do anything good that is really good unless we do it with Him. Our natural minds just don’t get this: our natural minds say that if we do loving things then we’re loving people—and that if we do loving things, then we’re the ones who did them, not God. But that’s like a little child saying that he baked a cake, when in fact all he did was hold the measuring spoon for his mom. Anything good that we have ever done has been done with the Lord. He loves to share His love with us, and He doesn’t need all the credit. But if we actively believe that we don’t need Him, then we push Him out, and the good we do becomes the good of falsity, which is not good.

The same thing happens if we believe that we can do good without ever repenting, or shunning evils as sins. Evil is like poison that taints the love we receive. Sometimes we try to tell ourselves that we can love this neighbor and hate that neighbor at the same time. But it doesn’t work that way. If we give ourselves permission to hate anyone, then hate ends up coloring the way we treat everyone. And that’s just one example. So the Lord urges us to repent. If we don’t take Him seriously, then the good we think we’re doing just isn’t as good as we think it is.

The children’s talk was about a story in which a woman anoints the Lord with fragrant oil (Matt. 26:6, 7). This woman’s actions said that she loved the Lord. And the Lord said that what she did was done for His burial (v. 12). In the spiritual sense of the Word, both anointing the Lord and the Lord’s burial symbolize His resurrection and His glorification (AE §659.19). And the Word tells us that if the Lord had not been glorified and risen again, we could not be saved. This woman’s actions symbolize a humble acknowledgment of this truth—the truth that we are able to be saved because of what the Lord has done for us. And her actions symbolize love for the Lord on account of what He has done for us.

But the disciples criticized this woman, and their criticism has a Smyrna quality. They saw that it would be good to sell the precious oil and give the money to the poor, but they didn’t see what that woman saw. They didn’t recognize the value of pausing to acknowledge our debt to God. The Lord essentially told them that wanting to show charity to the poor is good—but that what the woman did for Him was also good. In the spiritual sense of the Word, He’s telling us that the works of charity matter—but that recognizing the truth about our relationship with Him, and giving time and attention to that truth, and loving Him because of it, is also a blessed thing.

He tells the Smyrnans to “be faithful until death” (Rev. 2:10). To be faithful is to look to the Lord—to put our confidence in the Lord. Faithful people are people who know that they need the Lord. And if we know that we need Him, we’re going to listen to what He says. We’re going to let Him teach us. So in Apocalypse Revealed we’re told that being faithful until death symbolizes acknowledging and receiving truths until our falsities have been cast aside (§102). If the Smyrnans are faithful until death, the Lord says that He will give them the crown of life (Rev. 2:10).

The final word on the Smyrnans is that the thing they put first is the thing that must come first. Yes, the truths we know define our ability to do good that is really good—but in the end, the willingness to do good is what matters. In the end, the Lord isn’t going to say to us, “I know what you know.” He’s going to say, “I know your works.”

Amen.

The Church's First Love

Rev. Jared Buss

Pittsburgh New Church; April 13, 2024

Readings: Mark 9:33-41 (children’s talk); Revelation 1:9-16, 2:1-7; Apocalypse Revealed §§69, 82

            Today we’re going to be talking about the different qualities that are part of the Lord’s church. These qualities are represented by seven different churches; and our first reading is from the part of the Word that introduces these seven churches. This is a description of a vision that was shown to the Lord’s servant John. This vision, by the way, is the reason why this room is oriented towards a copy of the Word that is surrounded by seven lampstands—or candlestands. We read from chapter one of Revelation: [vv. 9-16].

            This is a vision of the Lord Jesus Christ in His glory as the God of Heaven and Earth. For obvious reasons, it’s a powerful and important picture. But today we aren’t focusing on this picture of the Lord: we’re focusing on the seven churches that are named here. The Lord tells John, “What you see, write in a book and send it to the seven churches which are in Asia: to Ephesus, to Smyrna, to Pergamos, to Thyatira, to Sardis, to Philadelphia, and to Laodicea” (v. 11). Specifically, today’s sermon is about the first of these churches—the church of Ephesus.

            To many people, these seven names are just seven strange words. If you don’t know anything about them, then they go by in a blur. They’re the names of seven cities that are located in modern-day Turkey. These cities were centers of the early Christian church. But we’re not going to spend any time on the historical significance of these cities: our focus is on their spiritual significance.

            The Heavenly Doctrine of the New Church says that these seven cities, or seven churches, symbolize all of the different states of mind and life that make up the Lord’s New Church. Another way of putting that is that the seven churches symbolize all of the different kinds of people who are able to be part of the New Church. Our next reading is from the Heavenly Doctrine, from the book Apocalypse Revealed, which is an explanation of the internal sense of the book of Revelation. At the beginning of the explanation of chapter two of Revelation, Apocalypse Revealed says: [read §69]. There are other passages from Apocalypse Revealed which say that all of the people who are described by these seven churches are “called” to the New Church, which is the New Jerusalem (§§68, 153, cf. §88).

            The bottom line is that if we’re trying to be part of the church that is symbolized by the New Jerusalem—that is, if we’re trying to be part of the Lord’s kingdom on earth, if we’re trying to be part of the spiritual communion that is His church—then we probably “belong” to one of these seven churches. So for the next seven or eight Sundays, we’re going to be looking at each of the seven churches in turn. In chapters two and three of the book of Revelation, the Lord dictates letters to each of the seven churches. Today we’re going to focus on the letter to the church of Ephesus; next week we’ll focus on the letter to Smyrna, and so on. And the children’s talks will be about stories that illustrate the mentality or the quality of the church that is the focus that day.

            Going through all of the seven churches this way is useful for at least two reasons. First, odds are that all of us belong to one or more of these churches. And the Lord speaks directly to each of these churches. In the letters He dictates, He tells them what they’re doing well, and He also tells them what they need to keep working on. So if we can learn to recognize that we’re in a “Smyrna” state of life, or a “Sardis” state of life, then in the letters to Smyrna or to Sardis we can find reassurance and guidance from the Lord that speak to us where we are. Of course, our spiritual states change; just because we resonate with Ephesus at one point doesn’t mean that we’ll always resonate with Ephesus. But at any given time, each of us is probably somewhere in the spiritual constellation that these seven churches define.

            The other reason that it’s useful to go over all of the spiritual states described by the seven churches is that all of them are different—yet all of them are part of the Lord’s New Church. All of the different kinds of people that we’ll talk about throughout this series are called to the Lord’s New Church. When someone else does life differently than we do, a normal human reaction is to wonder what on earth is wrong with them. This reaction can be especially strong when someone does religion differently than we do—especially if they say that they’re part of “our” religion… but there they are living and thinking differently than we do.

Of course it isn’t true that “anything goes” in the Lord’s church. Evil is a real thing, and the church should not countenance evil. But good is more varied than we might realize. The seven churches are different from one another. But those churches are represented by the seven lampstands (Rev. 1:20; AR §§10, 41, 43), and the Lord—the one God of heaven and earth—stands in the midst of them all.

As I said, our focus today is on Ephesus, the first of the seven churches. Without further ado, here is the Lord’s letter to Ephesus [read Rev. 2:1-7].

The Lord says to Ephesus, “I know your works, your labor, your patience, and that you cannot bear those who are evil” (Rev. 2:2). That’s a big hint at the mentality that Ephesus symbolizes. People of the church of Ephesus are champions of the church. They champion the truths of the church. They labor for the church; they endure, they’re steadfast (v. 3). They know the difference between right and wrong, and want nothing to do with evil… and they’re a little bit hard-headed about it. They can’t bear evil. Because, as we’re told in Apocalypse Revealed, these are people who “regard doctrinal truths primarily, and not goods of life” (§73). In other words, the Ephesians are strong on the truth, they value the truth—and indeed they value truth more than goodness.

But goodness is the soul of the church. So the Lord says to Ephesus, “Nevertheless I have this against you, that you have left your first love” (Rev. 2:4). The church’s first love is love. Here’s one last reading from Apocalypse Revealed, which says: [read §82].

Ephesus puts the truth first. And the truth really matters. Whether the church teaches truth or falsity has a much bigger impact on human happiness than most people realize. Ephesus gets that. But Ephesus gets that so well that it loses sight of what really matters—which is love. The two great commandments are to love the Lord with all our hearts, and to love our neighbor as ourselves (Mark 12:29-31). All of the truths of the Word hang on those commandments (Matt. 22:37-40).

The irony is that people who put love to the Lord and to the neighbor above all other things actually understand the truth better than people who put the truth first. The reading said, “to the extent that a person is engaged in good endeavors in his life, to the same extent he is really in possession of doctrinal truths, but not the reverse” (AR §82). This is because the goods of life “open the inner recesses of the mind” (ibid.). When we do what the Lord says to do, He flows into us, and His presence illuminates us. Heavenly love puts truth into order: it shows us which ideas must lead and which must follow. If we don’t have that illumination from the Lord, our understanding of the truth is stuck at a lower level.

But to be fair, it is “the goods of life” that open the mind. And the goods of life aren’t simply good deeds that we do from time to time. They aren’t compassionate feelings either. The good of life is charity in action. It’s spiritual love that we receive from the Lord and give to the world around us through our actions. And we can’t receive that spiritual love from the Lord unless we go to Him and ask Him to deliver us from evil. And we can’t do those things unless we know who the Lord is, and how He teaches us to live. So again, the truth really does matter. Ephesus is not a terrible starting place for someone who wants to be part of the church. We do need to learn to value the truth. But truth is not the point.

Truths are like tools. If you’re building a house it’s important to have tools—but holding a hammer is not the point, and telling the other guy that he’s holding his hammer wrong is certainly not the point. What matters is the good thing that we’re trying to build. If we keep our eye on that, the tools remain important, and they’re still in our hands—but they’re not front and center. Truth is the servant of what is good.

The Lord says that the Ephesians “have tested those who say they are apostles and are not, and have found them liars” (Rev. 2:2). In the spiritual sense of the Word, “apostles” means truths and “liars” means falsities (AR §79). The Ephesians are good at weeding falsities out of the church, which is work that needs to be done. The Lord also says that the Ephesians “hate the deeds of the Nicolaitans” (v. 6). The deeds of the Nicolaitans are merit-seeking works (AR §86). Merit-seeking works are good deeds that we do in order to collect spiritual “gold stars,” or show everyone how good we are. The Ephesians understand that this isn’t real goodness: real goodness comes from the Lord, and is received by a humble heart. The Ephesians get it… but they’re preoccupied by how well they get it, and they undervalue the part where they live the truth. So the Lord tells them, “Repent, and do the first works, or else I will come to you quickly and remove your lampstand from its place” (v. 5). The “first works” are the works of charity—spiritual love in action.

The passage from Mark that I read to the children illustrates the Ephesus mentality in a couple of ways. The Lord’s disciples argued about which of them would be first (9: 34, 35). In the spiritual sense of the Word, the twelve disciples stand for all of the goods and truths of the church (see AR §§79.2, 174). Arguing about which good and true thing is better and truer than all the rest is a very Ephesus thing do.

And when John told that man who was casting out demons in Jesus’s name to stop doing that, because He didn’t follow Jesus the way the twelve did, that was also a very Ephesus thing to do (Mark 9:38). The Ephesus mentality leads us to the conviction that what we see is the truth, and that anyone who doesn’t see what we see therefore does not see the truth. In other words, the Ephesians are quick to say that someone who thinks differently than they do is wrong. The tricky thing is that there’s a decent chance that the Ephesians will be sort of right about that. The Ephesians value the truth; they pay attention to the truth. And that’s to their credit.

But the Lord told John, “Do not forbid him…. For he who is not against us is on our side” (Mark 9:39, 40). People who try to do good works in the Lord’s name—even if they get some things wrong—are on our side. The Ephesian mentality is good at creating divisions. And some divisions—or separations—need to be. But on the whole the Lord is much more interested in gathering than in dividing. He says, “And other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they will hear My voice; and there will be one flock and one shepherd” (John 10:16).

And He set that little child in the midst of His disciples, and told them “Whoever receives one of these little children in My name receives Me” (Mark 9:36). Little children are pictures of innocence, and innocence is the soul of charity. It’s at the heart of everything that matters most to the Lord. Whoever seeks these qualities from the Lord finds the Lord. Whether their sight of Him is clear or blurry matters far less than the presence of His love in them.

Amen.

More Than a King

Rev. Jared Buss

Pittsburgh New Church; March 24, 2024

Readings: Matt. 21:14-16; Zech. 9:9, 16 (children’s talk); TCR §114; AC §8455

            In this portion of the service we’re going to explore who the Lord really is—and we’re especially going to explore what He values most of all. The idea we’re starting with is the idea that He is a king. That’s how He was hailed when He rode into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.

The Word makes it clear that He is a king. But it’s also pretty clear that that, throughout most of His ministry on earth, He didn’t seem like a king. He didn’t dress like a king; He didn’t wear a crown. People looked at Him and said things like, “Is this not the carpenter’s son?” (Matt. 13:55). He had no courtiers, no palace; in fact He said, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head” (Matt. 8:20). He was a wanderer. In Isaiah there’s a prophecy of His coming that reads, “He has no form or comeliness; and when we see Him, there is no beauty that we should desire Him” (53:2). Why did He present Himself this way, if He really was the king of heaven and earth?

            One answer is that His kingdom is not of this world (John 18:36). The Lord was not an earthly king—so He didn’t surround Himself with earthly trappings of royalty. The book of Revelation portrays Him as He’s seen in heaven—and in heaven’s light He looks very much like a king (e.g. 19:11-16).

            But there is another answer, which is that the Lord is more than a king. He wants us to see Him as something more than our king. All power in heaven and on earth is His (Matt. 28:18). He exemplifies the qualities that kings are supposed to have—majesty, glory and wisdom. It would be wrong to take any of these away from Him. But He is more than these things. He wants us to see more than these qualities in Him.

            We’ll turn, now, to the first of our readings from the Heavenly Doctrine of the New Church, which is from a book called True Christian Religion. We read: [§114].

            The two qualities that make up the essence of God are love and wisdom (TCR §37ff; DLW §28ff). These two qualities can’t actually be separated—they define each other, and they depend on each other (TCR §41; DLW §§14-16, 34-39). But we can make a distinction between God’s love and His wisdom (see DLW §14). Because He is these two things, many of His names come in pairs: He is the Lord God. He is Jesus Christ. And because He is these two things, He has two functions—or you could say, two primary roles. His kingly function, which is what we’ve been discussing so far, is the ministry of His truth. His other function is a priestly function, which is the ministry of His love.

            Like I said, the Lord’s love and His wisdom—or His goodness and His truth—can’t actually be separated. When He acts as a king, or when He is in His kingly function, He isn’t acting from truth alone. He rules by means of truth from good (cf. AC §3009). And when He is in His priestly function, He doesn’t act from love alone: His love expresses itself through wisdom. Even so, these two roles are distinct, especially from our perspective. Sometimes we see the Lord as a king; other times we see Him as a priest, or a healer, or a savior. It’s hard for our merely human brains to hold onto everything that He is at once. We tend to focus on one or another of His aspects. Sometimes we want to see His power. Other times we want to feel His love.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting the Lord to be our king—with wanting to be part of a kingdom that He rules with wisdom and with grace. But if one of His two functions is nearer to His heart, it’s the priestly function—the ministry of love. His love and His wisdom can’t really be separated, but there is a sense in which His love comes first. Wisdom comes from love. Love is His soul, and wisdom is the body from that soul (cf. DLW §14). Think of it this way: the Lord is called both Jesus and Christ. The name “Christ,” which means “Anointed,” has to do with His kingly function, and the name “Jesus,” which means “Savior,” has to do with His priestly function. They’re both His names, but Jesus is His first name. And when you’re with your own people, you want to be known by your first name.

The reason why all of this matters is that it helps us keep our eye on what the Lord wants for us most of all. His truth is beautiful. The kingdom that He rules is a kingdom of peace, and that peace is better than anything that this world can give us. Yet there is another quality that is even closer to the heart of all things, and the Lord wants to share it with us.

Our next reading is also from the Heavenly Doctrine, this time from the book Arcana Coelestia or Secrets of Heaven. This reading describes the quality of the truth that fills the kingdom of heaven. This truth is called the truth of peace. We read: [§8455].

The state of mind that’s described in this passage is beautiful. The truth of peace fills the kingdom of God like daybreak fills the earth. What’s revealed in that light is that God holds all things in His hands: He governs all things, and provides all things, and leads towards an end that is good. When we believe these things—when we have confidence in the Lord—then nothing that tomorrow holds can disturb us. Who doesn’t long for peace that deep? And yet, this peace is not the very heart of the Lord’s kingdom. It comes from something else. As the reading says, it depends on love to the Lord.

In the Heavenly Doctrine we’re told that there are two inmost things of heaven: innocence and peace (HH §285; ML §394). And if one of these comes first, it’s innocence. Just as love is interior to wisdom, innocence is interior to peace (cf. D. Wis. 3). Innocence is the source of peace (cf. HH §285; ML §394). These qualities fill the heavens because the spirit of the Lord fills the heavens—and He is innocence itself, just as He is peace itself. This is why, in Isaiah, He’s called the Prince of Peace, and in the same verse is also said to be the child that is born to us. (9:6; cf. AC §430).

This is why He’s called the Lamb. When John the Baptist saw the Lord, He said: “Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” (1:29, cf. v. 36). Lambs are symbols for innocence. Lambs are soft and gentle. They’re also the young of their species; and in youth—or childhood—we see a reflection of the innocence of heaven, which is the Lord’s innocence (cf. AC §§2305, 2306; HH §§277, 341).

The Lord is many things, but it seems that innocence is the inmost of them all. In the book Heaven and Hell we read:

Because innocence is the very being of good with the angels of heaven, it is evident that the Divine Good that goes forth from the Lord is innocence itself, for it is that good that flows into angels, and affects their inmosts, and aligns and adapts them to receive all the good of heaven. (§282)

It is in innocence that God dwells with us. Innocence is what He wants to share with us.

And what is innocence? In everyday speech, the word means guiltlessness, or blamelessness—if you’re innocent that means you’ve done nothing wrong. This is an aspect of heavenly innocence. God is the only person who has never done anything wrong—but He can bring us into a state of innocence, a state in which the bad things we’ve done are so far removed from us that they cast no shadows on our minds.

But heavenly innocence is more than just guiltlessness. Little children (in their good moments) show us what this innocence is like. Their innocence is tender—and it’s playful (cf. HH §§281, 288; AE §996.2). The Lord wants us to see these qualities in Him.

The closest thing to a definition of innocence that we’re given in the Heavenly Doctrine is that it’s a willingness to be led by the Lord (HH §§281, 341; cf. §§278, 280; ML §414). We’re told that the highest and wisest angels are also the most innocent, “for more than all others they love to be led by the Lord as little children by their father” (HH §280; cf. AE §996.2). Innocence is a total trust in the Lord. It’s the state of simply rejoicing to go where He leads us.

Of course, it doesn’t work to define innocence as a willingness to be led by the Lord when we’re talking about the Lord. He is innocence itself—does this mean that He loves to be led by Himself? That doesn’t make sense. It sounds self-oriented, and the Lord is anything but self-oriented. In human beings, innocence is a willingness to be led by the Lord. In the Lord, innocence is the reciprocal willingness: a willingness to lead us. To lead us to every good thing is His joy.

Innocence isn’t always something that we value very much. We don’t always think of it as something that we need. In some states of mind, we see it as worthless: we associate it with naïveté, and treat it with contempt. For these reasons, God doesn’t always appear to us as the God of innocence. Sometimes that isn’t the God we need. Sometimes we need the Lord to be a hero who will deliver us from evil; sometimes we need Him to be an authority figure. He is all of these things. He has many names, and all of them are good.

In the Gospel we see that He fills many roles. On Palm Sunday He was received as a king—and He is a king. But He has another aspect, an aspect in which He’s much closer than a king. He reveals it to us softly. You can’t make someone value innocence by hitting them over the head with it. But if we want to see His innocence, it’s there. We see it in the stories in which He takes little children into His arms and blesses them (Mark 9:36, 10:16, et al.). We hear it whenever He talks about what He really wants—when He says, “Father, I desire that they also whom You gave Me may be with Me where I am” (John 17:24). We hear it when He says, “the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.” (Matt. 20:28)

Amen.

How Do We Forgive Like Joseph Did?

Rev. Jared Buss

Pittsburgh New Church; March 17, 2024

Readings: Genesis 45:1-15 (children’s talk); John 15:1-12; Apocalypse Revealed §306

            Today’s sermon is going to be centered around Joseph’s ability to love his brothers in spite of what they did to him. But before we explore the Joseph story any further, I’m going to read a passage from the gospel of John. The connection between this reading and the Joseph story will come to light later on. For now, you’re simply invited to imagine what it would be like to hear the Lord speak these words to you. We read from John 15 [vv. 1-12].

            Now let’s go back to the Joseph story. When Joseph reveals his identity to his brothers, he also reveals his love for them—his desire to comfort them, his total disinterest in punishing them. That love makes this a wonderful story. The obvious question that the story puts in front of us is, “How do we do this? How do we forgive like Joseph did?”

            In a sense, the answer is, “You just do it.” You just choose love instead of resentment, like I said to the children. But if you consider how deeply people can be hurt, that phrasing might start to sound a bit simplistic. When we, as adults, reflect on how it would feel to experience what Joseph experienced at the hand of his brothers, it becomes clear that Joseph didn’t casually leave his wounds in the past and move on. He was seventeen, and they were his family (Gen. 37:2). And they physically overpowered him, and then they sold him (vv. 23-28). That would be a hard thing to forgive.

            And as I said to the children, they never do say sorry to him either. They do admit that what they did to him was a sin (Gen. 42:21-23, 44:16; cf. AC §5785), but they don’t say so to his face. They never ask for his forgiveness. In fact, they don’t even believe that he really has forgiven them: in the last chapter of Genesis we see that they’re still afraid that Joseph is going to get revenge on them someday (50:15). The point is, they don’t make it easy for him to forgive them.

            This means that his willingness to forgive them isn’t about what they do. In a way, it has nothing to do with his brothers. It certainly has nothing to do with whether or not they “deserve” to be forgiven. Joseph’s ability to love them and to move forward is something that he comes to within himself. And actually it has everything to do with his relationship with the Lord. We get a strong indication of this in the story. Joseph makes it very clear to his brothers that he sees that God is in charge. He says, “do not … be grieved or angry with yourselves because you sold me here; for God sent me before you to preserve life” (v. 5, cf. v. 7). And he says, “it was not you who sent me here, but God” (v. 8). This is a big hint at how we learn to forgive like Joseph did. Putting everything into God’s hands has everything to do with it.

            The Heavenly Doctrine of the New Church teaches that the stories of the Word contain an internal, or spiritual, sense. We might expect that the internal sense of the Joseph story would lay out everything that we need to know about the internal process of forgiveness. But if we look at what the Heavenly Doctrine actually has to say about today’s story, we don’t find they word “forgiveness” anywhere. Instead, we read that today’s story is about the conjunction of internal good with external truth (AC §5867). This might seem like it has nothing to do with the question that we’re exploring—how do we forgive like Joseph did? But the internal and the external senses of the Word are always connected. So let’s look more closely at what the Heavenly Doctrine says about the internal sense of this story; and then we’ll look at what this has to do with forgiveness.

            We’re told that Joseph symbolizes internal, heavenly goodness; he also symbolizes the Lord, because the Lord is the source of this goodness (AC §5869). And Joseph’s brothers symbolize truths in the natural mind (AC §5872). The mind has many levels, but while we live in this natural world, we tend to think and operate at the natural level of the mind. This is the lowest level of the mind—the level that’s nearest to the external, or natural world. Joseph’s brothers stand for the truths that are known to this level of the mind. Specifically, they stand for the truths of the church that are known to the natural mind (compare AC §§5409, 5419, 5574). Anything from the Word that we accept as a truth is a truth of the church that is known to the natural mind. So if we accept that Jesus Christ is God, then when we hear Him say, “I am the vine, you are the branches” (John 15:5), those words become a truth known to the natural mind. “If you keep My commandments you will abide in My love” (v. 10) is a truth known to the natural mind—until it becomes something more.

            There’s a really big difference between knowing that the Lord said something—or knowing that the church teaches something—and finding the Lord’s love within His truth. Joseph stands for heavenly good from the Lord, heavenly love that fills His truth. The Lord’s intention is to reveal this love to us. That’s why He’s taught us His truth: truth is nothing but a vessel for love. Love and truth belong together—they yearn for each other, just as Joseph yearned to be close to his brothers. But when we first learn the truth, we don’t really see the love inside it. We don’t recognize that the Lord Himself is present in that truth. This is what’s symbolized by the brothers’ failure to recognize Joseph. He was right there in front of them, but they didn’t know him.

            Today’s story is about the moment of revelation—the moment in which we get it (cf. AC §§5878, 5885). Truth becomes a transparent vessel: within that truth the Lord Himself shines out. Suddenly the brothers know who Joseph is. And more than that, they see that he loves them. They see that he bears them no ill will—he just wants to take care of them. The Heavenly Doctrine says that when external truth is joined to internal good, there is a reordering that takes place in our minds; it says that we don’t really see that reordering, but we feel it, “through some joyful feeling, like that experienced at daybreak” (AC §5871). When truth and good are joined together we find the Lord, and in the Lord we find joy. And this is what it means to abide in the Lord.

            The process by which we come to abide in the Lord—or by which truth and good are joined together—is long and complicated. The internal sense of the entire Joseph story is about this process. But in today’s reading from John the Lord gives us a really good summary of this process: He says, “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love” (15:10). Elsewhere in John He says, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him” (14:23). When we keep the Lord’s Word—that is, when we use the truths we know, when we take the commandments of God and act upon them—then, little by little, the truths we know are transformed into vessels that can receive Him. As He says, He comes to us and makes His home with us. We abide in Him, and He in us.

            The reason we’ve spent so much time going over all of these ideas is that the ability to forgive—or to rise above the hurt that we’ve experienced—flows from abiding in the Lord. Our next reading is a passage from the Heavenly Doctrine, from the book Apocalypse Revealed, about the deeper meaning of the word “peace.” Listen to what this passage says about abiding in the Lord. We read: [§306].

            “When a person abides in the Lord, he is at peace with his neighbor” (AR §306). And when a person abides in the Lord, he “has protection from hell, which is spiritual security” (ibid.). The natural mind on its own can’t comprehend that kind of peace, or that kind of security. The natural mind on its own says that there can be no peace until our neighbors come to us and somehow undo all of the hurt that they did to us. The natural mind on its own says that the bad things our neighbors do and the false things that our neighbors believe make us unsafe, and that we cannot ever be safe until our neighbors stop doing those bad things and thinking those false things. It says that we cannot be safe until our neighbors become the way that we think they ought to be.

            But as we’ve discussed, Joseph’s ability to forgive his brothers has relatively little to do with the way that they treat him. There are some things that he needs from them. For one, he doesn’t really forgive them until they bring Benjamin down to Egypt; Benjamin’s presence softens his heart. His brother Judah’s willingness to become a slave to Joseph in Benjamin’s place also seems to soften Joseph’s heart (compare Gen. 44:33, 34 and Gen. 45:1). But as we discussed, Joseph’s brothers don’t ask to be forgiven. They don’t make it easy for Joseph to forgive them. He doesn’t forgive them because of what they do. He forgives them because he isn’t living in a world that they control; he isn’t living in a world in which they have power over his spirit. He knows that God is in charge. He knows that it was his God, and not his brothers, who brought him down to Egypt. He is in God’s hands; he abides in the Lord. And when we abide in the Lord we are at peace with our neighbors.

            The ability to forgive—or better yet, the ability to let go of resentment—flows from abiding in the Lord. You could even say that the ability to forgive is a by-product of doing your personal spiritual work. Our job is to learn to abide in the Lord. If we abide in the Lord, that means we aren’t abiding in the past; neither are we abiding inside someone else’s head, or inside someone else’s estimation of us. The ways we’re treated by other people will never cease to matter. The people around us have the power to help us and to heal us, and with that comes the power to hurt us. That’s the way that the Lord made us. But the thoughts and feelings that other people hand us don’t have to be our resting place. They don’t have to be our home. The Lord is willing to be that for us. His love can be our resting place.

None of this should be taken to mean that forgiveness should be easy. Often forgiveness is the work of a lifetime. And learning to abide in the Lord is the work of a lifetime. Perhaps we know that we’re supposed to do it; perhaps we know that if we obey His commandments we will abide in His love. But at first this knowledge is just a truth in the natural mind. We may believe it, but we don’t feel the Lord in it. Only in time, as we do our daily spiritual work, as we act on the truths that we know, are those truths joined to goodness—goodness that transforms them into vessels for the love of God.

What’s startling, but also wonderful, is that the Lord tells us to love as He loves. He says “If you keep My commandments you will abide in My love” (John 15:10), and two verses later He says, “This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you” (v. 12). The Lord doesn’t wait for people to be perfect; He simply loves them. And He tells us to do the same. For us to love somebody who’s hurt us can be deeply challenging. It should be said that loving people isn’t the same thing as giving them permission to hurt us. We can set boundaries, and still love people. And yes, that isn’t always easy to do. The thing is, evil has no power over the Lord’s love. If we abide in the Lord, He gives us the ability to love, and no one can take it from us. How other people receive that love is their choice—we will never have power over that. That isn’t our responsibility. The Lord’s commandment is that we love one another as He has loved us.

Amen.

What Would We Give in Exchange for New Life?

Rev. Jared Buss

Pittsburgh New Church; March 10, 2024

Readings: Genesis 44:14-34 (children’s talk); Arcana Coelestia §§5804, 8480; Mathew 16:24-26

            Judah was willing to give up his own freedom so that Benjamin would not be lost. Judah isn’t necessarily a hero—there are other stories in which his behavior is awfully selfish—but what he does in today’s story is good. And what he does in today’s story is an image of one of the steps in the process of regeneration—the process of allowing the Lord to make us new. Judah chose to give up his freedom—something that was precious to him—for the sake of something that he valued more. The question we’re going to be exploring today is: What are we willing to give up in exchange for the new life that the Lord can create within us?

            If you zoom out from it, the whole Joseph story is about two relationships. In the first relationship, Joseph’s brothers are superior to him; and that first relationship is defined by their resentment of Joseph. In the second relationship, Joseph is superior to his brothers—and in the end, that second relationship is defined by Joseph’s willingness to forgive his brothers. When Joseph is in charge, things are good; when his brothers are in charge, things are bad. And to put it simply, Joseph stands for something that comes from the Lord; his brothers stand for levels of our hearts and minds that don’t necessarily have the Lord in them. Everything is better when we allow the Lord to reign! The Joseph story is about the process by which we get there.

            Last Sunday we talked about gratitude—and the message was that real gratitude to God is what follows when we recognize that we need Him. Gratitude comes from recognizing that it’s better when He’s in charge. Today we’re talking about the harder side of recognizing that we need the Lord. If we need Him—if we need the life He gives us—then we can’t insist that we’re good enough without Him. If He’s going to be in charge, then there are things we have to give up.

            Judah chose to give up his freedom In a sense, he gave his life to Joseph: if he became Joseph’s slave, then for the rest of his life, he would be in Joseph’s hands. Clearly this symbolizes some sort of yielding on our part. The first thing we’re going to get into is what this yielding is for. What is it that makes us willing to do this?

 In the internal sense of the Word, Judah and his brothers stand for goods and truths that are present in the external mind, or natural mind. Joseph stands for something that comes from the Lord. He stands for something really good that the Lord is creating within us. But at the point in our regeneration that’s represented in this story, that good thing that Joseph stands for is hidden from us. We haven’t recognized it yet: we haven’t seen the fullness of the joy that the Lord holds in store for us. That’s why Joseph, at this point in the story, is hidden from his brothers. They still think he’s just some Egyptian.

            Benjamin, on the other hand, stands for something new from the Lord that we have seen. In a lot of places the Heavenly Doctrine of the New Church says that Benjamin stands for the intermediary between the external mind and something much higher (see AC §§5411, 5443, 5639, 5688). But in the context of the story that we’re looking at today, the Heavenly Doctrine mostly describes Benjamin as a symbol for “new truth” (see AC §§5804, 5822). He has this symbolism because he is the youngest of Israel’s twelve sons—the newest of Israel’s sons (AC §§5804, 5812).

            Some of Israel’s other sons also symbolize truths, but for the most part they symbolize truths that we’ve learned from books or from teachers. The new truth that Benjamin symbolizes is completely different. Our next reading—which is from the Heavenly Doctrine, from the book Arcana Coelestia or Secrets of Heaven—describes the quality of this new truth [read §5804].

            These new truths aren’t just ideas that we’ve learned; they aren’t just what our parents or our pastors have told us to believe. They hold life within them. These truths are rays of spiritual light. They illuminate a brand new possibility—a kind of peace and beauty that leave this world behind. Fundamentally, Benjamin stands for truth that comes from good. So he stands for the way we see our lives and the way we see the Word of God after He has shown us what goodness—or love—really means.

            Once you’ve seen that new truth—that new vision of the life that the Lord could create for you—what will you be willing to do for its sake? What would you be willing to give up in order to hold on to that hope, that promise from the Lord? Judah was willing to give up his freedom so that Benjamin would not be lost. The question, then, becomes: What does Judah really represent? Where or what is the Judah in our lives? What does it mean to give it up?

Earlier I said that Judah and his brothers stand for parts of us that don’t have the Lord in them; but I also said that Judah and his brothers stand for goods and truths in the natural mind. Those two statements might seem contradictory—but they’re not, and that’s the whole point. It seems to us that if we know true things and do good things (or at least, things that look good on the outside), then we’re good people and the Lord is with us. But before we’ve truly allowed the Lord to enter in, the good that we do on the outside is lifeless—and it may even be evil on the inside. And that’s the kind of good that Judah represents.

            The Heavenly Doctrine says that he stands for the good of the external church (AC §§5782, 5794, 5841), and it defines this good as good that springs not from affection but from obedience (AC §5843). In other words, Judah stands for the kind of good that we do before the Lord’s light is actually shining in our minds. This good isn’t bad—it’s a step in the right direction. But compared to real spiritual goodness, it’s lifeless. And sooner or later it needs to yield; it needs to give itself up.

            There are two things that are involved in giving up external goodness—two closely related things. The first is the recognition that a lot of the good we’ve done in that external way has actually been done for selfish reasons. The second is the recognition and acknowledgment that we cannot do good that is truly good unless we do it from the Lord.

            As regards the first recognition—the recognition that a lot of the external good that we do is actually evil on the inside—one easy thing to point out is that Judah stands for this external good, and Judah did a lot of terrible things (see Gen. 38). He was the one who said that Joseph should be sold as a slave (Gen. 37:26, 27). And in the story we read today, Judah admits to this. As he kneels before Joseph, he says, “How shall we clear ourselves? God has found out the iniquity of your servants” (Gen. 44:16). This is puzzling, because it sounds like he’s saying that he and his brothers are guilty of stealing Joseph’s cup, when in fact they didn’t steal the cup. But the Heavenly Doctrine explains that Judah is really confessing to the crime that he did commit—the crime of making Joseph a slave (AC §5785). Kneeling there in Joseph’s presence, he knows that he has done evil, and he admits it.

            For our part, most of us probably already know that sometimes we do good things not because we’re motivated by any real love, but because we want to look good. Or because we want to worm our way into someone’s good graces. Sometimes when we donate to charity, we’re thinking more about the tax deduction and less about the charity. Sometimes we do good so that we can get what we want. It’s still good to do these kinds of good deeds—it’s better than not doing them. But it’s also plain that we should do more; we should go deeper. It’s also easy enough to see that if we were to pause, and look back over our lives, and recognize that the good deeds we’ve been so proud of have been riddled with selfishness, that recognition would hurt. If we were to admit to that, that admission would feel like a blow—like something was being taken away from us. That’s probably how Judah felt when he knelt down in front of Joseph.

But the deeper admission—the one that’s both more difficult, and more powerful—is that we can’t actually do any good at all without the Lord. A lot of the time, this seems unbelievable—because all of us are aware of good things that we have definitely done. But listen to what the Heavenly Doctrine has to say. This second reading is also from Arcana Coelestia, or Secrets of Heaven. [Read §8480].

To understand the flower analogy, you have to bear in mind that when this passage talks about a picture of flowers, it means a painting of flowers. The Doctrines were written before cameras were invented. The pigments in old fashioned paint came primarily from minerals, which is why the passage describes paint on a canvas as “a mass of particles of earth.” The point is clear: good that comes from the Lord is beautiful inside and out. More than that—it’s alive. It’s like a flower in a garden, a flower that holds seeds that can grow into more good things, and more and more forever. Whereas good that we do without the Lord is an imitation of goodness. It only goes so deep, and it is not alive.

It can be really hard to hear the Word say things like, “in himself a person is nothing but evil” (AC §8480). This seems untrue. When we were little children we gave our parents hugs and kisses, and that was good—and surely we’ve done a few more good things since then. The truth is that yes, we have… because the Lord has been with us. The love that we shared with everyone when we were tiny children was His love, and He’s been with us ever since, giving to us freely of His goodness, whether we know that it comes from Him or not. His goodness has been part of our lives. But when we’ve pushed or crowded Him out of our lives, what we’ve done has not been good.

It’s when we’ve tried to do it without Him that we’ve made the messes in our lives. When we ignore His mercy and His power, and try to do good deeds in the name of our own goodness, that’s when we feel inadequate. When we try to take control—when we believe that we need to be the source of the good that we do—that’s when we’re met with failure. The truth is that we need the Lord. We cannot do good that is really good without the Lord. To accept this truth we have to lay down our pride; we have to lay down our “right” to do it our way. And that’s what’s symbolized by Judah’s willingness to lay down His freedom.

But of course, Joseph doesn’t actually make Judah a slave. When we give our lives to the Lord, what actually happens is that we get to keep it all. He gives us new life—His own life—and He gives us the power to put that life into action as though it is our own. He puts His love into our hearts, into our hands, and He says: “love one another as I have loved you” (John 15:12).

Everything that we’ve talked about today is taught much more concisely in a few lines that the Lord says to His disciples in the Gospel. In Matthew we read: [vv. 24-26].

Right there in the Gospel, the Lord asks us what would we give in exchange for our souls. On the face of it, He’s asking us what we’d give up in order to save our souls from evil, but the question can also be framed the other way. He is willing to give us new life. He is trying to teach us new truth—truth that shows us real joy and real love. What does it profit us if we hold on to all of our pride and every piece of the life that we’ve created for ourselves, and lose that new life? What would you give in exchange for the goodness that flows from the kingdom of heaven?

Amen.

Gifts from God

Rev. Jared Buss

Pittsburgh New Church; March 3, 2024

Readings: Genesis 44:1-13; Secrets of Heaven §5747.2; Luke 15:11-24

            In this portion of today’s service we’re going to continue to reflect on the gifts that we receive from God. As we saw during the children’s talk, if we have even a little bit of an inclination to be grateful to God, then it’s pretty easy to come up with a long list of things that He has given us. And it’s wonderful that children can do that. We all know how much gratitude opens up our hearts. Gratitude to God really does open up our hearts towards heaven.

            But we also know that it’s easy to be grateful when you know you’re supposed to be grateful (or when the pastor is asking you what you’re grateful for). It’s a lot harder to make gratitude your baseline; to be grateful when no one is looking; to let gratitude shape the way you see yourself and your place in the world. We’re going to be talking about this second, or deeper, kind of gratitude. We’re going to be looking at what it takes to make the shift from occasionally agreeing that we’ve been blessed to actually believing what the Lord says in our recitation from John—that without Him we can do nothing (15:5). If that’s true, then every good thing that we do is a gift from God. “Without Me you can do nothing” can feel like a bitter pill to swallow. But what I hope you’ll see, in the teaching that we’ll look at next, is that when we acknowledge that we need what God gives us, we usually find that that acknowledgement is nowhere near as bitter as we expected it to be.

            To begin with, we’re going to revisit the story of Joseph and the silver cup. As I said to the children, in the internal or spiritual sense of the Word, Joseph stands for the Lord, and his brothers stand for people who are trying and sometimes failing to learn and apply the Lord’s teachings. And the silver cup symbolizes truth from the Lord; specifically it symbolizes interior truth (AC §§5736, 5747)—a purer and clearer kind of truth that holds a real taste of heaven within it.

            When we learn something, our instinct is to assume that we figured it out. We tend to treat knowledge, or truth, like a kind of currency—“the truths I know are my spiritual riches.” This story is about the process by which we learn that it isn’t so. Every insight that we have is a gift from God. The silver cup isn’t ours: it is the Lord’s.

            If Joseph represents the Lord, that does make it a little confusing that he plants the cup on Benjamin and then accuses him of stealing it (Gen. 44:2, 4, 5), because this doesn’t seem very just. But this was done for the sake of the internal sense. What’s represented here, in the internal sense of the Word, is that the Lord is constantly giving us gifts, like that silver cup, without our realizing it. He shows us true things, and we don’t even realize that we’ve seen them, let alone realize that He’s the one who showed them to us. So, like Joseph’s brothers, we assert that we have no silver cup. There’s no gift from God in our minds. Our knowledge is our own.

            Here’s how the inner meaning of this story is explained in the Heavenly Doctrine of the New Church, in a book called Secrets of Heaven: [read AC §5747.2].

            Even though Joseph’s brothers, in the literal sense of the story, didn’t steal anything, this story in its internal sense is about spiritual theft. To commit spiritual theft is to lay claim to something that actually belongs to the Lord. And everyone commits spiritual theft at some point or another, because the truth is that every good thing in creation actually belongs to the Lord (see AC §§1614, 2016). But for the most part we don’t realize this. We’re content to assume that the truth we know is ours, and that the good we do is ours.

            When we learn that it’s not so—that we ought to give thanks to God for every good and true thing that we possess—that feels like a bitter pill to swallow. Because it seems to us that if that’s true, then our existence must be meaningless. We think to ourselves that if it’s true that without Him we can do nothing (John 15:5), then we might as well be nothing. If all good belongs to God, then we must be no good at all.

            This is how everybody initially reacts when they learn just how much they owe to the Lord. Gratitude is really hard, because there’s a big part of everyone that thinks that we should be able to do it all on our own. That part of us believes that needing God is basically the same thing as being a slave to God (see AC §§892, 5763). And that’s why Joseph’s brothers, in the story, tell Joseph’s servant that if the cup is found with them, they should all be made into slaves. “With whomever of your servants it is found, let him die, and we also will be my lord’s slaves” (44:9). And when the cup is found in Benjamin’s bag they tear their clothes (v. 13). When we realize that we have nothing good without God, often our initial reaction is to grieve. There is a part of us that believes that if we have to admit that we need God, then we might as well have no freedom at all.

            So far we’ve been talking about two distinct phases in our spiritual development. The first phase is the one in which we imagine that the good we do and the truth we know are ours. We imagine that there’s no silver cup, no gift from God, hidden away in our spirits. The second phase is the one in which we start to recognize that we can’t take credit for anything good—because the more we try to do it all on our own, without any help, the emptier we feel. Because the truth is that everything good comes from God. This second phase is not a happy phase. In this phase we struggle with the feeling that God is asking us to become a slave—that God is asking us to have nothing, and to be nothing, at all.

            But there is a third phase. If you know what comes next in the Joseph story, you know that Joseph doesn’t make any of his brothers into slaves. Far from it. But instead of continuing with the Joseph story, we’re going to shift to looking at a story from the gospel of Luke, because this story illustrates all three phases clearly and concisely. This story is a parable that the Lord tells; it’s usually called the parable of the prodigal son. “Prodigal” just means “wasteful.” We read: [15:17-24].

            The father in this story clearly stands for the Lord. The prodigal son stands for us—he stands for an aspect of the human condition. At the start of the story, this man claims his inheritance from his father, and goes out into the world and lives large, and wastes everything that he has (v. 12, 13). This is “phase one” of the spiritual process that we’ve been talking about—the phase in which we take all of God’s gifts for granted, in which we assume that the life that’s been given to us is ours, and we spend it however we want to spend it, without giving any thought to the Father who gives us that gift in the first place.

            Then the land is gripped by a famine, and the prodigal son realizes that he has nothing. And that’s phase two. The detail that I want to call your attention to is that this man realizes that if he’s to have any food he needs to go back home—but he believes that if he goes back, he has to go back as a servant. He has to say to his father, “I am no longer worthy to be called your son” (v. 18). That’s how we tend to think! We tend to believe that if all good belongs to God—if we can do nothing good apart from God—then we must be unworthy. Often people even end up believing that if God is good, and we are not, that must mean that He looks down on us, that He has contempt for us, that He won’t even let us be His servants unless we beg Him.

            Nothing could be further from the truth. In the story the father runs to his son (v. 20). And he gives him new gifts: he gives him the best robe and a ring for his hand (v. 22). He has no interest in discussing his son’s worthiness or unworthiness (v. 21). He is overjoyed, because his son has come home (v. 24).

            The Lord has no interest in holding His goodness above our heads, out of reach. He has no desire to make us feel small so that He can feel bigger. He just gives. He loves to give good things to His children (cf. Matt. 7:11). Whether or not we deserve His gifts isn’t part of the conversation. What matters is whether or not we’re willing to receive His gifts. The father in the story of the prodigal son didn’t withhold his love because his son was unworthy; he loved his son every moment of that story. But the son didn’t know it, because he chose to go away from his father. When he chose to go home and ask for what He needed, He discovered the truth.

            It seems to us that if we admit that we have nothing good without God, then we’re admitting that there is nothing good in us or about us. But it isn’t so. Because the Lord is constantly giving us His compassion and His wisdom. He puts them into our hands and tells us to use them as though they were our own. In the Heavenly Doctrine of the New Church we’re told: “Divine love is such that it wills what it has to be another’s” (DP §43). And we’re told, “Love consists in this, that its own should be another’s; to feel another’s joy as joy in oneself, that is loving” (DLW §47). And the Lord is love itself. His joy is to give what He has to us.

            Now if He is so willing to give us His love and His wisdom, we might start to wonder why it’s so important that we acknowledge that those gifts are His. If the Lord is willing to give us the things represented by Joseph’s silver cup, then why weren’t Joseph’s brothers allowed to leave Egypt with the silver cup? Why did they have to go back, and humble themselves before Joseph? Why did the prodigal son have to go home and humble himself before his father? If the Lord is willing to give us good things whether we’re grateful or not, then why is it important to be grateful? Can’t we just stay at phase one? Can’t we just politely ignore God, and enjoy our power to learn and to love?

            The answer is simple: we need the Lord. And to know that we need Him makes all the difference. If we don’t know that we need Him, we wander away from Him—away from the source of our blessings—and our blessings run out. Surely every human being knows what it’s like to try to go it alone—to try to be enough, without emotional or spiritual help from anyone or anything. It’s exhausting. It leads to disappointment and failure. The world is simply too big for us. Trying to be enough on our own is like trying to make a single meal last for a week, or a month. We end up feeling empty. Like the prodigal son, we take the wealth that our Father has given us, and we use it up.

            But if we’re willing to admit that we need something from God—that we need more than we can create on our own—our hearts open up. Humility and gratitude bring us back to God with open spirits. That’s why He says, “Ask, and it will be given to you” (Matt. 7:7). To know that you need a gift from God makes all the difference in the world.

Amen.