No Glory

Rev. Jared Buss

Pittsburgh New Church; September 22, 2024

Readings: Judges 4:1-18; Secrets of Heaven §§10488, 1950.3

            In this portion of the service we’re going to dig deeper into the story of Deborah and Barak. This is one of those stories that can feel hard to derive a message from: on the face of it, it’s a story about a battle that happened a long time ago. Maybe it’s interesting… but why did the Lord tell us this story? Really, it can be hard to recognize the Lord’s voice in any of the stories of the book of Judges, if you don’t know that there’s an internal sense, or a deeper meaning, to these stories. So we’re going to be looking closely at what the teachings of the New Church reveal about the internal meaning of today’s text.

            But before we do that, we’re going to hear the second half of the story. This reading starts with Deborah’s response to Barak, after he tells her that he won’t go to battle unless she goes with him. It then goes on to describe the battle itself, and its outcome. We read: [Judges 4:8-18].

            The story goes on to describe how Sisera falls asleep in Jael’s tent, and how she kills him in his sleep (vv. 19-21). Then Barak comes to the tent, chasing Sisera, but he finds that Sisera is already dead (v. 22). So Barak is denied the honor, or the glory, of personally defeating the commander of the enemy army. That glory goes to a woman who isn’t even under his command.

            There are two pieces of this story that we’re going to focus on. The first is the piece that we already looked at during the children’s talk—the fact that Barak wouldn’t go to battle unless Deborah went with him (v. 8). The second piece is Deborah’s statement to Barak that she would go with him, but that there would be no glory for him in the journey (v. 9).

            Both of these details are about the truths that the church has from the Lord, and the way we hold them, or the way we use them. The fact that all of us are here right now is a strong indication that we recognize that learning the truth the Lord teaches is important. We want to understand. It’s been said that knowledge is power—how much more powerful, then, is an understanding of spiritual truth?

            But it’s also pretty obvious that the truth can be a challenging thing, and that churches, and religious people, don’t always know how to hold it, or how to use it. We know that we shouldn’t turn religious knowledge into something that is worshiped in its own right, and we know that we shouldn’t use the truths of the Word to attack other people or establish intellectual dominance over them. But of course, those things still happen. And sometimes it’s hard to figure out how to use the truth, how to speak the truth, without being arrogant or aggressive about it. How do you let the light of the truth shine out, without making it into something it shouldn’t be? In practice, when you’re dealing with people who might not agree with you, how do you hold the truth that you hear the Lord speaking to you, in His Word?

            Unfortunately, today’s sermon isn’t going to provide you with finished answers to any of these questions. But the story of Deborah and Barak does speak to these questions. Deborah and Barak are a leadership team. She is a prophetess and a judge (v. 4); he is a commander of soldiers (vv. 6, 10). It’s important to note that Deborah is the judge—she’s in charge. She calls Barak from his home, and she tells him that the Lord is sending him to do battle with Sisera (v. 6). That relationship between the two of them is particularly important to understand when you look to the internal sense of the Word—because in the internal sense of the Word, Deborah and Barak together symbolize truth from good (AE §447.4). Deborah lands on the “good” side of that equation; Barak lands on the “truth” side. She is the goodness from which truth comes; he is the truth that answers the call of what is good. And goodness is meant to lead the truth. The teachings of the New Church say that truth is like a body, and goodness is like the soul within that body (SH §§6344, 8530). The soul commands the body—and a desire to do good is meant to command the truth we know.

            This idea will be familiar to anyone who has spent any time with the teachings of the New Church. But there’s hearing this idea, and then there’s hearing it. The Doctrines make this point so clearly; and our next reading, which is from Secrets of Heaven, demonstrates this: [read §10488].

            Truth without good has “no power at all” (ibid.). We see this in the story: Barak was the mighty warrior, but the story doesn’t simply say that he couldn’t win the battle without Deborah—he wouldn’t even fight the battle without Deborah (Judges 4:8). Truth without goodness doesn’t do anything at all: as the reading says, “it is no more than lifeless factual knowledge” (§10488).

            Later on in the story, when they’re actually coming to grips with Sisera’s army, we see Deborah impelling Barak into battle. She says to him, “Up! For this is the day in which the Lord has delivered Sisera into your hand. Has not the Lord gone out before you?” (Judges 4:14). Goodness—or love, or affection—motivates the truth. It drives it forward. Without that motivation, the truth is inert, like a pile of letters on a page.

            The reading from Secrets of Heaven says that truth from good means a life in keeping with the truth, “for good is connected with life” (§10488). In other words, the truth is just so much information until we use it—until we allow our lives, or our behavior, to be changed by it. The truth of the Lord’s Word has no power in our lives until it is showing up, in our lives. That’s pretty self-evident. It’s also pretty obvious that living the truth doesn’t mean putting on an empty show—being a hypocrite praying on the street corner (cf. Matt. 6:5). The truth becomes part of our lives when we use it purposefully. So Deborah doesn’t stand for a hollow effort to do what we know we’re supposed to do—when that’s our motivation, the truth we know doesn’t have much power. Deborah stands for an affection that’s connected to the Lord’s purpose for us—and the Lord’s purpose is to bless His children and give them joy. That love is life itself. So Deborah stands for an affection that is connected to the life within all this information in the Word.

            Let’s talk about the practical applications of these ideas. The most obvious takeaway is that knowing the truth does not save us. It does not make us good people. We don’t begin to be good until we try to do what the truth says to do, and to love what the truth says to love. A more subtle application of these ideas is that when we’re trying to figure out what to do with the truth—what to make of the Lord’s teachings on repentance, or the second coming, or marriage, or anything—we should look for the affection behind them. Why did the Lord give us these teachings? How do they tie in to His purpose for us? And when we obey a specific teaching, what affection are we supposed to be expressing? If that truth is Barak, where and what is the Deborah? What is the affection that will impel that truth to do what it’s actually meant to do?

            Here’s an example: a teaching in the Doctrine that people sometimes struggle with is the teaching that the heart we’ve been born with is corrupt. We’re born inclining to evils of every kind (TCR §§520, 521). What is the point of that teaching? It’s there to show us that we need to change—and that we need the Lord’s help if we’re going to do so. And I believe that the affection that’s meant to go with that teaching has to do with humility—with realizing that we need the Lord—but it also has to do with hope, because when we ask for His help we receive it. That doctrine with its corresponding affection and that doctrine without it are two very different things.

            It must be said that goodness needs truth just as much as truth needs goodness. This is also something that the story illustrates: Deborah was in charge, but she worked through Barak. He was the one who commanded the troops in battle. The Canaanites that they were fighting against symbolize falsity from evil (AE §447.4)—and we’re told that they had nine hundred chariots of iron (Judges 4:3). As I said to the children, a chariot corps that strong would have been terrifying. And in the internal sense of the Word, those chariots symbolize an overwhelmingly sturdy system of false ideas. Chariots symbolize doctrine, and iron symbolizes unyielding truth—or, in this case, unyielding falsity. So to go up against Sisera and his nine hundred chariots of iron is to confront established systems of thought within ourselves. It’s to confront false ideas that have accumulated overwhelming momentum. It’s pretty obvious that a yearning to do good, all by itself, isn’t enough to challenge that falsity. We need more than just good intentions: we need light. We need to know what to do—and what not to do. The truth is that light. There’s a passage in the teachings of the New Church that says that good without truth is blunt, or rounded—but that with truth it becomes sharp (TCR §86). Truth enables love to be applied with clarity and with precision. The bottom line is that we need them both. The Lord gave us heads and hearts because we need them both.

            Now, at last, I want to go back to Deborah’s statement that she would go with Barak, but that there would be no glory for him in the journey (Judges 4:9). Deborah symbolizes goodness, and Barak symbolizes truth. When goodness and truth are joined together the way they’re meant to be, the truth does not have glory. The truth doesn’t get the spotlight. So if we find that we’re inclined to glory in the truth we know, that’s an indication that we’ve separated truth from goodness.

            This idea should become a little clearer after we’ve turned to our final reading for today, which is also from the book Secrets of Heaven. This reading is part of a whole series of passages that describe the quality of truth that is separated from goodness. We read: [§1950.3].

            Truth that is separated from good is ornery. It’s contentious—it looks for conflict. It’s insufferable and stubborn—it’s said to be like a wild donkey that’s unable to live with others. And truth separated from goodness glories in victory. It loves being right—it loves proving how right it is. It wants to outshine the other lights around it. Now, as I said, this mentality is insufferable. We know we’re not supposed to be this way… so if that impulse to give glory to the truth we know shows up in us, it will do so sneakily. What forms might it take? It could show up as a tendency to turn discussions about values and beliefs into arguments about values and beliefs. It could show up as an anxious or even desperate need to convince ourselves that we do know the truth. It could take the form of shower thoughts in which we rehearse speeches that demonstrate how right we are. In general, if we feel that our emotional or intellectual security depends on being right, we’re giving glory to the truth. But the truth is only meant to be a servant.

The glory belongs to the Lord. The Lord teaches us His truth, and He means for us to use it. But the truth can never do what it is meant to do unless an affection from the Lord goes with it. That affection directs the truth: it impels the truth to serve its genuine purpose, even as Deborah said to Barak: “Up! For this is the day in which the Lord has delivered Sisera into your hand. Has not the Lord gone out before you?” (Judge 4:14).

Amen.

Piece by Piece

Rev. Jared Buss

Pittsburgh New Church; September 8, 2024

Readings: Judges 2:11-19 (children’s talk); Secrets of Heaven §1820.5; Divine Providence §279

            How long are our spiritual struggles supposed to last? How long should we expect to battle against the same spiritual enemy? If we make a change for the better, and then our old demons re-emerge, okay that’s normal; if we try again, and then the demons resurface again, okay that’s still normal. But how long is that cycle meant to go on? Is there a point at which it’s no longer normal for us to still be wrestling with the same old issue?

            Today we’re talking about the children of Israel’s cyclical struggles against their various enemies: they would be delivered, and then they’d be enslaved again, over and over. In the spiritual sense of the Word, the children of Israel symbolize the church, and their enemies symbolize the hells. So the stories of the book of Judges are about our struggles with evil. This means that they’re about temptation and repentance: temptation and repentance are processes in which we wrestle with and reject the evils that we find in ourselves. When this sermon is over, all of you will be invited to take the Lord’s Holy Supper. The Holy Supper doesn’t have to be a sacrament of repentance, but it can be. There is a connection between Holy Supper and repentance (see TCR §§526, 530, 567.7-8, 722). The Holy Supper is an opportunity for each of us to come to the Lord with our struggles and with our commitments to continue to strive for what is right. It’s an opportunity to ask Him for His strength. This is just something to bear in mind, as you listen to the sermon.

            When the children of Israel were stuck at the edge of the Red Sea, and the Egyptians were coming after them, to kill or enslave them all, Moses said to them: “Do not be afraid. Stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord, which He will accomplish for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall see again no more forever” (Ex. 14:13). That sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? Wouldn’t it be great if all of our victories could be like that? If we, with the help of the Lord, could escape from our spiritual enemies, and know that we would see them again no more forever? Isn’t that how it’s meant to be? Isn’t there supposed to be a point at which we actually finish the fight—actually escape from our problems, and move on, with no need to ever look back? That is what the Lord wants for us.

            We get a similar impression from the description of the process of repentance that we find in the book True Christian Religion. We read: “The question then is, How are we to repent? The answer is, we are to do so actively. That is, we are to examine ourselves, recognize and admit to our sins, pray to the Lord, and begin a new life” (§530). Beginning a new life sure sounds like moving on, and, perhaps, seeing our enemies again no more forever. And in fact there are passages in the Heavenly Doctrine of the New Church that say, in about so many words, that once we’ve overcome a specific spiritual enemy, or a specific hell, that enemy loses its power over us, and can trouble us no more. Our next reading is an example of such a passage. The passage discusses temptations, and victories in temptations, and then it says: [read SH §1820.5].

            That passage sure sounds like it says that if we, from the Lord, receive the strength to withstand an evil that we’re inclined to, that evil loses its ability to trouble us—forever. But when we look at the battles against evil that we have fought, is that what we see? The children of Israel made the same mistakes over and over. And some of their enemies—for example the Philistines—troubled them again and again. And the children of Israel symbolize us. That is, to the degree that we’re trying to be part of the spiritual church that they represent, they symbolize us.

            Many people have said that they see themselves in the children of Israel. They’ve said that they used to shake their heads in disbelief, marveling at this group of people who just can’t seem to learn—that is, until they were smitten by the rod of self-awareness, and they realized just how many times they themselves have had to be taught the same lessons. It’s also pretty normal for people to talk about struggling with the same fundamental issues for years, or even for their entire lives. Does that mean that those people are failing at repentance? Was there a final victory that they were meant to experience a long time ago that they just didn’t obtain?

            This is a painful line of thought, because the evils that we’re trying to uproot from our lives are usually things that we really want to be rid of. This isn’t an arena in which failure is easy to swallow. When we sincerely try to do better, and we make forward progress, and then we see that old enemy—that old habit, that old behavior—come out again, and drag us down again, it’s easy to lose heart. Those stubborn old enemies can become sources of tremendous shame. And I think that people sometimes fear that they’re broken—that they should have kicked their bad habit a long time ago.

            Of course, the truth is that spiritual growth is complicated. It’s true that the best time to kick a bad habit is right now. Actually, the best time to kick a bad habit is before you ever start it. It’s true that there are easier and harder ways of doing things—shorter and longer roads to the Lord. And we should try to take the short road. But if we find that we’re on the long road, it is what it is. No one takes the short road every single time. And we really need to remember that the Lord isn’t shocked by our mistakes. He watched the children of Israel make the same mistakes over and over—and He kept working with them. He knows how complicated we are. He knows—far better than we do—just how much is involved in the regeneration, or rebirth, of a human being.

            And there are a lot of passages in the Heavenly Doctrine that talk about this: a lot of passages that say that deliverance from evil is never instantaneous. Our final reading is one such passage. This is from the book Divine Providence: [read DP §279].

            If evils can be removed only gradually, then what are we to make of that passage that was read earlier—the one that said that spiritual victories make it so that evil spirits do not dare to trouble us? To reconcile these two teachings, we need to understand just how complicated our spirits are, and just how complicated a single bad habit actually is. The reading from Divine Providence  goes on to make exactly this point. It says that “there are thousands of lusts which enter into and compose each evil” (§279.5). Another passage says:

Every evil appears to a person’s sight as a simple entity. That is how hatred and vengeance appear, theft and fraud, adultery and licentiousness, arrogance and haughtiness, and so on. But people do not know that every evil contains countless constituents—more than the number of fibers and vessels in a person’s body. (DP §296)

So when we fight against hatred, for example, we aren’t fighting a single entity. We’re fighting thousands of different lusts. And we fight them one after another. This means that there’s no way for us to overcome all hatred forever with a single spiritual victory. But it also means that the victories we experience really are victories. Every time we feel an urge to act with hatred, but instead we reach for the Lord and say “I will not do this, because it is a sin against God” (cf. TCR §567.5), and we turn away from that hellish path, we have achieved a victory. A little piece of hell has lost its power over us. And yes, hell is big. There’s a lot more work to be done. But the Lord is bigger. He can see us through the process, one step at a time.

            His will is to make us new, one piece at a time. The reading from Divine Providence says that our thoughts and affections are simply changes in the states and the forms of the organic substances of our minds (§279). The word “minds,” in this context, doesn’t refer to our physical brains—it refers to the spiritual minds that inhabit our physical bodies. The thing is, our minds are just as complicated as our bodies. In fact, the human body is an image of the human mind. Thoughts and affections move through our minds just as blood flows through our arteries, just as electrical impulses move across the synapses in our brains. And the Lord is causing our minds to be regenerated, or reborn. He is making us new. If you were to replace every fiber in the human body, every vessel, every synapse, with a new fiber, a new vessel, a new heavenly synapse, how long would that take? That’s exactly what the Lord is doing. So long as we walk with Him, He’s renewing us piece by piece. It’s okay for that process to take time.

            This doesn’t mean that we can tell ourselves that it’s okay to be evil for a while. Regeneration does take time, but we shouldn’t turn that into an excuse. Each of us only actually lives in the present, and in the present we choose good or evil. We can’t choose both at the same time. If we’re actually going to reject evil and choose the Lord, we have to put our hearts and our souls into that choice, in the here and now. If repentance is to be real, it has to be wholehearted. If, in the backs of our minds, we give ourselves permission to hold onto our evils, because we know we’ll get another chance to repent later, that isn’t really repenting. And yes, even if we put our hearts into rejecting an evil, some cousin of that evil is going to rear its head somewhere down the line. Repentance is not a one and done. There is no spiritual victory to end all victories. But every little victory counts.

            I spoke to the children about the cycle of the judges—about the children of Israel turning to the Lord and away from Him again and again. I’m going to end this sermon by looking at the other side of that picture—by looking at what the Scriptures say about the Lord who watches His people turn towards Him and away from Him, the Lord who guides us through this whole, long process. There are hundreds of Scriptures that touch on this theme, but here are three of them.

            From Isaiah:

I have blotted out, like a thick cloud, your transgressions, and like a cloud, your sins. Return to Me, for I have redeemed you. (44:22)

            From Jeremiah:

“If you will return, O Israel,” says the Lord, “return to Me; and if you will put away your abominations out of My sight, then you shall not be moved. (4:1)

            And from Malachi:

“Yet from the days of your fathers you have gone away from My ordinances and have not kept them. Return to Me, and I will return to you,” says the Lord of hosts. (3:7)

Amen.

Sell Whatever You Have

Rev. Jared Buss

Pittsburgh New Church; July 28, 2024

Readings: Mark 10:17-22 (children’s talk); Doctrine of Life §66; Secrets of Heaven §141

            The Lord told that rich man, “Go your way, sell whatever you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, take up the cross, and follow Me” (Mark 10:21). It’s pretty clear that He doesn’t expect us to follow these instructions to the letter. At least, that had better be the case—because if He wants us to literally sell all that we have, then none of us are listening to Him.

            The thing is, He still meant something when He said these words. When we look at a teaching from the Word and say, “the Lord can’t mean for me to take that literally,” we sometimes then proceed to put that teaching away entirely. “I don’t have to take it literally” turns into “I don’t have to take it seriously.” But the Lord doesn’t say empty words. When He says things that don’t make sense on the surface, He’s inviting us to think carefully. What does it really mean to sell whatever we have?

            Whatever it means, it’s probably pretty important that we do it. After all, the Lord gave this instruction after He was asked, “what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?” (Mark 10:17). The rich man asked the Lord, “how do I get to heaven?” And the Lord answered, “sell whatever you have.”

            Our next reading is from the Heavenly Doctrine of the New Church, from the book Doctrine of Life. This reading gives us a simple overview of the deeper meaning of the things that the Lord does and says in the story we heard from Mark [read §66].

            The first thing this passage notes is that the Lord is said to have looked at the rich man and loved him, because that man was able to say that he had kept the commandments from his youth (Life §66; cf. Mark 10:21). It’s important not to gloss over this moment. The love that was on the Lord’s face was an affirmation that this man had done something right. The rich man’s claim might strike our ears as overconfident and maybe even conceited—“oh, I’ve always kept all the commandments all my life.” It was certainly a big claim, and probably not one hundred percent true. This man had lots to learn. But he had done something right. Keeping the commandments really matters. Even if the upshot of keeping the commandments is that we become a little too sure of our own goodness, it’s still far better to keep the commandments than to break them.

            Of course the Lord loves us whether we keep his commandments or not. When we do the right thing He looks at us with joy and with love; and when we do the wrong thing He looks at us with sorrow and with love. But the story from Mark calls attention to the look of love that came onto the Lord’s face when the rich man said that he had kept the commandments—and the reason for this is that when we obey the Lord we turn towards Him, and we perceive the love that shines from Him. When our backs are turned to Him, we don’t see His love.

            But let’s go back to the instructions that the Lord gave this man. The reading says that to sell what we have is to withdraw our hearts from our riches; to take up the cross is to fight against our lusts; and to follow the Lord is to acknowledge Him as God (Life §66). Those instructions are easy enough to understand. We’re not going to spend any more time today talking about taking up the cross and acknowledging the Lord; those ideas will have to wait for another sermon. I want to focus on the instruction to sell whatever we have.

            By these words the Lord means that we should withdraw our hearts from our riches. Fair enough—that makes sense. If our stuff is more important to us than heaven, then our stuff is what we’re moving towards—not heaven. To fix this problem, we don’t have to literally get rid of our stuff: we simply need to put heaven above our riches. We need to value heavenly things most. “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matt. 6:21).

            These ideas are borne out by the conversation that immediately follows today’s story from Mark. The Lord says to His disciples, “How hard it is for those who have riches to enter the kingdom of God!” (10:23). Then, because they’re astonished, He clarifies: “Children, how hard it is for those who trust in riches to enter the kingdom of God” (v. 24). Riches aren’t the problem: the problem is trusting in riches, or investing our hearts in our riches.

            Of course, it’s easy to say that heaven is more important than our stuff. It’s obvious that this is the truth. Whether or not we believe this truth in our hearts is another matter. Our actual priorities are the ones we act on. Do we value heaven in practice, when we’re not sitting in church? Often this comes down to seemingly small choices, like whether we make time for prayer and the Word of the Lord, or choose to give that time to things like chores, or social media.

            An interesting thought experiment is to consider how much of your stuff you would be willing to part with, for the sake of a neighbor who had been injured. Would you give them a band-aid? Band-aids cost money. But not much. It’s unlikely that anyone would balk at parting with a band-aid. What about more expensive first aid equipment? Would you give up whatever activity you were in the middle of, to drive your neighbor to the hospital? If they were truly destitute, would you pay their hospital bill?

Now let’s do the same thought experiment, except that there’s no neighbor involved—what’s at stake is simply heaven, and your integrity with the Lord. If keeping the Lord’s commandments cost you a hundred dollars, would you part with the money? What if it cost ten thousand dollars? What if it cost you your house, or your job?

None of this is to say that you ought to go around paying strangers’ hospital bills. That might be a wise and charitable thing to do, but it also might not. The point is that it’s easy to enjoy being generous—as long as no one’s asking us to give too much. Picturing yourself giving what you have for a good cause probably feels good. But is there a point at which you begin to feel that something within you resists the thought experiment? “That’s too much—I couldn’t part with that much.”

The Lord makes it pretty clear that heaven is worth everything that we have. He says:

If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.  For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? (Matt. 16:24-26)

What are you actually willing to part with, for the sake of heaven—or for the sake of the love that fills the heavens?

So far we’ve been talking about parting with our stuff—our worldly possessions—and maybe also our time. But the riches that the Lord says we mustn’t trust in can also be understood to mean spiritual riches. In the spiritual sense of the Word, “riches” symbolize knowledges of good and truth (HH §365, et al.). These things are like treasures to us. The Lord doesn’t ask us to get rid of any genuine spiritual treasures. But some of the truths that we treasure are only half-truths. Some of them aren’t truths at all: they’re ideas that we hold dear, but in the end, there’s no place for them in the home that the Lord is calling us to. We all have our own ideas about the ways our lives are “supposed” to go. When life doesn’t go that way, it’s easy to feel cheated. But where did those ideas actually come from? Were they founded on the Lord’s own promises? We all have our own ideas about what it looks like to be good, and how much our religion can reasonably require of us, and what it means to be a man or a woman or a spouse or a parent or a neighbor. If we find that the Lord, in His Word, teaches something different, are we willing to part with our own ideas? Are we willing to sell what we have?

By the way, nobody—least of all the Lord—says that this kind of thing is supposed to be easy. In the story from Mark, the man heard that he should sell whatever he had, and he went away sorrowful (10:22). The Lord saw this. He knew that that man would struggle to accept the truth that He needed to hear. The Lord spoke the truth anyway. He also looked at that man and loved him (v. 21). The Lord’s mercy is forever. His patience is forever. He will not be angry with us if it takes us a long time to find the willingness to sell all that we have. And in the meantime, every little step counts for something. Every time we look at the way life has gone and say, “I guess the Lord’s plan was different from my plan,” we’re inching in the direction of giving up what is our own—and that’s good.

There is yet another way of understanding the instruction to sell all we have—another idea that’s even deeper and even more challenging than the ones we’ve talked about so far. In the Heavenly Doctrine we’re told: “That [this man] should sell all that he had, and give to the poor, signifies, in the spiritual sense, that he should put away from himself and reject the things of his proprium” (AE §893.4; cf. §934.2). Proprium is a Latin word that sometimes gets copy-pasted into English translations of the Heavenly Doctrine. One of the best ways to understand this word is to recognize that it is the origin of the English words “property” and “appropriate.” Our proprium is what belongs to us—what is our own, and nobody else’s. It’s the stuff in our hearts that belongs to us, as opposed to what belongs to the Lord. The Lord says that we should put away and reject the proprium, because the proprium is fundamentally selfish (cf. SH §154). When we’re immersed in the proprium, we feel that we’re the center of the world. The beliefs and behaviors that belong to that mentality need to go.

The thing is, when we’re immersed in the proprium, the proprium is all we know. It’s when we’re caught up ourselves that it’s hardest to believe that anything else has value. The delight of selfishness feels like life itself. To give it up feels like giving up everything we have. We feel that the Lord wants to take everything from us. Of course this isn’t true at all. We turn now to our final reading, which is from the Heavenly Doctrine, from the book Secrets of Heaven [read §141].

One of the wonderful truths of spiritual growth is that everything we give up, for the sake of the kingdom of heaven, is replaced with something better. This is why the Lord tells us to “sell” what we have, not to give it away. To sell something is to exchange it for something we want more. When we let go of the proprium—when we let go of the conviction that it’s supposed to go our way—the Lord gives us a heavenly proprium. He gives us life, and He gives us an awareness of that life and of the joy that goes with it, and He gives these things to us as though they are our own. This is what He meant when He said, “whoever loses his life for My sake will find it” (Matt. 16:25).

He really does ask us to sell all that we have—He asks us to let go of the belief that what we have now is better than what He’s going to give us. He told the rich man, “Go your way, sell whatever you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, take up the cross, and follow Me” (Mark 10:21).

Amen.

Life is Eternal

Rev. Jared Buss

Pittsburgh New Church; July 21, 2024

Readings: John 16:17-22 (children’s talk);

Luke 20:27-38; Divine Providence §73.6, 7; Secrets of Heaven §10409.3

            Today’s sermon is about the idea that life is eternal. Death is not final; it’s merely a transition. We were not created to strive for a while and then wink out of existence. We are precious to God: He will not allow what we really are to perish. We were created to live to eternity in a blessed state (DP §324.6).

            That there is an afterlife is one of the most basic tenets of the faith of the New Church. It’s right up there with “there is a God” and “we should be nice to people.” It’s an idea that most of us have heard before. So why spend a sermon talking about it? Well, the simplest truths are also, usually, the most powerful ones. We can learn these sorts of truths in a moment, but we’ll spend our lives learning how to really see them. It’s one thing to know that life is eternal; it’s another thing to live with eternity in our minds and in our hearts.

            So today’s sermon is about what it really means to believe in eternal life. The readings from the Heavenly Doctrine that you’ll hear in a little while are about the effect that such a belief is able to have on our thinking and our worldview. But before we get to those readings, we’re going to consider the Sadducees.

            The Sadducees were a Jewish sect that was active at the time of the Lord’s life on earth. One of the tenets of their faith was that there is no afterlife—no resurrection after death. They brought this belief to the Lord, and here’s how the conversation went: [read Luke 20:27-38].

            So the Sadducees present the Lord with a somewhat unlikely scenario: a woman has seven husbands—all of them brothers—one after another; and after all seven brothers have died, the woman herself dies. The Sadducees ask, “In the resurrection, whose wife does she become?” (v. 33). If they had been sincerely asking this question, the Lord’s response might have been something along the lines of, “Well, whose wife does she want to be?” But the Sadducees weren’t really asking anything: they were arguing that there cannot be an afterlife. It’s a pretty weak argument too: people sometimes have complicated relationships, and if there were an afterlife, people would take those complicated relationships into the afterlife. And since that’s obviously just unacceptable, it’s clear that there can’t be an afterlife.

            The Lord doesn’t really engage with this argument. The first part of his response to the Sadducees is more confusing than we might wish it to be: He says, “those who are counted worthy to attain that age, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage” (v. 35). It sounds a lot like He’s saying that marriage is an earthly thing, and that no one in the afterlife is married. But the teachings of the New Church make it overwhelmingly clear that this is not the case: there are marriages in heaven (ML §§27-41; HH §§366-386). We’re told that when the Lord says that no one after the resurrection is given in marriage, the only kind of marriage that He’s referring to is spiritual marriage, which is conjunction with the Lord (ML §41). If we don’t choose to conjoin ourselves with the Lord in this life, we won’t choose to do so in the life to come, either. That’s the point that the Lord is really making here. We might wish that the He’d been more direct with the Sadducees, because it’s important for married partners to believe that their marriages can last forever. True married love wants to last forever; we’re told that eternity is “inherent” in this love (ML §216). But we have to trust that what the Lord said to the Sadducees was what needed to be said at that time.

            But it’s the next part of what the Lord says to the Sadducees that’s especially relevant to today’s topic: “But even Moses showed in the burning bush passage that the dead are raised, when he called the Lord ‘the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ For He is not the God of the dead but of the living, for all live to Him” (vv. 37, 38). He is not the God of the dead. It’s outrageous, even blasphemous, to conclude that the Lord—who is love—presides over death and decay, over a world that’s doing nothing but inexorably fall apart. God does better work than that. What He makes is made to last. It’s made to live. He is the God of the living. All live to Him: all human beings are alive in His sight. We were created to live.

            In the Heavenly Doctrine we’re told that, “The Lord did not create the universe for His own sake, but for the sake of those with whom He would be in heaven” (DP §27.2; cf. TCR §§43, 46). And He wants us to be with Him in heaven so that He can make us happy. We read:

Divine love… has as its end a heaven consisting of people who have become or who are becoming angels, to whom it is possible for the Lord to impart all the blessings and happiness connected with love and wisdom, and to impart these from Himself in them. (ibid.)

That’s why we exist. That’s why we were made. It’s a bafflingly wonderful idea. The power that holds the universe together wants nothing more than to make us happy. How could love like that ever permit our lives—or any good thing—to be stolen from us forever?

            As I’ve been saying, these ideas have the power to reshape the ways we look at the lives we’re leading right now, and the ways we look at the world. I’m going to read two passages from the Heavenly Doctrine—two passages that show us the impact of a real belief in eternal life. The first is from a section of the book Divine Providence that talks about different kinds of freedom. There is natural freedom—which is the freedom to think and will the evils that we naturally incline to (§73.3). And then there is spiritual freedom, which is the freedom to be a spiritual person, and do what is right in God’s eyes. We read: [§73.6].

            If the seven or eight or nine decades that we spend on this earth are all that we have, why should we strive to change our hearts? Why should we delay gratification? If life in this world is all we have, we should grab every pleasure we can reach. We should all be hedonists. Why do anything that we don’t want to do?

            But everything changes if life is eternal—if, as the reading says, the delight and blessedness that are within our reach right now are, “but as a fleeting shadow compared to the delight and blessedness of life in eternity, to eternity” (DP §73.6). If eternal life outshines the here and now so completely, then striving to become a better person is not a waste of time. Resisting evil will still be work, but it will be worth it. Every moment of spiritual struggle, every ounce of our labor, will be worthwhile, and a thousand times more than worthwhile—because our labor in this world is just a fleeting shadow before to what is to come. To truly believe in eternal life changes the way we look at the work that’s in front of us right now. It gives us a reason to do that work. It gives us the will to do that work, and the freedom to become spiritual people.

            The second reading from the Heavenly Doctrine is from Secrets of Heaven. This context of this passage is a discussion of the idea that Divine providence can’t possibly be guiding the whole human race—because so often it’s the bad people who end up having good things, and good people who end up with bad things (§10409.2). Surely that wouldn’t happen if God were in charge! This perspective is easy enough to sympathize with. When we look at the world, it sure does seem that too often it’s the power-hungry people who end up in power, not the decent people. And we see good people falling on hard times—being handed burdens that they didn’t ask for and don’t deserve. Where is the Lord in all of that? Now we turn to what the Lord says in the heavenly Doctrine: [read SH §10409.3].

            The point is simple enough: worldly blessings like wealth and status don’t contribute much to our eternal happiness. In fact, they sometimes push us towards eternal unhappiness: sometimes they aren’t blessings at all—they’re curses. So fair enough—the Lord wants us to lay up treasures in heaven, not treasures on earth (Matt. 6:19, 20). But sometimes when we accept these truths, we accept them kind of resentfully. What we actually hear is the Lord explaining to us why we can’t have nice things, and at the end of it all we’ll get a pat on the back for being good. If we aren’t really looking to eternal life, then worldly pleasures and comforts seem pretty important, and it’s pretty unfair that some people get them and others don’t.

The Lord does care about whether or not we’re happy right now. When we’re upset because our car got scratched, He cares. When we’re sad because we didn’t get the job we applied for, He cares. But He’s looking to eternity—and we generally struggle to recognize just how small these things are in the face of eternity. The reading says that what endures to eternity “is.” What comes to an end “relatively is not.” In other words, these earthly things, the things that belong to this life and this life alone, are so temporary, so inconsequential, that in the face of eternity they practically don’t even exist. They just aren’t what matters to the One who values our eternal happiness. He only cares about worldly things insofar as they lead us to or from heaven. The next life outshines this one completely. This perspective shift is hard to make: this world in front of us feels pretty big and important. But the more we can direct our minds and our hearts towards eternity, the more peace we’ll find—the more order we’ll see—when we look at the world. The things that truly matter always have been and always will be intact in the hands of God.

On that note, one more powerful consequence of believing in eternal life is that we can know that the ones we love who have died are not lost. They are safe in the hands of God; they are more alive than they ever were in this world. He did not create us to die, and disappear: He is the God of the living. To believe this, when we’re faced with the loss of one we love, is one of the greatest consolations that a human being can be given. Our hearts know that what is alive doesn’t die. In Secrets of Heaven we read, “who does not say of his children who have died that they are in heaven?” (§5078.5). Earlier I said that true married love looks to eternity, because eternity is inherent in that love. And we’re told:

When married partners … love each other tenderly, they think of eternity in regard to the marriage covenant, and not at all of its being terminated by death. Or if they do think about this, they grieve, until strengthened again with hope by the thought of its continuing in the life to come. (ML §216)

When our minds tell us that death has taken someone we love away from us forever, our hearts are left holding a belief that they just can’t accept. It’s such a painful thing to hold, and it isn’t true at all. Nothing so precious as a human life can ever be lost. And the time we spend apart from the ones we love is only a fleeting shadow, compared to the eternity that we will share with them.

            When the Lord was about to die, He told His disciples, “I will see you again” (John 16:22). “I will see you again.” Those words matter so much. This world is only a doorstep: it takes us just a moment to cross it. So much of what we see and understand right now will be left behind. But everything good is eternal. “You now have sorrow; but I will see you again and your heart will rejoice, and your joy no one will take from you” (ibid.).

Amen.

Hope

Rev. Jared Buss

Pittsburgh New Church

Readings: Genesis 50:15-21 (children’s talk); Secrets of Heaven §6578;

Lamentations 3:15-26; Coronis §59.4

            Today’s sermon is about hope—and the message I hope to leave you with is that the Lord designed us to hope. Hope is powerful, and He wants us to lean into it.

            The Word definitely talks about hope. During our prayers this morning we said, “I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in His word do I hope.” Those lines are from Psalm 130 (v. 5), and there are many similar Scriptures. But the Word doesn’t treat “hope” like a theological term, and it’s never discussed at length. In the Heavenly Doctrine of the New Church we find countless passages about things like love and wisdom; hope, on the other hand, is mentioned here and there.

            But we know, from experience, that hope is important. If you pay attention, you start to notice just how often we use the word in everyday speech. Perhaps you recognize, intuitively, that hopefulness is bound up with spiritual happiness. And of course the opposite of hope is hopelessness, and nobody wants to be hopeless.

            To begin with, we need to define hope. It’s a familiar word; if you hear a phrase like, “I hope it’s sunny tomorrow,” you know exactly what that means. But just to be crystal clear: hope combines four elements. [1] If we hope for something, that means we want it. [2] The thing we hope for is something we look towards, something that isn’t here yet, something in the future. [3] If we hope for something, that means we’re willing to believe that we can receive it—it can be real. [4] And when we say we hope for something, we’re admitting that we don’t control it. We don’t control the weather, so we don’t say, “I choose for it to be sunny tomorrow.” We say, “I hope it’s sunny.”

            We’ll turn now to the Heavenly Doctrine. This next reading doesn’t exactly define hope, but it does help us understand it. The story that was read to the children says that Joseph consoled his brothers and spoke to their heart (Gen. 50:21). This reading is part of the explanation of the spiritual meaning of those words: [SH §6578].

            All of our internal experiences are seated either in the will or in the understanding—the heart or the head. “Hope” is a fairly emotional word, and we might assume that hope belongs to the heart, or to the will. But the reading says something different: “hope is of the understanding by means of truth.” This doesn’t mean that hope is cold or academic: real hope always touches the heart. But fundamentally, hope belongs to the mind. To hope is to look towards something, and the sense of sight corresponds to the understanding (SH §§4404-4411; AE §260). Without that something to look towards, hope is meaningless. We can’t “just hope,” we have to hope for something. We have to see something to hope for.

            The reading said that Joseph’s efforts to console his brothers symbolize hope. “Consolation,” again, might seem like a pretty emotional word; but again, consolation actually belongs to the understanding. When you console someone, you’re trying to tell them—or better yet, show them—that everything’s going to be okay. You’re trying to help them believe that everything is going to be okay.

            The reason why all of this matters is what we get to choose what we look towards. Emotions are slippery, and we can’t make ourselves feel them. If hope is an emotion, then we have little or no control over it. We can’t create that emotion. But we can choose to look to the Lord. We can choose to look towards heaven—towards the heavenly rest that the Lord has promised us. We can choose to look towards happiness in our marriages, or the happiness of our neighbors whom we serve in our daily work. And so on. When we choose to look to those things, the Lord bends our hearts to follow our gaze. There are lots of feelings that attend hope: a kind of tender longing; a certain straining or striving; a kind of comfort. When we choose to hope, those feelings follow. Though not always right away, which is an idea that we’ll come back to later.

            Earlier I said that the Lord designed us to hope. Ultimately, He designed us to be happy—that’s His plan for us (DP §27.2; TCR §43; SH §1735). And the Heavenly Doctrine indicates that our ability to hope is integral to our ability to be happy. The underlaying idea here is that we need to be spiritually free in order to be happy: if we aren’t free to think and to will, then happiness can never be assigned to us because there is no “us.” We need to be free in order to be happy. And hope is connected to freedom.

There’s a passage in the Heavenly Doctrine that contrasts hope with certainty—the kind of certainty that we would have if we were permitted to see into the future, as the Lord does. The passage says that hoping is a much happier condition than knowing. We read: “if in consequence of some Divine prediction [a person] were to know the end result or outcome, his reason would surrender, and with reason his love” (DP §178). The passage goes on to explain that hope comes from our reason—that is, our ability to think—looking towards what we love. So if our reason surrenders, our hope also disappears.

In other words, when we’re looking towards an outcome that we aren’t certain of, our reason and our love are engaged. When we don’t know what’s going to happen, we have to invest ourselves in hoping for something. Our freedom of choice is invested in that hope. Whereas if we’re certain of what’s coming, we go slack. The future becomes a freight train bearing down on us. It’s going to be what it’s going to be, and we have nothing to do with it. Our freedom has nothing to do with it. Hope is fundamentally free, because in a state of hope we don’t know the outcome—we choose what we want the outcome to be. And because there’s freedom in hope, hope is alive. Certainty, on the other hand, is static.

The long and short of it is that hoping is a happier condition than knowing. One illustration of this is the fact that people often observe that anticipating something can be better than having it. Waiting for Christmas can be better than Christmas. Another illustration is the fact that stories are way more exciting when we don’t know how they’re going to end. The Lord designed us not to know the future, but to look into the future with hope, because He knows that hoping will make us happier. And we can lean into that design.

The main points that have been put before you so far are [1] that hope is something we have a measure of control over, because we can choose what we look towards, and [2] that we are meant to hope—we are meant to use that ability to look forward and long for something, because in so doing we choose what we want, and choosing makes us feel alive.

Obviously there are wise hopes, and there are unwise hopes. Investing your life in the hope of becoming the greatest athlete in history may not be wise. There are also good hopes and evil hopes. Hoping that that maniac driver loses control of his car and gets what he “deserves” is evil. If we have some control over what we hope for, then we also have some responsibility to hope for things that are wise and good.

There are lots of good hopes. But the surest of them all is hope in the Lord. The Lord is always there, and He never changes. We can’t know the future, but we can have unshakeable confidence that when we come into the presence of the Lord, we will be met with peace, with tenderness, with forgiveness, with mercy, and with joy. Other hopes can be defeated, but the Lord has all power in heaven and on earth—and His plan for us is good. If we’re willing to hope in the Lord, we can do it. And it will make us happier.

This isn’t to say that hope in the Lord is like a light that we can switch on. We might wish to hope, and feel that we simply can’t. Hopelessness and despair and apathy are heavy weights, and the Word by no means tells us that we should be able to get out from underneath these things effortlessly. On the contrary, the Lord goes to some lengths to show us that He understands our despair. But even in despair He is present, and He has all power, and He loves us—so we can hope in Him.

Our next reading is an illustration of someone choosing to hope in the Lord, even in the midst of ruin and grief. The reading is from the book of Lamentations, which, as the title suggests, is not a cheerful book. It’s essentially one long lament for Jerusalem and her people, written after the city was besieged and then conquered by the Babylonians. The Babylonians burnt the temple, looted the city, and carried off many of the people. Those who were left were left with ruins. The book of Lamentations is filled with grief for these things. In the midst of that grief, we find these words: [3:15-26]

Near the beginning of the reading, the speaker says that his strength and his hope have perished (v. 18). Then something shifts, and he says, “This I recall to my mind, therefore I have hope” (v. 21). And what he recalls seems to be the simple truth that the Lord’s compassions fail not (v. 22). Great is His faithfulness (v. 23). “‘The Lord is my portion,’ says my soul, ‘therefore I hope in Him’” (v. 24).

Hope can be casual. We can say things like, “I hope it’s sunny tomorrow,” and not have much invested in those words. Hope may not seem especially powerful. When things are going well, it generally doesn’t seem so significant. But hope comes into a new light when we grieve, or when what’s in front of us is despair. That is, the light that is hope shines so much more brightly when the world is dark. And when the world is dark we need that light—we yearn for hope, we search for any hope that we can find. Hope in the Lord is always there to be found.

Our last reading for today is from the Heavenly Doctrine, from the book called Coronis.  The main point of this passage is that we need the Lord: we cannot conquer in temptation without Him. The passage offers us a series of illustrations to reinforce this point. But there’s a subtle shift partway through the series of illustrations that I’d like to call your attention to. The first several illustrations show us that we need the Lord—He is the one who sustains us in temptation. Then the illustrations start to suggest that hope in the Lord is what sustains us in temptation. We read: [§59.4]

Hope in the Lord is like hope in the sunrise. Believing that the sun will rise isn’t like switching on a light—it doesn’t make the darkness disappear. But to know that the darkness will not last makes all the difference.

This I recall to my mind,

Therefore I have hope.

Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed,

Because His compassions fail not.

They are new every morning…. (Lamentations 3:21-23)

Amen.

High Walls and Open Gates

Rev. Jared Buss

Pittsburgh New Church; June 16, 2024

Readings: Revelation 21:10-21 (children’s talk), 21:22-27; Apocalypse Revealed  §§922, 952

            The Holy City New Jerusalem symbolizes the New Church—a church that the Lord has made and is making still. This New Church isn’t an organization. It isn’t a building. It is His kingdom on earth. It’s a spiritual community that all people are invited into. It’s also everything that this particular congregation is stiving to embody.

            Today I want to focus on two details from the description of the Holy City that help us understand the character and the quality of this thing that the Lord is creating. We’re told that the New Jerusalem is surrounded by a great and high wall (Rev. 21:12); we’re also told that there are twelve gates in this wall (ibid.). At face value, there’s nothing remarkable about this: lot of ancient cities had walls around them, and of course if you have walls, you also have gates. But the New Jerusalem isn’t an ancient city: it’s the spiritual home that all of us are called to. The fact that the Lord’s church has both walls and gates illustrates an important tension. The walls around a city are there to protect the people in the city—and they do this by keeping enemies out. But the gates are there to let people in. So this city is enclosed, and separate from what is around it. Yet the city is open to what is around it.

            This tension becomes even more evident when you consider the rest of what’s said in chapter 21 of Revelation, which we’ll read now [vv. 22-27].

            The twelve gates of the Holy City are never shut. They’re never closed by day, and there is no night in that place (v. 25). The symbolism of a closed gate, or a closed door, is pretty obvious. Churches and church communities built by people can be closed: they can be suspicious of and hostile to the world around them. But the Lord’s church is open. The Lord’s church is not ruled by a defensive or an exclusionary mentality.

            But the New Jerusalem still has walls, and there are things that cannot enter it. “There shall by no means enter it anything that defiles, or causes an abomination or a lie” (v. 27). Now we’ve said two things that might not seem like they mesh very well: the Lord’s church is not exclusive, but there are things that cannot enter it. But both of these statements are true. The gates of the Holy City are always open. All people are invited in. The spirit that fills the Lord’s church is a warm spirit, a generous spirit, an open-hearted spirit. And evil has no place in the Lord’s church or in the kingdom of heaven. Each of these truths is pretty self-evident when it’s the only truth we’re looking at. But when we try to join them together, we can get confused. Trying to build a church community that joins these truths together is hard. It’s much easier to double down on one and ignore the other—to be the church of the door or the church of the wall, the church that has no boundaries or the church that has nothing but boundaries. But the Holy City has both walls and open gates.

            We’re going to look a little more closely at what is let into the city; then we’ll look a little more closely at what is kept out. Here’s what we’re told in the Heavenly Doctrine, in Apocalypse Revealed, about the spiritual meaning of the open gates. This is the first of the readings you’ll find printed in the worship handout: [read §922].

            As I said before, the gates of the New Jerusalem are never shut—this means that people are continually invited in. That image is so important. After all, we’re told in the Gospel that there is more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine who need no repentance (Luke 15:7). The joy of the angels is to receive us into heaven (see SH §5992.3). And to receive us into the church, because the Lord’s church is the resting place of heaven on earth. And if that’s the attitude that the angels hold, how much more does the Lord Himself rejoice to receive His children into His kingdom? How could the doors of the New Jerusalem be shut? How could Divine love put up barriers against us?

            The reading from Apocalypse Revealed says, at first, that those who are received into the New Jerusalem are those who “possess truths that spring from the goodness of love from the Lord” (§922). In other words, good people. The people who are received into the Lord’s kingdom are good people… no surprises there. But then the reading says, “Its gates not being closed … means, symbolically, that people who wish to enter are continually being let in” (ibid.). That language is important to hear. The Lord gives heaven to those who want it. No one who sincerely seeks out what He offers is ever turned away. Of course, in the end, those who actually want heaven and those who are moved by good loves are the same people.

            But what do these teachings tell us about our roles as would-be members of the New Church? First of all, they tell us that we can dial down the impostor’s syndrome by several degrees. We may not be “good enough” for the Lord’s kingdom, but that’s okay—nobody is! We’re allowed to be part of the New Church, as long as we want to be part of the New Church. But these teachings also say that we need to maintain an open door mentality. Who are we to deem anyone unworthy? If someone comes to this building, to learn the truth or to find something good, who are we to put barriers in their path? Who are we to close what the Lord has opened?

            But we haven’t talked about the walls yet. You could argue that the walls of the New Jerusalem aren’t really there to keep people out—walls aren’t really barriers if the gates are always open. The function that those walls do serve is to make it very clear what the city is, and what it is not. The New Jerusalem is the kingdom of heaven on earth, and “there shall by no means enter it anything that defiles, or causes an abomination or a lie” (Rev. 21:27). The walls of the city draw a line between light and darkness.

            The distinction between what is in the city and what is not becomes even more vivid when you consider the whole description of the New Jerusalem, which fills chapters twenty-one and twenty-two of Revelation. Today’s recitation was taken from Revelation twenty-two; the second half of the recitation reads: “Blessed are those who do His commandments, that they may have their power in the tree of life, and may enter through the gates into the city” (v. 14). The very next verse reads: “But outside are dogs and sorcerers and sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters, and whoever loves and practices a lie” (v. 15). These two verses create a stark contrast. The city is a blessed place, a city of crystal and gold, filled with the glory of the Lord. But outside the city—forever outside—is the darkness of evil.

            Many of the evils in that list are self-explanatory—murder, for example. Others, such as being a “dog,” are not. Here’s what the Heavenly Doctrine has to say about this verse: this is the second reading printed in the handout [read AR §952].

            To put it simply, those who are outside the city are those who do not keep the Ten Commandments. The categories of people who are said to be outside the walls line up with the things that are forbidden by the Ten Commandments. The sexually immoral are those who break the sixth commandment, the commandment against adultery. Murderers are those who break the fifth commandment. Idolaters break the first commandment. Those who love and practice lies break the eighth commandment. “Sorcerers” is a little harder to make sense of, but in an earlier passage in Apocalypse Revealed, we’re told that sorcerers are those who break the seventh commandment, since sorcery symbolizes spiritual theft (§892). And dogs, as the reading explains, symbolize those who break the ninth and tenth commandments—the commandments against coveting. As an aside, this passage is not here to tell us that our pets are evil, or that you can’t go to heaven if you own a dog, or any such nonsense. The Lord created dogs, and for a dog to be like a dog is just fine. But for a human being to hunger like a dog is not good—and that’s what this passage is talking about.

            The point is that we can’t take evil into the Lord’s kingdom. We can’t take it into heaven, and we can’t take it into the church—at least not into the true church. Not into the New Jerusalem. On paper, this makes total sense. The whole point of heaven is that it’s a place where there is no evil. But in practice, people often have trouble with boundaries that are drawn against evil. To hear the Lord say that certain kinds of people are not allowed into His city can strike our ears as stern, and even harsh. But evil is evil because it hurts people: it hurts the perpetrators, and it hurts those around the perpetrators. The Lord doesn’t want us to be hurt. He can’t save us from the harm we do to ourselves, if we don’t want to be saved—but that doesn’t mean that we’re entitled to inflict harm on those who make better choices. Those who are willing to be saved are taken to a place where evil is not welcome—a city that is guarded by shining walls.

            Something that’s very important to say, at this juncture, is that it is way more useful for us to focus on the evils that we can’t carry into the New Jerusalem than to focus on the evils that someone else can’t carry into the New Jerusalem. It is true that if this congregation is to be a congregation of the New Church, then the people of the congregation must strive, collectively, to make it a place where evil is not welcome. That means that if someone tries to bring a flagrant evil into the midst of this community, they probably need to be asked to leave. But it can be hard to figure out where to draw that line, since everyone is a sinner. A church is meant to be a place of healing for flawed human beings. The Lord did not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance (Matt. 9:13; Mark 2:17; Luke 5:32).

Still, the Word makes it clear that setting boundaries is not an evil thing. The New Jerusalem has boundaries. The passage I read earlier about the open gates of the Holy City says that those who possess truth from good from the Lord are continually let in—and then it makes this statement: “If any others enter, they are not welcomed, because they are of a discordant character, and they then either leave of their own accord because they cannot endure [the] light, or they are sent away” (AR §922).

But again, it’s way more useful to focus on the things that we can’t carry into the Holy City than on the things that someone else can’t carry in. Only God knows how hard someone else is trying. What we can know is that the gates of the New Jerusalem are open, and that we are free to go in—and that there’s stuff we can’t bring with us. So is the city open to us or closed? The answer is simple: it’s closed to everyone who clings to their baggage. It’s open to everyone who puts their baggage down.

According to an old fable, the way you catch a monkey is by getting a big jar that has a small opening, and filling it with something tasty while you know the monkey is watching. Then you go away. The monkey will come and reach into the jar and grab a big handful of the stuff inside—and then it will be caught, because its loaded fist will be too big to fit through the opening of the jar. It could get free just by letting go of the handful of stuff, but it won’t, because it wants that stuff. This may or may not be a true story about the behavior of monkeys, but it illustrates a spiritual truth. Sometimes we get stuck because we’ve grabbed a big handful of anger, or lust, or entitlement. And we feel that we’re stuck—and we also hear the Lord, in His Word, telling us that we can have heaven if we want it. And we might tell Him, “that sure doesn’t feel true to me!”

But the gates of the Holy City are open. Heaven and the church are never shut against anyone. There are things that we can’t carry into it—but from God, we have the power to put those things down. “Blessed are those who do His commandments, that they may have their power in the tree of life, and may enter through the gates into the city” (Rev. 22:14).

Amen.

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.