Easter Sunday: Allow Love to Resurrect Our Hearts
April 21, 2019
Today's message can be found below.
There will be a live audio Reflection & Prayer Service with community chatroom conversation in connection with this Multimedia Service this Sunday evening at 9 pm ET. Catch it towards the end of this Multimedia Service or on our Worship page. Video of the broadcast is posted there later.
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OPENING SONGS
Try to dance, move, sing, hum or play along with this music – or enjoy a meditative listen with deep, mindful breaths
Amost (Sweet Music)
Hozier
Lord of the Dance
Heath Mount Choir
Opening READINGS
From Biblical & Hebrew Scripture
Matthew 20:17-28
Now Jesus was going up to Jerusalem. On the way, he took the Twelve aside and said to them, “We are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the teachers of the law. They will condemn him to death and will hand him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified. On the third day he will be raised to life!”
Then the mother of Zebedee’s sons came to Jesus with her sons and, kneeling down, asked a favor of him.
“What is it you want?” he asked.
She said, “Grant that one of these two sons of mine may sit at your right and the other at your left in your kingdom.”
“You don’t know what you are asking,” Jesus said to them. “Can you drink the cup am going to drink?”
“We can,” they answered.
Jesus said to them, “You will indeed drink from my cup, but to sit at my right or left is not for me to grant. These places belong to those for whom they have been prepared by my Father.”
When the ten heard about this, they were indignant with the two brothers. Jesus called them together and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave— just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
From Swedenborg's Theological Writings
Click here for free ebooks of Emanuel Swedenborg's Theological Writings
Click here for free ebooks of Emanuel Swedenborg's Theological Writings
Allow Love to Resurrect Our Hearts
By rev. Cory Bradford-Watts
[This message was written before the recent tragedies in Sri Lanka. However, our hearts go out to those impacted by the wanton destruction. Let us strive to transform this destructive spirit as God does, as Sophia does, and work to never allow such excruciating pain again.]
Despite the tragedies in our midst, it's a blessing that so many families gather together for this holiday weekend, particularly in celebration of the living Christ within and around us! I think that strengthening our healthy family connections is a vital way to embody the love and life that is God(dess), that is Jesus or whatever name we use for Divinity, and to reject death and despair. Because ultimately, I think that is our true celebration and worship today – embodying Christ in our connections as he continues his healing ministry and his resurrection through all of us in multifaceted ways.
Actually, resurrecting our orientation towards Divinity and its love in our lives is a purpose that seems to permeate the Hebrew and Christian Bibles. And I think this call permeates many other holy texts from many other traditions as well. We see it in how God strives to remind the Israelites of his presence and help foster his loving will in many communities, from Genesis to Revelation. Even when God’s law seems somewhat micro-managing and overbearing from our retrospective viewpoint, we’re told that those prescripts were right for those people and their context, besides often being symbolic. But ultimately, God emphasizes throughout the Bible that he cares little for those external details, those external laws and the liturgical rites, saying in Hebrew scripture that he would much rather each of us have a “circumcised heart” and display loving behavior!
I think that this call, the call to change our affections and desires, to purify them, and allow the Lord to resurrect the love within, happens to be one of the most prevalent threads connecting the books this world often calls scripture. The Bible is ultimately a text meant to resurrect our hearts, and today we celebrate God’s resurrecting power.
In Christ’s Gospel story, we see this in many ways, some being more obvious than others. I think that we even see it in Christ’s critique of the Pharisees as they are presented in the Bible – the same religious leaders that ultimately orchestrate his death, we’re told. As you probably know, throughout Christ’s ministry, the Pharisees he interacts with are presented as essentially domineering religious clergy – they were authorities of the day, and in the Gospel story they often use the law and religious rules to dominate, control, and ultimately destroy those under their tutelage. In response to this, Jesus tells them, tells part of each of us perhaps, to stop using our authority, our knowledge and beliefs – the details, to dominate and hurt those around us. He says that these rules are meant to serve humankind not to hinder us.
And as we heard from the book of Matthew today, Christ tells us himself that it is the “chief priests and the teachers of the law” who will condemn him to death. Again, emphasizing that it is often the part of us with authority, the part of us with pride in our own learning, intelligence, and power, that is at the most risk of dismissing, despising and even destroying the loving, gentle Christ within and around us.
Unfortunately, still today a dominating hand is being placed on each of us – and especially placed on women, minorities, the poor, the condemned, the weak, the imprisoned, and the disenfranchised. Often even the privileged aspects of our lives are under the yoke of a dominating spirit. We all suffer from humanity’s tendency to crucify and imprison itself – to crucify “the Son of Man,” as Christ calls himself when talking about his death. In both blatant and hidden, horrendous fashion, our societies and our own hearts crush many of us under the mercilessness of authority, religious and otherwise. We would do a disservice to Jesus if we forgot his critiques and the justice that he spoke so passionately about, the justice that he continues to fight for in his resurrected life.
Thankfully, the Gospel tells us that God ultimately cannot be kept down. Jesus tells us directly that, despite his apparent death, “On the third day [the Son of Man] will be raised to life!” May this promise of Godly resurrection find fruition in each of our hearts as well.
It is this hope of transformation and rebirth that he promises us. He promises that if we allow him to, he will resurrect us in this life from our own deathly tendencies to dominate and hurt others, just as he was resurrected. And he also says he will eventually release us from these burdens being directed at us, and “wipe every tear from our eyes.” Christ’s resurrection into glory embodies the transformative power that he strives to perform in our hearts and in our lives. Amen to that.
And even now, it is Christ who walks with all of us in our oppression and pain, working to continue to resurrect our hearts and our society. It is Christ who carries each of us in our failing strength, in our cries, our loves, and in our health and passion, even if we call him something else.
As the Gospel tells us, hope is never lost, if we all but turn back to God. Indeed, the resurrected God is always with us, and because of that we are called to help uplift and glorify the love of Christ in all peoples and all things. We are called to celebrate and uplift God’s presence in the diversity of life and the diversity of traditions around us with open doors, releasing our tendencies to dominate with with our dogma.
I think that if we allow him to, God shines the infinite light of hope, peace, and transformative love into our hearts and lives, even in the face of great sadness. So in the spirit of that belief, let us celebrate the living Lord.
The 18th century mystical interfaith-Christian theologian Emanuel Swedenborg – the guy who helped inspire our tradition – believed that Jesus has the soul of Jehovah and is quite literally the one personhood of God in the flesh. He believed that the passion of the cross was the last temptation that Christ overcame in his life, one of many, most of which centered on the tendency to be like those religious leaders and force our will onto others using whatever means at our disposal.
Perhaps part of the temptation of the cross was that God had to allow this type of behavior to continue to some degree, that humanity would continue to be crucified, often with the feeling of being forsaken and alone. But we are not alone.
For Swedenborg, through overcoming and enduring these temptations, through growing as an incarnate person and overcoming all the influences of the hells, as he may put it, Christ made his humanity Divine and helps each of us to more easily turn toward him and receive his glory in our own lives – no longer buried under the burden of oppression. This is why Jesus resurrected bodily – to help resurrect us from the yoke of hellish oppression, both within our hearts and in community.
Further, despite this deep belief in Christ, Swedenborg also believed that it is this same God who is present with all peoples in all the healthy aspects of their traditions and beliefs. This same God has spoken in the ear of every living being throughout the universe, and hopes to uplift every person’s good, healthy tendencies in their own diverse ways. It takes discernment and flexibility to discover what these loving tendencies are for each of us, our families, and our society, it takes patience and insight, and that is the purpose and gift of wisdom, spiritual practice, and reflecting on holy messages like the Gospel story.
I think that the message of Christ’s resurrection from death is that through his strength and love we can all allow him to resurrect our hearts. We can each allow God to transform our spirits and environments into healthy images of the infinite Christ, even in the midst of destruction, pain, and death, and what a blessing such a gift that is!
Hallelujah. Hosanna. Amen.
CLOSING SONGS
False Confidence
Noah Kahan
One More NIght
Michael KiWanuka
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