Advent Sunday 3, 2019: Agers Anonymous

Dec 15

Written By Swedenborgian Community

Today's message can be found below.

All Are Welcome

When I Grow Up NF

Away in a Manger Pentatonix

Opening Readings

From Biblical & Hebrew Scripture

Genesis 2:8-15

Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground-trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. A river watering the garden flowed from Eden; from there it was separated into four headwaters. The name of the first is the Pishon; it winds through the entire land of Havilah, where there is gold. (The gold of that land is good; aromatic resin[a] and onyx are also there.) The name of the second river is the Gihon; it winds through the entire land of Cush. The name of the third river is the Tigris; it runs along the east side of Ashur. And the fourth river is the Euphrates. The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.

Revelation 21:9-14, 22:1-5

One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues came and said to me, "Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb." And he carried me away in the Spirit to a mountain great and high, and showed me the Holy City, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. It shone with the glory of God, and its brilliance was like that of a very precious jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal. It had a great, high wall with twelve gates, and with twelve angels at the gates. On the gates were written the names of the twelve tribes of Israel. There were three gates on the east, three on the north, three on the south and three on the west. The wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them were the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign for ever and ever.

Isaiah 2:5

Come, descendants of Jacob, let us walk in the light of the Lord.

Agers Anonymous Rev. Dr. George Dole

If you look up the word "walk" in a Bible concordance, you will find that it occurs over a hundred and thirty times in the Old Testament-not counting "walks," "walked," and "walking"-and that in the vast majority of these instances it does not refer to literal walking but to the way in which we conduct our lives: "O house of Jacob, come; let us walk in the light of the Lord." There is nothing particularly abstruse or arcane about this, but it embodies a huge truth that is hidden in plain sight, namely that we are constantly in motion. Physically, even when we are sound asleep we are inhaling and exhaling, our blood is circulation, our digestive systems are processing what we have eaten, and films of us asleep show us shifting our weight as though our bodies themselves cannot abide motionlessness for too long.

Digestion, respiration, and blood circulation are cyclical. They don't seem to get anywhere, to make any progress; but this appearance is the effect of our everyday short attention span. Over the years, our bodies do change, following a basic pattern to which there are no exceptions, though with remarkable variety as to "style." We are all born small and helpless, and barring accidents and illnesses, grow in size, strength, and competence, reach a peak, and then decline and die. "The little moments, humble though they be, make the might ages of eternity."

A lot is also happening spiritually during this process. Ideally, we are learning to curb the darker side of our nature and become increasingly thoughtful and trustworthy, forming ever deeper relationships of mutual affection and understanding. We are getting our priorities straight, so that by the time death approaches, we are secure in what matters to eternity. This is what life is all about. Swedenborg put it very briefly in Secrets of Heaven (§1616:5): "Unless the innocence of infancy becomes an innocence of wisdom through learning from experience, it is useless."

"The innocence of wisdom." In a way, "innocence" is a negative term. Etymologically, it means "harmlessness." The dictionary tells me that it can mean both freedom from guilt and freedom from guile. We are of course free of guilt and guile at birth. As we grow, though, we assume more and more responsibility, and inevitably the darker side of our nature makes itself known. We can do this because there is a brighter side to our nature as well. We do have good and loving impulses that are just as real and spontaneous as the negative ones; and if we faithfully turn our backs on the negative ones, the affirmative ones will flourish of their own accord, and we will find ourselves gifted with the greater innocence.

This does not happen overnight. If we see the innocence of wisdom pictured in the Garden of Eden and the innocence of wisdom in the Holy City, the New Jerusalem, there is a lot of biblical narrative in between. There is the early call to Abram, promising greatness and requiring that he be a blessing. There is the tortuous path that leads to the birth of an independent nation, a great one at least in its own estimation, but with the prophets dismayed that the quality of blessing has been forgotten. There is the collapse of that material greatness, followed in due time by the intervention of the incarnate Lord with the proclamation of the kingdom of heaven. There are finally the cosmic, surreal battles of the Book of Revelation, before the Holy City descends. If we look at this story with a longing to learn, we can see ourselves reflected on page after page, sometimes at our best, sometimes at our worst. We can discern a God who is constantly trying to get through to us, and we can see ourselves time after time misconstruing what that God is saying, hearing "stamp out idolatry" as "kill all those idolaters." For "idolatry" read "terrorism."

Step by step, though, the Bible carries us forward. Step by step, we ourselves can be led out of our innate tendencies to strike back and instead obey the Gospel mandate to love our enemies (Matthew 5:44), following the advice of the apostle Paul not to respond to evil with evil but to overcome evil with good (Romans 12:17, 21).

For centuries, the Christian church argued about our part and God's part in this process. At one extreme there were those who insisted that some were predestined to heaven and some to hell, and that there was nothing anyone could do about it. At the other extreme there were those who said that we were free to obey the law or to violate it, and that in effect God was bound by our choices. Luther laid great stress on one particular verse from Paul's letter to the Romans (Romans 3:28): "We determine that we are justified by faith, apart from the works of the law"; and this was misinterpreted to mean that as long as we had faith-which soon came to be equated with the acceptance of orthodox doctrine-it did not matter how we conducted our lives.

As a devout Lutheran with an inquiring mind, Swedenborg struggled with this, caught between his conviction that nothing mattered more than our trust in Jesus and his conviction that we were free agents who could not possibly enter heaven if we led evil lives. Finally, when he had worked his way through the Bible to Isaiah, it seems that the light dawned. In Isaiah 44:2 (43:17 in his edition of the Bible) he came to the word adjuvare, "to help", and wrote that it was "for providing assistance so that we may be reformed. In its outer sense, it is for people to whom it seems that their own efforts contribute to their reformation; in the inner sense, for people who demand something of themselves for their regeneration; in the still more inward sense, for people who know in theory that they are capable of nothing but still think they are somehow involved, and in the inmost sense for people who claim no credit whatever for themselves."

This is not an intellectual solution to a theological puzzle. It goes much deeper than that. It goes to the heart of the matter, which is our fundamental attitude. It is very simple: the mortal enemy of true righteousness is not wrong doctrine but self-righteousness. Incidentally, Swedenborg never published these few lines. They are found by the head of the manuscript of his index of Isaiah.

The first twenty or so years of the usual human life see us grow from total dependence to a something like independence, and we treasure that independence. No one wants to feel useless. "Earning a living" translates that need into dollars and cents, but it goes far deeper than money. If we value what we do and feel underpaid, that does not necessarily undermine our self-esteem; it may even reinforce it. The problem is that if "self-esteem" is not embedded in equal esteem for others, it is nothing short of arrogance. If I see no value in anyone but myself, then my apparent self-esteem is nothing but a heavy cloak to hide my real belief that I am worthless to everyone else. I cannot for a moment relax my efforts to prove how important I am.

So we try to raise our children with a trust that they are of value, with something that we call "healthy self-esteem"; and if our care for them is genuine, they are most likely to come into adulthood equipped to weather the changing seasons of self-doubt and self-congratulation and follow the sequence that Swedenborg outlined so clearly. Eventually, the whole business of self-esteem becomes little more than a distraction from the fascinating and immensely rewarding business of being of value to others.

This, our theology tells us, is what aging is all about-becoming more and more truly human. It is the challenge that faces us all, wherever we are along the rhythmic procession of birthdays. In this essential enterprise, we are all equal partners, from the youngest of us to the oldest of us. Chronologically, we are all aging in the same direction at the same rate.

I have come to see this as one of the unique and most precious characteristics of the parish church. Think for the moment of your own activities of the past week. How often have you been gathered with people of all ages? Socially and professionally, we tend to get together with others in our own age bracket. As we gather on Sunday mornings, though, we have a chance to see virtually the whole life span. Whatever our age, we can see representative samples of what we were, what we are becoming, and what we will become.

Randy Laakko, the recently retired pastor of our church in Wilmington, once told of having had a call from someone whose grandmother had just died. This woman had been a member of the church during her childhood, and had made it clear that she wanted her memorial service to be held there. Randy had never heard of her until this request came, and his first reaction was something like resentment. "Where has this woman been all these years? Now she wants some attention." Then it struck him: "No," he thought," So little is left of the world she grew up in. It is a good thing that the church is still here for her." I suspect I know where the stroke came from.

The church wants to be here for its members from cradle to grave. What other organization can say the same? This particular church is a relatively young one by many standards, but it has already been there from cradle to grave for over five generations and has no intention of failing its present ones.

This is not just a matter of survival. I recall a remark by a member of an exceptionally well-endowed church: "This church could keep going even if it didn't have any members." That would be survival of everything but the church. I'm starting to think of the ideal church as a kind of support group. Support groups form spontaneously, serving people who are facing or have faced some particular trying experience-bereavement, divorce, or cancer, for example. The only requirements for membership are shared experience and a recognition of the need of help in dealing with it well.

For a number of reasons, a church needs a much more clearly defined formal structure than such support groups have, but the attitude has a lot to recommend it. We could think of the church as a supportive gathering of people who know they are aging and who want thoughtful companionship-a kind of "Agers Anonymous," if you will. If we put our text together with the reading from the doctrines, we would recognize as belonging to the church anyone who wanted to walk in the light of the Lord.

This is not a matter of lowering our standards of membership, not at all. "Recognizing" requires familiarity and understanding, the perception of shared values at a depth that gives meaning to our lives. Living a truly Christian life is not easy. I was told recently of a minister who made a practice of telling potential members, "At one time or another, this church will disappoint you." The ideals of this church are high and beautiful, but the church itself is a human institution, and a fallible one. Physical walking, after all, is a process of making progress by repeatedly overbalancing forward and putting a foot ahead to keep from falling flat on your face. Sometimes we trip, and we may need the assurance of the Psalmist who tells us that we will not be "utterly cast down" because the Lord will raise us up again (Psalm 37:24).

Support groups work because people share their experiences, recognizing that we are not "beings" but "becomings." The spirit of "Agers Anonymous" would lead us to share what and how we are "becoming," and in fact we do. We may not do it well, we may even try not to do it, but we do. Everything we say about anything says something about ourselves. "Little" things, especially unconscious things like tone of voice and bodily attitude, come across as welcoming or distancing. We are constantly saying to others either "You really are worth listening to" or "You really aren't worth listening to."

Any questions? I hope so.

Amen.

~Rev. Dr. George Dole

Secrets of Heaven 6628, 6633 by Emanuel Swedenborg

In the preceding exegesis, it is obvious throughout that the theology of the early church was a theology of caring, and that this theology united all the churches so well that it made one out of the many. That is, they recognized as belonging to the church all whose lives were devoted to the good that caring does. They called them family-this regardless of how much they might differ as to the truths that we now refer to as "truths of faith." In such matters they taught each other, this being one of their expressions of caring. Too, they did not get upset if one did not agree with the opinion of another, realizing that all accept truth to the extent that they are focused on what is good.

Because this theology of caring is one of the lost values nowadays and has been displaced by a theology of faith that is woefully remote from the truth, I am given leave by the Lord's divine mercy to offer that theology preceding the individual chapters of Exodus, and so restore it to the church.

When We Were Young Adele