The Greatest Love Story Ever Told
by Rev. Cory Coberforward
Exodus 3:13-14 (responsive reading)
God said to Moses,
“I am that I am.
This is what you are to say to the Israelites:
‘I am has sent me to you.’”
John 3:13-21
“No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven—the Son of Man. Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.”
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.
Read the written message below with music videos
The sages are largely consistent with the assertion that we are love itself and so is God. Indeed, they describe how a separation between the love that we are and the love that God is doesn’t exist, although we may often feel or believe this way. Our tendency to get invested in our sense of having a limited form, a limited story, a limited way of thinking and observing of “outside things” keeps us from seeing this truth. The thing that sees these seeming limitations is not itself limited, and how do we know it is not a shared “field of consciousness”? We are one in God – this is also the truth we hear from Jesus Christ. And yet, even knowing this, when we hear the famous Christian Biblical quote of John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life,” we interpret it from a place of division, believing that the “only Son” that we are to believe in is elsewhere and not already within us, as the love at our core.
In a way you could say that John 3:16 is a description of our love, at least, that is if our fundamental source of love is God’s love. How might understanding that change our reading of it? Perhaps: ultimately, we all love creation and each other so much that we allow ourselves to be put through the wringer so that we can eventually awaken to this love in outward form. If the Buddhists, Sikhs, Hindus, and others are correct, then we have actually “died” millions of times before we reach a humanoid body – ready to fully awaken to the love within. Even if we don’t believe in reincarnation, we can rest assured that we will someday die. But unlike most of us, the son of God, Jesus, died knowing his awakened and loving nature fully, and so that others may learn to know that their own nature is the same.
If we were to read the Bible consistently, on its own terms, we would find that the stories in the Bible are not exclusionary tales, but fundamentally speak of our shared nature as living beings – the only begotten offspring of God. We are one, undivided in essence or being even when we’re totally sure we are. Christ again and again calls us to know our unity in God which is also our unity in him, and also calls us to discover our nature as children of God, and yet in our modern readings of his words we tend to forget these parts as we go along. In fact, we can tend to rail against these teachings when they’re put in a way that actually makes us pay attention to them!
I once said that this may come from an exaggerated sense of humility, but, in fact, that sense of humility is in itself a type of arrogance and ignorance. We want our religion to be the only way, and hearing that we are all in essence one with God flies in the face of this belief. Although this type of arrogance is something we’re taught, we are open to it because we still take our stand as separate beings from others – the opposite of Christ’s own stand.
It was Christ’s stand as being all being, and his love for us knowing that reality, that caused him to give his life for us in his teachings and in his physical death. When he saw other living bodies, he saw his own light shining from them but dampened by the mind’s ignorance of how the light of awareness within it was the light of God, “the light of this world,” as Christ called us. And, if you think about it from your experience, we are more this light of awareness than we are the workings of the mind that we perceive. This is why he tells us to let our light shine, telling us to dispel our ignorance and to behave like the love that we are. And it’s also why his teachings tend to always centre on letting go of our attachments to people, things, ideas, and behaviours, while also asking us to turn to our source within and come to love others as ourselves.
Funnily enough, we actually see our unity with others and Christ described in the verses just before John 3:16. In John 3:13-15, Christ says, “No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven—the Son of Man. Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.”
How could it not be put more plainly? “No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven.” In this statement, Christ is defining what the “Son of Man” is – it’s everyone, or at least everyone who can come into heaven. We are one as the Son of Man and should come to see this unity, just as Christ told us to be in him just as he is in us. God asks us this for our own benefit, so that, “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up.” We are also the snake that needs to be lifted up. We are to be raised from the dust of our ignorance into the wisdom and power of Moses’ commanding staff, able to separate the waters and destroy the forces of Pharaoh. And yes, this involves sacrificing our old natures, just as Christ sacrificed his own as well as his body on the cross as a sign and a fulfillment, allowing his true being to be raised up.
All of this comes from love. Rising up from our serpentine natures represents coming out of cold bloodedness into the warmth of the sun and our “humanity,” and this rising is empowered by God’s love, which is our very being. Even the cross in this imagery takes a positive representation (new for some Swedenborgians) of our self-sacrifice through sacrificing our old way of being and thus “laying down our lives for our friends.” We are to become walking representations of God’s love, which entails God’s freedom, God’s goodness, and God’s wisdom from God’s inherent redemptive power. This power is ours as children of God. As we come to believe in this power and truth within, the Son of God within, we allow God to redeem us and others. Even so, the fleeting forces of ignorance in this world may try to destroy this love in one way or another, but the love within loves so much it is ready and willing even so.
In fact, this Love is not in itself afraid of death or sacrifice, knowing that it is itself eternal and that all perceived things pass in one way or another, constantly. It has no recollection of work, just being, healing action comes to it naturally. It is the light and the love of God within that never passes or changes, it is what perceives the passing and the ever-changing. Although it is always with us our minds tend to know it very little, preferring our doomed attachments and opinions and so not knowing its infinite depth and eternal warmth and clarity. Ultimately, finding this love within will be the greatest love story ever told for each of us. It is the true source of our care for others and the true love that loves our loved ones. And as John 3:16 describes, turning to it helps us serve and sacrifice of ourselves for our world and empower others’ hope of redemption. Be it so.
Peace is yours,
Cory