This is, according to the calendar, the first Sunday of Spring. Yesterday was the Spring (or Vernal) Equinox, the day when the direct rays of the sun crossed the equator on their way to warm the northern hemisphere, which should mean that all the snow is going to be gone until late Autumn, at the very least. Of course, being Minnesotans, we know that snow in April is still possible, especially those of us who have taken our children to Easter Egg hunts with about four or five inches on the ground. Unfortunately, spring is not a switch that someone throws, forcing all the snow to melt into the ground instantaneously. The changing of the seasons is a gradual process, and deep down, we understand this and we are at peace with it.
The same can be said for nearly any process we can name. Natural processes rarely change as abruptly as a the numbers on a digital clock, but gradually, like the hands of this analog clock, with one moment gliding gently into the next. This is especially true for the stages of our lives. No one can really pinpoint the precise moment we stop becoming children and embrace adolescence, for example, and no one can name the exact instant we become an adult. We have birthdays, of course, but I think we can all agree that just because someone has a “teen” in the number of their years that they are a physiological adolescent—children grow at their own pace, physically and emotionally. And just because we have become twenty-one doesn’t necessarily mean someone is an adult. Like the seasons, we sometimes experience childhood thinking in later stages of life, and there are a lot of adults in this world that exhibit, from time to time, a bit of adolescent behavior. People do not always act their age.
As it turns out, maturity is not a function of age. It is a function of regeneration—the process of spiritual growth that Swedenborg describes throughout all of those books on the shelf. A person can live many decades being an adult in the eyes of the law—getting married, paying taxes, voting, doing all the things that adults are allowed to do—but if that person hasn’t gone through the process of maturation, they haven’t really become an adult in the truest sense of the word. This might sound like people can’t become adults until they have read Swedenborg for the instructions on how to do it, but that’s not what we’re saying at all. The process is explained fully in a much shorter work that’s a lot easier to read: the Bible.
As you know, we’ve been reading through the Bible in this church every Sunday morning, a chapter or two at a time, and we’ve recently completed the books of the Kings. These four books—First and Second Samuel, First and Second Kings—cover a four hundred fifty-year period in the history of the Holy Land, from the birth of the prophet Samuel to the fall of Jerusalem to the forces of Babylon. It’s a time when Israel has a king, beginning with Saul, David, and Solomon and through the years when the once unified kingdom of Israel is divided into the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah. If we are to accept, as Swedenborg asserts, that being ruled by a king corresponds to our being led by a set of ruling principles, then this story describes the period in our lives as young adults when we are searching for the right set of ruling principles to follow, and the story, with all of its successes and failures, reflects our experience as we work to figure out what it means to be an adult. Throughout these four books of the Bible, there are patterns that we need to recognize, because becoming an adult requires that we successfully meet four major challenges.
The first challenge is to get rid of our idolatry. The Bible relates that with each king of Israel and Judah, the people kept idols, sacred poles, and “high places”, and they would visit these and worship before them, even though Solomon’s Temple stood in Jerusalem. Swedenborg writes that idols correspond to the ideas we retain in our thinking that are inconsistent with the love and wisdom that constantly flow into us from heaven. We are taught, for instance, that we must love our neighbor, but humans are very good at finding reasons to hate and exclude. Each time we do that, when we allow judgmental and exclusionary thoughts to become established in us, we ignore the Temple and bring our offerings to an idol instead. We are taught that it is wrong to covet anything that belongs to our neighbor—it’s right there in the Ten Commandments—but we’re pretty good at coveting, too. It’s not that we want to steal something out of our neighbor’s backyard, but we do sometimes gauge what we want for ourselves based upon what we see others possessing. We often can’t see ourselves as successful until we have what others have, and when we do that we are ignoring what the Lord wants for us in favor of what we want for ourselves. We form our ideas of success at an idol instead of within the Temple. Anything that we give authority to that is not the love and wisdom of the Divine is an idol. Money is a good example. Do we base our decisions on what will yield the greatest profit over what will build positive relationships? Do we withhold our material wealth if we suspect we’re not going to get anything back, of if we suspect that “our” money will be squandered? Convenience is another idol. Do we withhold acts of kindness because going out of our way to do something nice is inconvenient for us? Whatever prevents us from living lives of caring, healing, friendship, inclusivity, equity and justice is an idol in our lives, and we cannot be truly adult as long as we hold on to those ideas and practices.
The second challenge for us who are striving to become adults is to honor the Temple. This might sound like a different way of expressing the first challenge, but it actually conveys a bigger concept. The Temple in Jerusalem corresponds to our spiritual center, the acknowledgment that our lives are more than our physical existence and everything that we accomplish in this world. There was a time in the biblical story when the king of Israel, Jeroboam, forbid the people of the northern kingdom to visit Jerusalem to worship. He built two idols to act as substitutes for the Temple. This is like us saying that worship isn’t really necessary. As long as your life is based upon sound ideas, that’s good enough. This is a shortsighted notion. It ignores the fact that the Temple—our spirituality—is the very source of all our sound ideas. We need to maintain our spirituality because that’s where all the ideas that nourish our personal growth comes from. Going into the Temple, that is, taking time to consciously open ourselves to our Divine source, is essential for being inspired with good ideas, for deepening our capacity for love, and for resolving the unresolved issues that are impeding our growth to become the angelic humans that we were created to be. Adults need an active, fully functioning spirituality.
The third challenge is to live with integrity. After King Solomon’s reign, the kingdom experienced a schism, becoming the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah. The first corresponds to our intellectual life and the second corresponds to the life of our affections. Each kingdom operated more or less independently from that point forward, and this for us is a picture of a person in which thought and feeling are only superficially connected. We can say things, for example, that we don’t really feel. We can hang on to attitudes that we can’t justify. We can do things that we know in our hearts to be wrong. When our heads and our hearts are not in agreement with one another, we are not integrated. We are not living with integrity. There were times in the story when Israel and Judah cooperated to achieve a common goal, but they were never unified after Solomon, and they were weaker because of it. Each eventually fell before their adversaries. Israel, our capacity to think logically, fell before the military might of Assyria, corresponding to our ability to rationalize self-serving ideas, and Judah, our emotional life, fell before Babylon, corresponding to our selfishness, our tendency to put ourselves first without any regard for others. Living with integrity means that our thoughts and our feelings exist in harmony with one another. Our choices and our behavior are supported by rational thoughts and by feelings of compassion, and both our intellect and our affections are inspired by Divine love and wisdom, expressed in all that we say and do. That’s integrity, and we cannot be functional adults without it.
The fourth prerequisite for true adulthood may be the easiest to express, but the most difficult to achieve. We need to love the truth. There were a few kings, not many, who took down the idols, who worshiped in the Temple, who made efforts to live peacefully with the other kingdom, but they did so because they were told to do so, either by a prophet or an old piece of parchment they found, or because it was politically advantageous. They did it because they feared the consequences for not doing it, not because they loved doing the right thing. If you have ever chosen to do an inconvenient thing—to strike up a conversation with someone you would rather avoid, for example, or buying something from children when you’d really prefer to spend the money on something else, simply because it helps their school or their Girl Scout troop, and you know it has cost you somehow but you still feel really good about it, then you have experienced a brief moment of what it’s like to love the truth. If we regret our kindnesses, if we count the cost for doing good in the world, then we’re not quite there yet.
It turns out that Joshua was right. When the people enthusiastically committed themselves to living as the Lord’s people, Joshua challenged them. Serving the Lord is harder than you think, he told them. Becoming an adult is harder than you think. We might think we have achieved adulthood, based upon the fact that we have a driver’s license or that we are no longer financially dependent upon our parents, but true adulthood means that we are no longer ruled by the emotional wounds of our childhood or the feelings of resentment and superiority that so often mark our adolescent years. Most adults, it would seem, live in a state of blindness regarding true maturity, blindness regarding what is required of us to achieve true spiritual adulthood. Fortunately, the Lord is very good at curing our blindness. “I came into this world for judgment,” he said, for the purpose of teaching us how to judge, to discern truth from falsity and right from wrong, “so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see,” or those who think they know the truth without spirituality, “may become blind.” This is not condemnation or punishment; it’s humility. In order for us to learn what it takes to become adults, we must first accept that there’s something about it that we have yet to learn. In order to be healed, to be inspired with the truth, we must first acknowledge that we have been blind.
I know that this sermon is too short. I know that the ideas I’ve shared with you have been drastically condensed, that each one of these challenges we must face to attain true adulthood is at the very least a whole sermon in itself, and it is my intention to devote a sermon to each of these points over the next few months. For now, I’d just like to plant the idea that what we think we know about being an adult may not be the truth of it, or at least may not be the whole truth. Regardless of how advanced in years we may be, there is always something more to learn about living a heavenly life—what it takes to become fully human. If you think that what I’ve said becoming an adult sounds pretty daunting, that the criteria are difficult to meet in this world, remember that regeneration is something that the earth experiences every year. As long as there is commitment, a willingness to receive truth and live by it, growth comes as naturally as a budding flower or an apple growing on the end of a limb. Thank heaven that we have the biblical story to guide us through that process, and that the Lord will always take great joy in healing us from our blindness and helping us to grow.
Let us pray:
Lord, you have inspired us that a life in your light is one that embraces growth. Grant us the humility to acknowledge that there is always more to learn, and the wisdom to recognize that we are surrounded by opportunities to do just that. We are grateful for your emerging springtime, when life is awakening all around us, and also for the inspired idea that you are present in every growing leaf and flower. As you awaken the world from its winter slumber, awaken our spirits as well. Strengthen our eagerness to learn, to explore, to engage in deep and honest conversations with those around us, knowing that every moment of earnest exploration will teach us something new. Lead us into a new springtime of our spirit, Lord. Help us to be the angels we were created to become. Amen.
READINGS
Old Testament reading: Joshua 24:14-22
“Now fear the Lord and serve him with all faithfulness.Throw away the gods your ancestors worshiped beyond the Euphrates River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.” Then the people answered, “Far be it from us to forsake the Lord to serve other gods! It was the Lord our God himself who brought us and our parents up out of Egypt, from that land of slavery, and performed those great signs before our eyes. He protected us on our entire journey and among all the nations through which we traveled. And the Lord drove out before us all the nations, including the Amorites, who lived in the land. We too will serve the Lord, because he is our God.”
Joshua said to the people, “You are not able to serve the Lord. He is a holy God; he is a jealous God. He will not forgive your rebellion and your sins. If you forsake the Lord and serve foreign gods, he will turn and bring disaster on you and make an end of you, after he has been good to you.” But the people said to Joshua, “No! We will serve the Lord.” Then Joshua said, “You are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen to serve the Lord.” “Yes, we are witnesses,” they replied.
New Testament reading: John 9:24-39
A second time they summoned the man who had been blind. “Give glory to God by telling the truth,” they said. “We know this man is a sinner.” He replied, “Whether he is a sinner or not, I don’t know. One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!” Then they asked him, “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?” He answered, “I have told you already and you did not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you want to become his disciples too?” Then they hurled insults at him and said, “You are this fellow’s disciple! We are disciples of Moses! We know that God spoke to Moses, but as for this fellow, we don’t even know where he comes from.” The man answered, “Now that is remarkable! You don’t know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners. He listens to the godly person who does his will. Nobody has ever heard of opening the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.” To this they replied, “You were steeped in sin at birth; how dare you lecture us!” And they threw him out.
Jesus heard that they had thrown him out, and when he found him, he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” “Who is he, sir?” the man asked. “Tell me so that I may believe in him.” Jesus said, “You have now seen him; in fact, he is the one speaking with you.” Then the man said, “Lord, I believe,” and he worshiped him.Jesus said, “For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.”
Reading from Swedenborg: True Christian Religion #687.2
In the world, the process of being regenerated is represented by various things. For example, by the flowering of all things on earth in springtime and the ensuing stages of growth to the point of bearing fruit. Likewise, by the stages of development that every type of tree, bush, and flower goes through from the first to the last warm month. The process of being regenerated is also represented by the development of fruits of all kinds from initial stem to ripe fruit. It is represented by the morning and evening rains and the falling dew that cause flowers to open, as they also close themselves to the darkness of night. It is represented by the fragrances of gardens and fields; and by the rainbow in the cloud. It is also represented by the radiant colors of sunrise.