Part 1: I’ve Been to 47 States
One of the things I can brag about in life is that I have been to 47 states. I still haven’t gotten to Alaska, Idaho or Vermont, but I hope I get the chance some day, so I can cross off those last remaining states off my list. Then I can say I’ve been everywhere in the USA.
Well, sort of. One of the states I “crossed off” the list a long time ago was Arkansas. Here’s the story: I was driving across the country with my brother Owen, from Philadelphia to Arizona, and we drove the diagonal route from Memphis, Tennessee, to Texarkana in the southwest corner of the state. We had food in the car and gas in the tank, and as a result we drove that whole stretch (about 250 miles) without stopping. So, for about five hours, we saw Arkansas through the windows of the car, but my feet never actually touched Arkansas soil and I never spoke to anyone who lives there. Does that count as being in Arkansas?
Another time I flew from Memphis to New Orleans in the winter, and they had to de-ice the plane before we left Memphis. But after completing most of the flight, they decided that they couldn’t land in Louisiana, so we turned around and went back to Memphis to try again. So that day I flew over the state of Arkansas three times. Does that count as being to Arkansas? Maybe not, so I perhaps should revise my list: make that 46 states.
Alabama and Mississippi are on that list too, even though I drove through them just once, along the gulf coast – a stretch of about 200 miles. I don’t remember if I ever stopped. So perhaps I’m down to only 44 states. But at least I can say I’ve been through Indiana many times. Well, not through much of Indiana: just the 50-mile stretch of I-94 from Chicago to Michigan, which I usually did without stopping – although I did eat in a restaurant there once. So I wouldn’t be very well qualified to write a travel book about Indiana. Now I’m down to 43 states. For other states, I flew into one city, where I stayed for a few days, and flew out again.
You can see where I’m going with this: even for the states that I can say I have definitely, absolutely “been” to, what I really mean is that I have driven along one or two highways, or visited one city. Instead of looking at state boundaries as an all-or-nothing prospect, if I instead traced out how much I have seen with my own eyes, it would usually be a thin ribbon or a small dot. Those ribbons and dots are a small percentage of the state.
In some cases, I’ve had more time to explore, and visited more dots and ribbons. For Montana, for example, I can say proudly that I’ve been to Billings, Bozeman, Butte, Missoula, Kalispell, Dillon, Red Lodge, and Helena. On one business trip to Montana, my colleague and I got to stay an extra day and visit Yellowstone National Park. We drove for many miles through the park, visited hot springs and geysers, saw countless bison and other exotic animals, hiked the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone and stared at waterfalls for hours. But we discovered a funny thing: if you tell people you’ve been to Yellowstone, they just ask one question: “Did you see Old Faithful?” And when you tell them no, you saw other amazing features of the park but not that one, they get a disappointed look on their face as if to say, “Well then how can you say you’ve been to Yellowstone?”
Well, I can definitely say I’ve been to Arizona: I lived there for four years in the 1980s, and have visited it every year since. “Have you seen the Grand Canyon?,” people could ask. Yes, I have – but like many others, I just stood at the rim for a few hours. My parents and brother, on the other hand, hiked the canyon from rim to rim: they saw it from the bottom, which is a whole different matter. But the Grand Canyon is 300 miles long, so even they have only seen a small portion of it. Why are we so eager to cross things off the list? What is our motivation for being able to make that brag?
How about Minnesota? I have lived here for 32 years, so that surely counts. Although again: people could easily name places in Minnesota I haven’t been (the Boundary Waters, for example). Perhaps if I narrowed it down to east central Minnesota, I would qualify as being able to write a travel book. This past summer, I biked over 1,000 miles on Twin Cities bike trails, and could write a book about that. One nice thing about that is that biking is slower than driving, so I got to see the landscape in a much more intimate way. But even then, biking through the terrain at 12 mph, I surely missed a lot. Sometimes I would walk the same trail that I biked, and on foot I would see it in a new way. And sometimes I sat on a bench and did not move for an hour, and you see the world in a different way when you do that. That is perhaps the best way to get away from that mentality of “crossing things off the list.”
There is a similar problem when it comes to talking about people I’ve met. Maybe you can brag about meeting a famous person – but what did meeting them really get you? Another chance to brag? Do you “know” them? In the south, you can shake someone’s hand for the first time and they might say “So glad to know you” in reply. In Minnesota, that sounds a little presumptuous: how long does it take before you can say you “know” someone? Someone might ask “Do you know Garrison Keillor?” and you could say “Well, he came to the Virginia Street Church for a few book readings, and I ate at a table with him once, but I don’t know him.” On the other hand, I can say that I’ve had conversations and meals with you members of the church for many years – but can I really say I “know” you? How about co-workers? My in-laws?
My own wife?
My self?
Part 2: Heaven: The Travelogue
If all of this sounds like an intellectual thought exercise that’s not really a suitable topic for a sermon, bear with me. Is my point that the beauty of nature is vast, and the world is a bigger place than you think it is? If so, that might be an acceptable sermon in its own right. But let’s go back to that idea of being qualified to write a travel book. When our family has traveled to other countries, we often buy travel books, and they are worth the money. They are fun to read before we leave, they help us make travel decisions, and perhaps most importantly, they get us excited about the trip. But we also realize the impossibility of describing a place in a few pages – and I’m sure the author knows that even better than we do.
What if that travel book isn’t about a country? What if it’s about the place you hope to spend the rest of eternity? What if it’s about heaven?
For thousands of years, people have been speculating about what the afterlife will be like, and the visions of what it looks like are wildly different from each other. So what a gift it was when the Lord said to Emanuel Swedenborg in 1745, “I will let you see with your own eyes.” And He didn’t just give Swedenborg a day to look around. Swedenborg visited the afterlife for 27 years, and wrote more than 30 books about it. No wonder Heaven and Hell is his most popular book: it’s the ultimate travelogue!
But even the “ultimate travelogue” is only a few hundred pages long, and is dependent on the descriptive skills of Emanuel Swedenborg. Often he recognizes the limits of his own abilities and just says, “It can’t be described in earthly language.” Just as it says at the end of the book of John in the Bible: “Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.” (John 21:25) What a frustrating end to the Gospels! Couldn’t you have given us a little more? At least Swedenborg wrote a shelf-full of books.
Part 3: The Pride of Checking It Off
My point, if you haven’t gathered it, is that those books are only the beginning. They are only a taste of what is to come – but how extraordinary it is to have that gift. Many of you discovered Heaven and Hell and other books of Swedenborg late in your life; I was born into this religion, so I have had that gift since early childhood. I have also lived in several Swedenborgian church societies, and have been surrounded by people who were blessed with that gift for their whole life. And I’ve noticed something that really shouldn’t surprise anyone: that those people are not perfect.
In fact, I have observed that Swedenborgian societies often slip into an unfortunate mindset: “We have a truth that others don’t have, so it will make us better people.” It makes us feel special, which can be good and bad. The bad side is a kind of smugness that can settle in. It is not that different from how Jesus talked about the most explicitly religious people in his society: the priests and pharisees. In Matthew 22, he had to correct them: ““You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God.” That must have annoyed them.
Being fully steeped in the scriptures did not stop them from murdering Jesus. He even forgave them on the cross: “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.” These were the most spiritually learned people in the society: how could they not know?
I think it is because of an attitude that settles in: “I know this stuff.” It made them focus on empty ritual, and be blind to what they were missing. To use a geographic metaphor: they did not see the terrain they were living in. And I think that mentality shares some similarities to my own mentality of “crossing off” states from my list. “I’ve seen Delaware: done!” How different is that from “I’ve read Divine Love and Wisdom: done!”
What is behind that desire to check things off a list like that? Why do I take pride in it?
Should I instead be humble about what I haven’t seen, what I don’t understand, the places I haven’t been? Have I just whizzed past them at 60 mph, or flown over them at 30,000 feet?
When I say I know someone, what is the benefit of that? To predict what they will think and do? How often have you been wrong about that? To smugly claim to be one of the few who understand them? Now, instead of thinking of another person, what if I am talking about God? Do I have the arrogance to think I can predict what God will do? That I am one of the few people who understands God?
Perhaps it is better to say: “I have only seen a brief glimpse of Arkansas. I should never assume that I have seen all its beauty and understand its mystery. That would take more than a lifetime.” And in the same way, I could say, “I have only seen a brief glimpse of my loved ones. I should never assume that I have seen all their beauty and understand their mystery. That will take more than a lifetime. Thankfully, Swedenborg reassures me that if they truly are loved ones, I can continue that work in the next life. I am glad I will have all eternity to do it.”
Amen
READINGS
Matthew 22:23-29
That same day the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to him with a question. “Teacher,” they said, “Moses told us that if a man dies without having children, his brother must marry the widow and raise up offspring for him. Now there were seven brothers among us. The first one married and died, and since he had no children, he left his wife to his brother. The same thing happened to the second and third brother, right on down to the seventh. Finally, the woman died. Now then, at the resurrection, whose wife will she be of the seven, since all of them were married to her?” Jesus replied, “You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God.
John 21:25
Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.
True Christianity #350 (excerpts)
The Lord’s Word is an ocean of truths, vast and dep, from which all angelic wisdom comes, although to those of us who do not know about its spiritual and heavenly meanings the Word appears to hold no more than a jug of water. The proliferation of the truths of faith is like the proliferation of seeds in fields and gardens; they are capable of generating hundreds of millions of plants and continuing without end. In the Word, “seed” has no other meaning than truth, “field” means a body of teaching, and “garden” means wisdom. The human mind is like soil in which both spiritual and earthly truths can be planted like seeds and can multiply without end.