What would life be like without doors? It’s a little difficult to imagine, isn’t it? Those of you who came here in person went through probably half a dozen doors, leaving your house, getting in your vehicle, and coming into the church. Imagine surviving a Minnesota winter without doors, or keeping the insects and weather out in a Minnesota summer, or trying to protect your property. There are homeless people who have to cope without doors some of the time, but they need and appreciate doors whenever they can get them. Imagine trying to keep a pet without doors - anything from a bird or a hamster all the way up to a horse.
Doors offer protection from the elements; doors keep things where they belong, and protect against thieves; doors make privacy possible. Doors are about separation - the difference between what is inside and what is outside. Doors are about movement and progress, changing from one state to another. Doors are about choice.
Did they have doors in biblical times? Obviously - doors are mentioned over 150 times in the Bible, not to mention related things like gates and locks. And it’s nice to hear that certain customs we do today trace all the way back to Old Testament times, such as: what do you do when you approach a door that you want to go through? You knock on it. In Matthew 7, Jesus said, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.”
There’s something beautiful about knocking: it is a request, a bid, asking for permission. Perhaps you could open the door on your own, but it would be rude - you want to respect the wishes of the person on the other side. Or perhaps the door is locked, and the only way to get in is if the other person lets you in. Either way, it is a social exchange, asking “May I?” and getting a response “Yes, you may” or perhaps, “No, you can’t come in.” And it’s nice to know that even the omnipotent and omnipresent Lord God Almighty respects doors. In Matthew, he doesn’t say “I saw you standing out there and knew you wanted to come in, so I opened the door before you asked.” You knock first, then God opens the door.
Let’s imagine a particular person in a particular situation, knocking on someone’s door. I’ll call him Darren. He is a young man who is disturbed by all the evil he sees in the world and really wants to do something about it. He reads the news every day, and gets upset hearing about unnecessary wars, and about corruption and police brutality, and about evil corporations that profit off of the poor, about mining companies that destroy the environment, about politicians making society worse instead of better, about domestic violence, about scammers preying on the uneducated, and about news sources that deliberately make it all seem worse.
The person whose door he is knocking on is Ruth, a wise old woman he heard about, who lives on a mountaintop in a lovely little cottage. So in this case, the door to her cottage serves one more function that I didn’t mention before: it shows Darren a little something about the person who lives there. Like the rest of the cottage, Ruth’s door is decorated with flowers, and is well-kept and beautiful. She opens the door and warmly greets him with a smile, invites him in and asks him what she can do for him.
Darren says, “I have heard that you are a person of great wisdom, and I want to make the world a better place, so I’d like your guidance on the best way to do that.”
Ruth just asks, “What is wrong with the world that it needs help?”
Darren shakes his head in amazement: “Haven’t you noticed that the world is full of evils and corruption? Don’t you read the news?”
“Actually I don’t,” Ruth replies. “I just like to live alone in this cottage, tending to the garden and helping anyone who comes by.”
So Darren lists off all the evil things he hears about in the world, the things he would like to fix, or at least help. Ruth listens carefully and patiently, and then says, “Here is my advice: go back down to that world, find examples of those evils you heard about, and do a lot of research. See if you can make a difference, and if you’d like to come back up here and talk further, I would be happy to talk to you again.”
Darren is disappointed. Do research? See if you can make a difference? Isn’t he doing that already? But he decides to take her advice to heart, and instead of just reading news stories, he goes and talks to people who are involved with those situations. He talks to politicians, he talks to police officers, he interviews executives in large corporations who are willing to talk to him, he finds social workers who deal with domestic violence cases, he does more research on scams and who does them. But in the process, he runs into the same issues over and over again.
When he talks to politicians who are making society worse instead of better, for example, he discovers that those politicians think they are making society better. He argues with them over what really helps society, but he doesn’t get very far with that, and eventually realizes that he is not changing anyone’s mind.
Darren talks to police officers, and finds that they feel they have to use the techniques that Darren finds so objectionable. They think the alternative would be worse.
He is lucky enough to get access to an executive in a mining corporation that has been doing a lot of polluting. The executive asks Darren if he has a cell phone in his pocket, and of course Darren does, and the executive points out that his phone wouldn’t work without the minerals his company extracts from the earth.
When interviewing social workers, he finds out that most people who commit domestic violence were victims of violence themselves, who never had good role models in their life, and don’t know how to control themselves. He reads up on scammers, and finds that they are forced to run these scams by bosses, who are controlled by other bosses, and you can never find the top boss.
So Darren goes back up the mountain to visit Ruth again. She asks him what he has found, and he says, “I’ve found that it’s more complicated than I thought. That the people who commit evil in the world either feel they have to do it, or have a justification for it. If I try to track down who is responsible, everyone I meet blames it on someone else that I can’t get access to. I also found that the efforts to rid the world of those forms of evil don’t work terribly well. Even if you can catch people commiting crimes and throw them in prison, it doesn’t make the problem go away. Overcrowded prisons are a problem too, and then there’s the issue of prisoners learning new crime techniques in prison. Social workers say that a lot of it goes back to having a dysfunctional home life, and not having a father is a contributor - so when we arrest more fathers and lock them up and take them away from their children, that makes the situation worse. I tried really hard, but I couldn’t seem to do anything to help with the evils of the world.”
Darren thought that Ruth would shake her head in sympathy and acknowledge that things are hopeless, but instead she smiled. “Why are you smiling?” Darren asked.
“Because this means you are growing in understanding. You can’t help the world if you are ignorant. And one very important lesson you must learn is that you have no power over the evil that is out there. You can work in fields that help, and you can make contributions to the welfare of the world. You can get a job in politics, or in law enforcement or social work or environmental justice, and you can do your best at that job. But one thing you cannot do is eliminate evil in the world.”
Darren won’t give up: “But I want to fix the evil!”
Ruth smiles again: “You can work on eliminating evil - just not where you think. The only place you can work on evil is in your own heart.”
Darren is a little taken aback: “I don’t have evil in my heart. I’ve never hurt anyone, or ripped anyone off. I don’t lie, cheat, or steal.”
He goes back down to his home, and ponders Ruth’s words for a long time. He thinks: the only evil I can do anything about is the evil in my own heart, and I don’t see any evil in my heart, so I can’t do anything to make the world better.
But as he goes about his daily life, Darrren starts to notice things he didn’t really notice before. He reads a story about a scammer who took the life savings of an elderly couple, and he realizes that he wants to kill that scammer. It makes him realize that he is a murderer in his heart. He gets into a political argument, and in the middle of that argument he realizes that he wants to ignore something he knows is true, and create a distorted picture to win his argument. That is bearing false witness.
He reads stories about public figures who are blatantly racist or sexist, and he wants to shut them down forever. But he stops and thinks: “Wait a minute! I am making assumptions about people based on just a fragment of information - isn’t that what prejudice is all about? So how am I better than them?” He gets upset with news sources that sensationalize things and only focus on the worst side of life, but then he notices that he clicks on the most sensationalistic headlines and ignores the positive news. He can’t blame the news for wanting the most viewers they can get, which makes him realize that his own habits are the source of the problem. Darren knows that passage from Matthew; he knows that not actually doing anything evil in a visible way is not enough. That is just cleaning the outside of the cup; he must also wash the inside of the cup.
So, he thinks, “My goal is to eliminate evil, and now I see it in my own heart, so my new task is to eliminate evil from my heart.” When he feels an impulse to hurt, or to lie, or to steal, he will eradicate it. When he detects an evil thought in his head, he will destroy it until there are none left.
This does not go as planned. The impulses and the thoughts keep cropping up, no matter what he does. He starts to feel overwhelmed, like he is nothing but evil. It is time to visit Ruth once more.
When he knocks on her door, Ruth is happy to see him again. But one little thing is different: this time she does not invite him in, but stands in the doorway. She asks him how he is doing, and Darren says, “Discouraged! I feel like I am nothing but evil, and I can’t do anything to stop the evil thoughts and impulses from entering my head. What do I do?”
She says, “Do you see this door? What does it do?” And Darren thinks of that list of functions I mentioned earlier: the door protects Ruth from the elements, keeps unwanted things out, separates the inside from the outside. He gets her point: “My goal is to keep the unwanted thoughts and feelings out of my head, and I’ve been trying to do that. But it hasn’t worked very well. Maybe I need a stronger door? I need more mental discipline and willpower. Then I will prevent anything evil from entering my house.”
“Actually, no you can’t,” Ruth says. “Well, not in a way. Perhaps you can adjust your image of what your mind is. It is not just the inside of the house; there is an exterior mind too, and that’s like the front step. You can’t prevent unwanted guests from coming knocking on your door. That will always happen.”
“Ah, but I don’t have to invite them in!” Darren realized.
“Yes,” Ruth said. “Some of those evil thoughts and feelings are welcome; you say, ‘Come on in, make yourself comfortable, stay a while!’ Others you have quickly rejected, and told them they have no home here. Doors are also about choice. So if evil comes knocking at your door, you can just say ‘You are not welcome here’.”
“But what if it’s already inside the house?” Darren asked. “What about those evils that have been living there a long time?”
“Well,” Ruth said, “did you know my little cottage also has a back door?” So they went and looked at it, and she explained that this too is an image of how our minds work. “One door opens to evil, the other to good. It’s like the doors are connected,” Ruth said, “and when one closes, the other opens. They can’t both be open at the same time. So if you shut the door to thoughts of murder, you open the door to loving thoughts. And just as you can decide not to invite evil thoughts into your mind, you can also invite those evil thoughts to leave.”
“But I tried that, and it didn’t seem to work,” Darren said.
“It may not seem to work in the short run,” Ruth said, “but the Lord is doing more work than you realize. It is really He who is removing those evils, not you. And it is a gradual process, so you may not realize what is happening. And despite the fact that the Lord is doing the lion’s share of the work, you must keep doing your part. When evil knocks on the door, don’t invite it in. When you see evil already living inside your heart, invite it to leave.”
Darren had one last thought: “But I still want to change the world!”
Ruth said, “By tidying your own house, by choosing good instead of evil in your own small corner of the world, by living a life of peace and joy, you are changing the world. In fact, that is the only way to change the world.”
Amen.
Old Testament Reading: Jeremiah 7:1-7
“‘Hear the word of the Lord, all you people of Judah who come through these gates to worship the Lord. This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Reform your ways and your actions, and I will let you live in this place. Do not trust in deceptive words and say, “This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord!” If you really change your ways and your actions and deal with each other justly, if you do not oppress the foreigner, the fatherless or the widow and do not shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not follow other gods to your own harm, then I will let you live in this place, in the land I gave your ancestors for ever and ever.
New Testament Reading: Matthew 23:25-28
“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean. Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.
Reading from Emanuel Swedenborg: Divine Providence 112
If we are to be cleansed from our compulsions to do evil, it is absolutely necessary that the evils be banished from our outer self. Until that happens, there is no vent for our compulsions, and if there is no vent, then they remain pent up inside, breathing out their pleasures and urging us to consent and then to act. Our inner compulsions enter our bodies through our outer thought processes; so the moment there is consent in our outer thought processes, the compulsions are present in our bodies. [W]e can compare our compulsions and their pleasures to a fire that burns more intensely the more it is fed and that spreads wider the more room it is given, until it destroys the houses in a city or the trees in a forest. [I]t is obvious that if evils are not banished from our outer self, the compulsions and their pleasures will increase dramatically. The more thieves steal, the more obsessed they are with stealing until eventually they cannot help themselves. It is the same with the cheating of cheaters, with hatred and vengefulness, with hedonism and gluttony, with promiscuity, blasphemy, and the like. Everyone knows that a love of power for self-aggrandizement grows to the extent that restraints are relaxed, and the same holds for a love of possessions for worldly reasons. It seems as though there were no limit to them, no end.