Minister's Message
Happy Thanksgiving Friends,
I hope you had a nice Thanksgiving yesterday.
I know many you told me you improvised this year finding a way to create a special day, but not a typical day. I am writing from my dad’s house in PA where my brother and I enjoyed dinner together and FaceTimed with the larger family. 2020 keeps us creative in how we celebrate and gather. Please rech out to me if you feel lonely or isolated.
Last Sunday we had a great discussion about world religions. You can read my sermon below.
Advent
This Sunday marks the first Sunday of Advent, the season that prepares us for Christ coming into the world and into our hearts. The first Sunday of Advent is known for the theme of hope. It represents that hope that though we often feel in darkness the light will come into the world and into our hearts.
Spiritual Tools to Fight Addiction
This Sunday I’ll be preaching on another challenging topic—addiction. Addiction of some type seems to impact all of us in greater or less degrees. Studies report that “The US is in the midst of epidemics of several addictions…” It appears to be getting worse.
I only recently learned that this past Wednesday night was one of the worst for people struggling with alcohol addiction, even gaining the nickname “Blackout Wednesday.” Though we tend to think of addiction in terms of drugs and alcohol many new categories, such as, online, sex, work and shopping addictions are also impacting many.
Few topics relate closer to a feeling of wrestling with darkness and needing hope to find a way to the light. Sunday, I’ll be discussing the different types of addiction, why they seem to be on the rise and see what spiritual teachings offer us in understanding combating them. You may be surprised to learn the origins of the 12 Step process in the readings this week.
I hope you can join.
Benevolence Fund
As I mentioned in last week’s newsletter, if you are member of our community and in need of financial support during these challenging times, please reach out to me for a grant. Your information and request will remain confidential. Grants are a one-time offer and are limited to $500. If you want to contribute to this fund you can also let me know.
COVID Update
Our bookkeeper Edith Mendez has completed quarantine and is home. Also, Helen't brother has been discharged from the hospital. We are grateful for those developments.
Communion Next Sunday
Next Sunday, December 6th, we’ll be having communion as part of the worship service. You’ll need to bring to the call your own bread and beverage for the ceremony. If you’d like to join without elements that’s fine too.
Church Building Update
We are taking advantage of this down time in events at the church to renovate the inside for our return. This past week there were bulldozers and teams of workers securing the church’s new electrical system into the city’s. The church will be electrically up to code for all activities for the first time in modern history. You can see the photos below the service order.
I hope you can join Sunday on Zoom with me,
Rich
Which Religion is the Best?
November 22, 2020 Sermon
Which religion is the best?
This question has led to some major conflicts, but also some great humor.
You may have heard the story of the parents of a Jewish boy who was not doing well in math at school. His parents decided it might be best to send him to Catholic school. To their delight, after his first two months there, his math grades dramatically improved. When his parents asked him why his math scores increased, the boy responded, “Well when I saw the guy nailed to the plus sign in every room, I knew they meant business.”
Or you probably heard about the guy who died and went to heaven. As the angels were showing him around they stopped by various rooms. In the first room, he peaked in to hear Latin and watched a priest serve communion. “Those are the Catholics,” the angel explained. In the next room, he saw a group singing and speaking in tongues. “Those are the Pentecostals,” the angel explained. As they approached the third room, the angel guide whispered to the man, “You’ll have to tiptoe here.” “Why?” the man asked. “This next room is where the fundamentalists worship and we need to be quiet because they think they’re the only ones here.”
Humor can also be insightful. The first joke reminds us how little we know about each other’s faith and the the second joke reminds us how exclusive we view our own.
Why are there so many religions? As one person asked me, “Do you think Christianity is the best religion? And if not, why won’t don’t you switch to the other one?”
I think that’s a fair question and I want to tackle those questions today.
The fact is most religious people believe their faith is the true one. That’s why they follow it. Christians make the case that Jesus is the only way pointing to Scripture where he says he is the way, and no one comes to the Father but through him.
I experienced this first-hand in my ordination council to become a Baptist minister way back in the late ’80s. Two members from every church in the region came to respond to my theological statement and quiz me. Even back then I had a strong Swedenborgian understanding of the variety of faith paths that lead to heaven.
The one question from the group was, “If a person doesn’t accept Christ, can they still get into heaven?” I responded that only God would know that answer. I thought that would end that topic, but no. The next and the next person asked similar questions each getting more specific. They wanted an answer. Finally, one person demanded “In John 3: 16 Jesus said that no one comes to the Father but through him. Would you disagree with Christ and say people who are not Christians can get into heaven?”
Disagree with Christ? He wasn’t much room to respond. I knew full well they were asking about Catholics and Jews in our area. They wanted me to condemn them.
“But what about John 3:17?” I asked, “It says Christ came to save the world not to condemn it. If Christ didn’t come to judge, then who are we to judge another person’s salvation?” That only made the questioner angrier. This went round and round and the questions got meaner and meaner. I eventually won the ordination vote, but by the smallest margin of any candidate in memory.
What was so amazing to me was their primary focus of all topics was wanting to hear me say only Bible-believing Christians like them were going to heaven.
This viewpoint is widely held today. I found this from a pastor answering the questions online:
“Based on the observable evidence, a religion based on a single, creator God is the most compelling option. Of the three major one-God religions, only Christianity presents compelling eyewitness testimony in both its holy writings and external historical evidence to claim that Jesus is God. If the resurrection of Jesus is true, then the result would be that Christianity is the correct religion. Jesus Himself claimed to be the way, not a way, and He challenges those who seek the truth to look to Him.”
His whole premise is based on observable evidence, which he does not have. Finding the right religion isn’t a science experiment.
Growing up I hadn’t been that exposed to different religions. When I’d arrived at East Stroudsburg State College and I remember there were two choices of Christian groups to join. Campus Crusade for Christ was the Protestant group, and the Newman Center campus ministry was the Catholic group. After attending events with both groups, I came to a surprising conclusion. The Catholics, who had not known much about, were kind Christians, with programs to feed the hungry and help the poor. The other group was, like my ordination council, obsessed with their salvation and the condemnation of other faiths.
My college years were an ecumenical awakening for me. I attended the Presbyterian church and also attended Wednesday Catholic folk mass I even played the rabbi in the school play. Two summers I served as campground minister for the Lutheran church. All and all, I loved the variety of ways people found a way to God. By my senior year, I became the first Protestant to run the Catholic Newman Center campus ministry program and have maintained connections to Father Jack Bendick, now monsignor, our priest to this day. In fact, I received an email today asking for prayer for a nun suffering a health crisis.
I learned from them that each faith had something special to offer. At Divinity School, I continued my explorations of faiths and took courses in Swedenborgian theology where I grew to appreciate our tradition teaches all faith paths were good if they lead to greater compassion.
I also worked at the ecumenical church, Memorial Church in Harvard Yard, where I got to help play host to the world’s greatest preachers and we even there we created a Christian-Judaic Fund to sponsor Rabbi’s preaching at the church.
I truly enjoy learning about other people’s faiths and during this last decade I was honored to serve as the chair of the NCC Muslim-Christian dialogue at a time when Muslims were experiencing discrimination.
Here’ what I’ve learned about which religion is the best. The answer is quite simple.
It boils down to this that are two types of religion in the world.
Religion that through its practices, teaching and rituals helps you become more kind to others and religion that do not. If your religion gives you a conscience and provides structure and discipline to your life as you seek to love and forgive more, then that is a religion that leads to heaven. If your religion makes you more compassionate leads to a better life on earth with more happiness and peace and leads to heaven. Religion that creates a desire to condemn and dominate your fellow human beings is a path to unhappiness and hell.
People who call themselves Christians that practice love to others have more in common with Muslims, Jews, Buddhist and Hindu sects that practice the same thing. The reverse is also true. Christians, Muslims or Jews, Buddhist and Hindu sects who are focused on how their faith is the only true faith without compassion to others are not living a life toward heaven.
The religion’s name is unimportant. The action of the follower is all that matters.
What about people who are kind but have the wrong theology?
No problem, he explains that those people who loved their neighbor are brought into the truths of heaven gradually using the example of pulling up a plant by the roots gently so it can be replanted and not abruptly. He suggests that the story of Jesus is true and an important concept to learn even in the afterlife and those who lived a Christ life has no problem learning more.
What about those who have the theology of Jesus correct but don’t love their neighbor?
Swedenborg saw Christians on the other side who struggled to get into heaven because of their own arrogance of thinking, they had it right and their beliefs were the only true ones.
He also runs into many different faiths who seem to suggest to him that Christians have a negative brand on the other side as the group who has been presented the truth, but too often failed to act on it.
But why so many religions in here on earth wouldn’t it be easier if there was just one?
Jesus in the gospel reading today states that there are many rooms in his father’s house showing the love of diversity and different paths in heaven. I get the sense that the longer people are in heaven the less they feel connected to their life on earth religion.
God loves diversity in creation. Swedenborg teaches that the deeper meaning of an image in Revelations of the Holy City has 12 gates and he teaches that these gates represent the diverse paths people will need to come to God. Our diversity is critical to the Lord’s creation. He explains, that the more diverse, the stronger and more perfect heaven becomes.
You’d expect that Swedenborg’s unique insight that all faiths are good would have a positive impact in the world and it did. During the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago, a member of the Chicago Swedenborgian church, judge Charles Carrol Bonney, imagined creating the nation’s first the ecumenical event called the World Parliament of Religions which brought spiritual leaders from Hinduism and Buddhism to the US for the first time and introduced eastern religion.
But what about when a religion on earth no longer teaches goodness? Religions on earth often outlive their usefulness. We read the gospel each week and most of Jesus’ battles are with religious fundamentalists more interested in the rules than justice. Swedenborg suggests that when religions outlive their usefulness new ones emerge and what’s really fascinating is that the leaders of the new religion are rarely can’t part of the previous religion.
This might hint that what we now call the “nones” might be the leaders of what’s next in terms of religion in the world. As the Christian church evolves into a new more authentic faith. I’m not sure but interesting to consider.
The bottom line is that God created us with incredible variety, and we can learn from other faiths about their path and deepens our own.
Learning another person’s faith is an act of love.
I remember last year a woman arrived for Sunday services after dropping off her son at Howard University. After the service she looked concerned, “Father, I loved the service but what about communion? It doesn’t count if there’s no communion.” I quickly figured out she was Catholic.
I told her I wasn’t a Catholic priest but could give her communion if that would be better for her. Within a few minutes, I had the communion wafers a chalice of wine on the altar and did the Catholic liturgy from a memory of those services I attended in college. She was greatly relieved as she heard the words she was familiar with. My lessons from Father Bendik at the Newman Center helped build a bridge with a person of a different faith that I’ll likely never meet again.
The key to understanding world religions is to look at those that help people be better human beings. Those that do are true religions. All that matters to God is the person who follows the teachings of Christ, which is love to others.
The Lord’s love is all-inclusive and welcomes all of us to find our path toward heaven by a life of service to others. There’s room for all religions in heaven and our job is to find one that helps us grow to be better people while we are here.
Amen
Sunday Service Order
November 29, 2020
Light a Candle
Open the Word
Greetings and Check-In
Invocation
Gracious, God, make each of us an instrument of your grace. Weave us into a community showing forth your power and tenderness. Bless us and our differences and under gird our courage to stand together. We call on you today to gather us in your love. Lead us to better know you and glorify you on each step of the journey of our lives. Amen.
Community Confession
Almighty God, unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid; cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of Your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love You, and worthily magnify Your holy name, through Christ the Lord. Amen.
First Reading
1 Samuel 16:14-23
David Plays the Lyre for Saul
14 Now, the Lord’s Spirit had left Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord tormented him. 15 Saul’s officials told him, “An evil spirit from God is tormenting you. 16 Your Majesty, why don’t you command us to look for a man who can play the lyre well? When the evil spirit from God comes to you, he’ll strum a tune, and you’ll feel better.”
17 Saul told his officials, “Please find me a man who can play well and bring him to me.”
18 One of the officials said, “I know one of Jesse’s sons from Bethlehem who can play well. He’s a courageous man and a warrior. He has a way with words, he is handsome, and the Lord is with him.”
19 Saul sent messengers to Jesse to say, “Send me your son David, who is with the sheep.”
20 Jesse took six bushels of bread, a full wineskin, and a young goat and sent them with his son David to Saul. 21 David came to Saul and served him. Saul loved him very much and made David his armor bearer. 22 Saul sent ⌞this message⌟ to Jesse, “Please let David stay with me because I have grown fond of him.”
23 Whenever God’s spirit came to Saul, David took the lyre and strummed a tune. Saul got relief ⌞from his terror⌟ and felt better, and the evil spirit left him.
Gospel Lesson
Mark 10:17-27
The Rich Young Ruler
17 As He was setting out on a journey, a man ran up to Him and knelt before Him, and asked Him, “Good Teacher, what shall I do so that I may inherit eternal life?” 18 But Jesus said to him, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good except God alone. 19 You know the commandments: ‘Do not murder, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not give false testimony, Do not defraud, Honor your father and mother.’” 20 And he said to Him, “Teacher, I have kept all these things from my youth.” 21 Looking at him, Jesus showed love to him and said to him, “One thing you lack: go and sell all you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.” 22 But he [a]was deeply dismayed by [b]these words, and he went away grieving; for he was one who owned much property.
23 And Jesus, looking around, *said to His disciples, “How hard it will be for those who are wealthy to enter the kingdom of God!” 24 And the disciples were amazed at His words. But Jesus responded again and *said to them, “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! 25 It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” 26 And they were even more astonished, and said to Him, “[c]Then who can be saved?” 27 Looking at them, Jesus *said, “With people it is impossible, but not with God; for all things are possible with God.”
Swedenborg Insights
Spiritual Experiences
2169. Spirits exist in our mental life
Everything whatever that exists in a person's mental life and feelings, evil as well as good, has spirits, and societies of spirits, who exactly interact with it.
Just one such case was, when I was taking pleasure in some unimportant details, either in regard to writing, or eating or drinking, or something else, like while buying things I had desired in times past, and for which I had acquired a liking. When those enjoyments recurred, then there were spirits, and societies of spirits, that had exactly the same enjoyment, so that they were much more desirous than I myself, even to the point that they could hardly control themselves, without almost perishing, if they were not indulged and given those things - even though they knew they were of no use to them, but to me.
So there is not anything mental or emotional in a human being that does not have societies of spirits that indulge and favor it.
It is amazing but true that it is easy for any of us to rebuke someone else who is intending to do evil and say, ‘Don’t do that—that’s a sin!’ And yet it is difficult for us to say the same thing to ourselves. The reason is that saying it to ourselves requires a movement of the will, but saying it to someone else requires only a low level of thought based on things we have heard. . . .
All people who do good actions as a religious practice avoid actual evils. It is extremely rare, though, that people reflect on the inner realms that belong to their will. They suppose that because they are involved in good actions they are not involved in evil actions, and even that their goodness covers up their evil.
But, my friend, to abstain from evils is the first step in gaining goodwill. The Word teaches this. The Ten Commandments teach it. Baptism teaches it. The Holy Supper teaches it.
Reason, too, teaches it. How could any of us escape from our evils or drive them away without ever taking a look at ourselves? How can our goodness become truly good without being inwardly purified?
I know that all devout people and also all people of sound reason who read this will nod and see it as genuine truth; yet even so, only a few people are going to do what it says.
Divine Providence 36 12 Steps to Spiritual Growth
They said that they picture wisdom to themselves as a magnificent and highly ornate palace into which one mounts by twelve steps. No one arrives at even the first step, they said, except from the Lord by recognition of God; and according to a person's to connect with God they ascend; also as one ascends, one perceives that no person is wise from himself but from the Lord. Furthermore, they said that the things in which one is wise are to those in which one is not wise like a few drops of water to a large lake. By the twelve steps into the palace of wisdom are meant goods united to truths and truths united to goods.
Offering
Please give generously to our ministry
(Be Careful to Remove the Tip Feature)
Prayers of the People
The Lord’s Prayer
Benediction
Now may the peace that passes all understanding be with you all this day and forevermore.
AMEN
Question Time
This time is for those who would like to remain after the service to ask questions and hear the questions of others.
Guidelines:
Participate by asking questions only.
Be curious and open-minded in your participation to the views of others.
Keep your questions brief.
Listen deeply to the questions of others.
