Sermon: Those Who Are With Us

March 14, 2011 By Coleman Glenn 1 Comment

I preached this sermon on Sunday, March 13, 2011 at the Olivet New Church in Toronto.

THOSE WHO ARE WITH US

Readings: 2 Kings 6:8-23; Mark 9:36-41; Arcana Coelestia 5036

“So [Elisha] answered, “Fear not, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them” (2 Kings 6:16).

All of us go through times when we feel alone.  Maybe we feel alone when we reflect on the tiny size of the New Church compared to all the other religions in the world.  Maybe you feel alone when you try to express yourself and no one seems to get what you’re saying.  There are times when we feel alone even when we’re surrounded by friends or family.  The truth is, all of us feel alone in some context, in some situation.  No matter how integrated into a group we seem to be, there are times when we feel that we’re on our own.

We can especially feel alone at the times when we most need help – at the times when we are faced with obstacles and challenges.  Most of us know the feeling of having to take on a struggle in our life, with a sense that we’re going into battle by ourselves.  We know something of the feeling that Elisha’s servant must have had as he looked outside his master’s house and saw the entire city of Dothan surrounded by Syrian warriors.

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What Will We Do In Heaven?

February 4, 2011 By Coleman Glenn Leave a Comment

C. Michael Patton has a great series over at Parchment and Pen called “Questions I Hope No One Will Ask.” The latest question he addresses is, “What will we be doing in heaven?” Obviously, as a New Church person, this is the FIRST question I hope to be asked. The Writings have answers – entire books of answers.

But of course some people (including Patton) would argue that parts of those answers are unbiblical. He writes,

No matter what your position regarding the particulars, all roads of orthodox Christian ‘eschatology’ (the doctrine of the last things) converge on a new or recreated earth where the presence of God is evident and real unlike any time since Adam roamed Eden.

In support of a physical resurrection in our physical bodies, he cites John 5:29; 1 Cor. 15:13-22; 1 Cor. 15:51-53; and 1 Thes. 4:17. But none of these passages – or any other passages in the Bible – explicitly say that we will rise with the same body as before. In fact, it says otherwise:

It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body.(1 Corinthians 15:44).

The New Church does not at all deny that we have resurrection bodies – but as spiritual bodies, we stay in the spiritual plane. Heaven is not a temporary holding cell – heaven is our eternal home. The “new earth” that is recreated does not literally mean this planet.  A better translation might be “a new land,” as in “new heavens [or sky] and a new land.”  No one thinks that “the new heaven” actually means a new sky; it’s no more of a stretch to say that “the new land” doesn’t refer to the land itself but to the people living on the land, and in particular the church (for more on this, see Arcana Coelestia n. 1066, New Jerusalem and Its Heavenly Doctrine n. 5, and many, many other passages that provide ample scriptural evidence that “land” is used to mean the church, or the Lord’s people).

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Rev. Jonathan Rose in “Heaven”

April 30, 2010 By Coleman Glenn 1 Comment

In Monday’s New York Times, Mark Oppenheimer reviews a new book by Lisa Miller entitled Heaven: Our Enduring Fascination with the Afterlife. The review mentions a few specific views of heaven that Miller explores, including the Swedenborgian view of heaven:

Over time, she explains, visions of heaven became more specific. The Book of Revelation is especially vivid. In the Middle Ages, Christians gave heaven strata, where the righteous were sorted into levels. Dante and Milton embroidered the Christian imagination of the afterlife even further. The 18th-century mystic Emanuel Swedenborg believed that marriages on earth continued in heaven, a view later held by Mormons.

Miller’s description of Swedenborgianism makes particular good use of her interview subject, a seventh-generation Swedenborgian named Jonathan Rose, who taught for many years at Bryn Athyn College in Pennsylvania.

That (and the allure of instant gratification that comes with having a Kindle) was incentive enough for me to buy the book.

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“Pork, A Piece of Beef, Cheese, Beer and Fiery Wine”

April 15, 2010 By Coleman Glenn 3 Comments

Doing research for a doctrinal class, I was looking at  Divine Providence n. 67, which says that Divine Providence not only leads a person to heaven, but leads them toward a specific place in heaven.  I personally love this teaching, but I know for some people it seems to take away free will – and it does need to be balanced with the teaching that the Lord would raise everyone into heaven, and even to Himself, if He could (se Arcana Coelestia n. 2335).

But, as I understand it, the Lord knows the choices you’ll make, and so He leads toward a specific spot in heaven.  Does that sound too predestination-y?  I know there are ministers who would disagree with my take on it, but that’s how I understand it.

Anyway, that’s not the point.  The point is that it reminded me to go re-read a passage that I really like.  I don’t have the passage number memorized, but it’s easy to find in NewSearch: just search for “beer,” and it’s the passage that comes up from Divine Providence.  I just did that, and the passage is Divine Providence n. 254.  It says:

Further, it has been provided by the Lord that those who could not be reached by the Gospel, but only by a form of religion, should also have a place in that Divine Man, that is, in heaven, by constituting those parts that are called skins, membranes, cartilages and bones, and that they like others should be in heavenly joy. For it makes no difference whether they are in such joy as that experienced by the angels of the highest heaven or by the angels of the lowest heaven, since everyone who enters heaven comes into the highest joy of his own heart; anything greater he does not assume, for he would be suffocated by it.

For illustration of this compare a peasant and a king. A peasant may be in a state of the highest joy when he goes about in a new suit of rough home-spun, and sits down at a table on which is pork, a piece of beef, cheese, beer and fiery wine; and he would be distressed at heart if he were to be clothed like a king in purple, silk, gold and silver, and if a table were to be set for him with delicacies and costly food of many kinds with noble wine. From this it is clear that there is heavenly happiness for the last as well as for the first, for each in his degree; and consequently for those also who are outside the Christian world, provided they shun evils as sins against God because they are contrary to religion.

(Actually, the text I was looking at said, “A piece of beef cheese,” but it turns out that that’s just a typo. So much for my brilliant explanation that it probably meant “cow cheese”).

One thing that’s not stated is that even if you told the peasant that the king was actually happier than him, he wouldn’t envy the king’s state – he’s perfectly happy where he is, and he can’t even imagine being any happier.

So, to put it in geeky terms, if my happiness level is maxed out when I get to my specific place in heaven, I’m not going to complain that apparently some people are even happier than me.  I’m not even sure I’ll believe it…

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