This is a sermon I gave at the Olivet New Church in Toronto on April 11, 2010.<\/p>\n
Readings: Isaiah 43:1-11; John 20:19-29; Apocalypse Revealed<\/em> 469<\/p>\n MY LORD AND MY GOD<\/p>\n A Sermon by Rev. Coleman S. Glenn<\/p>\n \u201cAnd Thomas answered and said to Him, \u2018My Lord and my God.\u2019 \u00a0Jesus said to him, \u2018Because you have seen Me, Thomas, you have believed; blessed are they who have not seen, and have believed.\u2019\u201d <\/em>(John 20:28, 29)<\/p>\n \u201cMy Lord and my God.\u201d\u00a0 These are some of the most profound, powerful words in the entirety of the Word.\u00a0 \u201cMy Lord and my God.\u201d\u00a0 For the first time, a disciple acknowledged not only that Jesus was a great teacher; not only that He was the Son of God; but that He was God Himself, Jehovah of the Old Testament come down into this world.\u00a0 Those five words contain what is perhaps the single most important truth that has been revealed to the world: the Lord Jesus Christ is God.\u00a0 Everyone in heaven worships the Lord as God \u2013 and so, if we are on the heavenly path \u2013 every one of us will reach that moment of recognition where we see the Lord for Who He truly is.\u00a0 And because we grow closer to the Lord to eternity, and learn more and more to eternity, we can have this moment occur again and again in our lives, with each new moment being a deeper realization that the Lord is God.<\/p>\n But we do not remember Thomas primarily for making this confession of the Lord\u2019s divinity.\u00a0 We know him today as \u201cdoubting Thomas.\u201d\u00a0 We use the name to refer to people who are too sceptical for their own good, who refuse to believe anything unless they can touch it and see it.\u00a0 And this, too, is an important part of the story.\u00a0 Thomas was only able to make his confession when he saw and touched the Lord; but the Lord said, \u201cBecause you have seen me, Thomas, you have believed; blessed are they who have not seen and yet have believed.\u201d\u00a0 Unlike Thomas, we do not physically see the Lord or touch Him \u2013 we are asked to believe in Him without actually having physical proof that He is there, that He has risen, that He is God.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n But someone might object, \u201cIf I can\u2019t see Him, how can I make<\/em> myself believe in Him!?\u201d\u00a0 There is a truth behind this question.\u00a0 In some sense, we do<\/em> have to \u201csee\u201d the Lord to truly believe in Him.\u00a0 The book Doctrine of Faith<\/em> says,<\/p>\n [The Lord\u2019s words to Thomas] do not mean a faith separate from an internal acknowledgement of truth, but that they are blessed who do not see the Lord with their eyes, as Thomas did, and yet believe that He is; for this is seen in the light of truth from the Lord (Faith\u00a0 10).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Those who have faith still see the Lord \u2013 but in the light of truth, rather than in the light of the world.\u00a0 Faith is defined as an internal acknowledgment of truth \u2013 and we cannot force ourselves to see the truth in something that we do not understand.<\/p>\n But if we can\u2019t make ourselves believe something, does that mean that we just have to sit and wait for faith to happen?\u00a0 Some branches of Christianity teach exactly this \u2013 that we have no free will in spiritual matters, and that God simply grants faith to some and not to others. \u00a0Following this logic leads inevitably to the idea of predestination \u2013 if there\u2019s nothing a person can do to acquire faith on his own, if it\u2019s just an act of God, then the fact that not everyone has faith shows that God has chosen not to save them.\u00a0 It\u2019s a pernicious doctrine that totally denies the Lord\u2019s clear teaching that He wants everyone <\/em>to be saved.<\/p>\n But then what is the answer?\u00a0 If the Lord does not randomly inspire faith, and yet we cannot force ourselves to have it, what can we do?\u00a0 The question is posed and answered later in the Doctrine of Faith<\/em>:<\/p>\n If anyone should think within himself, or say to someone else, \u201cWho is able to have the internal acknowledgment of truth which is faith? not I;\u201d let me tell him how he may have it: Shun evils as sins, and come to the Lord, and you will have as much of it as you desire. (Faith 12)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n This one sentence answers this age-old question \u2013 how can I have faith?\u00a0 The answer is two-fold.\u00a0 First, shun evils as sins.\u00a0 And second, come to the Lord.<\/p>\n To do these things does<\/em> require some kind of faith \u2013 faith in the sense of willingness or trust.\u00a0 But this is a kind of faith we can <\/em>choose to have.\u00a0 We can choose to follow the Lord\u2019s commandments.\u00a0 We can choose<\/em> to assume that the Word is true, even if we don\u2019t always see<\/em> the truth in it.\u00a0 And it can take a long time of going through the motions before we\u2019re able to see<\/em> the truth, to come to that internal acknowledgment that is faith.\u00a0 But when we choose to live by the truth, we do<\/em> come to know it.\u00a0 Many of us have probably shunned some kind of evil in our lives and seen the way that it helped us grow in our love for others.\u00a0 We stumble, of course, and sometimes we feel that we are not making progress \u2013 but we may find that even the fact that the progress is slow and stumbling confirms<\/em> our faith, since that is exactly<\/em> how the Writings tell us the progress will go.\u00a0 We find that the Word describes our inner states more perfectly than could be known by natural psychology.<\/p>\n \u201cShun evils as sins, and come to the Lord, and you will have as much [faith] as you desire.\u201d\u00a0 Most of the sermons we hear focus on the first part of this \u2013 shunning evils as sins. We focus on our own lives \u2013 our struggles, our efforts to keep the commandments, temptations we will face, our hopes and dreams.\u00a0 This is the world we know best, and it is easier to understand than it is to understand what it means to come to the Lord.\u00a0 And it is vital and useful to focus on our lives.\u00a0 But we may sometimes lose sight of how important that second part is: to approach the Lord<\/em> \u2013 that is, to approach the Lord Jesus Christ in His Divine Human.\u00a0 The book Apocalypse Revealed<\/em> says that the two essentials of the New Church are first, \u201cthat the Lord alone is the God of heaven and earth, and that His Human is Divine\u201d; and second, \u201cthat people ought to live according to the precepts of the Ten Commandments\u201d (AR 485).\u00a0 And the passage we read this morning says that that first essential \u2013 \u201cthat the Lord is the God of heaven and earth, and that His Human is Divine\u201d \u2013 \u00a0is the essential itself<\/em> of the New Church.\u00a0 We need to follow the Ten Commandments, but just as importantly \u2013 or even more importantly \u2013 we need to come to the Lord if we want to have faith.<\/p>\n But what does it mean to come to the Lord?\u00a0 How do we approach Him?\u00a0 And how do we come that internal acknowledgment that mirrors Thomas\u2019s external one \u2013 that Jesus Christ is our Lord and our God?\u00a0 Thomas had spent three years following the Lord.\u00a0 He had come to know Him intimately.\u00a0 When the Lord said that He was going to Jerusalem, where they had recently wanted to stone Him, Thomas said to the other disciples, \u201cLet us also go, that we may die with Him.\u201d\u00a0 He literally followed wherever Jesus went.\u00a0 He got to know Him intimately.\u00a0 And in the same way, if we want to have that internal acknowledgement which is faith, we need to get to know Jesus, to love Jesus, and to follow in Jesus\u2019s footsteps.<\/p>\n This emphasis on Jesus<\/em> may strike some as unusual, because in the New Church we usually refer to Jesus as \u201cthe Lord,\u201d and talking about \u201cgetting to know Jesus\u201d for some people carries connotations of fundamentalist Christianity.\u00a0 But \u201cthe Lord\u201d means Jesus \u2013 Jesus is \u201cthe Lord.\u201d \u00a0Thomas cried out, \u201cMy Lord and my God.\u201d\u00a0 We sometimes use \u201cLord\u201d as a synonym for \u201cGod\u201d \u2013 and the Lord is<\/em> God.\u00a0 The Writings themselves occasionally use the word \u201cLord\u201d in this way.\u00a0 But usually when the Writings use the name, \u201cLord,\u201d they\u2019re specifically talking about Jesus.\u00a0 A passage early on in Arcana Coelestia<\/em>, the first published book of the Writings, says, \u201cIn the following work, by the name Lord is meant the Saviour of the world, Jesus Christ, and Him only\u201d (AC 14). <\/em>In the New Church, we know that Jesus is God \u2013 but we may sometimes forget that every time we say \u201cthe Lord,\u201d we\u2019re referring specifically to Jesus.<\/p>\n Replacing the name \u201cLord\u201d with \u201cJesus\u201d can bring us startling realizations.\u00a0 For example, the defining love in the celestial heaven is love for Jesus.\u00a0 The two essentials of the New Church are to love Jesus and to follow the Ten Commandments.\u00a0 The God of Heaven is Jesus.\u00a0 This is what all these passages are saying, but they can strike us in a new way when we say \u201cJesus\u201d instead of \u201cLord.\u201d<\/p>\n One of the reasons it\u2019s confusing is that in the Old Testament, the name of God was Jehovah \u2013 but in most English translations of the Bible, this was translated to \u201cLord,\u201d written in small capital letters.\u00a0 The reason for this is that when the New Testament quotes the Old, it replaces Jehovah with \u201cKyrios,\u201d the Greek word for Lord.\u00a0 One reason for this was \u2013 and the one known by most scholars \u2013 is that the Jews considered the name of God too holy to speak, and so said \u201cAdonai\u201d \u2013 the Hebrew word for Lord \u2013 when they read \u201cJehovah.\u201d\u00a0 But the Writings reveal that there were two other reasons that the name \u201cthe Lord\u201d was used instead of the name \u201cJehovah\u201d.\u00a0 First of all, if Jesus had called Himself Jehovah, the name of God from the Old Testament, people would not have been able to believe it.\u00a0 By calling Himself \u201cLord,\u201d people could take it either to mean simply \u201cMaster\u201d or \u201cRuler\u201d \u2013 or <\/em>they could understand that He was calling Himself by the name of the One True God.\u00a0 And second, while He was living in the world, Jesus had not completely united His Humanity to His divinity \u2013 although He was always Divine in His soul.\u00a0 After the last temptation on the cross His Humanity was made completely Divine \u2013 and for this reason, after the resurrection the disciples always called Him \u201cLord,\u201d acknowledging that He was God Himself come down into the world.<\/p>\n And so if we want to have that same recognition that Thomas had of our Lord and our God, we need to get to know Him as Jesus.\u00a0 But again, how do we get to know Him?\u00a0 Primarily, we get to know the Lord in the Word.\u00a0 In the stories of the New Testament especially we learn Who He is. This is important because to love God, we need to know Him as a person<\/em> \u2013 and it is in the New Testament that we see Him most clearly as a person.\u00a0 The Writings are clear \u2013 we cannot really be joined in love to an invisible God.\u00a0 A visible, human God we can<\/em> be joined to.<\/p>\n But worshiping a visible God does not just mean picturing an external human body when we pray.\u00a0 It means praying to a specific person \u2013 and the stories in the New Testament help us picture not necessarily what he might have looked like, but how<\/em> He expresses Himself, the kind of feelings<\/em> He inspires, the kind<\/em> of Person He was and is.\u00a0 He becomes more tangible, and thus, more visible<\/em>.\u00a0 Think of the parable we heard this morning in the children\u2019s talk \u2013 the parable of the father welcoming back the prodigal son.\u00a0 What is your picture of the Lord as He is telling that parable?\u00a0 Think of the warmth you might hear in His voice, that would have come through with every word \u2013 the care he had both for the sinners and for the Pharisees.\u00a0 That loving, warm, kind man Who spoke those words is God.<\/p>\n But it is not just the New Testament that testifies to the Lord\u2019s Divine Human. \u00a0The entire Word, in its inmost sense, is about the Divine Human.\u00a0 It can be harder to see in the Old Testament, but even in the literal sense it shines through \u2013 in the Psalms that speak of Jehovah being slow to anger and great in mercy, in the stories of His protection of the people of Israel.\u00a0 But it is really in the internal sense that the stories of the Old Testament help us to know the Lord better.\u00a0 For this, Arcana Coelestia<\/em> is a wonderful book to read.\u00a0 Especially in its treatments of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, it tells us about who the Lord is and was in His mind and soul.\u00a0 We can get to know Him in a deeper way by learning the internal sense of these stories.\u00a0 And all the Writings for the New Church describe the Lord\u2019s interior essence \u2013 His love and His wisdom.<\/p>\n The passage from Doctrine of Faith <\/em>said that to have the internal acknowledgment of faith, a person has to shun evils as sins and come to the Lord.\u00a0 We\u2019ve been focusing on the second part of this \u2013 but the reality is that coming to the Lord cannot actually be separated from living according to His commandments.\u00a0 We learn about Him in the Word, but the way we really get to know<\/em> Him and love<\/em> Him is by living according to His teachings.\u00a0 This is why people from other faiths are able to come into heaven \u2013 because if they have lived according to teachings similar to the Ten Commandments, in their hearts they already love the Lord, even if they have not heard His name, and they readily accept Him when they learn about Him after death.<\/p>\n The more we follow the Ten Commandments, the more we learn to care more about the happiness of others than our own happiness.\u00a0 We learn what it is to love other people.\u00a0 And even though it feels<\/em> like it is ourselves, we can gradually come to realize that that love for others is not <\/em>our own.\u00a0 That is the Lord with us.\u00a0 The Writings tell us that faith and charity make one when we do good and shun evil as if of ourselves, but acknowledge that it is the Lord acting in us and through us.<\/p>\n The more we follow the Lord, the more we experience that love of others.\u00a0 And the more we experience that love for others, the more we are able to understand the Lord\u2019s mission that He had in this world.\u00a0 In all His combats, He never fought for Himself, but for the entire human race.\u00a0 He went through death, and rose again, for the sole purpose that He could bring people to heaven.\u00a0 He told His disciples before He left them, \u201cAnd if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also. And where I go you know, and the way you know\u201d (John 14:3-4).\u00a0 To this Thomas replied, \u201cLord, we do not know where You are going, and how can we know the way?\u201d Jesus said to him, \u201cI am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; and from now on you know Him and have seen Him.\u201d (John 14:6-7).<\/p>\n How much did Thomas understand when the Lord appeared to them again?\u00a0 We cannot be sure.\u00a0 But there was a recognition in that moment when he saw and touched Him that He had conquered death \u2013 that all His promises of eternal life, that He would gather them up to Himself, that He had prepared a place for them \u2013 all of those hopes which had seemed to die on the cross must have come flooding back, and Thomas exclaimed, \u201cMy Lord, and My God!\u201d<\/p>\n We cannot force this revelation to come into our own lives.\u00a0 We might not even understand why it is so vital that we worship the Lord Jesus Christ, rather than a more general idea of God.\u00a0 But we can trust the Word when it tells us that doing this and shunning evils as sins will lead us into that internal acknowledgment of truth which is faith.\u00a0 We can choose to follow the Ten Commandments.\u00a0 We can choose to learn about the Lord Jesus Christ in His Word, and approach Him in our minds as we pray to Him.\u00a0 Like Thomas, we will face doubts.\u00a0 But the Lord promises us that we too will see Him and feel Him \u2013 not with our eyes and hands, but in the light of His truth and in the warmth of His love.\u00a0 And in that moment of recognition we too will be able to say in our hearts, \u201cMy Lord and my God!\u201d<\/p>\n Amen<\/em><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This is a sermon I gave at the Olivet New Church in Toronto on April 11, 2010. Readings: Isaiah 43:1-11; John 20:19-29; Apocalypse Revealed 469 MY LORD AND MY GOD A Sermon by Rev. Coleman S. Glenn \u201cAnd Thomas answered and said to Him, \u2018My Lord and my God.\u2019 \u00a0Jesus said to him, \u2018Because you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":275,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[72,330,200],"class_list":["post-58","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons","tag-faith","tag-sermons","tag-the-lord"],"yoast_head":"\n