Learn to Do Good
Rev. David J. Fekete, Ph.D.
Isaiah 1:1, 10-20 Luke 12:32-40 Psalm 50
No time like the present. Eternity is now. Heaven isn’t in the future, it’s here and now. Now is when good feelings happen. Now is when we seek truth. Now is when peace and joy come into our lives.
Our reading from the Old Testament talks about sacrifices. God tells the Israelites that God takes no pleasure in sacrifice. God even exclaims, “who has asked this of you,/this trampling of my courts?” What God is saying is that God never told the Israelites to sacrifice animals in the temple. Yet sacrifice became the central way to worship for Israelites.
If you look at the early parts of the Old Testament, you will see a lot of laws and moral commands. God tells the Israelites to protect the weaker people in society. God tells them to care for the orphan, who has no adult male to feed, clothe, and give shelter. Likewise, God tells the Israelites to care for widows, who also need food, shelter, and clothing since they have no adult male, or husband, to do this for them.
But with the rise of kingship, and with the building of the temple in Jerusalem by Solomon, animal sacrifice became the predominant form of worship, not moral living. Making animal sacrifice the centre of worship was a man-made idea. It is not what God wants. God tells the Israelites specifically that God did not teach them to sacrifice animals,
For in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, I did not speak to your fathers or command them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices. 23 But this command I gave them, ‘Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people; and walk in all the way that I command you, that it may be well with you.’ (Jeremiah 7:22-23)
God wants us to live good lives.
We don’t sacrifice animals. But the Isaiah reading makes us think about externals of worship. Externals are the rituals we do on Sunday. Externals are chanting the Psalms, listening to Bible readings, singing hymns, praying, hearing sermons, and taking communion. They are called externals because they are behaviors that we do. You can do all these things without having your heart in them. You can just go through the motions. You can go through the motions, and think you’re saved. But if your heart is in them, they can have much power and meaning.
So this morning, I thought that I’d invite us to think about worship on Sunday morning. Due to the financial issues we are dealing with it strikes me as something valuable to do. So let’s first consider why we come to church. Why do we take a few hours on Sunday to come here? Let’s also think about what we like in church. What parts of worship do we like? Is it singing? Is it the Bible readings? Is it my sermons? What do we like about church? Another thing to think about is what happens to us in church? Do we feel uplifted? Do we experience a closeness to God? Does the noise in our heads quiet? Do we find an hour of peace? Do we feel a connection and mutual love in the church community? Do we come away from church different than when we arrive?
Another way to get at this subject is to ask different kinds of questions. These may be hard to hear, but we are in a safe environment. We can ask ourselves what we would miss if there were no church. What aspect of our religious life would be gone without a church? I hope that the answer to these questions would be something other than the rituals we do here. I would hope that there is something in us that we would lose touch with without church.
Now we think about today’s Isaiah reading. We realize that being religious isn’t only going to church. Let’s think about what we get out of church. What is there we can take out of church into the world? Because if we don’t carry out into the world the spirituality we experience in church, we are like the Israelites who put all their faith in the ritual of animal sacrifice. We would be putting our faith in the externals of worship, not what is in our hearts. Maybe we leave church feeling inspired, and we bring that feeling of inspiration into the world. Maybe we learn a new religious principle that we apply in our lives outside church. Remember Swedenborg’s statement that, “All religion relates to life, and the religious life is doing good.” In fact, real sacred space isn’t inside these walls. Real sacred space is in the world around us where we do good to others and show our love for the neighbor.
Along these lines is another hard question. What would we do without a Swedenborgian identity? We can echo the words of Jeremiah in relationship to this church. In Jeremiah, as we have heard, God says, “For in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, I did not speak to your fathers or command them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices.” Our forefathers debated the very formation of this denomination. Swedenborg himself never founded this church. It was readers of Swedenborg in England who made the decision to start up a new denomination. Many important voices said that the New Church was not meant to be a denomination. Among these voices was Henry James, Sr. who wrote a pamphlet on that subject, titled, “The Church of Christ not an Ecclesiasticism: A Letter to a Sectarian.” You can imagine God’s voice, maybe, saying, “I did not speak to your fathers or command them concerning a new denomination.”
Where would we be without a Swedenborgian identity? I faced this question a few weeks back. I considered transferring my ministry to the United Church. I wondered what it would be like not to self-identify as a Swedenborgian anymore. What would it be like to be a United minister? In a way it was surprisingly liberating. I no longer would look out at the world from the small minority world of Swedenborg, who no one has heard of, and some who have heard of us think us a cult. Being a Swedenborgian can mean an us and the other mentality. And since everyone in the world practically isn’t a Swedenborgian, we see the whole world as the other. If I’m not Swedenborgian, then I’m not apart from the world, but I’m among everybody else. Put in its most extreme form, we can also think that being Swedenborgian alone means we’re saved. But take away the label, and where are we? It was men in 18th century England who gave us this label. Maybe it is doing more harm than good.
So we ask, what is meaningful in church? Why do we come to church? What would we miss if there were no church? And finally, who would we be without the label of Swedenborg? Challenging questions indeed. But good questions to ask as we consider the future of this church. And more importantly, good questions to ask in relation to our spiritual process.
David Fekete 