“Living in Blessedness”
(The Inner Sense of Jesus, #1 of 3)
Before I get into today’s message, I’d like to say a few words about the intention of the next three weeks. In the course of our Bible study on Sunday mornings at 9:30 (and yes, this is a subtle plug for that particular opportunity to work on your spiritual awareness among people who are doing the same), we have sought meaning in Scripture by applying what Swedenborg called correspondences—the “internal sense” or underlying intent of the text. This has helped us to perceive meaningful ideas from some rather obscure and sometimes troubling bits of the Bible, and as we are now about halfway through the Bible, I think we can agree that it’s been worth the time and effort. Studying the internal sense has permitted us to see that the biblical narrative is actually our own story—the underlying patterns of our spiritual development. We can see ourselves in the events of the Hebrew Scriptures. But when it comes to the Gospels, and the story of Jesus of Nazareth, we tend to be satisfied with a merely literal interpretation of those verses. We are quite willing to accept those events as history, and walk away from the table whistling a merry tune. What would happen if we applied the same system of correspondences to the Gospels? What is their “internal sense”. It’s my intent over these next three weeks and beyond to demonstrate that the internal sense of the Gospels will yield even more wonderful truths that can help us to appreciate the beauty of a heavenly life. More than that, to actually begin living it.
I’d like to begin by focusing on what Jesus said. These eleven verses from the fifth chapter of Matthew constitute the opening lines of the “Sermon on the Mount”, a discourse that fills three whole chapters in the gospel. They are referred to as “the Beatitudes”, a word that means “blessed sayings” or “sayings about blessedness”. But what does that mean? More importantly, why did Jesus begin his teaching with them? What sort of foundation do these words establish for the rest of the Sermon? Taken literally, they make sense, characterizing a person who is living a life of love by being meek and merciful, pure in heart, a peacemaker, etc. This is a very agreeable notion; I don’t think very many people would argue against it. As you may well suspect, however, the inner sense reveals more. Let’s examine them...
There are nine statements within these opening words that begin with “Blessed are...”. Swedenborg noted that they occur in a specific order, beginning with Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Swedenborg defined the word “spirit” as our very life, more specifically, the part of our life that we can alter, as opposed to our “soul”, which is properly the unalterable life-force within us. We alter our spirit by the choices that we make from moment to moment. To be “poor in spirit”, then, is to refrain from choosing from ourselves, as if our self was the only resource we have upon which to base a choice. In other words, to be “poor in spirit” is to be humble. It is only while we are in a state of humility that we can begin to perceive how heaven guides us in our choices. Therefore, a state of blessedness begins with humility.
In a similar fashion, Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Typically, one who mourns has lost someone dear to them, and is grieving over that loss. When we assume an attitude of humility, our ego is losing, by choice, control over our spiritual direction, and our affection for being self-directed feels that loss. Our choices are a function of our intellect, but mourning is a feeling. It is associated with our affections. So these first two Beatitudes refer to our head and our heart, and the close relationship between them. When we choose humility, our affection for being self-directed mourns. But it will be comforted. If our affections are uncomfortable with humility, then the Lord will help us to become comfortable with the idea.
We have found in our study of the Bible (again, Sunday mornings at 9:30) that correspondences to the head are often accompanied by correspondences to the heart, which makes the Bible seem so repetitious at times. Here, in the first two Beatitudes, we find the same thing, and we’re going to find it in the next two Beatitudes as well. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. There have been two thousand years of sermons expounding upon what it means to be “meek”, and many of them are quite good, but for Swedenborg being meek is to live with charity. What does that mean? I’m sure we can all agree that there are a lot of things in this world that incite our anger, our resentment, our judgment, and sometimes even our violence, unfortunately. All of these reactions are functions of our egos. To act charitably toward our neighbors and the world around us is to consciously refrain from letting these ego-driven reactions be our reactions. Heaven calls us to respond to dysfunction with love, not with more dysfunction. We are called upon to refuse to give these dysfunctional impulses expression. Feel what you feel, certainly, and acknowledge that you are feeling it, but let all your outward responses be as heavenly as you can manage. When we do this—when we choose to respond with charity—we “inherit the earth”, which corresponds to building the church within us, because the “earth” in the Word corresponds to the “church”, a heaven-based doctrine.
Choosing to live according to the principles of charity being of the head, we would expect the next Beatitude to refer to the heart, and it does. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. To be “hungry” in the Word is to desire goodness and to be nourished by it; to be “thirsty” in the Word is to desire truth, and to be nourished by it as well. This idea is also reflected in our celebration of the sacrament of Communion, where the bread corresponds to Divine goodness and the wine to Divine truth. When we are growing, spiritually, we crave both goodness and truth. The Beatitude, however, refers to a hunger and a thirst for “righteousness”, which Swedenborg defines as a state in which goodness and truth coexist and work together. Living “righteously” is to live according to the dictates of truth as we understand it, and applying those truths with love, and not just out of a sense of philosophical duty. As we endeavor to do this, Jesus teaches, we will “be filled”. We will be inspired with new ideas continuously and find satisfying ways to apply them.
Lo and behold, these first four Beatitudes actually complete one another. The first two refer to our internal state of humility, and the second pair which follows refers to our outward behavior. Our internal life guides and informs our external life, and not the other way around. The next three Beatitudes also guide and support on another, referring not to the harmonious relationship of head and heart, but the harmonious relationship of the three levels of our existence, namely, our inmost celestial life, our internal spiritual life, and our external natural life.
Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy. We use the word “merciful” to describe our willingness to extend forgiveness and compassion toward another. Swedenborg interprets the word even more broadly, noting that we are able to do this for each other because the Lord continuously inspires us to do so. The Lord’s “mercy” isn’t just forgiveness; it’s the unbroken flow of goodness and truth, which sometimes we pick up on and sometimes we don’t. The repetition of the word “mercy” in this Beatitude is significant. When we are consciously merciful, we open ourselves up to be inspired with goodness and truth, the Lord’s mercy, which encourages us to be merciful in kind. It’s a continuous loop, which our highest self, our celestial self, understands and strives to maintain in our daily life.
Further, to live in this continuous flow of goodness and truth purifies our heart from evil inclinations and falsities. One might say that it is a self-correcting system. The more we choose to receive spiritual truths, the more we are opened to a spiritual perception of all that’s going on around us. In other words, Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. “To see” in the Word corresponds to our perceptions. As our wills, our “hearts”, are purified with the best of intentions, our heavenly perceptions increase, and we are gradually able to see things more for what they really are. We are increasing able to perceive the Divine presence and providence in all of history, all of creation, in spite of appearances which, as we are experiencing in our current events, can be twisted and used to serve any agenda. If we persist in being “pure of heart”, we are able to see past whatever self-serving intentions exist behind the message so that falsities and self-serving desires can’t be implanted in us.
As we get better at doing this, at letting love and wisdom shape our perceptions, our outward behavior also changes. We begin to do whatever we can to ensure that love and wisdom and peace are expressed in all our external interactions. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. To the extent that we work to bring a sense of peace into all that we do, we are more and more firmly aligned with heaven while living in this world. We are increasingly “children of God” in the sense that we are becoming unadulterated expressions of the Divine Presence. Not only do “children” in the Word correspond to derivative expressions of the parent, they also convey a sense of innocence, a humility, a willingness to learn even more. To be a “child of God” is to want to live a life of goodness and truth.
We’ve all tried it. We’ve all made those internal resolutions to better ourselves, to resist the temptations that have beaten us before. We know it’s easier promised than done. Righteousness is easy to pretend, but not easy to attain. While sitting on that mountain, Jesus acknowledged that as we strive to be our best self by living in heaven’s light daily we will be pulled of course by our merely human fears and our false thinking. These things “persecute” our efforts, because our unenlightened egos don’t like to give up anything that serves the desires of the self. But contending with these temptations is essential for our growth. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. When we engage with our individual temptations, more of the nature and reality of heaven is revealed to us. The Lord doesn’t leave us high and dry in this, either, but specifies where we are to experience these temptations. Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. To be “reviled” is to experience a challenge to the good in our will, our desire to be a good person. To be “persecuted” is to experience a challenge to the truth in our understanding, our efforts to discern what is right and what is wrong. To have “all kinds of evil uttered against us” is to be challenged on the level of what we choose to do or not do. It challenges our desire to be accepted. We wouldn’t think that these temptations would be something to celebrate, but the Lord disagrees. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. “The prophets” were all those who expressed truth in spite of opposition, for the sake of a better life for all. In a similar way, we may feel resistance to changing our life, especially when it means giving up something that we want, but the positive consequences of our best choices, and all our efforts to build and maintain an unbreakable connection with heavenly truth and love, it’s all worth it. The next time we feel the discomfort of our temptations, try celebrating temptation as a gift, as an opportunity to understand more deeply our obstacles to growth, and to experience the thrill of being bigger than those obstacles, the joy of choosing a better life over the more familiar and comfortable status quo.
So here, in these opening words to Jesus’ great sermon, is a description of how to live a heavenly life. It begins with an internal promise, a commitment to align ourselves with heavenly love. It continues by describing the connection to heaven that is possible for us, and it ends with an expression of loving encouragement. As long as you live in a state of heaven, said the Lord, you can do this! You can live a life of blessedness!
Would it surprise you to learn that there is a tenth Beatitude? It’s not in the Gospels. We have to go all the way into Revelation to find it: Blessed is the one that readeth, and they that hear the words of the prophesy, and keep the things that are written therein. (Revelation 1:3) Swedenborg wrote that this refers to one that maintains a connection with the angels of heaven, and lives according to a perpetually purified doctrine—a “new church”. Jesus taught how to get there. The tenth Beatitude completes the previous nine, describing the blessedness of a life that is regenerated.
But still...what does “blessedness” mean? Our brothers and sisters in other branches of Christianity are very enthusiastic about being “blessed”. They put it all over their tee shirts and ball caps. Swedenborgians tend to be a little skeptical of this—I think because it seems a bit self-aggrandizing to declare oneself “blessed”. We want to know more. In Arcana Coelestia #6408, Swedenborg wrote that “blessedness” cannot be easily described, and then he proved it by trying to describe it, but let me share with you what else he wrote about it:
As long as people who are focused on love for God and love for their neighbor are living in the body, they have no obvious sense of the pleasure that stems from those loves and from the good affections that arise from them. All they feel is a sense of well-being that is barely perceptible because it is hidden away in their deeper natures, veiled by the outer sensations of their bodies and dulled by the cares of this world. Our state changes completely after death, however...the faint sense of pleasure, the almost imperceptible sense of well-being that was found in people who were focused on love for God and love for their neighbor in the world, turns into the pleasure of heaven, perceptible and palpable in countless ways. That sense of well-being that has been lying hidden in their deeper natures while they lived in the world is now unveiled and released into open sensation, because now they are in spirit, and this was the delight of the spirit. [Heaven and Hell #401]
Every choice we make, every temptation we resist, every inch of growth we are able to claim because we have chosen to live “in blessedness”, letting heaven inform all of our perceptions, is made a part of our spirit, and when we finally “shuffle off this mortal coil”, the angel that has been nourished within us because we have not settled for anything less than love can emerge. To live in “blessedness”, to be “blessed” is to remember that at the core of our spirit there is an angel waiting to be born.
The inner sense of the Gospels teaches us how to connect with our heavenly, angelic potentials—how to awaken the angel within us—and Divine Providence has gifted us with a brand new year in which we can figure out how to get it done.
Dearest Divine Spirit, we ask that you strengthen our resolve to grow in this coming year. Guide us when we discover something about ourselves that needs to change, and encourage us to seek your inspiration continuously. Let us do our part in the challenging, necessary, and exciting process of our regeneration, all of us becoming truly “children of God”. Amen.
READINGS
Old Testament reading: Psalm 101
I will sing of loyalty and of justice;
to you, O Lord, I will sing.
I will study the way that is blameless.
When shall I attain it?
I will walk with integrity of heart
within my house;
I will not set before my eyes
anything that is base.
I hate the work of those who fall away;
it shall not cling to me.
Perverseness of heart shall be far from me;
I will know nothing of evil.
One who secretly slanders a neighbor
I will destroy.
A haughty look and an arrogant heart
I will not tolerate.
I will look with favor on the faithful in the land,
so that they may live with me;
whoever walks in the way that is blameless
shall minister to me.
No one who practices deceit
shall remain in my house;
no one who utters lies
shall continue in my presence.
Morning by morning I will destroy
all the wicked in the land,
cutting off all evildoers
from the city of the Lord.
New Testament reading: Matthew 5:1-12
When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. “Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
Reading from Emanuel Swedenborg: Arcana Coelestia (Secrets of Heaven) #6408:
As to this blessedness of the heavenly affections, it cannot be easily described, because it is inward, and rarely puts itself forth in the body itself, thus is rarely felt, for while we live in the body we distinctly feel those things which come forth in the body, but very obscurely those things which come forth in the spirit, for worldly cares prevent it. Where these cares exist, the blessedness of the affections cannot flow into the sense of the body unless natural and sensuous things have been reduced to agreement with interior ones; and not even then, except obscurely, as a tranquility arising from being contented in mind...In a word, blessedness of the heavenly affections is of the spirit itself, flowing in through an inward way, and penetrating towards the body, where it is received insofar as the delights of natural or sensuous loves do not stand in the way.
