3. Oil for the Lamps

The LORD said to Moses, "Command the people of Israel to bring you pure oil from beaten olives for the lamp, that a light may be kept burning continually. Outside the veil of the testimony, in the tent of meeting, Aaron shall keep it in order from evening to morning before the LORD continually; it shall be a statute for ever throughout your generations. He shall keep the lamps in order upon the lampstand of pure gold before the LORD continually."

Leviticus 24:1-4.

According to the rabbis, Israel saw a depth in God's goodness to them in the fact that God not only created and loved them, but also told them through the Scriptures about that creation and that love, so they would know it consciously. So the tabernacle and the ark within it symbolize the dwelling place where the Divine is not only present, but where the Divine Presence is known. The light that sheds this knowledge is the subject here.

People can look on the same thing in very different lights. A child may see in grass and flowers their pleasantness to touch and smell with his bare feet and nose.

A farmer may see them as food for cattle, a botanist as instances of species differentiation. An adult absorbed in other interests may not see them at all. A war may look in one light brilliant and glorious, in another horrible and wrong in its cost in human suffering, in another painful but necessary as a step toward justice. The prophets and the psalms ask us the question: In what light does God see our history and our world? What would it be like to see in the light of goodness and truth itself, the light of the Lord's own mercy and power to heal? To make love the basis for wisdom?

The light for the tabernacle was from oil of olive, pure, and beaten. The oil is the symbol for love, associated with joy, with the touch of healing, and with the anointing of a priest or king. It symbolizes heavenly Divine good. The word "Messiah" means literally "anointed with oil." The two olive trees on either side of the lampstand in Zechariah's vision, are the two Messiahs, or literally in Hebrew, "the sons of the olive" (Zech. 4:14). The Messiah is love giving light to the world, and John speaks often of that light as he sees Jesus as Messiah: "I am the light of the world; he who follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life" (John 8:12).

When the people brought the oil, Aaron was to set the lamps in order outside the veil of the testimony in the tent of meeting. People are needed to beat swords into ploughshares, or to beat olives in a press or mortar, into pure, fine oil. People who have done the beating see their ploughshare or their oil with respect, and the people were to bring their beaten oil and make the lampstand of pure gold, as they had the cover, the cherubim, and the fittings for the ark. The stand held seven lamps of gold, and these were to be kept filled and burning from evening to morning every night, making light continually.

The people have a necessary part here. But the references to Aaron and to the curtain between the ark of the testimony and the lamps, show that we are dealing with more than the ordinary conscious level of the people's experience. Aaron is the priest. As Moses symbolizes a truth that cannot be heard or perceived directly, Aaron is the teaching of good and truth in a form that people can hear. The priest, the spokesman and teacher, represents the Lord's love of saving, the part in us that mediates, explains, and loves to save, that draws us to the Lord.

Aaron is the one to "keep the lamps in order . . . before the Lord." The word "order" here is used elsewhere for Living a table for a meal (Isa. 21:5), drawing up troops in strategy for battle (Ju. 20:22; I Sam. 17:8), or setting an argument in order for a legal case (Job 13:18). It is the priest in us, and not the trickster, the debater, or the seeker after personal reputation who is there to mediate, to order the strategy of our understanding as we begin to bring our holy things to consciousness.

The lamps were outside the veil of testimony. Inside was only the ark with the Word itself, that inmost Presence of the Lord where the power is known at a level too deep for words or conscious apprehending. The part of the tent of meeting outside the veil is the interpretation of the Presence in relation to the motives and the choices of human life. It is here that the light comes, within the specific context of living what is good or true, m the limits of an existing situation. The inmost truth is always too much, too powerful, to be contained within our limits. But unless the attempt is made to see its interpretation within the limits, it does not come to light and life at all. So we are asked to bring our oil, that love may be the light in which we see the things of God; but we are asked also to respect the veil between the lighted and the inmost ways of knowing. On this boundary of conscious and unconscious we need our Aaron as spokesman for our Moses.

Psychologists since the 18th century have made us all aware of the power of the unconscious. Jung saw the Ego and the consciousness as a small segment of the person, as compared to the personal, and then to the collective unconscious.' The Ego with its conscious analysis of itself and others, its carefully preserved image of itself which it shows to the world in interactions with people, and even its areas of personal unconscious, the feelings and the unseen motivations relating to its personal world, is still not the larger segment of the person. The anima or animus which the man or woman can come to know as inner partner, that other side with which he or she functions as a whole person, and the collective unconscious, make up by far the larger segment. It was in this larger segment of the person that Jung found the Self, the deep identity, the center of our real decisions, of which the conscious, Ego choices are the afterthoughts.

Jung saw religious sacraments and symbols as "wise and appropriate" means for dealing with these unconscious powers.² He encouraged his patients to find and use their individual religion in coming to their awareness of their deep Self and finding a sense of meaning in their existence.³ Jung criticized traditional religion, however, for its rigidity and its failure to let the power of symbol live and reach maturity in individual Selves.

We have been following Swedenborg's approach to the Bible in this treatment of the tabernacle. Swedenborgians, like members of any religious group, succumb, of course, in many ways to the temptation of rigidity in religion. But Swedenborgians have a strength in their respect for the power of symbol. For them, the collective unconscious is the world of spiritual reality through which Divine love and wisdom reach humankind and without which we would die. For them, the power of symbol is the power that creates the universe, now as in the past, as each person seeks to realize that Self that is in the process of creation, and learns to be a functional form of love, and sees in the amazing reality of the human being himself or herself the pattern of the universe. For them, too, the Self is in the larger segment, not in the area of the conscious Ego. The Self gains strength from its membership in the spiritual world, as it finds more and more its own distinct identity and its relationship with the Divine. And for Swedenborgians, these Biblical narratives of the tabernacle and the ark can bring awareness of that membership. The narratives are living Word of God, not only in their literal history, but as each person comes to meet the symbols in them, and lets the symbols come alive. And the literal history itself is a symbol of the spiritual journey of every man and every woman.

The light of the tabernacle is the symbol of our bringing to consciousness the inner, deeper meaning of God's Word for us. In our lives we encounter lights of many shades and colors. This light of the tent of meeting is what we have felt of the Lord's own love, the Good itself. We bring the oil, for all our love is from the Lord, really ours because it is a gift, really given. We bring the oil for the lamps to bring to light for us the reality of that dwelling place of God with us, including the reality of the veil. And if in some way we get used to seeing in that light, to any degree at all, we find increasing strength in awareness that the depths within us are potentially powers for good. For all the creative momentum of the universe supports our finding of our deep distinct identity in the world of which God is ultimately the light.

What would it be like to see, and then to walk, in the light of the Lord's mercy and healing power?

Sit quietly a moment. Visualize for a moment the lamps before the veil that hides the ark. Feel the difference of that inner, timeless world behind the lamps and veil, from the outer world of physical things and busyness in time.

Now open your inner eyes and ears again as you read again Leviticus 24:1-4, and let its symbols be a way for God to speak to you.

Visualize the clear, golden olive oil, pure oil of love, of joy, of healing, of anointing priests and kings, givings its light in that part of life that you can see, that part which is separated only by a veil from the reality of Love itself in all its power. Rest for a moment in the joy of being in the light of Love itself. Feel the warmth and the power of that light pouring down upon you, surrounding you with good.

And now turn your mind to some decision you have to make, or some person with whom you have a relationship, and see that decision or that person in the light of Love itself. Feel the warmth and the power of that light pouring down upon that decision or that person, surrounding it or him or her with good. And now let go, and let the power of the Love work, and see your decision or your person in that light, and be thankful. (Note: If you are dealing with a person, and if the person who comes to mind is one with whom you have tension or hostility, you may want to start this exercise with someone else first, someone you feel positive about. Try it with the easier person first, and only then with the more difficult case. In either case, let go. Don't try to force a result. Let the light of Love work, and be thankful.)

Lord, thank you that your Love is so close to us, your love so amazing, so real I cannot imagine, much less see it, there every moment, in all the power that makes the universe, coming in goodness unto me. Thank you, Lord. Amen.