Sermon by Rev. David Roth

Sermon: The gospel of Luke reads, “the kingdom of God does not come with observation, neither will they say here it is, or there it is, for indeed the kingdom of God is within you.” Think of the ramifications of that phrase “the Kingdom of God is within you”. It not just something to think about for after you die, whatever your idea of the afterlife is, or that the kingdom of God will happen then. But it’s something that’s happening right now, for us, that’s inside of us. The quality of it depends upon the choices we make in this world; what we believe to be true and how we live by those choices.

The kingdom of God is the realm of our thoughts, our feelings, intentions. We can often think that we have no control over those things and that what other people do to us causes us to behave certain ways — things happen to us, or someone ‘makes’ us angry. The truth is, no one can make you feel any other way than you are willing to decide to feel. Maybe we have no idea that that’s so, since from childhood we’ve thought, “Yep, other people make me angry, or they decide my agenda for me”.

The Lord says whatever enters you from the outside cannot defile you, because it does not enter your heart, but your stomach, and is eliminated, thus purifying all “food”. What comes out of you, is that which defiles you. It’s our choices that we make and our responses to the things that happen to us that determine who we are and what our character is. Therefore, we choose our reaction and the Lord in his Word gives us the tools to know that this is, and, to actually live our lives this way. So, it is possible to live a life where you decide how you’re going to react to things.

We’re in the middle of a spiritual growth campaign called “Rise Above It,” about rising above acting from your external impulses and trying to act from the Lord’s influx, from His love and His wisdom. He is constantly showering down on us.

We’ve talked about two tablets in the Ten Commandments; the first tablet about our relationship to the Lord, and the second tablet about our relationship to our neighbor or how to love our neighbor. The first full commandment on the second tablet is how to love our neighbor. It’s called “You Shall Not Murder”.

Of course, all Judeo-Christian religions, and all religions, actually, believe that it’s wrong to kill. The Koran says whosoever slays a soul shall be as if he had slain mankind altogether, and whoso gives his life to a soul, shall be as if he has given life to mankind altogether. From Buddhism we read that the right action is to abstain from taking life. Those are a few examples of this idea that everybody believes it’s wrong to murder.

Literal law is not to murder, not to take human life, not to hurt somebody’s body, or not to mutilate them. It’s from a Hebrew word that sounds like “raksak,” which sounds bad in itself, but it means to dash in pieces, literally to dash something in pieces, or someone in pieces, especially also to murder, that idea of taking life.

Maybe that’s not an issue for you — you don’t go around killing people, and you’d probably be in jail if you did. But what’s relevant to all of us are those feelings of hatred, anger, envy and criticism that come up. We either respond to or act upon, or we don’t.

The Writings for the New Church invite us to look deeper at this Commandment, at what it is that actually drives us to behave in ways that hurt other people.

1st John, chapter 3 says “He who hates his brother is a murderer,” This idea of hatred in our heart, is the same thing as murder. Leviticus 19 says “you shall not hate your brother in your heart.” It’s talking about looking beyond your actions, looking at what’s going on inside of you.

Hatred, anger, contempt, malice, revenge, these are feelings that a lot of us have felt in different ways. If we can stop these feelings inwardly, the behavior outwardly won’t happen, will it? It’s those feelings that drive us to act and use words of hurt to other people.

Interestingly, our language reflects this as well: we say things like “stab someone in the back”, when you criticize them or say something about them, because literally, we’re talking about something more than words. You’re actually stabbing them in the back, spiritually, so to speak. Or, have you ever had an argument where you feel like you got your way and you said, “I really got a good jab in when I was having that conversation.” You know, just like you’re taking a knife and stabbing it into somebody else.

One of the main feelings that gives rise to this commandment is the feeling of anger. The Heavenly Doctrines for the New Church say that the root of anger is self-love, which is only caring about ourselves and what our needs are. When we lose something that serves self, or someone that serves us, then we get mad. For the self, if it doesn’t get what it wants, it feels sorrowful at first, and that sorrow turns to grief, and that can turn into anger, which in itself, as the Lord says, is hatred. So, the Writings say anger is the general emotion that results from anything which gets in the way of self-love and its desires. Next time you feel angry, think about it. What is it that I feel is being taken away, or compromised, here?

I thought about this in terms of raising children, and I wondered if, when children feel sad about things or when they feel grief, perhaps it won’t go to the place of anger if they have an opportunity to actually communicate those things in a healthy way. Many children are told not to cry, or to be quiet, (the general idea being, that those feelings aren’t welcome here). But how can we help them to redirect that and express their feelings in a way that is useful? If you see something selfish in it try to teach them about that and redirect them by saying, “This is actually something that’s selfish that you need to work on. I understand you’re angry. But try not to let that sadness turn to anger.”

Anger is a very common emotion. It’s almost a daily occurrence, maybe an hourly occurrence, or maybe some people just feel angry all the time. For some people, it’s an overwhelming force in their lives. They have rage and fierce emotions, and can be set off by little things. For others, it can be an occasional thing. Other people might never appear angry, because they’ve hidden it so well, they’ve come to a point where they can hide their anger and get along by smiling, even as they’re burning up inside.

The Writings for the New Church explain anger as a type of fire and it is not a good type of fire, it’s a consuming fire. It consumes things inside of us that we need for our spiritual health. There are three things that I want to mention : When you are angry, it hides and destroys what’s good and true inside of you. If you have what’s good and true, anger destroys it in you. The second thing it says is that it closes Heaven above and opens up Hell beneath. So imagine where your influx and inspiration is coming from if Heaven has been shut off and the door to Hell has been opened for you. Lastly, it says that perception is darkened when you’re angry. We could all agree we’ve had that experience. So it’s important to learn and deal with this emotion.

So, what is good anger and what is bad anger? Is there such a thing as good anger, or is it all bad, and how do we control bad anger when it does arise? The Heavenly Doctrines tell us that anger can be good, but that it has a different name, and it’s called zeal. Zeal is a good type of anger, so we’ll just stop calling it good anger and I’ll just call it zeal. Zeal is the emotion that’s positive and anger is a negative emotion. From the outside, they look exactly the same. If you saw someone and they were acting in a way that looked angry, it could be that they were acting from zeal, or it could be that they were acting from anger. So what’s the difference?

The Lord gives us four different distinctions to help clarify it. The first one is that zeal is from God, anger is from Hell. The origin itself is that one is from the Lord, and one is from Hell. The second is that zeal comes from charity or kindness, and anger comes from hatred for other people. The third thing is that zeal seeks to defend what it loves (something that’s good), and anger seeks to destroy something outside of itself. These are from very different motives. One wants to protect, the other to destroy. The most telling, in my mind, is that zeal goes away when the cause goes away, and anger will not. It continues on and burns inside.

Maybe you’ve had an experience where your child was in danger and you yelled for them, and looked angry, but when they were out of danger, the emotion went away. The zealous feeling stops, but in anger, it keeps going.

Did you ever have someone cut you off in traffic, or in the grocery store, and in your mind you’re imagining all kinds of things you would like to do to them? Do you drag them into an alley and start pounding them, in your mind? So these conversations go on in our head and they continue to go on because anger is like does. It’s never satisfied with what’s happening.

So, when we have these feelings of anger or zeal, how can you tell which is which? Here what Emmett Fox says: “No sane person gets angry without what he deems to be a cause, however trifling or irrelevant the cause that he assigns may be.” The Lord has given us a tool to tell. He asks if the understanding part of your mind plays a part in what’s going on for you, or is it absent? Here in Matthew again he says, “and I say to you that whoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of judgment.”

So what should you do when you realize you are angry? Well, the first thing you can do is, stop. We tell our kids to have time outs and we chould do the same thing. The Lord says that nothing that enters from the outside defiles you so, we have this opportunity when things happen, to stop and observe it. We have to control how we respond to things so we have to fight our actions. When it comes to our feelings, that’s different, because the Lord is the one that can change your feelings for you. You can’t really do that for yourself. You can change your thinking, and you can change your behavior. And if you do that, the Lord can change your feelings into positive feelings.

The Lord will do this, because you can’t have a false or an evil desire with a true thought. They can’t be married together. So if you’re feeling angry and you have all these ideas in your mind that it’s married to, the way to break that is to tell yourself something different about the situation. Bring the truth into the situation because the bad feeling can’t stay there any more if truth is in your mind and you are dwelling on the truth. So we have to work on that and turn it around by changing what we’re thinking. You can’t stop the birds from flying over your head, but you can prevent them from building nests in your hair right?

One of the great tools that the Lord gives us in His Word is to recognize that negativity is coming from Hell and not from you. It is then when the angels who are with you take it away, the Lord tells us. It’s a beautiful teaching. It gives us so much power over our mind if we will practice it. And at the same time, good is flowing in from the Lord, and when something good occurs to us, just say “Thank you Lord”, and recognize it’s not from ourselves, but the Lord. That gives us spiritual strength. So stop, recognize the origin and ask the Lord for help.

The second thing is to hide yourself. Go into hiding if you’re angry, get away from other people. The Lord says, “Come, my people, enter your chambers and shutter your doors behind you”. Hide yourself as it were for a little moment, until the indignation has passed. Put yourself where other people aren’t. If you’re on fire, don’t catch other people on fire too. People are flammable. So get away from them if you’re feeling angry. Give yourself a time out away from other people.

I want to mention that expressing anger doesn’t really make it go away, unless what you mean by expressing is actually clear and rational communication with someone else about what you need to talk about. But expressing anger and acting from anger doesn’t help. The Lord tells us in the Word that our mind is like a house and if there’s a fire burning in that house and you start chucking furniture on it, what’s going to happen to the house? It’s going to burn down beyond your ability to deal with it. It’s going to catch on fire. So we must not add fuel to that fire. It seems like expressing it makes it better, but it really only destroys, because hate is never constructive. Good is constructive. Zeal is good if it helps us protect what is good.

If you have children and you’re concerned about their welfare, and somebody’s going to hurt them and you’re going to protect them, that’s a feeling of zeal. Or if you love your marriage and you want to protect it from bad influences in the world it’s zeal that comes up to protect it. It’s a good thing, and you want to use that to protect it.

So two things to remember. It’s not what we feel, but what we do, that matters, because the Lord is responsible for our feelings, and He can change them if we do the work of changing our thoughts and changing our behaviors. He can give us the strength to do that. And take a time out – starve the fire, if you can. One way to think about it too is if you have a fire of anger burning in your mind, what’s something you could do? If there was a fire burning in this room, what would we do? Well, we could call the fire department, or we could get some water and put it on, right? Water symbolizes truth. Find out what’s really true about the situation you’re angry about, and the truth will be like water. It will start to cause the fire to diminish. Find out what’s really true.

The other night I was lying in bed worrying about what I imagined someone else was going to be doing that was going to affect me. I hadn’t talked to them yet, I had no idea yet, but I had this thought that, wow, this is really disturbing to me, I’m lying there worrying about this, and starting to get angry about it. What could I have done? Well, stop, first of all, and find out what’s true. What is the truth about this? Do I have any reason to be upset about this, or not? And no evidence, I had no water at all. It was a dry fire ready to burn.

So take time to find out the truth of the situation, or re-write the answers in your own head. I remember one time walking out of the grocery store, I have my cart, and I’m stepping into the “pedestrians only are allowed to walk through here” lane, and this car just drove right past me, so I thought, I should be really angry with this person. There’s a possibility of zeal in this situation, so ignore that for a moment, but I said, well, I should be angry because this person almost killed me. What I did, in that particular instance, was that I told myself a story. Wow, I guess they just found out that maybe their child got hurt or their wife’s about to give birth to a baby and they’ve got to get out of here quickly. So, just tell myself something about the situation to change the reaction. So we can tell ourselves something that might be a “better” truth, or put an interpretation on the situation.

So when you’re feeling angry, stop what you’re doing, and hide yourself. Go away from others until you’re ready to be around them, because other people are flammable too. Gather your wits and your cool, and don’t act in anger. And ask for the Lord’s help to stop you. As it says in the Psalms, “set a guard, oh Lord, over my mouth, keep a watch over the door of my lips. Do not incline my heart to any evil thing.”

he Lord in His Word has great power and sometimes we don’t recognize that. I had a great experience last night as I was putting the children to bed, the youngest child was asleep and the two older kids were going to bed, and my daughter was at a party that day, yesterday was a Halloween-type party, so I found out she watched a movie that was scary for her. I didn’t know about it until it was time to go to bed, and now she’s about to cry because she’s so scared to go to bed. She’s thinking, I’m not going to be able to go to sleep, I’m going to have nightmares. I thought well, let’s go in to bed. The way we do this is, I lay on the bed and I have a child on either side. We say the Lord’s prayer and talk about how the Lord has all this power, and evil doesn’t have any power, and so on, and we prayed for what we needed in this situation. Then we read some stories from the children’s Bible, which they like.

The first one was about the Lord calming the sea, when there was waves. Then there was the woman who was healed from an infirmity by touching the Lord’s garment, she had an issue of blood, and then another child who had died, Jaharis’ daughter, was raised from the dead. And one last story they wanted to read was about the demon possessed man who was healed by the Lord.

I read these stories, and after we were done, my daughter Marin feels better. I guess these stories are all about how we should trust the Lord. And at that moment I was looking at Kellen, on my right hand side, and then I turned to my left and she was asleep, just like that. And you need to know that she has difficulty falling asleep, first of all. She needs lots of cuddling and lots of attention, but the power of the Lord’s Word just calmed her, and brought her into a state where she was able to fall asleep. It reminds me of that Psalm that says “In peace I will both lie down and sleep, because You alone, oh Lord, make me to dwell in safety,” From Psalm 4, a beautiful teaching. So the Lord has that power to heal us and to take away those fears, if we’ll use it.

We need to understand the breadth of these Commandments. They’re not just literal… we know we shouldn’t kill other people. But there’s more than that. It’s about criticism, about anger, and how we act towards other people. We know the difference in our own life when we act from anger and when we act calmly and act peacefully. We know what that’s like from experience. The Lord says if you want to enter into life, keep the commandments.

Life is that place where we’re acting calm, we’re acting peaceful, where the Lord’s love is working through us. And that kingdom of Heaven when it’s not so much the kingdom of Heaven, but more like the kingdom of Hell when we’re acting from hatred and anger and we don’t want that. So choose life. We have the choice, the Lord’s given us that choice. Be a life-giver, be someone who tries to support people in what we say and what we do, try to lift them up rather than tear them down, tear them to pieces like the word “raksak” means.

We’re here to develop a spiritual life and we need to ask for that strength from the Lord. And, we need to practice it. Spiritual practice is called spiritual practice because we have to practice it. We practice it until it becomes part of who we are. And also, surround yourself with other people who are doing the same thing, (and I think that’s the power of a church community), and support one another in that.

We’re very fortunate that Ray and Starr (authors of the book) are willing to give a testimony about this particular commandment from their experience of teaching this course.

Ray: Starr and I were thinking about what we would like to speak about, and by the way, before I start, hi old friends and hi new friends. It’s wonderful for us to be here in this beautiful sanctuary in this beautiful valley, so thank you for inviting us. We were thinking about various things that we might talk about, and Starr gave me this great gift. She said, talk about whatever you want to talk about, Ray, and I really appreciated that. I think you let go of worrying what I might talk about, right? (laughter) You did mention something about when we were preparing for coming here, and you expecting me to come home for the conference call, I want to talk about that.

Starr: We had lined up a conference call with Dave and Anna to talk about the weekend, the marriage weekend, and it was to be on a certain afternoon, and Ray was teaching until about 3:00, so somewhere around 3:30 we were going to make the call, and a little after 3, I was in the grocery store checking out, and I get a call from Anna saying, are you ready for the call? And I said not quite! Of course, what I didn’t tell her was that I was checking out at the grocery store, I said I was on my way home, and that Ray would be needing me there and that I would give her a call as soon as we were both together.

Ray: Let me tell this part. Why don’t we do this in shifts, Starr, we’ll go back and forth. We haven’t rehearsed this, but so, there I was, at Bryn Athyn college, just finishing up a class, totally involved, totally engaged – Willard, are you here? You know how it is, Willard, when you’re totally wrapped up in teaching, everything’s out of your mind, including the promise that you made that you’d be home on time. So, there I was, it was a great class, students were talking to me afterwards, and I was in another world. I’m not justifying this, I’m just explaining.

Starr: Well, it makes it interesting, Ray, nice details. So here I am on the way home, with all the groceries, and feeling like, oh no, what if I’m calling Ray’s cell phone, he doesn’t answer, I’m calling his work phone, he doesn’t answer, and I think, I can’t get a hold of him, and I think he’s going to forget about this meeting. Because otherwise he would’ve called me by now. And so, the feelings are beginning – you know, anger doesn’t start off as full blown anger. You start to get the irritation, the frustration, the upset, and it builds. Well, it started with a little bit of worry, and then the irritation’s coming, the frustration’s already here, and then it’s beginning to think, I might have to do this conference call by myself. Oh, what would that look like? Ray and I love doing it together, and I thought, I didn’t want to do it alone. So then I was angry with Ray that I couldn’t get him on his cell phone, so this is all happening in my mind while I’m on my way home, and then something switched, and I though – wow, I’ve decided that I’m going to be a new person, and this new person has a choice. So I can choose to continue with this, and it’s not going to get me very far, because I still have to do this conference call, I don’t want to cancel it, or I can choose a new attitude. Right then, I stopped and prayed. And that’s the point where everything can change. And in that prayer I just asked the Lord to be with Ray, that he was doing whatever he needed to be doing, and that whatever happened, when I got home I would make the call, and if Ray was there, that would be wonderful, and if he wasn’t there, we’d have a great call. But it took the Lord coming into that situation where with all this other stuff, the anger, the frustration, irritation, upset, it all slipped away. By the time I got home, I just put the few things in the refrigerator that needed to be refrigerated, did one more call to Ray, couldn’t get a hold of him, and I called here. And we had the most wonderful conference call. It was so exciting and absolutely wonderful, and there was absolutely no anger, no feeling of, well, Ray wasn’t there, why wasn’t he there? No upset about it. And Ray came in just as we were finishing the call.

Ray: Oh, let me tell that part again. So, at about 3:10 or 3:30, I finished speaking to the students, finished my class and went up to my office, and there was a red light on my phone, which means there’s a message. But then I remembered, well there’s a faculty meeting today. Oh, I’m late for that faculty meeting, I am not going to even pick up that message, because I just didn’t want to be really late (you know what I mean, Chuck?), so I rushed over to the faculty meeting, and the faculty meeting was over around 4:30 or so, and I came back to my office and listened to that message, and it was “Ray, where are you?” I’m not sure I have the tone exactly right, could you repeat it?

Starr: Ray, where are you?

Ray: I’m in trouble now! So, driving home, it’s only about a seven minute drive home, I was furiously scrambling to make up excuses and how I would explain this to Starr, and how I could make her feel okay about this, and then I realized, maybe I’ll just say I’m sorry. Maybe that’ll work. (laughter) And some of you can probably identify with me right now. Well, when I got home at around 5, I knew I was like two hours late for this teleconference, and Starr was still on the line! And I thought, oh, she’s going to be so glad to see me and get me in on the conference. She just gave me a little wave, and a smile, and just continued the conference. I was totally left out of the thing! And I was actually, this was like a miracle – I couldn’t believe it! I was like, home free! And of course, I’m grateful to Starr, but I’m grateful to the Lord for giving us the commandments that we can put into our life so that we can dwell in safety. (laughter) And the further miracle is that this doesn’t mean that in the future, Starr, I’m going to just not worry and not even keep my appointments and promises, I’m going to do it even more. Which is really kind of counter-intuitive, isn’t it? But I’m going to do it more, because of this great freedom you’ve given me in not getting mad at me. I feel like I’m out of prison, and I thank you for that. And I want to return the same to you, I want to give you freedom in every way that I can. And that includes not getting angry, and that’s beautiful.

Starr: Thank you. I’d just like to say, if any of you are working on this commandment this week, just to stay with it. It’s a beautiful commandment. And the flip side of it is to be a life-giver, and to go out and watch how much your words, rather than hurt, and maim someone, can actually give life, and how the words of your mouth can actually bring life to another person, so it’s very important the words that we choose that come out of our mouths. This is a week to be very aware of that, and you can very much make a difference in the lives of everyone around you.

Ray: When I was a little boy, one of the first scriptural passages that got into my mind was this one, and I want to conclude with this. Is it okay? May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, oh Lord, my rock and my redeemer. Thank you very much.