You Shall Not Covet

Rev. Dan Calvo

Pittsburgh New Church; March 29, 2026

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The Ten Commandments are all related to our actions. Some of the commandments describe things that we must actively do, like keeping the Sabbath day holy and honoring our father and mother, while many of the commandments describe things that we must not do, such as not committing adultery, not using the Lord's name in vain, and not worshipping idols. All these commandments focus on our external actions. They describe things that can be seen and heard by others.

Then we come to the ninth and tenth commandments. These commandments are different from the rest. Instead of focusing on visible actions, they focus on something that cannot be seen or heard by anyone else: our desires.

The ninth and tenth commandments say this:

“You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.” (Exodus 20:17)

Unlike the other commandments, these ones do not describe something that we do with our bodies or our words. Instead, they address something happening inside of us. They speak about what we desire.

The ninth commandment, which tells us not to covet our neighbor’s house, and the tenth commandment, which tells us not to covet anything else that belongs to our neighbor, are given as separate commandments by the Lord. Yet their spiritual meaning and their application in our lives are very closely related to the point in which they are written in the same verse in the Word.

These commandments reveal something very important about the Lord's concern for us. The Lord doesn’t just care about our external behavior. He also really cares about our inner life.

We all know that it is possible for someone to behave well externally while keeping evil desires internally. A person might avoid stealing but secretly wish to take what belongs to another. A person might avoid lying, but they still may take pleasure in imagining ways to deceive others. A person might avoid adultery but still have fantasies of betraying their spouse. The Lord always sees beyond the external actions and into our intentions.

This teaching is explained clearly in the Heavenly Doctrines. In the book True Christian Religion we read:

The ninth and tenth commandments look back to all the commandments that precede them. They teach and enjoin that we are not to do evil and that we are also not to desire doing evil. Therefore the Ten Commandments are not only for the outer self but also for the inner self. Someone who does not do evil things but nevertheless desires doing them is still doing them. (TCR 326)

These commandments act like a mirror at the end of the list. They look back at everything that came before them and ask us to reflect on our intentions. It is not only a matter of whether we refrain from evil actions. It is also a matter of whether we are holding on to the desire to do those things in our hearts.

The Lord spoke about this same issue during His ministry on earth. He warned the scribes and the Pharisees about focusing too much on external appearances while neglecting their inner spiritual lives. He said to them:

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, because you clean the outside of your cup and plate, but the insides are full of plundering and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of your cup and plate, so that the outside may be clean as well.” (Matthew 23:25-26)

This is a very simple message. A cup may look completely clean on the outside, but if the inside is filthy, the cup is still unclean. In the same way, we may appear good and clean externally while our inner life is still full of selfish desires.

Whenever we desire to break any of the ten commandments, whenever we desire to commit adultery, whenever we desire to lie, or whenever we desire to steal, we are still engaging with all the evils described in the earlier commandments, and we are breaking the commandments against coveting.

Following the commandments against coveting may sound like a pretty tall order. It is already difficult to avoid doing evil actions all the time. Now the Lord is telling us that we should not even want to do those things. If we follow that line of thinking, the commandment can begin to feel overwhelming.

After all, temptations show up in everyone’s mind. We all experience passing thoughts that we know are not good. We might suddenly feel anger toward someone, or envy toward a neighbor, or lust toward someone who is not our spouse. If every fleeting thought counted as breaking the commandments, then none of us would have any hope at all of ever seeing Heaven.

But this is not what the Lord is teaching.

The Lord is not concerned with every passing thought that enters our minds. Instead, He is concerned with something deeper: whether we welcome those thoughts, dwell on them, and eventually make them part of our intentions.

This important distinction is explained in another passage from the Heavenly Doctrine. In the book Divine Providence we read:

Nothing that we simply think about becomes part of us, even though we think we intend to do it, unless we intend it to the point that we would actually do it if the opportunity arose. As long as it is a matter of thought alone it cannot be made part of us, because our understanding does not unite itself to our will, or the thinking of our understanding to the desire of our intent. (DP 80)

This teaching brings an important sense of balance. We have thoughts constantly passing through our minds. Many of them appear and disappear without leaving any kind of a lasting impression. What matters is whether we hold onto those thoughts and nurture them until we would be willing to act on them if the opportunity presented itself. When we begin to imagine carrying out an evil and secretly wish that we could do it without consequences, then that desire has begun to take root in our heart.

In the Heavenly Doctrines, sin is sometimes described as a kind of spiritual disease. When we break the commandments, we not only harm the people around us, but we also damage our own spiritual well-being. Evil spreads through the soul in the same way that illness spreads through the body.

The ten commandments act like a treatment plan for healing this illness. By following the ten commandments, we begin to remove the destructive tendencies that separate us from heaven.

The ninth and tenth commandments address something particularly important in this healing process. They draw our attention to the root cause of our spiritual sickness: our inner desires for evil.

The connection between our desires and our actions is described in another passage from True Christian Religion:

A desire and an action are as closely connected as blood and flesh or oil and flame. The desire is in the action in the same way that air from our lungs is in our breath and speech. (TCR 328)

If our desires are dominated by selfishness and envy, those desires will eventually shape the way we treat others. But if we bring our desires into harmony with the Lord's Higher will, then our actions will begin to reflect that transformation.

This is why the commandments ask us not only to avoid doing evil but also to examine the desires that live within us and reject any desires that are against the Lord’s Will for us.

Another passage from True Christian Religion, which you can read in the back of your handout, explains how these commandments look back at all the others and address their spiritual root:

In the spiritual meaning, the Ninth and Tenth commandments prohibit all the cravings that go against the spirit, that is, against the spiritual qualities taught by the church, which primarily relate to faith and charity. If our cravings were not tamed, our flesh would pursue its own freedom and would quickly fall into every kind of wickedness. In brief, these two commandments taken in their spiritual meaning look back to the spiritual meaning of all the commandments previously given, adding that we are not to crave doing those evil things. The same goes for all the commandments previously given in the celestial meaning. (TCR 327)

In other words, these commandments summarize the deeper meanings behind every commandment that came before them. They remind us that the true battle is not only about controlling our external actions. It is about reshaping the desires of our hearts. And when we reshape the desires of our hearts, we experience tremendous spiritual freedom and growth.

The Heavenly Doctrine explains this beautifully in another passage from True Christian Religion:

Eight of the commandments say nothing about loving God or loving our neighbor. They do not say that we must love God or we must keep God's name holy. They do not say that we must love our neighbor, or deal honestly and uprightly with our neighbor. They say only, "There is to be no other God before my face; you are not to take God's name in vain; you are not to kill; you are not to commit adultery; you are not to steal; you are not to testify falsely; and you are not to covet what your neighbor has. " Briefly put, we are not to intend, think, or do evil against God or against our neighbor. We are not commanded to do things that directly relate to charity; instead, we are commanded not to do things that are the opposite of charity. This is because the more we abstain from evils because they are sins, the more we want the goodness that relates to charity. In loving God and our neighbor, the first step is not doing evil, and the second step is doing good. (TCR 329)

The doctrine goes on to explain in the following passage how this spiritual transformation gradually takes place in our lives:

The more we abstain from what is evil, the more we will and intend what is good, because evil and good are opposites. Evil comes from hell and good comes from heaven. Therefore the more hell is removed, the closer we get to heaven and the more we focus on good. The truth of this becomes obvious when we see eight of the Ten Commandments in this way. For example: (1) The less we worship other gods, the more we worship the true God. (2) The less we take the name of God in vain, the more we love the things that come from God. (3) The less we want to kill and to act on the basis of hatred and revenge, the more we want what is good for our neighbor. (4) The less we want to commit adultery, the more we want to live faithfully with our spouse. (5) The less we want to steal, the more we aim to be honest. (6) The less we want to testify falsely, the more we want to think and speak what is true, (8) and the less we covet what our neighbors have, the more we want our neighbors to be doing well with what they have. (TCR 330)

This teaching brings us back to the purpose of the ninth and tenth commandments. They are not simply warnings about envy or jealousy. They are invitations to begin the deeper work of being spiritually born again by abandoning our evil desires and embracing the good desires that the Lord wants us to have.

The ninth and tenth commandments remind us that our duty to follow the Lord’s Will goes deeper than our external behavior. The Lord is not only asking us to change our external actions, He is also asking us to change our desires. When we ask the Lord for help in turning away from selfish desires, we open the door for something better to take their place. When we begin that process by following the commandments, our hearts begin to change, and our actions follow that change. And in that transformation of our desires, the Lord leads us closer to a life that truly follows His loving Will for us to be saved to eternity. Amen.

You Shall Not Bear False Witness

Rev. Jared Buss

Pittsburgh New Church; March 22, 2026

Readings: Mark 14:55-64; True Christian Religion §321

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We’ve been working through a series of sermons on the ten commandments, and today’s topic is the eighth commandment: “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor” (Ex. 20:16). It’s definitely a bit jarring to switch to this topic right after rejoicing in the baptism of a little child who’s never told a lie in his life. And at the same time, baptism is actually a perfect counterexample to false witness, because baptism is all about choosing the truth. The waters of baptism correspond to truths; and when we or our children are baptized, we’re testifying to a desire to be washed by those truths, and a desire to stand in the company of the angels, who love the truth.

The spirit of false witness that we’re going to talk about now is the dead opposite of that love of truth; and it’s that much easier to see why we need to shun false witness when we also see the power of standing for the truth.

When we teach the eighth commandment to children, we often paraphrase it as, “you shall not lie.” That’s a valid paraphrase, because in a broad sense this commandment does forbid all kinds of lying; but technically what the commandment forbids in its literal sense is bearing false witness, or lying when we’re a witness in court, or some similar situation. It isn’t hard to see that this is an especially destructive kind of lying.

There are a number of stories in the Word that involve bearing false witness in this narrow sense. King Ahab wanted Naboth’s vineyard, but Naboth wouldn’t sell it to him; so the queen orchestrated Naboth’s death, and she did this by hiring men to testify, falsely, that Naboth had “blasphemed God and the king” (1Kings 21:1-14). Something similar happened to the Lord Himself, and that’s the story that we’re going to hear now. This reading is from the gospel of Mark, and it picks up right after the Lord has been arrested in Gethsemane: [read 14:55-64].

This trial is a mockery of justice in so many ways. First of all, it says right at the beginning that they “sought testimony against Jesus, to put Him to death” (v. 55). So they’d already sentenced Him, before the trial even began. Now they’re working backwards, trying to justify their verdict; but the only justifications they can come up with are lies. The story says that “many” bore false witness against Him (v. 56); maybe those false witnesses were council members, who were motivated by their hatred of the Lord, or maybe they were random people who were paid to come in and tell lies, like the scoundrels who were paid to accuse Naboth of blasphemy. In any case it would have been obvious—everyone in that room would have known—that the accusations against the Lord were false, because no one’s testimony agreed with anyone else’s. But they just kept going, kept slinging mud until something stuck.

The best accusation that they could come up with was this claim that the Lord had said that He would destroy the temple and build it again in three days (v. 58). The Lord had said something sort of like this: when His disciples had called His attention to the workmanship of the temple, He had told them, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone shall be left upon another, that shall not be thrown down” (13:2; cf. John 2:19). Those words were a prophecy, and the prophecy was literally fulfilled about forty years later, when the Romans levelled Jerusalem. But the Lord said that the temple would be destroyed, not that He would destroy it—and that’s not a small difference. This accusation made against Him is a textbook example of twisting the truth.

This whole trial is an extreme example of the perversion of justice; but it’s an important story because it so vividly illustrates what happens when people are willing to subordinate the truth to what they want. Without honesty—without the truth—justice falls apart, and so much else falls apart with it. People know this. Perjury, or giving false testimony when you’re under oath, is a crime in virtually every country in the world. Perjury can earn you a prison sentence. So people do take this stuff seriously. Nevertheless, lies are still told; in court, in the public sphere; in this country and in others; and yes, those lies do damage to justice and the rule of law. If we’re bothered when other people tell lies, that’s a good sign; and if we want to see justice done in the systems that we’re part of, then it’s appropriate to say so, to show our neighbors and our leaders that we value truth and will not be content with lies. But, obviously, we as individuals have no power over other people, and are not responsible for what they choose to say. What we actually have power over is whether or not we will stand for the truth ourselves.

We already touched on the idea that, although in a strict sense the eighth commandment only forbids lying in court, it really forbids all kinds of lying. The Heavenly Doctrine says as much, and says it very clearly. We turn now to the reading that’s printed on the back of the worship handout, which is from the chapter on the ten commandments in the book True Christian Religion: [read §321].

Something that stands out about this passage is how it stresses that the things it says not to do are things that cause harm. It says that the eighth commandment forbids “lying and hypocrisy… with evil intent,” and that it forbids criticizing and slandering our neighbor “so as to undermine his honor, name and reputation.” The things the Lord forbids are forbidden because they’re hurtful. But is lying always hurtful? Is it possible to tell a lie with good intent? It isn’t that hard to think of situations in which lying seems like the kinder choice. The classic, stereotypical example is a wife asking her husband, “how do I look in these clothes?” There are answers that the husband should not give, no matter what he actually thinks. But this example is overused, and just to pick on it a little—if the husband feels like he has no choice but to lie, then something unhealthy might be going on. What really matters here is that the husband treat his wife like he loves her and values her beauty; and if he’s wise, he can probably find a way to do that and still share some of his actual thoughts.

But—continuing to use marriage as an example—sometimes husbands and wives don’t feel like they’re in love with each other at all. When this happens, should they act like they love each other, or is that lying? The Heavenly Doctrine says that when a couple is in a cold state, it’s useful and commendable for them to nevertheless act like a married couple, and to simulate friendship (ML §277ff). This might feel false. In any context, acting nice when we don’t feel nice might feel false. But it’s not lying; it’s simply choosing not to act on what we feel. It’s replacing behavior that reflects how we really feel with behavior that reflects what we know is right; so it’s replacing one truth with another, more useful truth. Choosing to say what’s useful instead of saying everything is not lying. The hells that prey on our consciences want us to think it’s lying; they want us to think we have to lie sometimes. But they’re wrong, so ignore them.

There are other examples we could look at—other situations in which a person with good motives might choose not to say the whole truth. We might do this to protect people. If a child asks a question and the real answer is something they’re just not ready for, it isn’t against the eighth commandment to give that child an incomplete answer. Or to pick a really mundane example, sometimes people will ask you how you’re doing, and you’ll say “fine,” even though the truth is more complicated. Maybe it would be useful to be more honest; but choosing to say “fine” is probably fine.

The point is that the eighth commandment is about more than just whether or not the truth is technically spoken: it’s about the choice between the love of truth and the abuse of truth. Will we yield to the truth, so that it can shape our words and actions; or will we subordinate the truth to our own opinions, or to what’s profitable or convenient for us? It’s possible to stand for the truth without saying much at all; and we can subordinate the truth even when the words we speak are technically true. We can quote Scripture with harmful or selfish intent—and that is lying, though the Scripture itself is always true.

Misusing or falsifying Scripture probably involves breaking the eighth commandment not just in its natural sense, but in its spiritual sense. The Heavenly Doctrine says that we break the eighth commandment in its spiritual sense when we persuade (or attempt to persuade) others that what is true is false, and what is good is evil—or vice versa, when we persuade people that evil things are good and false things are true (SH §8908; Life §87; TCR §322; AE §1019.2). The harm that we can do when we muddy the water like this is obvious. In the highest or celestial sense, breaking the eighth commandment means, “speaking blasphemy against the Lord and the Word, thus chasing truth out of the church” (TCR §323). Again, it isn’t hard to see that when we reject and revile the truth at its source, we’re doing something harmful. Bearing false witness, in all its different forms, is forbidden because it’s harmful. And fundamentally, the thing that it harms is the truth.

To conclude this sermon, we’ll consider some thoughts about the power of standing for the truth. We know that the truth matters: we know that justice falls apart when truth is not held sacred, and that when justice goes, a whole lot more goes with it. Even so, we sometimes talk about truth like it’s just a bunch of ideas. Especially in religious contexts:  we talk like “truth” is just what the books say, or those long doctrinal words that the priest is always using. But that’s not what “truth” means. It’s not just so many ideas: the truth is what’s real. The truth is solid ground beneath our feet, air that we can breathe and light that we can see by. To know the truth is to know the difference between good and evil, between health and sickness, between innocence and guilt. Truth can be inconvenient, it can be hard, sometimes it cuts; but it’s real nonetheless. And there’s something so liberating about choosing what’s right and what’s real, even when that means that we don’t get what we wanted. The Lord said, “you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32). And truth has this power because He is in it.

When the Lord was in the world He spoke the truth, though it cost Him His life. When He was on trial, they bore false witness against Him, but their testimonies were incoherent. They couldn’t convict Him of anything until the high priest asked Him, “Are you the Christ?” (Mark 14:61). He answered with the truth: He said, “I am” (v. 62), though He knew full well that they would regard that truth as a lie, and treat it as a justification for killing Him. But how could He do less than speak the truth? He is the Christ; He stood for the truth and He became the truth. And in the end, that truth rang out, because they couldn’t kill Him at all.

What all of this means is that when we say the truth, the Lord is there. In short, telling the truth is even more powerful than it seems.

We’ll close this sermon with one more reading from the Heavenly Doctrine:

When a person abstains from false testimonies understood in a moral and spiritual sense, and shuns and turns away from them as sins, the love of truth and the love of justice flow in from the Lord through heaven. And when, as a result, the person loves truth and loves justice he loves the Lord, for the Lord is truth itself and justice itself. And when a person loves truth and justice it may be said that truth and justice love him, because the Lord loves him; and as a result his utterances become utterances of truth, and his works become works of justice. (AE §1020.2)

Amen.

Shunning Theft & Protecting Honesty

Rev. Jared Buss

Pittsburgh New Church; March 15, 2026

Readings: Luke 19:1-10 (children’s talk); Doctrine of Life §80; John 10:1-10

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Our series on the ten commandments has us in the midst of a set of commandments that are just obvious. Everyone knows that murder and adultery are wrong, and that stealing is wrong. Stealing is illegal everywhere. It seems unlikely that any of you need to be convinced that it’s bad.

Isn’t it nice that some of the commandments are easy to understand? After all, the Lord says a lot of things that challenge our understanding. But it would be much too easy to say, “Well I’m not in the habit of robbing banks, so this one isn’t for me—it’s for other people.” We’re meant to look deeper. If a commandment is easy to understand, that means we can spend our energy not on understanding it but on asking, “Am I really keeping it?” Because all of the commandments run deep, and they all get hard to keep at some point. After all, how many of us can truly say that we have never stolen anything?

So to begin with, we’re going to turn to the Heavenly Doctrine and hear a passage that summarizes the three major levels of the commandment against stealing: the natural, spiritual and celestial levels. This passage is from The Doctrine of Life, and it’s printed on the back of your handout [read §80].

Right off the bat, we should note that pretty much wherever the Heavenly Doctrine talks about stealing, it calls attention to the fact that stealing, in its natural sense, includes both obvious thefts and those that are not obvious (e.g. AE §967.3). Obvious thefts, like robbing banks and mugging people, are obviously wrong, and there really isn’t much to say about those things besides, “don’t do them.” But there are a lot of ways of taking what isn’t ours that are a lot less conspicuous—and we need to understand that those things are forbidden by the seventh commandment, just as much as daylight robbery. The reading says that swindling or taking another person’s goods by subterfuge is stealing (Life §80). And in True Christian Religion we read:

[Stealing] extends to all imposture and unlawful gain, usury and extortion, as well as fraud in payment of dues and taxes and in repaying debts. Workers who do not work in good faith and without deceit offend against this commandment; so do merchants who cheat over their wares, weights, measures and calculations…. (§317)

It’s pretty clear that the seventh commandment isn’t just about robbery: it’s about every method, every pretense, for taking or laying claim to what is not ours.

Now, people know that sneaky stealing is still stealing. White collar crime is still a crime. In general white collar crime is seen as less serious than something like armed robbery, and that holds up to the light of doctrine: if you rob someone at gunpoint you aren’t just stealing, you’re also threatening violence—so you’re breaking the fifth commandment as well as the seventh. And breaking two commandments seems worse than breaking one. But it’s worth nothing that when it talks about stealing, the Heavenly Doctrine highlights the destructiveness of “guile and deceit” (Life §81). Guile, or cunning, and deceit are like poisons that worm themselves deep into our minds. The point is that we need to be careful not to tell ourselves that our crimes “aren’t serious” because they’re subtle. That could be the opposite of the truth: if we embrace the art of deceit so deeply that we learn how to take what isn’t ours in a way that no one on earth will ever punish us for, we may be on the road to becoming someone who lives and breathes deceit. Even if we manage to convince ourselves that what we’re doing “doesn’t count” as stealing.

An interesting thought experiment is to consider the things a person could do that would not be illegal, but would still count as stealing in the Lord’s eyes. And we’re not talking about spiritual stealing yet—we’re still considering literal stealing. For example, if a company technically meets the requirements of the law as far as disclosing what their product is and what they’re going to charge for it, but their advertising and the way they do sales and their entire approach to business is about getting customers to pay more than they think they’re going to have to pay, is that stealing? It probably is. But the only people who can truly know whether or not an individual member of that company is stealing are the Lord and the individual himself. It could simply be that customers are making bad decisions because they’re too lazy to read the fine print. The question that the individual businessman needs to ask himself, in this example, is, “What’s my motive? Do I want my customers to get something that is worth their money, or am I looking for devices that will enable me to take more than I’ve earned?” If the intent is dishonest, then we’re stealing, even if the methods are technically legal.

The world generally views the theft of a valuable item as more serious than the theft of a cheap one. The sentence for stealing a car is greater than the sentence for shoplifting. That isn’t necessarily how the Lord sees it. The value of worldly goods doesn’t mean much in His kingdom. In the long run, it won’t matter much that we “only took a little bit at a time” if the fact is that we’ve given our heart to the art of taking.

As with all of the other commandments, the essence or spirit of stealing is easier to recognize if we also understand the good affection that stealing is opposed to. According to the Heavenly Doctrine, that good thing is honesty. Our reading said, “Insofar as someone refrains from every form of stealing as being a sin, so far he loves honesty” (Life §80). The word “honesty” makes sense here: it’s fairly common to refer to people who don’t lead lives of crime as “honest people.” In this context, “honest” people are people who value the law and live uprightly, people who are what they seem and do what they say. But there’s even more going on if we look at the original language. The Latin word here translated as “honesty” is sinceritas, which is the root of the English word “sincerity.” In English, to be sincere is to really mean what you say. But the Latin sinceritas has a broader meaning. It means cleanness, purity, soundness, wholeness. It describes something that is no more and no less than what it’s meant to be. It overlaps with the English word “integrity,” a word that also has to do with wholeness. If we’re whole, or sincere, or in integrity, or however you want to put it, that means that what we say and what we do are in alignment; but it also means that we know where we end and another person begins. To love honesty (or wholeness, or integrity) is to honor and value the truth that other people are distinct from ourselves. They are their own, and what is theirs is not ours.

For those who like to overthink things, there are a lot of rabbit holes related to stealing that we could descend into. What does it mean to “own” something? Is private property a real thing, or is it an empty social construct? If someone has billions of dollars and will hardly notice the loss of a few thousand, is it really so wrong to take a few thousand from that person? What if that billionaire is a thief—is it really wrong to steal from thieves? Most of the time we can be saved from the rabbit-holes by the simple question: is this mine? If it isn’t mine, I cannot take it. And it isn’t up to me to decide what should theoretically belong to whom. If it isn’t mine, I must not take it.

Beneath this idea is the much bigger idea that everything actually belongs to the Lord. “The earth is the Lord’s, and all its fullness” (Ps. 24:1). He created all of it; He sustains all of it; no created thing could exist for a moment apart from Him. So who are we to lay claim to any of it? Even our life is a gift from God. Now He wants to share what is His, so He gives us life and lets us feel as though it is our own; and He gives us other blessings, things that we get to call ours—like our children, our homes, our morning coffee. But they’re all gifts, which is why gratitude is such an important mentality; to be grateful is to see reality for what it is. And who are we to decide that what God has given to someone else should be ours instead?

So at last we’re ready to talk about the spiritual and celestial levels of this commandment—especially the celestial level, which has to do with claiming what belongs to God. Earlier we read:

In the spiritual sense stealing means to deprive another of the truths of his faith and the goods of his charity. And in the highest sense stealing means to take from the Lord something that is His and attribute it to oneself…. (Life §80)

Before we discuss these ideas any further, we’re going to turn to our final reading for today, which is from John chapter 10. This is a familiar text; but note how, throughout it, the Lord is directly contrasting Himself with thieves and robbers [read vv. 1-10].

In the spiritual sense, stealing means taking spiritual things away from people. True Christian Religion says that the thieves and robbers in this passage from John—the ones who are trying to get the sheep to hear them and follow them—symbolize people who deprive others of truths by means of falsities and heretical beliefs (§318). So to steal, in this sense, is to take a true idea away from someone by hoodwinking them or forcing them or persuading them to accept a false idea in its place. And why would anyone do something like that? “For the sake of power” is the obvious answer. If we can control what people think, then to a certain extent we can control what they do. But we might also do something like this simply because we feel a need for other people to think the way we do. We might feel threatened by the fact that other people think differently than we do. This is especially likely to be the case if we’re doing something wrong, and we know it, and other people also know it—we might attempt to take that truth from them, by persuading them that what we’re doing isn’t wrong, so that we don’t feel threatened. This is very different from trying to share the truths we see. Again, intention makes all the difference. Are we trying to give, or to take? If our object is control—if we’re trying to take a certain perspective or power of thought from someone—we’re stealing. And note how, in the spiritual sense as well, stealing involves a failure to respect the boundary between ourselves and another person—the difference between what is ours and what is not.

In the celestial sense, to steal is to claim what is the Lord’s. In John He says, “I am the door” (10:7, 9), which means that He is the way to life and salvation. These things are His to give. Trying to get these things without Him—without His help, without acknowledging Him—is stealing. In Secrets of Heaven we read:

“The sheep” are those who have charity and consequently faith, and they enter the fold through the Lord when they acknowledge that He is the source of everything composing faith and charity; for then these flow in from Him. But to attribute them to others, especially to self, is to take them away, which is “to kill and destroy” them. (§8906)

Isn’t it interesting that when we take what is the Lord’s and claim it for ourselves we don’t just steal it—we kill and destroy it? It’s like stealing a work of art and smashing it so that the owner can’t take it back from us. It’s a classic case of “the tighter you squeeze, the less you have.” When we feel the need to take instead of accepting good things as gifts, we don’t even enjoy what we have. Whereas the opposite will be the case if we choose gratitude. The more we humble ourselves, the more clearly will we see every gift that God’s given us; and there’s no limit to what He will give. He says, “I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly” (John 10:10).

Amen.

Shunning Adultery & Protecting Marriage

Rev. Jared Buss

Pittsburgh New Church; March 8, 2026

Readings: Genesis 2:15-25 (children’s talk); Matthew 19:4-6; Married Love §180;

True Christian Religion §313

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            Our sermon series on the ten commandments has brought us to the sixth commandment, which says, “you shall not commit adultery” (Ex. 20:14). Much like the commandment before it—“you shall not murder” (v. 13)—this one is short and straightforward. We all know more or less what adultery is, and we all know that it’s harmful—and that’s why the Lord says “don’t do it.” There’s the sermon.

            But actually, there’s quite a bit more that’s worth saying. This is one of those instances where it makes a big difference to understand what the commandment is there to protect. Another way to put it is, why is adultery harmful? What does it do damage to? We might answer, “well, it’s harmful because it’s a betrayal, and because it’s deceitful.” It’s true that adultery often is those things; but according to New Church teachings, adultery would be harmful even if it didn’t involve betrayal and deceit. If a person had an extramarital affair with the full permission of their married partner, they would still be breaking the sixth commandment. The sixth commandment isn’t there to protect honesty; honesty is protected by its own commandment. The sixth commandment is there to protect marriage.

            So before we reflect any further on adultery, we’re going to look at some teachings that show us what marriage is—or what it was designed to be. We’re going to spend some time reflecting on the good stuff. If we can come to a clear understanding of what marriage is meant to be, then questions about what adultery encompasses and why it should be shunned will almost answer themselves. Teachings about marriage can be challenging in their own right, because many of them present us with ideals, and all of us fall short of those ideals in one way or another. But take those words in: all of us fall short of those ideals. And the Lord knows who He’s created. These teachings were not given for perfect people who don’t exist: they were given for people like us. They’re aspirational, and that’s okay. In other words these teachings are not about where you have to be right now: they’re about what the Lord wants to give you.

            In the gospel of Matthew, the Lord quotes from the story that was read to the children—the story about the creation of woman—and in so doing He establishes that that story is foundational to the way that we’re supposed to understand marriage. He’s asked if it’s lawful for a man to divorce his wife for just any reason (19:3), and here’s His reply: [vv. 4-6].

            There are two ideas expressed in this teaching that, as I said, are foundational to the idea of marriage that’s been given to the church. The first is that God designed marriage. In the beginning, God made them male and female, with the intention that they be joined to one another in marriage. And He had something good in mind when He designed us that way. “Therefore what God has joined together, let not man put asunder” (v. 6). If He made it, it’s not ours to take apart. The second idea is that God designed marriage to join a husband and wife together so that they become one. “So then, they are no longer two, but one flesh” (v. 6).

            New Church teachings build on this idea: they say that men and women are designed to be joined to one another not just physically, not just by living in the same house, but on a spiritual level. The Heavenly Doctrine says that since ancient times the world’s understanding of marriage has steadily declined, and that an understanding of the spiritual potential in marriage was lost; but the Heavenly Doctrine also says that the Lord is working to restore that understanding, by means of new teachings that He’s provided for His New Church (ML §§78.8; 81.5). In the book Married Love we’re told that true married love “originates from the marriage between good and truth” (§60). The idea here, in brief, is that good and truth—or love and wisdom—are meant to be joined together and are always striving to unite themselves (§§88, 89). Love finds its expression in wisdom and wisdom finds its purpose in love. And the book Married Love says that, “Male and female were created to be the very image of the marriage between good and truth” (§100). Men are designed to be forms of the wisdom that clothes love, and women are designed to be forms of the love that clothes wisdom (§32); that’s what we are on the deepest level. So men and women have a capacity to be joined together on the deepest level (§§157, 158).

            Another thing we’re told in the book Married Love is that true married love corresponds to the marriage of the Lord and the church; “In other words,” we read, “as the Lord loves the church and wants the church to love Him, so a husband and wife love each other” (§62).

            We’ve gone over these teachings very quickly. The simple takeaway is that the Lord has designed us with the intention that husbands and wives be joined to each other on the deepest level. There are several reasons why He’s built us this way. One is that unions like this are good for us. Another is that they make us happy. Intimacy—or closeness with another human being—feels good; and in an orderly marriage the deepest intimacy is possible. That intimacy is something that the Lord can bless with all His power. In Married Love we read: [§180].

            That passage goes on to say that the Lord’s desire to share those blessings has everything to do with why He designed men and women the way He did—why He designed us to be married.

            Now that we’ve gone over all of these lofty teachings, it’s important to go back to the idea that these teachings are aspirational. If we look around at the world, it becomes perfectly obvious that every marriage takes work, that every marriage has its unlovely bits, and that some marriages end. If that’s obvious to us, then surely the Lord knows it too. He’s not telling us that we should have figured out all of these things already: He’s saying, “here’s the goal—strive for it!” And if we do what He says we can reach that goal. Even if it takes longer than we want it to. Even if it doesn’t happen in this lifetime. In Married Love we read, “For people who desire true married love, the Lord provides similar partners, and if they are not found on earth, He provides them in heaven” (§229). It’s so important, and so easy to forget, that the Lord sees eternity, whereas we often struggle to see past this week. All of the years that we spend in this world are just a prelude to the life that we were really created to live.

            One more thing that needs to be said about the way that marriage was designed is that sexual intimacy is meant to be part of marriage. It’s part of the mechanism that joins a husband and a wife together (ML §§172, 210; cf. AE §1005.2). Some churches teach or have taught that sex is impure, and that celibacy is preferable to marriage—but the teachings of the New Church say the opposite (ML §156). If sexual intimacy was less than ideal, why would the Lord have designed us to be joined to our spouses and become “one flesh?” (Gen. 2:24; Matt. 19:4, 5). There is nothing shameful or unclean about sexual relations within the context of an orderly marriage—quite the contrary (ML §§143, 144). But by design, sexual intimacy belongs to marriage; and if it’s separated from marriage, then something out of order has taken place. The idea that we’re supposed to be pure and that a mistake makes us impure forever is no good; but it’s also true that sexual intimacy belongs to marriage.

            So we come back to the sixth commandment—which says, “you shall not commit adultery”—because adultery, by the simplest and most common definition, is when a married person has sex with someone other than their married partner. In the light of everything that’s been said so far it should be easy enough to see that an affair like that is fundamentally wrong not just because it involves breaking promises, not just because it involves betrayal, but because it involves breaking apart what God has joined together.

            But the sixth commandment is about more than just extramarital affairs. Last week, when the subject was the fifth commandment—“you shall not murder”—it was said that physically killing someone is not the only way to break that commandment. And that’s because that commandment is really about hatred, hatred that expresses itself in violence to the degree that it can get away with it. That hatred is murderous even if no actual murder is committed. The sixth commandment works the same way. It says, “you shall not commit adultery,” and in a strict sense adultery is a physical act; but in that broader sense, adultery is an intention—an intention that leads to acts that break marriages apart, or that take the clean things of marriage and make them unclean. All of this is explained in the Heavenly Doctrine. We turn now to our final reading for today, which is from True Christian Religion: [§313].

            So looking at someone to lust for them is adulterous, even if that look doesn’t lead to anything. Now, the Lord isn’t saying that if we notice someone and find them attractive we’ve committed adultery. We can’t always help what we notice. But we can decide whether or not we look twice. When we deliberately look at someone in a lustful way, that look expresses an intention; and as far as our spirit is concerned, an intention is the same thing as an action. “Willing and doing obscene things” is also against the sixth commandment. Even if no married people are involved, obscene or criminal sexual acts still do damage to things that belong to marriage; so they are adulterous.

At its heart, adultery is a spirit that opposes true married love; it’s a spirit opposed to the love that joins two together and makes them one flesh. We’re told in the teachings of the New Church that the love of adultery ruins married love, destroys it, and finally loathes it (ML §423). And in so doing, it hurts people. Married Love is a gift the Lord gave us because He wants us to be happy, and adultery takes that gift away from people. And people who willfully damage what the Lord has made are hurting their own souls. That’s why the Lord says, “don’t do it.”

I said earlier that many of Lord’s teachings about marriage are aspirational. We don’t have the power to make all of these beautiful promises come true right now. The sixth commandment, however, is not aspirational—it’s not something we’re meant to get to “someday.” The sixth commandment is where the Lord tells us what we can do right now. Everyone has the capacity to reject acts of adultery, and to search inside themselves for the spirit of adultery and shun that too. That’s true even if we’ve done adulterous things in the past. The Lord has the power to separate us from the past. He’s looking at who we’re choosing to be right now; and if we’re willing he can make us clean (Mark 1:40).

What’s wonderful is that the sixth commandment—this unlovely, down-to-earth commandment—is also the most powerful tool for finding the happiness promised in those lofty teachings. The Heavenly Doctrine says that to the degree that we shun any evil, we love the good that that evil opposes. Specifically it says, “insofar as someone refrains from adultery, so far he loves marriage” (Life §75). To the degree that we shun adulterous things, a love of marriage will flow into us and become strong; and the Lord, in His time and according to His wisdom, will bless that love, and bring it to fulfilment.

Amen.

You Shall Not Kill

Rev. Dan Calvo

Pittsburgh New Church; March 1, 2026

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In 1955, in Mississippi, a 14-year-old Black teenager named Emmett Till was brutally murdered by two grown men. Emmett was accused of whistling at a woman during a quick visit in a store, and in revenge, the woman's husband and his half-brother kidnapped Emmett in the middle of the night, beat him up, shot him in the head, and dumped his lifeless body in a river. A 14-year-old teenager, lynched, because he allegedly whistled when he saw a woman in a store. The initial accusation, which was used as an excuse to commit unspeakable violence against a child by men whose hearts were full of hatred, acted in a way as the murder of Emmet Till’s reputation, which ultimately led to the horrendous physical murder of his body.

Today we will be discussing the fifth of the ten commandments: “You shall not murder.” Many of us don’t tend to think too much about this commandment, both because it is so straightforward and because most of us have never been faced with the moral dilemma to either take or spare a human life. For the vast majority of people in this day and age, it is not exactly a struggle to follow the fifth commandment by not killing a human being, but once we dive into the different meanings of this commandment, we may find that we are struggling to follow it, even though we may not realize it just yet.

Each one of the Ten Commandments has three different meanings: a literal meaning, which is what we read in the book of the Word itself; a spiritual meaning, which relates to how we treat our neighbors; and a celestial meaning, which relates to our personal relationship with God. Today we will explore all three of the meanings of the commandment against murder, starting with the literal meaning of what we read in the book of the Word itself.

While the commandment as found in the Word is quite self-explanatory, the Heavenly Doctrines expand on the literal sense of this commandment in the book True Christian Religion, where it says that:

This commandment, 'You shall not murder', means in the natural sense that it is forbidden to kill a human being or inflict upon him any wound that might prove fatal; also to mutilate his body. It also means not doing any drastic injury to his name or reputation, since to many people their reputation is as precious as their life. In a wider natural sense murder includes feelings of enmity, hatred and revenge which are murderous in intent. For these have the idea of murder lurking in them. These are murders in intention, but not in deed. (True Christian Religion 309)

When we allow ourselves to hold resentment against other people, to the point in which we believe that they are worthless, and that the world would be a better place if they did not exist, that resentment can continue to grow and fester inside us, until it explodes into real physical violence. Even if it never manifests as a physical act of violence, if the only thing keeping us from hurting another person is a fear of consequences, such as jail or the loss of reputation, then we are still guilty of committing murder in our heart.

Even if we don't physically take a person’s life, there are countless examples in history, besides the case of Emmett Till, that show that the destruction of the reputation of a person or group can lead to the physical murder of human beings. The movie “Birth of a Nation” which depicted Black men as being violent criminals who targeted innocent women, directly inspired the creation of the second iteration of the KKK, which was responsible for hundreds of brutal murders of innocent people. The Nazi propaganda machine which depicted Jewish people as being responsible for all the problems that Germany was facing, led to a horrific genocide of the Jewish people during World War II. Destroying the reputation of someone, whether we are talking about an individual or a group of people, may lead to the loss of human life in a way that goes against the Lord’s will for us, which is for us to live in peace, respect, and love with one another.

Now many of us may feel that we are doing a really good job following the fifth commandment so far. If we don’t physically injure anybody or hold any murderous hatred against any other person, and if we don't destroy someone's reputation, then we may look at ourselves and say that we are doing an incredible job. And perhaps we are, but the Heavenly Doctrines are very clear that even if we are not actively doing something evil, we can still be guilty of those very evils, if we support them in others. Even if we are not killing another person, or destroying their reputation, if we see other people doing those things, and we support it or believe that it is acceptable, then we are also participating in murder and we are breaking the fifth commandment.

The book Divine Providence explains this further by saying this:

If we believe that particular evils are permissible, then they do become part of us even though we do not do them, since the permission we grant them in our thought comes from our intent, and there is an agreement. As a result, when we believe that some particular evil is permissible, we have relaxed the inner restraint against it and are kept from doing it only by outward restraints, which are fears. (Divine Providence 81)

We must always be vigilant that we do not condone violence done by other people, even against those that we think deserve it for whatever reason we may have. The Lord has taught us that we must take care of our neighbor’s well-being on multiple levels, not only on a natural and physical level, but also on a mental, emotional, and spiritual level as well. When violence is done to a person's reputation or body, and we don't react to that violence with reprehension, sadness, or disgust, but rather we decide to celebrate it or support it, even if we do so quietly, we are breaking the fifth commandment, even if we are not the ones committing the harm.

The spiritual meaning of the fifth commandment focuses on our relationship with our neighbors. Now the literal sense of the fifth commandment is already very focused on how we treat other people, since it tells us not to destroy a person's body or their reputation, but the spiritual meaning of the fifth commandment goes deeper than the physical level, and it tells us to not destroy our neighbor's connection with the Lord and the church.

According to this passage from the book True Christian Religion:

In the spiritual sense murders mean all manners of killing and destroying human souls. These are of many and varied kinds, for instance, turning them away from God, religion and the worship of God, making these things the subject of scandal, and persuading people of things which cause them to be hated and rejected. (True Christian Religion 310)

When we push people away from religion we are committing murder in the spiritual sense. If we go through life saying “the church is evil and it has nothing to offer, it’s just a bunch of lies, and all the church wants is to take your money, and it’s full of uppity hypocritical people who think they’re better than you,” if we go through life saying those things or pushing people away from engaging with religion, then we commit murder in the spiritual sense. Now, this doesn’t mean that we should never criticize a church when it is doing something evil, and it especially doesn’t mean that people who have been victimized by organized religion shouldn’t be allowed to speak about their experience. In fact, priests or church communities that commit evil are also murdering in a spiritual sense because they are pushing people away from God with their very actions. However, when we unjustly push people away from religion and God altogether, saying that it’s all worthless, we are closing the door on a lot of possibilities for support, community, love, and guidance for people who need it.

Sometimes this can even happen in church communities with people who have the best of intentions. For example, if we meet a newcomer who came to church on Sunday, who has some opinions that we don't like, or has some lifestyle choices that we disagree with, but they are coming to church with a genuine desire to connect with God and live a good life, if we were to push that person away and not welcome them into our church, we would be committing murder in the spiritual sense because we would be pushing that person away from possibly having a life-changing experience of connecting with God and finding support in a community of believers. This is why it is so important to foster an environment in church that is welcoming to others and that is open for people of all walks of life who are willing to listen to the Word of God and live by it, because when we don't have that kind of community, we run the risk of murdering someone’s spirit who is trying to approach God.

Finally, since we have talked about the literal meaning of the fifth commandment which is about the murder of someone's body or reputation, and the spiritual meaning of the fifth commandment which is about the murder of someone's spirit, we arrive at the celestial meaning of this commandment, which is about our personal relationship with God. If the spiritual meaning of murder is to push people away from God and religion, it follows that the celestial meaning of murder, is to want to destroy God Himself.

The book True Christian Religion says that:

In the celestial sense murdering means being unjustifiably angry with the Lord, hating Him and wanting to blot out His name. These are the people who are said to crucify Him; and they would actually do so if He came into the world as before. (TCR 311)

Holding a resentment against God Himself to the point where we think that God should not exist and that He is worthless, is murder in the celestial sense. This often comes from feelings of superiority and selfishness where we think that we should be the ones in charge, that we should be the ones who are in control of the universe, and everyone should be under our power. When we hate God to the point where we cannot even bear to hear His name mentioned, we are committing murder in the celestial sense.

Even though the very idea of killing God is nonsensical (because who could ever kill infinity itself?) when we resent the values and love of God, when we want to destroy love, wisdom, respect, and human dignity, we are committing a murder of the very idea of God in our own hearts. And as we mentioned earlier, even if we do not physically hurt someone, if we hold a resentment against a person to the point that we would actually hurt them if we could, we are still guilty of committing murder, and this is the case for those who want to murder God Himself.

The fifth commandment can be difficult to talk about, because of all the suffering that is related to it. When this commandment is broken families are destroyed, dreams are shattered, and the world becomes a worst place to live in. The Lord called on us to follow this commandment in its entirety, to never destroy a person's body, to never hold hatred in our heart, to not destroy a person's reputation, to not push people away from religion, and finally to not hate the Lord Himself whose only desire is for us to be happy and to feel His infinite love for us. Whenever we break the fifth commandment in any of its forms, we not only commit a murder that hurts others, we murder our own spirit, because we move further away from God, who is the source of life itself.

The fifth commandment is a reminder of the Lord’s great commandment for us when He said: “Love one another as I have loved you.” The Lord loves us with all our imperfections, even when we make it very difficult for Him to connect with us. He wants nothing but the best for us, and He is willing to walk alongside us as we go through life, and He wants us to have that same love and care for each other. When we follow the fifth commandment and reject the hatred that comes with murder in all its forms, we can live more fully with the Lord's presence in our hearts, so that we may be the kind of useful, wise, loving servants that the Lord called us to be.    Amen.

Honor Your Father and Your Mother

Rev. Jared Buss

Pittsburgh New Church; February 22, 2026

Readings: 1 Kings 12:3-15 (children’s talk); True Christian Religion §305;  Married Love §391

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            The fourth commandment is interesting because it’s the only one of the ten commandments that directs our attention to specific people (other than the Lord). The commandments don’t explicitly tell us how to treat our children, or our bosses at work, but they tell us to honor father and mother. The thing about talking about a specific relationship that everyone experiences is that that relationship is different for everyone. Honoring your parents is fairly easy—and what it means to honor them is self-evident—if you have an ideal relationship with your parents. The more complicated that relationship gets, the harder we have to work to understand this commandment.

            What we need to do, as we work through this commandment, and as we reflect on our parents and what it means to honor them, is look for the things that are from the Lord. Because that’s what this commandment is really about: honoring what is from the Lord. In the highest sense our Father is the Lord, and our mother is the church, or the Lord’s kingdom. And even when we’re talking about our earthly parents, fatherhood and motherhood are roles that were given to those people by the Lord.

            We’ll come back to these ideas, but now we’re going to turn to a reading from the Heavenly Doctrine of the New Church, from the book True Christian Religion, which you can find on the back of the worship handout. This reading is about the literal meaning of the fourth commandment [read §305].

            So to keep the fourth commandment, in its literal sense, is to honor our parents, to obey them, to be devoted to them, and to show gratitude to them for the kindnesses they do. We could dig into what all of these words mean, and whether or not they’re good translations of the original, but you get the idea. One detail that is worth noting is that, at the end, the reading says that the fourth commandment also applies to guardians, in cases where the biological parents are dead. It doesn’t use the words step-parent or adopted parent, but it’s pretty clear that those types of parents are included too. A parent is a person who does a parent’s job.

It makes sense that little children should honor and obey their fathers and mothers: little children have no judgment, but their parents presumably have at least some. But the fourth commandment doesn’t say, “honor your parents while you’re a child, and then you can stop that when you get older.” It says, “honor them.” The implication is that we’re meant to respect and perhaps even defer to our parents as long as they live. There are a number of passages in the Word that suggest that we’re to have a basic, universal respect for our elders. The story that was read to the children is one of them (1 Kings 12:3-15); and in Leviticus we’re told, “You shall rise before the gray headed and honor the presence of an old man” (19:32). You could argue that this kind of deference to elders is mostly just a cultural thing, but the Lord does talk about it in a number of places in the Word.

            However, it’s pretty obvious that even if we respect our parents our whole life long, our relationship with them changes as we grow, and what it means to honor them changes as we grow. In the book of Mark the Lord rebukes the scribes and Pharisees for failing to keep the fourth commandment, and the blameworthy thing that He specifically says they’ve done is teach people that it’s okay for them to give all their money to the temple, instead of setting some money aside to support their parents in their old age (7:9-13). In other words, the Lord says that caring for our parents, or supporting them (appropriately) in their old age is part of what it means to keep the fourth commandment. But when we’re little children that’s not what it means to keep this commandment. Little children should not be supporting their parents. The point is that the meaning of honoring father and mother evolves as we get older and our parents get older. And to a certain extent we’re called to use our own good judgment to figure out what it means to keep this commandment under our present circumstances.

            As I said before, honoring father and mother isn’t that hard under ideal circumstances. But in practice it can be challenging—and that’s true whether we’re fifteen or fifty. The things that make it challenging to honor our parents can be divided into two main categories: stuff that’s our fault and stuff that’s not our fault.

            The story about Rehoboam does a good job of illustrating the first category—the stuff that we’re responsible for that makes it hard for us to honor our parents (even though Rehoboam was disrespecting his elders and not specifically his father or mother). He got really good advice from the elders, who really did understand the situation better than he did, and he ignored it. He chose instead to kick the hornets’ nest, because his friends told him it was the awesome thing to do. And why did he ignore wisdom when he heard it? Well because he was a hothead, because he’d recently become king and he was drunk on the power, and because he thought he knew better. One of life’s big lessons that we all have to learn is that we don’t know better—not all the time. Probably not even most of the time. The Lord has put people who are older and more experienced than we are into our lives for a reason. In the Heavenly Doctrine we read that:

It is the mark of genuine wisdom for a person to see from the light of heaven that what he knows, understands and perceives is so little in comparison to what he does not know, understand, or perceive, as to be like a drop in the ocean, and so scarcely anything. (AR §875.4; v. EU §37; TCR §387; AE §739.10)

If what we know is a drop in the ocean, then we have no business refusing to learn—refusing to listen to people who might know things we don’t know. Especially if those people are older than we are and have had more time to figure things out (and of course listening to someone doesn’t mean you have to agree with them). No matter how old we are, our parents probably have something to teach us; and in any case, the Lord tells us to honor them. If we can’t do that because we’re hotheaded like Rehoboam, then that’s on us.

            But nobody’s parents are always right. Nobody’s parents are perfect—and sometimes parents don’t do their jobs very well at all. So we come to the second category of things that can make it hard for us to honor our parents: the stuff that’s not our fault. Part of leaving childhood behind is recognizing that our parents never were perfect. We come to see their limitations more and more clearly. Some of those limitations are easy to forgive, but some are not. In the most extreme cases, parents do horrible things to their children. How do we honor father and mother when we’re confronted with our parents’ flaws?

            In this context it’s important to note a detail from the opening reading from True Christian Religion: the readings says that parents do their duties as parents, “because of the love they have from the Lord, in whose place they act” (§305; cf. SH §3183). Parents act in the Lord’s place. Now it’s important to understand what this means. It doesn’t mean that anyone’s parents are godlike. We’re talking about what to make of bad parenting, and the last thing to believe when our parents are parenting us badly is that they’re being like God. Far from it—that’s when they’re the least like God. The point is that the Lord asks fathers and mothers to do His work—to act in His place. Fatherhood and motherhood are actually His jobs, but He lends those jobs to people on earth for a time.

            This means that fatherhood and motherhood aren’t really, permanently attached to anyone on earth. And people can’t really make themselves fathers or mothers: they become fathers or mothers when the Lord calls them to act in His place. And they only really act as fathers or mothers when they do the job the Lord has given them the way He means it to be done. Fatherhood belongs to the Lord, and motherhood belongs to His church, or His kingdom. The fourth commandment isn’t about honoring human beings and their flaws: it’s about honoring roles that come from the Lord. We’re asked to honor our earthly father and mother to the degree that they faithfully carry out the roles that the Lord has given them. If they disdain or abuse those roles, we can’t honor them for that.

            It’s important to understand that parenthood doesn’t truly belong to anyone on earth. The Lord is the one who makes people parents—and this is true in a very concrete way. A man and a woman can try to have a child, but conception itself is something that they don’t control. That new life that takes hold in a woman’s womb is a spark that only the Divine can ignite. Children are a gift from the Lord, and parenthood goes with that gift. The same is true of the love that characterizes parenthood—it’s from the Lord, we don’t “make” it. We turn now to our second reading from the Heavenly Doctrine, which is also on the back of the handout [read ML §391].

            So the Lord wants to protect what He’s created, and He does this by implanting His love in fathers, mothers and nurses—everyone who has charge over children. The reading says that people aren’t generally aware of this, because they don’t generally feel the Lord’s love flowing in; but it says that if we think about it, we’ll realize that this has to be the explanation for the kind of love that parents feel. Where else does love like that come from? From nature? From sunshine or dirt or chemicals in our brain? How could fathers and mothers love so much if there weren’t something heavenly moving into them and shining through them? And to the degree that our earthly fathers and mothers have received that love, they should be honored. To the degree that they’ve faithfully acted in the Lord’s place, they should be honored. Every good thing that they’ve done for us is ultimately something that they’ve done on the Lord’s behalf; and in a deeper sense, it’s something that He has done through them. And the Lord, and His goodness, are worthy of all of our honor and our gratitude.

            If we lift our minds to the deeper meanings of this commandment—the spiritual and celestial meanings—then the thought of our earthly parents fades away, and the Father whom we’re meant to honor becomes the Lord and the Lord alone. We’re told in True Christian Religion that in the spiritual sense, our Father and mother are God and the church (§306); and in the celestial sense, our Father and mother are the Lord and the communion of saints—the church that transcends time and space, the church that’s symbolized by the Lord’s bride (§307). So the spiritual and celestial meanings of this commandment are essentially the same; it’s just that the celestial meaning, which is deeper or higher, involves a clearer and more personal idea of who God is and what His church really is.

            In the book of Matthew He says, “Do not call anyone on earth your father; for One is your Father, He who is in heaven” (23:9). We’re told in the Heavenly Doctrine that this wasn’t said for our benefit, but for the benefit of angels in heaven (TCR §306). While we live in this world, we’re allowed to call our earthly parents father and mother. But in heaven they know no father or mother besides God and His church (ibid.). The way it’s meant to go is that in the end—in the very long run—the authority of our earthly parents will fade, and they’ll become more and more like brothers and sisters to us, and together we’ll acknowledge the Lord as the one who gave us life; the one who’s raised us, taught us and provided for us all along. He is our Father in the heavens; every other parent simply acts in His place, for a time.

Amen.

Remember The Sabbath

Rev. Jared Buss

Pittsburgh New Church; February 15, 2026

Readings: Exodus 16:22-31 (children’s talk); True Christian Religion §301

            Today’s sermon is about the third commandment—and there’s something a little bit amusing about preaching on this commandment. More than is usually the case, it seems that the ones who are present to hear such a sermon are not the ones who need to hear it. You’re already here, and that says that you think church is worth your time (or that someone else in your life thinks church is worth your time). So who needs to hear a sermon about it?

            But the third commandment doesn’t actually say anything about church. It doesn’t say anything about praying or singing together, and not a word about sermons. Instead it says, “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy” (Ex. 20:8), and then it goes on to talk about doing no work (vv. 9, 10). Of course no priest is going to stand on chancel and say that coming to church is not important. Much more significantly, the Heavenly Doctrine says that coming to church is useful (SH §1618), and part of the life of charity (SH §§1175.2, 8252-8253[1]). Coming to church is part of how we remember the Sabbath day—but we’ll come back to that later. For now, let’s look a little more closely at what the third commandment actually says.

            We’ll turn to our reading from the Heavenly Doctrine, from the book True Christian Religion, which is a discussion of the literal sense of the third commandment [read §301].

            That passage calls attention to a number of important ideas. First, it underscores the idea that the Sabbath, at its heart, is about rest: the Sabbath is a day for the Lord to give us rest. Then it touches on the idea that among the ancient Israelites, the observance of the Sabbath was representative; that is, heavenly things were represented on earth when people kept the rules about the Sabbath (and that’s why the rules were so important). But when the Lord came to earth, representations ceased. And the reading concluded with a list of the things that the Sabbath is meant to be about now: since the cessation of representatives, the Sabbath has been a day for instruction in Divine matters, a day of rest from work, a day for meditating on things that have to do with salvation and eternal life, and a day of love for the neighbor. That’s an interesting list. It’s especially interesting that the Sabbath is still, even in 2026, supposed to be a day of rest from work.

            The word “Sabbath” is just an Anglicization of a Hebrew word that means “rest.” So the third commandment literally says, “remember the day of rest, to keep it holy.” There’s something holy about observing a day of rest—that is, a day of rest in the Lord. Why is that? We talked about this during the children’s talk; the simple answer is that we need to just let the Lord take care of us sometimes. Actually, we need Him to take care of us all the time; but sometimes we need to stop and remember that we depend on Him—that He’s the one who gives our spirits bread every morning. We need to stop trying to do it all, and spend some time with the idea that He’s doing things we could never do. He has us in His hands, and the whole world too. To put it very simply, remembering the Sabbath is about remembering to put our trust in Him. It’s hard to do that when we’re preoccupied with our own work. Have you ever had the experience of being outside and feeling busy—because you’ve got a lot of work to do, or because you’re rushing from place to place, or because your mind is full of thoughts—and then looking up and noticing how big the sky is, and how warm the sun is, and suddenly feeling quieter inside? Remembering to look up is what the Sabbath is all about.

            The third commandment tells us to regularly pause our thoughts about the things that we do, and lift our minds to what the Lord does. And this becomes even clearer when we consider the deeper meanings of this commandment—the spiritual and celestial commandments that are held within the literal sense of the third commandment. In True Christian Religion we read:

In the spiritual sense this commandment means a person’s reformation and regeneration by the Lord. “Six days of work” means the fight against the flesh and its lusts, and at the same time against the evils and falsities which are implanted in one by hell. The seventh day means his being conjoined with the Lord, and his consequent regeneration. (§302)

And a little further on we read:

In the celestial sense this commandment means being conjoined with the Lord, leading to peace as the result of protection from hell. The Sabbath means rest and, in this highest sense, peace. That is why the Lord is called the Prince of peace, and He calls Himself peace…. (§303)

The Lord is the one who regenerates us, or makes us new. And He’s the one who gives us peace. Without Him we can have approximations of peace or illusions of peace. We can convince ourselves that we’re doing just fine; but there’s something restless and dissatisfied deep down inside every feeling peace that doesn’t have the Lord in it. He’s the one who gives us that feeling of safety and lightness and freedom—peace as unconquerable as the wide blue sky. And the third commandment says “remember.” The Lord’s presence in our lives makes all the difference, yet it’s so easy to push Him to the margins of our thought. The third commandment tells us to “remember”—and more than that, it tells us to do things regularly, every week, that will remind us to stop and look up.

            So how do we keep this commandment in practice? What does it mean to actually “remember the day of rest, to keep it holy?” Different faith traditions have come up with different interpretations of what it means to remember the Sabbath, and some of those interpretations have been very strict. In some traditions (at least in the past) children weren’t even allowed to play on the Sabbath—because somehow playing was considered work. Sundays were for worship, and that was it. And of course, it used to be that businesses were all closed on Sundays, and very few people were required to work on Sundays. Increasingly that is no longer the case. And it’s hard to literally abstain from work on Sundays when the world around us isn’t doing that. Besides, how strict do we really need to be? There are lots of stories in the Gospel in which the Lord is confronted by religious authorities who are offended because (in their eyes) He’s broken the law of the Sabbath—and the Lord seems to tell them that the law of the Sabbath doesn’t need to be kept as rigidly as they think it does. The message seems to be that we don’t have to be uptight about abstaining from work on the Sabbath. After all, representations have ceased, right?

We’re certainly not meant to be boneheaded about keeping the Lord’s rules. And yes, representations have ceased—worship is no longer meant to consist of symbolic actions that the people performing them don’t understand. But it’s not like all of the rules in the Old Testament have been abolished. Notably, we’re still meant to keep the ten commandments, and the third commandment still says, “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy…. In it you shall do no work” (Ex. 20:8, 10). But we don’t want to be boneheaded about this commandment, so let’s look at what the Lord actually teaches in the Gospel.

            There are two main things that the Pharisees and other religious authorities challenged the Lord for doing on the Sabbath: plucking and eating heads of grain as He and His disciples walked through a field,[2] and healing people.[3] Harvesting crops is a lot of work, so it makes sense that people were expected not to go out into the fields with their scythes on the Sabbath. It was reasonable for harvesting to be against the rules. The Pharisees evidently saw Jesus and the disciples plucking heads of grain and said, “That’s harvesting! You’re working!” But how much work is it, actually, to pick a head of grain from a stalk as you walk by? The Pharisees were being nitpicky. And they were missing the point: how much resting in God can you do when you’re rushing around scolding other people for their transgressions? The Lord responded by saying, essentially, that it’s okay to make exceptions to the rules when circumstances require it. A specific thing He said is that the Son of Man is also Lord of the Sabbath (Matt. 12:8; Mark 2:28; Luke 6:5). In other words, the Sabbath is about the Lord; the purpose of the Sabbath is for us to look to the Lord, and the rules are just there to help. We’re not meant to put the rules above the Lord, or His mercy, or any of His other qualities.

            This principle is even easier to see in the stories in which the Lord is challenged for healing on the Sabbath. First of all, He mostly healed by putting His hands on people, and that’s hardly work at all. But more significantly, the Lord does not want us to put our own rigid interpretation of the rules over the health and wellbeing of His people. So He told the Pharisees, “it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath” (Matt. 12:12; cf. Mark 3:4; Luke 6:9). He also pointed out that everyone was already taking their oxen and their donkeys out of the stall to give them water on the Sabbath day (Luke 13:15), even though the third commandment says that oxen and donkeys shall do no work on the Sabbath. The point is don’t be rigid. Don’t make the rules more important than the purpose that those rules serve. Reasonable exceptions can be made, in the name of what’s good.

            So what does it mean for us to keep the Sabbath holy, in practice? We don’t have to get bogged down by rules. In today’s world it’s often difficult to literally abstain from all work on Sundays, and that’s the way it is. Reasonable exceptions can be made, in the name of what’s good. And the third commandment still says that we’re not to work on the Sabbath. And the Heavenly Doctrine still says that the Sabbath is a day for the Lord to give us rest (TCR §301). Resting in the Lord is fundamentally an internal, spiritual thing—but if it stays at the level of the spirit and never shows up in the way we live, then it’s an idea and not a reality.  If our observance of the third commandment is to be real, we need to do something about it. If Sunday looks exactly the same as Saturday, then what are we doing to keep the Sabbath any holier than any other day of the week?

            So we come back to the usefulness of church. The opening reading from True Christian Religion said that the Sabbath is now a day for instruction in Divine matters, a day of rest from work, a day for meditating on things that have to do with salvation and eternal life, and a day of love for the neighbor (§301). New Church worship services are designed to help people do all of these things. The instructional component is easy to see. Church is meant to be a restful experience. The meditative component is present in the quiet portions of the service, during which you’re invited to pray and to reflect. And gathering together, as we have, means that we’re surrounded by neighbors that we have an opportunity to share something with. Though maybe that last component needs more emphasis than it’s sometimes been given; what would it look like if we truly made the Sabbath a day of love for the neighbor?

Of course the service that you’re participating in right now is not the only way to rest in the Lord. But this service, and others like it, are offered every week because of the third commandment—because resting in the Lord is important. It’s important that we stop our work and make the time to look up at bigger, holier things. As the Heavenly Doctrine puts it, the Lord is Lord of the Sabbath, “that is, [Lord] of rest and peace” (TCR §303). He wants us to remember the Sabbath because He wants us to find the rest and peace that are His alone to give.

Amen.

[1] See also the teachings on the “signs of charity:” DLW §431; Charity §§173-183

[2] Matt. 12:1-9; Mark 2:23-28; Luke 6:1-6

[3] Matt. 12:10-14; Mark 3:1-9; Luke 6:6-12; 13:10-18; 14:1-7; John 5:9-19; 7:22, 23; 9:14, 16

You Shall Not Take the Lord's Name in Vain

Rev. Jared Buss

Pittsburgh New Church; February 8, 2026

Readings: Exodus 3:1-8, 13-15 (children’s talk); True Christian Religion §297

            In today’s sermon we’re going to continue to explore the second commandment—“You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain” (Ex. 20:7). A question that comes readily to mind when we look at the second commandment is, “why is this one of the ten commandments?” It makes sense that God’s name is important, it makes sense that we shouldn’t say rude things about Him… but why is this one of the ten? Why does it stand alongside “you shall not murder” or commit adultery or steal (Ex. 20:13-15)?

            The question that I invite you to reflect on as we work through today’s sermon is, “what is this commandment here to protect?” All of the commandments are here to protect something. In general, the first three—or maybe four (see TCR §456; AE §1026.3)—commandments are here to protect our relationship with the Lord, and the rest are here to protect our neighbor. But more specifically, what is the second commandment protecting? And why is that thing that it’s protecting worth protecting?

            We’re going to turn now to a reading from True Christian Religion. This passage, which is printed on the back of the handout, is simply a discussion of the literal sense of the second commandment. [Read §297].

            That passage starts by giving us a nice, clear definition of what it means to take the Lord’s name in vain: to take His name in vain is to misuse it. The Lord’s name, like anyone else’s, is meant to be used when we’re talking to or about Him. Using any of His names when we aren’t talking to or about Him is a misuse of His name.

Of course, people do this all the time. The Lord is called the Lord God Jesus Christ (AR §839; TCR §§638, 791), and all four of these names are routinely used to intensify statements—to express the speaker’s shock, or anger, etc. Essentially they’re used as swear words. Which is pretty clearly a misuse of these names. If you shout the Lord’s name because you dropped something on your foot, you’re not actually talking to Him, are you?

            Now, people might still say, “what’s the big deal—what’s harmful about using God’s name this way?” One way to think about it is to consider what would happen if people started using your name this way—if they started shouting your name when things went wrong. Honestly it might be funny at first, but wouldn’t you eventually start to wonder why your name was getting attached to pain and anger?

            The reading goes on to say that misusing the Lord’s name is especially problematic when we use it in “false statements or lies… [or] to avoid being blamed.” And this makes sense: saying “I swear to God I didn’t do it” when you did do it is obviously wrong. The reading also says that it’s especially bad to use the Lord’s name in curses. We might think we don’t really curse people all that often anymore; but in fact people do fairly often call on God to damn people or things. And think about what that means. When we ask God to damn someone, we’re saying that we want Him to abandon His justice and His mercy and throw that person into hell. Is that something we should be saying? Really thinking about the meanings of the words we say is a theme here.

            The reading also says that it’s not wrong to use the Lord’s names when we do so sincerely and thoughtfully. It isn’t wrong to make promises in His name, so long as we understand the significance of promising in His name, and we mean what we say. Notably, when people are married in New Church wedding services, they make their vows in God’s name: in the liturgy we find the words, “In giving this ring I wed you, and take you to be my wife [or husband] in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Bridegroom and Husband of the Church” (§239). It also isn’t wrong to use the Lord’s names in worship services—we’re supposed to use His names in worship. The point is that we shouldn’t be afraid of saying His names; and, when it comes to God’s names, it’s especially important to be mindful of the meanings of the words we say.

            One last thought about this external or literal level of keeping the second commandment: probably the most common misuse of the name of God is in the stock phrase “oh my God.” People say this all the time, and how often do they mean what they say? And yes, this is probably one of the less harmful ways of misusing God’s name. But also, what are the consequences of mentally connecting God with empty words—words that we don’t mean when we say them?

            But enough about the literal sense of this commandment. As you heard in last week’s sermon, all of the ten commandments have multiple layers of meaning: there are spiritual and celestial commandments nested within the literal sense of this commandment. The spiritual sense of this commandment rests on a bigger idea of what the Lord’s name really means. In True Christian Religion we read:

In the spiritual sense the name of God means the whole of the church’s teaching taken from the Word, and through which the Lord is invoked and worshipped. All of this is summed up in the name of God. (§298)

In other words, the name of God means more than just His name: it means everything that is from God, everything that He stands for. This includes the Word, because the Word is God’s truth. So in this deeper sense, not taking the Lord’s name in vain means not misusing or being contemptuous of anything that is in the Word.

            The way another passage puts it is that the name of God does not mean the name itself but His quality; “and the quality of God or the Lord is everything that is from Him by which He is worshiped” (AE §959.4). Everything that is from the Lord has His quality in it. Every teaching in the Word has His quality in it; it bears His name. So it should be treated with reverence.

             And there are lots of statements in the Word that make it obvious that “the Lord’s name” has to mean more than just His literal name. For example, in Matthew He says, “where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of them” (18:20). What does it mean to be gathered in His name? If three people get together, and they say out loud that they’ve gathered in the name of Christ, and then they proceed to do evil things, have they really gathered in Christ’s name? Is He there in the midst of them? To do something in His name is to stand for and abide in what is His. “His name” is a shorthand for everything that is His—and none of it should be misused.

            In the highest, or celestial sense, taking the Lord’s name in vain means the same thing as blasphemy against the Holy Spirit (TCR §299; SH §8882; AE §961.15). And this is what we’re told, in the book of Matthew, about blasphemy against the Holy Spirit:

Therefore I say to you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven men. Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man, it will be forgiven him; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him, either in this age or in the age to come. (Matthew 12:31, 32)

To understand this, we have to understand that blaspheming the Holy Spirit is more than saying bad things about the Holy Spirit. If “the Holy Spirit” is just a phrase to us, then saying bad things about it is just saying bad words about some other words. The blasphemy against the Holy Spirit that the Lord is talking about is when we disdain the Holy Spirit itself—and we can’t do that unless we’re aware of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the spirit that goes out from the Lord and gives us life; it’s the spirit of truth that fills His Word. When we meet that Holy Spirit—that living, moving Spirit of God—we are very much on holy ground. And if we then proceed to blaspheme that Spirit, if we reject it or treat it with contempt, we’re dragging what is holy into the mud. We’re rejecting not just words, or ideas, but the spirit of God Himself. That’s profanation; and that’s why the Lord says that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit cannot be forgiven, and why the second commandment says that the Lord “will not hold Him guiltless who takes His name in vain” (Ex. 20:7).

            All of that might sound scary, but we should remember that the Lord’s Holy Spirit isn’t something we come face to face with unless we want to. If we simply disregard the Spirit in the first place, we can’t profane it. It takes dedication, on our parts, to find the Holy Spirit: it takes a commitment to the Lord and His teachings. The point is that if you do that work, and you find yourself in the presence of the Lord—in the presence of living holiness—don’t choose that as the moment to reject Him and blaspheme Him.

            But now let’s go back to the question that was asked at the beginning of the sermon: what is the second commandment there to protect? We might say that it’s there to protect the name of God, or the Word of God; but the truth is that God doesn’t need to be protected. God won’t be offended if we abuse His name. The second commandment is there to prevent us from damaging our own relationships with holy things. Because what have we done to ourselves if we cripple our ability to feel reverence? If we cheapen the thought of God by associating Him with empty or angry words? Misusing His name isn’t necessarily the same thing as cheapening the very thought of Him, but it does open the gate on a road that leads in that direction. You could say the second commandment is there to remind us not to destroy our sense of the sacred.

            People sometimes say that nothing’s sacred anymore, but if you look closely, virtually everyone has something they hold sacred. There are words and phrases that people refuse to say, because saying them would simply be too offensive. That absolute refusal to violate something is essentially the same thing as holding something sacred. What is it that people are holding sacred when they refuse to speak offensive words? Another thing that can feel sacred to us is a very small child. The thought of hurting something so fragile and innocent is unacceptable.

People sometimes speak as though reverence is outdated and can be done away with, but there’s no good reason for that to be true. Reverence that has to look a certain way, or that has to involve a certain kind of old-fashioned seriousness, might be outdated. But the heart of reverence is simply the awareness that we’re in the presence of the sacred—something too precious to be trifled with. There’s often a kind of reverence in the way that we hold little babies. What else do we hold with that kind of reverence?

            The Heavenly Doctrine says that everyone, whether they’re religious or not, has a God in effect—because we all have something that we put above all other things, and “Anyone or anything which is loved above all is, to the lover, God and Divine” (TCR §293). By the same measure, we all have things we hold sacred, things we just won’t mess with because they’re too important to us. Shouldn’t the Lord be among those things? Shouldn’t He be first among them?

            And if the Lord is sacred, shouldn’t we protect our ability to recognize that He is sacred—to feel reverence in His presence? To feel a trace of reverence even when we speak His name? At very least, we mustn’t cheapen Him and our sense of the sacred by speaking of Him thoughtlessly or contemptuously.

            The Lord is a loving God who is near to us, and we don’t need to be afraid of Him; but He is also God forever, and the ground beneath His feet is holy. How can we draw near to him if we aren’t willing to see that He is what He is? He is our Father in the heavens; hallowed be His name.

Amen.

Giving Presents to the Lord (Christmas Day)

A Sermon by Dan Calvo

Pittsburgh New Church

December 25, 2025

Video:

Text:

Opening their treasures the wise men from the east offered gifts to the new-born Lord - gold, frankincense, and myrrh. 'Gold' here means good, 'frankincense' [means] internal truth, and 'myrrh' [means] external truth; both kinds of truth spring from good. In this instance 'gold' is the first to be mentioned because it means good, which is inmost; 'frankincense' is the second because it means internal truth springing from good; and 'myrrh' is the third or last to be mentioned because it means external truth springing from good. (…) The wise men from the east offered those gifts to the Lord born at that time to indicate His Divinity within His Humanity; for having a knowledge of correspondences and representations they knew what gold, frankincense, and myrrh each served to mean. (AC 10252)

The Christmas season is finally here, and this is such a wonderful time of the year. This is a time of the year when we get together with family we haven’t seen in a while, we get to share delicious food, we get to listen to beautiful Christmas music, but there is one main thing that every single one of us is looking forward to during Christmas, and that is presents. We all love getting presents for Christmas. Presents mean a lot to us, whether they come from a parent or a friend or our spouse, getting a present from someone we really care about can mean a whole lot to us and they make us feel very happy. And on the other hand, giving Christmas presents to someone that we love can be a wonderful way for us to show just how much we care about the people in our lives.

The reason why we exchange presents during Christmas is because we are celebrating the Lord's birthday, and like on any birthday it's very important to have presents to celebrate the person who was born that day. Imagine a birthday without presents! That would be pretty sad, right? But on the day of the Lord's birthday we are the ones usually getting the presents, while we don't really give presents to the Lord all that much. It's not easy to send a box of chocolates to heaven! But it’s very important that we give presents to the Lord, because the Lord is giving us presents all the time. He’s constantly taking care of us, and giving us good things that make us happy and healthy and fulfilled. For example, the Lord gave us life, He’s given us friends, family, the food that we eat, the water that we drink, the air that we breathe, every single good thing that has ever happened in our lives is a present from the Lord. So, if we are constantly getting presents from the Lord all year round then how can we show Him that same love? How do we give presents to the Lord so that we can celebrate how happy we are that He was born on earth?

When the Lord was born there was a group of three wise men from way in the east of Israel who had been waiting for the Lord to be born for a very long time, and so they decided to go and visit baby Jesus and His mother Mary where they were staying, and they brought gifts to celebrate the birthday of the Lord. They brought 3 gifts: they brought gold, frankincense, and myrrh. They brought these three gifts because they had a very special meaning and believe it or not, once we learn what the special spiritual meaning of these gifts is, we can learn how to give those same presents to the Lord not only on Christmas but every single day of the year.

First, we have gold. It's very easy to see why gold was a great present. Gold is very valuable and expensive. It is very pretty, and it is used for jewelry and of course, money. So how do we give gold to the Lord? Well, the special meaning of gold is that gold is a symbol for good. Gold is a symbol for kindness, for doing nice things for others, like doing chores around the house to help our family, for being nice to people and respecting others around us. Every time we are being loving to our neighbors, it is like we are taking some gold and offering it to the Lord as a present. This is partly why the Lord told us in the Word, “Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did [something kind] for one of the least of these brothers or sisters of Mine, you did it for Me.” (Matthew 25:40)

Next, we have frankincense. Frankincense is a mix of special herbs and plants that when they get dried up and you burn them they smell really, really nice. Frankincense was very important to the people of Israel because they used to burn frankincense in the temple because the Lord really liked the smell of frankincense. Now the special meaning of frankincense, is that frankincense is a symbol for worshipping the Lord. Whenever we go to church to worship and pray, it is like we are giving a present of frankincense to the Lord because He is overjoyed by the fact that we are spending time with Him. Spending time with the Lord by going to church on Sunday, or praying or reading the Word is a wonderful gift that we can give to the Lord. And when we invite someone else to come to church with us to worship the Lord, we get to make that present even more special because we are sharing it with somebody else and we get to bring them into the celebration. Right now, we are giving a gift to the Lord by being here in this room worshipping Him.

And finally we get to myrrh. Now, myrrh is a very interesting thing. Myrrh is kind of like medicine, it was used to heal certain wounds, it was used to protect people's skin and sometimes it was even used during funerary rituals. Myrrh was very, very expensive because it had so many different uses to it. So how do we give a present of myrrh to the Lord? Well, the special meaning of myrrh is that myrrh is a symbol for the truth that we find in the Word. When we read the Word, when we read the stories and all of the wonderful teachings that the Lord gave us about how to love our neighbor, and how to live a better life, we are reading the Lord's message to us and we are spending time with Him getting to know Him better. And when we are doing this it is like we are giving a present of myrrh to the Lord, we are giving a present to the Lord of wanting to spend time with Him, and wanting to learn more about the things that He has to say to us. And when we share a passage of the Word with someone who may really need it, we can make that present even more special, because we are sharing all the good things of the Word with someone who could really use that support, and once again, whatever good things we do for others, are also good things that we are doing for the Lord as well.

Now there is a very important thing to consider as we are giving presents to the Lord and it's that the Lord is way nicer than we are. If you think about it every single one of the presents that we are giving to the Lord are things that are good for us. Being kind to other people and doing good for our neighbors is good for our relationships with others, and it makes us happier. Spending time in church worshiping the Lord helps us be more connected with Him, and it helps us make new friends and develop community with the people who are worshipping with us. And when we read the Word, we learn new things that are going to make us happier, we learn how to be kind, we learn how to handle conflicts with our friends and our loved ones, and we learn how to treat other people. So, reading the Word is also a present for ourselves. Every single present that we are giving to the Lord by doing these things is also a thing that ends up being a present for ourselves because what the Lord wants more than anything in the universe is for us to be happy and closer to Him. And when we share those good things with others, we are making those presents even more special because we are sharing the joy in the way that the Lord wants us to do.

We can give presents to the Lord every single day of the year. Whenever we do a kind thing for our neighbor it's like giving a present of gold to the Lord. Whenever we go to church to worship it is like giving a present of frankincense to the Lord. And whenever we read the Word to learn more about the things that God wants us to know about, it is like giving a present of myrrh to the Lord. When we make it a goal in our everyday lives to do these things we constantly give new presents to the Lord to show Him how much we care about Him, and show Him our gratitude for all the presents that He is always giving us. If we make a habit of doing these things to celebrate the Lord, we can celebrate His birthday every single day of the year and we can show Him our love and our appreciation not only on Christmas but every day of our lives. Which means everyday can be Christmas! And how wonderful would that be? Amen.

Glory to God in the Highest

Rev. Jared Buss

Pittsburgh New Church; December 21, 2025

Readings: Luke 2:8-20; True Christian Religion §§118, 119

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Text: 

            In this portion of the service we’re going to focus on the words that the heavenly host said to the shepherds: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men!” (Luke 2:14). Why did the angels choose these words?

This was one of the most wonderful moments that has ever been recorded in all of history: God had been born on earth, and the heavens literally opened so that the angels could share their excitement and their joy. It’s easy to appreciate how awesome this would have been for the shepherds: there they were, on an ordinary night; and then, there was the glory of God, shining around them; and then they saw a host of angels with their own eyes. They were told something wonderful, something they were surely not expecting to be told when they went out into those fields: “There is born to you this day … a Savior…” (v. 11). They would have remembered these things vividly for the rest of their lives.

            What isn’t quite as obvious is that this moment would have been even more wonderful for the angels. Because they understood it. They knew why the Lord’s advent was necessary; they knew what He would accomplish. And they’d been waiting for Him for so long. The first prophecies of the coming of the Lord are given in the book of Genesis, which was written thousands of years before the Lord was born (e.g. Gen. 3:15). And in the Heavenly Doctrine we’re told that the angels of heaven and the people of the Most Ancient Church knew that the Lord must be born long before Genesis was even written (see SH §§250-260, 2523, 2661.2). What’s the longest that you’ve ever waited for a good thing? The answer is certainly not “thousands of years.”

            For just a moment, that heavenly host that appeared to the shepherds was able to share the thrill of the fulfilment of millennia of anticipation. They did this by saying thirteen words: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men!” Actually it’s just eleven words in the original Greek. Why did they pick those eleven words? What do these words really mean? The better we understand them, the better we understand what that the angels wanted to share with the shepherds that night. And the joy they shared with the shepherds is joy that they will share with us right now, if they can.

            But before we dig into the meaning of these words, let’s take a step back and consider what the angels knew, and why the Lord’s birth was so significant to them. The people of the Lord’s church at the time might have had a vague idea that they lived in a troubled era—but the angels would have known that the era was far more than “troubled.” The Lord’s kingdom was at a crisis point. The church on earth had failed, and the hells had become so powerful that they were extinguishing heaven’s connection with people on earth. The way the Heavenly Doctrine puts it is that “utter damnation stood threatening at the gate” (TCR §§3, 121.3). Hell was almost powerful enough to take away our spiritual freedom and damn us forever.

            And it wasn’t just people on earth who were in danger: the heavens themselves were starting to be swallowed up. That’s a bewildering idea, so we’re going to turn to a part of the Heavenly Doctrine that explains it. This reading is from True Christian Religion, and is printed on the back of your handout. The redemption spoken of here is the universal redemption that the Lord accomplished when He came to earth [read portions of §§118, 119].

            So the core idea here is that all of the heavens together with the church on earth are like one human being in the Lord’s sight—and if part of that person dies, all of it dies. These passages use a number of analogies or comparisons to illustrate this idea, which I didn’t read to you; but one of them is gangrene in the feet. A gangrenous wound in one part of the body will eventually kill the whole body.

            The real point is simply that the angels knew that they were in danger. They needed to be saved. And of course, everyone on on earth also needed to be saved, though they didn’t know it. The angels also knew that only the Lord could do what needed to be done. True Christian Religion says, “this redemption could not have been accomplished except by God incarnate” (§124). The angels acknowledged that they could do nothing on their own, and that they needed God—think of the humility and openness of spirit that go with that acknowledgment.

            Of course, the angels came to the shepherds the night the Lord was born, and on that night His work on earth had only just begun; His people had not yet been redeemed. But a tremendous step towards redemption had been taken. Something new had happened, something that had never been done before: the Word had become flesh. And what God sets out to do is guaranteed to be done. The Lord was still a little baby that night, but the angels knew that He was born a Savior and that He would save heaven and earth. Divine love does not fail. We’re told in the Heavenly Doctrine that while He was on earth the Lord Himself, “was filled repeatedly with an inmost confidence and faith that, because it was pure love out of which He was fighting for the salvation of the whole human race, He could not but be victorious” (SH §1812). So in a way, the angels saw and celebrated the end of the Lord’s work on earth as soon as that work began. The Lord was on the job, and they knew they were going to be okay.

            So they said, “Glory to God in the highest.” They gave to God the highest degree of glory they could give. And what is “glory”? That word means many things. On one level it means light—brilliant light. So in the story we’re told that the shepherds were out in the fields, and that an angel stood before them, and “the glory of the Lord shone around them” (Luke 2:8, 9). The Word often speaks of the glory of the Lord in a way that invites us to picture it as brightness. For example, in Exodus we read, “Now the glory of the Lord rested on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it six days…. The sight of the glory of the Lord was like a consuming fire on the top of the mountain” (24:16, 17). Note that in this example the glory of the Lord is covered by a cloud—it’s visible, but it’s also veiled.

            But “brightness” is just one of the meanings of the word “glory.” The word also means “reputation” or “honor” or “greatness.” Think about what it means when we say that this or that person is “pursuing glory”—it means that they want to make a name for themselves. And the Heavenly Doctrine says that in the highest sense, “glory” means truth. We read: “in the highest sense ‘glory’ is the Divine Truth which emanates from the Lord; and Divine Truth appears before angels’ eyes as the light and splendor from the Sun, which is the Lord” (SH §8427). So glory means the Lord’s truth, and it also means the power and greatness that go with that truth, on a lower level it means the light and splendor that also go with that truth. And what the angels were saying is that all of that—every bit of it—is God’s. All glory that can ever be given is to be given to God, because He alone is worthy of it. He alone was able to redeem us.

            What those angels really meant to say becomes even clearer when you compare what they said about glory with some of the other passages in the Word that speak of glory. In the Psalms we read: “Not to us, Lord, not to us, but to Your name give glory; because of Your mercy, because of Your truth” (115:1). Glory does not belong to us: it belongs to the God of mercy and truth. The angels understood this so well that night.

            Another passage that speaks of glory is this prophecy of the Lord’s advent from the book of Isaiah:

The voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be exalted and every mountain and hill brought low; the crooked places shall be made straight and the rough places smooth; and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together…. (40:3-5)

When the Lord was born on earth His glory was revealed; the veil was taken away. He made Himself visible. Again, the angels understood this, or at least partially understood it. So they celebrated His glory, and at the same time they testified that His glory had been revealed. “Glory to God in the highest.”

            And of course, that isn’t the only thing they said: they also said, “and peace on earth, goodwill toward men.” Were those words a wish, or a statement? Were the angels wishing peace and goodwill upon people on earth—or were they simply saying that the Lord had made peace on earth? The answer is probably, “both.” Of course the angels wish us peace; of course they bear us nothing but goodwill. Good people on earth are like that; surely the angels, who are filled with the Lord’s vitality, wish us peace and wish us well.

            We might wonder why they chose to wish us peace instead of joy or giddy excitement. But they said “peace” because they know that the deepest joy is found in peace, and is experienced as peace. In the book Heaven and Hell we’re told, “There are two inmost things of heaven, namely, innocence and peace. These are said to be inmost things because they proceed directly from the Lord. From innocence comes every good of heaven, and from peace every delight of good” (§285). Every delight of good, or every good delight, comes ultimately from the peace that is inmost in heaven. We’re told that that peace is in its essence, “the Divine joy of the Lord’s Divine love” (§286). That’s what the angels wish for us. Their words, “peace on earth, goodwill toward men” are an expression of a most complete desire for our happiness.

            And the angels were also saying that peace was already with us: because the Lord had been born, and He is Peace itself (ML §394; cf. HH §§285, 287). Where the Lord is present, there is peace. That’s why, when He appeared to His disciples after His resurrection, His first words were, “Peace to you” (Luke 24:36; John 20:19, 21, 26). So the angels celebrated the glory of God, and they celebrated that He had brought peace to earth; it was all part of rejoicing in what He had done.

            Unfortunately, none of us were among the shepherds who saw the heavenly host that night. That would have been something to see. But though more than two thousand years have passed, the hearts’ desires of the angels of heaven have not changed. They still rejoice for what the Lord has done; they rejoice that He stooped down and saved us when no one else could. They still bear us goodwill: they still want to share that joy. And they are nearer than we think. The Lord said, “The kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21). If we choose to follow God, the angels will accept us as one of themselves. And they’ll be with us. In the quiet of our minds we’ll hear them—a heavenly host—echoing our words every time we give thanks to God, every time we say, “Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever. Amen.” (Matt. 6:13).