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

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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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            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).

How Joseph Prepared for the Lord

Rev. Jared Buss

Pittsburgh New Church; December 14, 2025

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Readings: Matthew 1:18-25 (children’s talk); True Christian Religion §766; Matthew 18:15-17

            Last Sunday we talked about Mary, and how her acceptance of the call to become the mother of the Lord sets an example for us all. When the Lord calls us in unexpected ways, we can strive to answer as she answered: “Let it be to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38). This Sunday we’re reflecting on Mary’s husband, Joseph, and what we can learn from him about receiving the Lord.

            Of course none of us will receive the Lord the way that Mary and Joseph did—as a baby to physically care for. He has already been born on earth, and never will be again, because Divine work does not get undone. But it’s not like the Lord made His advent to a certain set of people who lived thousands of years ago and doesn’t come to us today. Right now He is striving to make a spiritual advent to each of us, as individuals. We’re told as much in True Christian Religion; you can find this reading in your handout [read §766].

 When we receive the Lord, He comes to us and is present with us in a new way—something new dawns within us. And that moment of reception is the advent of the Lord. And in many ways it’s what Christmas is all about. It is so important to celebrate what happened two thousand years ago; but for us right now, the thing that makes the biggest difference is our willingness to receive Him not just as “somebody’s God” but as our God, Creator, Redeemer and Savior. When we are so willing, something new from Him is born within us.

            And Mary and Joseph show us this willingness. They show us how to receive Him. They accepted that He would come and turn their lives upside down two thousand years ago; and in the internal sense of the Word, they represent the attitudes and qualities that are able to receive the Lord—the Lord who even now is with you, urging and pressing to be received.

            More than anything else, the quality that receives the Lord is a humble willingness to let Him change our lives; that’s the quality that Mary demonstrates so wonderfully. In the Heavenly Doctrine we’re told what she symbolizes in the internal sense of the Word: she symbolizes “the church as to the affection of truth” (God the Savior §37). In other words she stands for a tender affection, an innocent affection for what is right and beautiful. But, as I said, we’re focusing on Joseph today, not on Mary.

            The Heavenly Doctrine doesn’t spell out what Joseph symbolizes. But there’s a lot that we can work out just by looking at the story: he is Mary’s husband, her other half. She symbolizes an affection, which has to do with the will, or the heart; so he must symbolize something having to do with the understanding, or the head. The understanding is the partner to the will. If you look at the story, it’s pretty conspicuous that Mary’s job is tender—her job was to carry a baby—and that Joseph’s job is less so: he’s associated with all of the hard decisions that needed to be made to protect Mary and the baby. She stands for innocence within us, and he stands for something thoughtful.

            In many ways, Mary’s job was the more important one: she was the one who actually bore the Lord into the world. But it’s also pretty clear that if Joseph hadn’t been there, and if he hadn’t done the things he did, the Christmas story would not have ended happily. If he had publicly accused Mary of adultery, she might have been put to death. Even if she wasn’t, she would have been outcast and shunned, and then the Lord wouldn’t have been born into the orderly context that He needed to be born into. We’re told in the Heavenly Doctrine that, “It was necessary for Him to be born of a virgin in legitimate marriage with Joseph” (God the Savior §38). Joseph also provided for Mary; it was difficult for women to earn money in that era and culture. Food seems like a trivial thing when we’re thinking about the Lord who saved heaven and earth—but if Mary hadn’t been able to eat, she couldn’t have had a baby. Joseph was also the one who received the warning, from an angel in a dream, that Herod would try to destroy the Lord (Matthew 2:13), and he was the one who took Mary and the baby to safety in Egypt (v. 14).

            The point is that Joseph symbolizes something necessary: if we’re to receive the Lord, if He is to make His advent to us, then there needs to be something in us that plays Joseph’s part. And again, Mary represents something having to do with the will—and we need to be willing to receive the Lord—while Joseph represents something having to do with the understanding. Our understanding needs to be prepared, if we’re to receive the Lord.

            So what we’re going to do now is look more closely at Joseph’s behavior, as it’s described in the reading from Matthew, and reflect on what we can learn from him about how we should prepare ourselves to receive the Lord. There are two specific things that Joseph does that we’re going to focus on: the first is that he acts thoughtfully and carefully, and with integrity. The second is that he is willing to get himself out of the way.

            His commitment to acting thoughtfully is testified to in these verses:

After … Mary was betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Spirit. Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not wanting to make her a public example, was minded to put her away secretly. But while he thought about these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream… (Matt. 1:18-20)

The text passes over these events pretty quickly, and we should be careful not to invent whole stories where the Word itself only gives us a few lines. But those few lines do say a lot. Mary was found with child. Joseph knew he was not the father. Think about the emotions that he would have experienced. His eyes would have told him that he had been betrayed, and that kind of betrayal cuts deep. And it’s not like he was twitching at shadows—it’s not like he saw Mary talking to some guy and jumped to a conclusion. She was pregnant. The Word doesn’t tell us how that whole conversation went, but it does tell us that Joseph was a just man who took that emotional reaction and subjugated it to a consideration of what was right. He thought before he acted. And that is the job of the understanding. We need to use our ability to search for the truth to keep ourselves—and our feelings—in line, and that effort is necessary, if there is to be a safe space in us for the Lord to be born.

            Again, we don’t know how the conversation went, but presumably Mary told Joseph the truth—told him what the angel Gabriel told her. But Joseph was still “minded to put her away secretly,” which means he wasn’t fully convinced by her story. He had the opportunity to hear the truth, to hear the angel’s words in Mary’s mouth. But he didn’t completely buy what she told him. And maybe that’s reprehensible, but it’s hard to blame him too much. Can you imagine yourself in that situation—hearing your partner tell you that she was pregnant with the Child of God? In any case, we can see that Joseph wasn’t perfect—and neither are we. No one’s understanding comes up with the whole truth all on its own. What’s admirable about Joseph isn’t that he knew exactly what to do, but that he rose above his emotional response and looked for the right thing to do. And when we do that, we give the Lord an opportunity to send His angels to us; and the angels bring the light of heaven and show us things we could not have seen on our own.

            Joseph’s thoughtfulness and his measured response to a perceived injury resonates with other teachings from the Word. For example, here’s what the Lord says to us in Matthew about conflict resolution:

Moreover if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he hears you, you have gained your brother. But if he will not hear, take with you one or two more, that “by the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established.” And if he refuses to hear them, tell it to the church. But if he refuses even to hear the church, let him be to you like a heathen and a tax collector. (18:15-17)

What this teaching communicates is that the Lord wants us to escalate slowly. Start with a one-on-one conversation, and only get other people involved in your dispute if that one-on-one conversation doesn’t work. Don’t make your dispute public unless you have no other recourse. This is essentially what Joseph did: he didn’t make Mary a public example, but tried to fix his issues with her privately. Measuring and disciplining our responses to difficult circumstances is the job of the understanding; and when the understanding does that job, there is a safe space in us—a space that holds angry emotions and hellish voices at bay. And the affection that Mary represents needs that safe space, that quiet space—it needs the boundaries that the understanding establishes. Within that protected space, that affection can receive the Lord.

            The other admirable thing that Joseph did is that he got himself out of the way. We read, “Then Joseph, being aroused from sleep, did as the angel of the Lord commanded him and took to him his wife, and did not know her till she had brought forth her firstborn Son” (Matt. 1:24, 25). Like Mary, he accepted that his life was going to go very differently than he had expected it to. He got married, but for months he couldn’t consummate the marriage. Clearly he perceived that that would not have been appropriate. In that significant respect, his own marriage was not about himself (at least not at the beginning). And there were probably other ways in which he took a back seat within his own marriage. Once he realized that Mary was carrying the Son of God, he surely experienced a kind of reverence, or deference. She was doing holy work, and his job was to support her in her work.

            A lot of fathers have said that it was hard for them to watch their wives deal with all of the challenges that go with carrying a child—and especially hard for them to be with their wives while they were in labor—because they wanted to do more, they wanted to take on more of the work, but they couldn’t. This is partly because a lot of men struggle with being in the passenger seat (both figuratively and literally), and partly because a lot of husbands genuinely wish they could take their wives’ burdens from them. Think how much more Joseph would have struggled with feeling sidelined when it wasn’t even his child that his wife was carrying! But that was his role: he had to get himself out of the way. The wonderful things that were happening were not about him.

            The point is not that men should take a backseat in their marriages; in marriages there should be no dominion of one over the other of any kind (HH §380). The point is that if the Lord is to make His advent to us, our understanding has to yield. Like Joseph we need to try to do what’s right; we need to think about what’s right, so that we can preserve that ordered space within ourselves in which our innocent affections can safely dwell. And then, at a certain point, we have to give it up. We have to tell the Lord, “I don’t know; I just don’t know. Show me.”

When He makes His advent, He’ll come with light that we have never seen before. He’ll teach us wisdom we have never known. It isn’t about what we know; it’s about what He can show us. As John the Baptist said, “He must increase, but I decrease” (John 3:30).

            These are just a few things that we can learn from Joseph, as we prepare ourselves to receive a new spirit from the Lord.

Amen.

Mary's Innocent Wisdom

A Sermon by Dan Calvo

Pittsburgh New Church

December 7th, 2025

Video:

Text:

Picture this: Mary was about to start the happiest chapter of her life. She had finally found the love of her life, Joseph, and she was going to marry him. Everything that she could possibly hope for was coming together, and all of a sudden something happened that changed everything. An angel of the Lord came to her and told her: “Mary, you are going to have a baby, you are going to have the son of God: you are going to give birth to the Lord.”

In our own lives, we oftentimes go through things that are very similar to what Mary was going through in the story. Life is going great, we have a well-paying job, we have a good community around us, and the place we live in is comfortable. Everything is going okay in general, but then something comes into our mind, something that tells us to make a big change in our lives. We get a SPIRITUAL CALLING to do something completely new, a calling to do more, to give more to others, to find a way to be more useful to our neighbors. Maybe we feel a calling to find a new job that is closer to our true values and what we really want to bring to the world, or we feel the calling to volunteer for a good cause that we really believe in.

All these things are spiritual callings for change that are really good, and they can bring a lot of positive things into our lives, and yet there is always an element of uncertainty when we are faced with this powerful spiritual calling. We may feel the calling in our hearts, but we don’t know HOW this calling is going to come to life, we don’t know how it is actually going to happen. When we are faced with this level of uncertainty, we are in a position that is very similar to what Mary was experiencing in the story.

When Mary was faced with this huge calling, she could have been thinking about all the different ways in which it could have gone wrong: she could have lost her marriage, she could have lost her standing in the community, she could have even lost her life. And yet, she didn’t think about any of these things. She did not respond to the angel by asking “what if everything goes wrong?” Her answer had this childlike wonder to it, this INNOCENCE. Mary asked the angel “how can this be, since I am a virgin?”

While there was some uncertainty on her part about this new calling, her uncertainty wasn’t about WHETHER the Lord was going to make this miracle happen or not, but about HOW the Lord was going to make this miracle happen. There wasn’t a doubt in Mary’s mind that the Lord would bring this miracle to her life, and she was fully willing to be led by the Lord. Mary’s response in the story teaches us about innocence, and about how we can grow to develop a true innocence that comes from wisdom.

The innocence of wisdom is a very important concept in New Church doctrine. When we are children, we are in a first state of innocence that comes from not having knowledge of the world, so we have an innocence that comes from ignorance, and it presents as a childlike willingness to being led by our parents, teachers, and other adults in our lives. However, innocence that comes from wisdom is wanting to be led by the Lord. It is the innocent belief that the Lord is the one who is in charge, that He is the one who is going to carry us to a good result, and it is the willingness to be led by Him to that good result. The innocence that comes from wisdom in our adulthood is having experience of the world and knowledge of life and truth, and making an informed decision to allow ourselves to be guided by the Lord and by his Word. That's what the true innocence of wisdom is.

Mary, being a virgin, was still in the first state of innocence. In the Word, a “virgin” symbolizes an innocent state in us in which we want to be united with the Lord and to be led by Him. However, when Mary responded to the angel saying “how can this be?” she was taking the first steps to transition from the first state of childlike innocence to the adult state of innocence from wisdom, because she was starting to think more deeply about HOW the Lord was going to guide her, rather than passively following commands without giving them a second thought.

We can understand this more fully through this passage in Heaven and Hell, which you can find in the back of your handout, where it says that:

Real innocence is wisdom because to the extent that we are wise we want to be led by the Lord; or what amounts to the same thing, to the extent that we love being led by the Lord, we are wise. (HH 341)

In our own lives when we get this big spiritual calling for change, and we are uncertain about how this is going to happen, it can be a good approach to wonder about it and be curious about how the Lord will guide us through that calling, rather than being negative about the outcome before we’ve even gone down that journey. In the same way that Mary asked how the Lord was going to make this wonderful thing happen in her life, we can ask ourselves or meditate in prayer how He is going to make this calling come to life for us, and trust that He has a good plan for us.

This is the way to develop the real innocence from wisdom: we can do this by having an Affirmative Attitude. This affirmative attitude is the idea that while we may not understand something from the Lord, we are still willing to follow it, keep learning about it, and accept it in our lives, knowing that it is a good thing because it is coming from the Lord. That's what Mary was doing in this story, she had an affirmative attitude when the angel told her that she was going to give birth to the Lord. When she asked how this would happen, she didn't ask it from the perspective of not believing that the Lord was going to make it happen, she asked it from the perspective of wondering HOW the Lord was going to make it happen. There was no doubt in Mary's mind that the Lord was going to give her a baby while being a virgin, she was just wondering how the process was going to look.

It's interesting that the angel told her about her cousin Elizabeth and her husband Zachariah, because Elizabeth and Zachariah show a different end of the spectrum of how we can have an affirmative attitude and an innocent wisdom in allowing ourselves to be led by the Lord. Zachariah was told by the angel of the Lord that his wife Elizabeth, who was an elderly woman, was going to have a child. However, Zachariah responded in the opposite way to Mary. Zachariah did not believe that this was going to happen, he didn’t trust that the Lord would make his wife have a baby, and as a punishment he was not able to speak until his child was born.

This shows the difference between an affirmative attitude and an attitude that is not affirmative, and the difference between an innocent wisdom and a wisdom that does not allow itself to be innocent. We can't say that Zachariah was not a wise man, he wanted to follow the Lord, and he wanted to follow and teach the Law, he was a good, wise man. But he didn't fully trust that what the Lord was saying was actually going to happen. So, the road to receiving the blessing of having a child was a lot more difficult for him than what happened with Mary.

We can see this explained more deeply in this passage from Secrets of Heaven, which you can find in the back of your handout, which explains that:

Good cannot pass into a negative attitude, nor even into one of doubt, until this [attitude] becomes affirmative. (…) For good is flowing in constantly from the Lord, but where no affirmative attitude exists it is not accepted. An affirmative attitude is therefore the first means and so to speak first dwelling-place of the good flowing in from the Lord. (AC 3913)

In our own lives the more we resist a spiritual calling to become better and do more for others, and the more we push back against this spiritual growth, the harder it is for good things to happen in our lives. For example, if we get a calling to start a new job that is closer to our values and is of more use to the neighbor, if we push back against it and really don't want to embrace the calling, at some point we may start feeling unfulfilled at our job, until we make the decision to embrace this calling and go to a job that really does fulfill us and that really gives us a purpose. So even though change and growth may still happen somewhere down the line, and we may finally embrace this new calling from the Lord to change our lives, the road to getting to those blessings will be a whole lot more difficult if we don't have that affirmative attitude and that innocence of wisdom of allowing ourselves to be led by the Lord to that good result.

In the story, after Mary asked the angel how this would come to pass, and the angel told her how the Lord was going to make it happen, Mary responded by humbling herself and saying, “let it be according to your Word, I am the servant of the Lord.” Through this response, Mary was showing the development of the true innocence of wisdom in her mind and heart. Mary opened herself up to this blessing with humility, she allowed herself to be open to the change that the Lord was going to bring to her life and she allowed herself to be led in this path to come to that good result, to have the blessing of bringing life into the world. When we humble ourselves in this way, and we accept the leadership of the Lord, that is the innocence of wisdom in action.

Notice how at the end of the story Mary was neither distressed nor fearful. All that Mary had was PEACE. Peace in knowing that the Lord was taking care of her through this big life change. Peace and innocence go hand in hand, because peace itself is trust that the Lord is leading us to a good result. When we trust in the Lord, navigating change and going through all these different things in our lives becomes a whole lot more peaceful, and a lot less uncertain. The book Secrets of Heaven says that those who are in the innocence of wisdom “know that for those who trust in the Divine all things advance toward a happy state to eternity, and that whatever befalls them in time is still conducive to it” (AC 8478).

When we humble ourselves and consciously choose to be led by the Lord in our new calling, not only do we allow the Lord to bring blessings into our own lives, we allow the Lord to bring blessings and good to the lives of other people around us as well. When Mary opened herself up to that calling from the Lord, she brought the Lord to the world, she brought life. And this was not only joyful for her back then, it was joyful for every single one of us here today, thousands of years after it happened. We can do that too when we allow ourselves to innocently accept the calling: we can bring joy, peace, love, and life not only to ourselves, but to everybody around us. When we have this innocent wisdom and we are affirming, and we decide to follow our new spiritual calling, whatever that may be, wonderful things can happen!

So, if we are thinking about a new spiritual calling to do better, to be closer to the Lord and more useful and kind to others around us, let us allow ourselves to embrace the blessings that the Lord wants to bring into our lives, let us allow ourselves to make the wise choice of letting the Lord guide us, so that we may respond in the same innocent way that Mary did, by saying the words: “Behold, I am the Lord’s servant; may it be done to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38). Amen.

LESSON: Luke 1:26-38.

Thanksgiving (Getting What We Need)

A Sermon by Dan Calvo

Pittsburgh New Church

November 27th, 2025

Sometimes when we really want something, we pray to the Lord and ask Him to give us what we want. We may ask the Lord to help us get our dream job, a relationship with someone we really like, or even a vacation trip to the Caribbean. We ask the Lord to please help us achieve our goals, and when we achieve them we are very grateful, and we say thank you to the Lord for giving us all the wonderful things that we wanted. But sometimes, even if we pray to the Lord for something that we really, really want, we still don't get it. Sometimes we don’t get the job, the person that we wanted to start a relationship with was not interested, and we can’t go on that trip to the Caribbean.

In the Gospel of Matthew, the Lord promised us that we could always reach out to Him asking for what we want, and He said:

“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. Or what person is there among you who, when his son asks for a loaf of bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, he will not give him a snake, will he? So if you, despite being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him! (Matthew 7:7-11)

The Lord told us we could ask Him for what we wanted and He would provide for us. So, when we reach out to the Lord, and we pray for the things that we want, and we don't get them, a lot of times we may feel betrayed. Maybe we worry that we have done something wrong to make the Lord angry at us, or maybe we think that He's ignoring our prayers or that we don't deserve any good things and that the Lord is not going to help us because He doesn't like us and He doesn't really care about us, and doesn't want us to be happy, and we get all of these crazy thoughts. When this happens, it can make us feel very sad, because we want to have that connection with the Lord and we want to feel that we are being taken care of, and when we pray for something and we don't get it, it can be pretty hard to believe that the Lord is taking care of us.

There is an old song by this band called The Rolling Stones, and this song it's called “You can't always get what you want.” And the chorus goes “you can't always get what you want but if you try sometimes then you just might find you get what you need.” And it may not be a religious song but there are very few songs that describe so perfectly how the Lord takes care of us.

What the Lord wants more than anything in the entire universe is for us to be happy, and everything that happens in our lives is being guided by the Lord to lead us to the happiest possible result. And sometimes that means that we don't get exactly what we want but we get what we really need. For example, who here would like to eat pizza, ice cream, cookies and cake for dinner every single day? That sounds great, right? But if we did that, we would probably get pretty sick, pretty quickly. So even if it is what we want it isn't what we need. What we need is healthy food. That's what the Lord is providing for us all the time. The Lord isn't always giving us what we want but He's always giving us what we need.

And even when it feels like the Lord is not listening to our prayers the truth is that He is always listening to our prayers, but He responds to those prayers based on what we really need in our lives. This passage from Secrets of Heaven says this:

Little attention is paid to the prayers of those in the middle of temptation; for the Lord desires the end in view, which is a person's salvation. The Lord knows that end, but a person does not, and the Lord does not do what prayers ask for if that is contrary to the end, which is salvation. (…) In prayer, when inspired by God, there is always the thought and belief that the Lord alone knows whether what is sought would be beneficial or not. Therefore, the one who prays leaves the Lord to decide whether to listen to what he asks for, then accordingly pleads that the Lord's will may be done, not his own, in keeping with the Lord's words. (AC 8179)

This is why when we say the Lord's prayer, we say “give us today Our Daily Bread.” We ask the Lord to provide us with the things that we want, and the things that we need, but we also have to say “Thy will be done” meaning that while we may ask for things, the Lord is the only one who knows for sure what we need and we have to trust that even when we don't get the things that we want every single time we ask for them, the Lord always knows exactly what we actually need in our lives.

The Lord is constantly providing us with the things that we need to be happy, and He does it every single moment of every single day. This is why the Lord told us in the sermon on the mount:

“Do not be worried about your life, as to what you will eat or what you will drink; nor for your body, as to what you will put on. Is life not more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the sky, that they do not sow, nor reap, nor gather crops into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more important than they? And which of you by worrying can add a single day to his life’s span? And why are you worried about clothing? Notice how the lilies of the field grow; they do not labor nor do they spin thread for cloth, yet I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, will He not much more clothe you? You of little faith! Do not worry then, saying, ‘What are we to eat?’ or ‘What are we to drink?’ or ‘What are we to wear for clothing?’ For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things; for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be provided to you. (Matthew 6:25-33)

So, when we are feeling frustrated when we pray for something but don’t get it, we can deal with that frustration by accepting that the Lord is in charge of everything good that happens in our lives, and He always knows better when it comes to what we need. When we don't get something that we really wanted, chances are that it wasn't going to be that good for us, and the Lord is making some space for us to get the things that will make us actually happy. For example, maybe we didn't get the job that we really wanted but we got a new offer for a job that is even better. Maybe the person that we were interested in was not available for a relationship but then we meet someone else who is just perfect for us and is interested. Maybe we didn’t get that trip to the Caribbean, but if we had gone on that trip we would have gotten caught in the middle of a hurricane, so it actually worked out that we didn’t go on that trip. Sometimes we don't get the things that we think we really want in the moment so that we can get the things that will make us the happiest in the long term later down the line.

Even if we don’t get what we want every time, we can still be grateful to the Lord for all the wonderful gifts that He has given us and all the ways in which He provides for us. And if we make it a point every day to say thank you to the Lord and be grateful for all the good things that He is already giving us, our whole outlook on life is going to change. When we live every day with gratefulness, it becomes a whole lot easier to see all the good things that we already have in our lives, instead of focusing on whatever things we don’t have. Having a grateful attitude helps us to be much happier and much more connected with the Lord. In fact, this is why the Lord tells us to be grateful to Him for all the good things that He does for us. He doesn't tell us to be grateful to Him for His own sake, He tells us to be grateful for our own well-being.

This passage from Secrets of Heaven which you can find in the back of your handout goes into this in more detail by saying this:

The Lord does, it is true, demand humility, worship, thanksgiving, and much else from a person, which seem like repayment, so that His gifts do not seem to be free. But the Lord does not demand those things for His own sake, for the Divine derives no glory at all from a person's humility, worship, or thanksgiving. It is completely inconceivable that any selfishness should exist within the Divine, causing Him to require such actions for His own sake. Rather, they are required for a person’s own sake, for if someone possesses humility he is able to accept good from the Lord, since in that case he has been parted from selfishness and its evils which stand in the way of his accepting [that good from the Lord]. Therefore, the Lord desires a state of humility in a person for that person's sake, because the Lord can flow in with heavenly good when that state exists in [a person]. The same applies to worship and thanksgiving. (AC 5957)

The more we focus on being grateful to the Lord for all the good things that He gives us every day, the easier it is for the Lord to bring even more happiness into our lives. Let's test that theory right now. Let’s share what we are grateful for.

DO EXERCISE

Do you notice how you instantly feel better when you focus on being grateful for the things that you have? The more we focus on being grateful the easier it is for us to see all the good things that the Lord is already doing for us. The Lord is always taking care of us, He's protecting us, He's providing for us, He is leading us to all the things that will make us the happiest that we can possibly be, not just for this life on earth but also for Heaven. Sometimes when the Lord is providing for us, we will not get every single thing that we want, but the Lord is making sure that we are getting everything that we need to be saved and closer to Him. So today as we go home and spend time with our loved ones and share a delicious meal, let’s take a moment to look around and be grateful to the Lord for providing us with all these wonderful blessings. Let’s be grateful for our family, for the food, for our community, for the gift of being alive. Let us take a moment and say thank you to the Lord, because when we didn't get what we wanted, He gave us exactly what we needed. Amen.

Humbling Ourselves for the Lord

A Sermon by Dan Calvo

Pittsburgh New Church

November 9th, 2025

One of the best feelings in the world is the feeling of being in control. That feeling we get when we are on top of everything in our life, when we get everything that we need to get done finished in our To Do List, when we are keeping track of our health, working out and eating healthy, when we are paying all our bills, when we are getting all our errands done, and when we are moving forward in life knowing that we are getting things done and that we are in control. When we are in this great situation, we almost feel like we are a commander of an army, being able to direct every part of our life to go the way that we want. It truly feels amazing to be in charge.

But then of course as it happens we realize that we are not in charge. Life comes at us really fast, and before we know it we are faced with just how limited we are, and how much we do not have control over the world. Maybe we lose our job because there were cuts, maybe we get into an accident and get injured, maybe we get sick, maybe a family member passes away, or there is some sort of a natural disaster. All these things are completely out of our control and most of the time we cannot really keep them from happening. When we are faced with these challenges in our lives we have to look at ourselves and realize that we are limited human beings and that we are actually not in charge. This realization that we are limited and that we do not have the power to control everything in the world can bring a lot of pain to us, because we like to believe that we have the power to control everything that can happen to us and that we have the power to take control over the world around us and avoid any bad thing that may come our way. And of course, the reality is that we do not have that power and when we face that reality it can be very painful because then we come face to face with the fact that in many ways we are completely, absolutely, powerless.

The centurion in the story that we just read today for the children's talk was in a very similar situation to this. For context, a centurion as we talked about was a commander of the Roman army who was in charge of 100 warriors, sometimes even more and they were chosen to become centurions after proving themselves in battle and after passing very strict standards of physical ability and martial prowess. Centurions in many cases were from wealthy backgrounds, but a wealthy background was not enough to get them in that position. They had to prove that they were warriors who were strong enough and powerful enough to command 100 Roman soldiers for the most dominant empire on earth. So clearly, a centurion was someone you did not want to mess with. A centurion had a lot of control over the lives of others, and yet in this story this centurion did not have the power to heal his servant. The centurion had enough authority to command over 100 warriors and he probably had the resources to get the best medicine available to anyone in the world at that time with him being a high-ranking officer of the Roman army, and yet he still wasn’t able to change his situation. He could not heal his servant, he was completely powerless to do so.

In our own lives we like to believe that we are like the centurion, that we have all this power and authority over our lives. Maybe it comes from our education, from the wealth that we have been able to accumulate or that has been passed down to us, or maybe it comes from our physical prowess or even our appearance. And we may go through life thinking that we are in control and that we have the power to take charge over any situation that comes our way and yet we have to be faced a lot of times with the fact that we don't have that power, we don't have that authority. We cannot miraculously heal every illness, we cannot prevent natural disasters from happening, and we cannot bring the dead back to life. We are not God. We are limited. We are powerless.

If the centurion had decided to rely on his own power and his own authority to deal with his servant’s illness, his servant would have died. If we do not accept our limitations, we will bring tremendous suffering into our lives and even the lives of others. We can become riddled with anxiety over the fact that we have to be on top of everything, and we have to be in control of every single little part of our lives and if anything doesn't go according to plan then we become distressed because we feel that we are failing at being worthy human beings. If we go through life believing that we must be in control all the time when we are faced with the absolute truth that we are not in control and that left to our own devices we are actually powerless we may very well lose hope, we may lose faith, we may lose our confidence, and we may end up living in fear that something is going to happen to us and we won’t be able to do anything about it. Or on the other hand, we will try to bite a whole lot more than we can chew trying to take control over situations that we cannot control, living in denial over our own limitations.

If someone in our lives was to develop an incurable disease, we would do that person a terrible disservice if we were to tell them that we have the power to heal them. In the same way we would do ourselves and our families a terrible disservice if we were to see the weather forecast in the news saying that there is a dangerous tornado coming our way and because we weren’t ready and it didn’t go according to our plan for that evening, we freeze up and become desperate. In all these situations we end up asking ourselves the same question, “What do I do?”

It may sound counterintuitive but the best way to deal with this difficult situation is to humble ourselves and surrender to the supreme authority of God. This is something that may challenge a lot of our notions in our modern culture that call on us to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and get over it and just push through and try to take control under any circumstance. Humility and allowing the Lord to take charge of our lives aren’t really qualities that are seen as positive in our modern world. But really that is an unhealthy and unrealistic way of trying to deal with our limitations as human beings. In this story, the centurion recognized this, and he reached out to the Lord and asked Him to heal his servant. Recognizing that there is a power greater than ourselves that can actually help us and guide us and take care of us is the first step in achieving the humility we need to allow the Lord to lead us through life.

This passage from Secrets of Heaven which you can find in the back of your handout explains this state of humility further, by saying this:

A state of true humility can only exist when people acknowledge that of themselves they are profane and condemned, and so of themselves are incapable of looking towards the Lord where everything is Divine and Holy. To the extent therefore that a person acknowledges his own condition he can possess true humility, and when engaged in worship can have real devotion. For all worship must contain humility, and if separated from it no adoration and so no worship at all is present. The reason a state of humility is vital to worship itself is that insofar as the heart is humbled selfishness and all resulting evil come to an end; and insofar as these come to an end good and truth, that is, charity and faith, flow in from the Lord.

This recognition that by ourselves we are powerless and we cannot lead good lives without the guidance of the Lord is at the core of humility. When we acknowledge that we are limited, that everything that is good in our souls and in our lives comes from the Lord and not from ourselves, then we can achieve a level of humility that will allow us to overcome the challenges in our lives because we will no longer be relying on our own strength but on the infinite strength of the Lord. While we may not have the power or authority to be in control of everything in the world or in our lives there is one thing that we are absolutely in control of, and that is our willingness to humble ourselves and allow the Lord to take charge of our lives.

And when we allow ourselves to rely on the Lord, He is able to come into our lives and bring peace and healing. As the Lord was reaching the centurion’s house, the centurion sent messengers and said, “Lord you do not have to enter my house because I am not worthy of it. I know that if you simply want it to be so my servant will be healed.” The centurion completely humbled himself before the Lord and he was absolutely convinced that the Lord could heal his servant, that the Lord had the power to take over the situation, and that He was in charge. The centurion recognized that his own authority as a powerful warrior, as a leader of 100 men was meaningless compared to the supreme authority of the Lord, and when he humbled himself in this way he allowed the Lord to do His work and heal his servant.

Heavenly peace, which is the peace that is experienced by angels in heaven, comes from an absolute reliance in the authority of the Lord. One of the most important passages in the Heavenly Doctrines, from the book Secrets of Heaven, says this:

Peace holds within itself trust in the Lord, the trust that He governs all things and provides all things, and that He leads towards an end that is good. When a person believes these things about Him he is at peace, since he fears nothing and no anxiety about things to come disturbs him.

When we recognize that the Lord is in charge and that He is always leading us to a good result we can surrender to His care, and we can end up appreciating the fact that our lack of control over the world is a very good thing. We don't have control over the weather, we don't have control over death, we don't have control over what is going to happen tomorrow. And thank goodness that we don't have that control! Thank goodness that we are not in charge! Because there is someone who is looking at every single miniscule detail of our lives and carefully guiding us to the best possible result that will make us happy and fulfilled, and that person is the Lord. When we trust in His care, we know that we can deal with every situation that comes our way, no matter what it is, because we are not relying on ourselves, we are relying on the Lord.

While we may go through life thinking that we are in control and that we have the ultimate authority to take charge of everything in the world around us, the truth is that we do not have that power but when we humble ourselves, and surrender to the care and guidance of God, we can let go of all the anxiety and pain that we've been going through while worrying about being in charge. We can achieve heavenly peace and spiritual healing by relying on the higher power that is taking care of us at every single moment of our lives. We can let Him take the lead, let Him be the centurion and commander of every aspect of our lives, because He will guide us to the best possible result, not only in this life but to eternity. Amen.

Serving the Naked

A Sermon by Dan Calvo

Pittsburgh New Church

September 28th, 2025

Video:

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Fall is finally here, and soon we will find ourselves in the middle of winter. Now in this part of the world that we live in winter can be very, very cold, and there are few things that are more comforting during the winter than having a good winter coat that can keep us warm. This not only applies to winter of course, but during the summer we wear clothes that are lighter and allow us to stay cool. If we are working a blue collar job like in construction we need clothing that is fitting for our job, like good work boots or gloves that can help us work safely, and depending on what kind of office we work at, it’s important to wear appropriate business clothes for the way we present ourselves. Clothing is something that a lot of times we can take for granted but it is so important to our quality of life on so many levels from our personal expression to our personal safety and comfort.

Unfortunately, while we can take these things for granted, the truth is that there are millions of people in the world who do not have access to these privileges. There are millions of people who do not have access to a good winter coat or shoes so they can walk safely in the streets, or who only have a few items of clothing that are ripped and broken. Millions of people in the world, including children, women, and the elderly, are struggling because they do not have access to good quality clothes that can protect them in different kinds of weather.

The Lord told us to serve our neighbors, and for the last few weeks we have been talking about the different kinds of people that the Lord tells us to serve. We have talked about serving the hungry, the thirsty, and the stranger, and today we will be talking about serving the naked. Now of course in this part of the world that we live in we don't tend to see a lot of naked people in the streets, but if we think of the naked as people who do not have access to appropriate clothes to protect them, then we can see more easily how we can serve people in this situation. There are many organizations across the world that take clothing donations and will distribute those clothes for people in need, and we can donate from our own clothes to these organizations. It can be a very powerful thing to look at our wardrobe and see if there are clothes that we don't really need or that we don't really care about and take those clothes and bring them to a place where there will be people who are really in need of those things that we take for granted. It can be a very powerful shift in perspective to see those clothes that we don't really think about mean so much to somebody else. When we do this, we can serve the naked in the natural sense as the Lord told us to do.

Now, of course as we have covered in previous sermons in this series, we're not only told to serve our neighbor in a natural sense, but we're also told to serve our neighbors in a spiritual sense. So, who are the spiritually naked that we are meant to serve? The spiritually naked are people who are lacking truth, or people who are lacking guiding principles in their life, and who are looking for that truth to guide them and protect them from the hardship of the world. This comes from the fact that in the Word, whenever clothing is mentioned, the Word is speaking about truth. The book Apocalypse Revealed says that:

Clothes in the Word symbolize truths that clothe good, and in an opposite sense, falsities that clothe evil. For a person embodies either his goodness or his evil. Truths or falsities are therefore his clothes. (AR 45)

It's easy to see why clothing has this spiritual meaning: all truth and good comes from the Lord, none of it comes from us. So, if we don't have the truth, faith, and values that come from the Lord, then we have nothing of our own, we are spiritually naked. For example, when we feel grief over losing a loved one, if we don’t have any idea that there is an afterlife or that the person who passed is at peace in the other world, then we feel pain, like not having a coat during a snowstorm. If we are going through life trying to keep our integrity, but we don’t have any solid foundation of values and faith, then it is like walking down a rocky path with no shoes on. We need truths from the Lord to cover us, to keep us safe as we go through life.

On the one hand, it seems pretty obvious how we can serve the spiritually naked who are lacking truths in their life and are looking for it. We can share the truths that we get from the Word, we can help instruct them in these ideas from the Word, and in doing so we can in a way donate spiritual clothing from our own spiritual wardrobe to those people. We can share the spiritual clothing that we get from the Lord, and the good thing is there's a surplus, there's a never-ending amount of spiritual clothing that we can get from the Word and that we can share with other people.

But there is another aspect to this problem of being spiritually naked, that isn’t just the lack of truth when facing adversity. Clothing serves to protect us from the elements, but it also serves as a powerful form of personal expression of our identity. This is something that starts very early on in our lives when we are teenagers and young adults, when we experiment with using clothing to represent our personality, and we continue to do that throughout our lives whether we realize it or not. The clothes that we wear are often a representation of our identity, from the brands that we buy from, to the quality of the fabric and the style that we wear, our clothes can be a representation of everything from how we perceive ourselves and how we want to be perceived, to even things like our tax bracket. We can learn a lot about a person by seeing the way that they dress. All these things can be an external representation of our identity whether we are realizing it or not.

We can see how this applies to the spiritually naked, because as we go through life we are searching for our identity, we are searching for who we truly are, and there are many people in the world right now who are searching for an identity, and they look for it in all sorts of places. This happens especially with teenagers and young adults who oftentimes look for an identity in trends on social media like TikTok or YouTube, and who are struggling to find who they really are. Adults can do that too, but we tend to do it based on political parties or ideologies or even our economic status. We hold on to these things and try to build an identity around them, but ultimately those are external things, they are superficial and flawed, they're not real spiritual clothing that can provide us with a true sense of self, and if we take a good look in the mirror, we realize that we are actually spiritually naked if we look for an identity in these places. It is very similar to the story of the emperor’s new clothes, in that we can go out into the world thinking that we are wearing magnificent clothes, thinking that we have a powerful identity, but really we are walking around spiritually naked, going along with what others are telling us our identity should be.

We may look at this problem of people who are struggling with an identity crisis, who are struggling to figure out who they are in this world, and think to ourselves, “how do we serve these people?” If we believe that without the Lord we have nothing, doesn’t that mean that we ourselves in the New Church don’t have an identity at all, that we lose our personal identity when we surrender to following the Lord? Isn’t putting on the Lord's spiritual clothing like putting on a uniform and conforming to a single way of being?

The thing is that just as the Lord's truth is infinite, it also manifests itself in infinite kinds of spiritual clothing. The Lord doesn't give us uniforms, He provides us with infinite styles and infinite kinds of ways that we can cover ourselves with His truth and His kindness, but they all have the same fabric, which is His truth. In fact, the more that we decide to surrender ourselves to the Lord, the more that we accept that without Him we are spiritually naked, the more we can develop an identity of our own, and the freer we become as individuals.

The book Divine Providence explains this further in a series of passages, saying that:

The more closely we are united to the Lord, the more clearly we seem to have our own identity, and yet the more obvious it is to us that we belong to the Lord. The reason we are more clearly aware that we belong to the Lord as our sense of identity becomes clearer is that the more closely we are united to the Lord the wiser we become; and wisdom both teaches this and is conscious of it. Since the goal of the Lord's divine providence is a heaven from the human race, it follows that the goal is the union of the human race with the Lord. It also follows that the goal is for us to become wiser and happier because of this union, because we are given heaven through our wisdom and in proportion to it, and this is what gives us happiness. Lastly, it follows that the goal is for us to have a clearer sense of our identity and yet to be more clearly aware that we belong to the Lord (DP 42, 44, 45).

When we willingly surrender ourselves to the care and guidance of the Lord, and we accept that without Him we are stripped of anything good and true in our lives, we realize that there is actually tremendous freedom to develop as individuals when we accept this. Think of it like this: we all depend on electricity. We take it for granted, it powers our homes, our phones, our cars, and we have all decided to depend on it without really questioning it, and in doing so we have found tremendous freedom to develop as individuals. How much more can we develop as individuals if we accept that every good thing we have in our lives comes from the Lord and not from ourselves or other sources? How many more unique ways of expressing our identity can we find if we surrender ourselves to the care of the Lord, who provides us with all kinds of spiritual clothing?

When we willingly cover ourselves with the truth that the Lord provides by means of His Word, and we become willing to follow Him instead of trying to find an identity in other places, we will find that we are actually much freer and unique, because we are covering ourselves with clothing that is everlasting, that is not going to degrade or break, and that is custom-made for us. The Lord doesn’t want to take away our individuality, on the contrary, He wants to provide us with spiritual clothing that is perfectly suited for each one of us individually, so that we can express ourselves to the best of our capability under His guidance.

There is a good chance that we all know someone who is struggling with an identity crisis. It might be a younger person who is struggling to find their place in the world, it may be someone who is going through a divorce or separation and is trying to figure out who they are without their spouse, it may be someone who is grieving after losing someone they love and discovering what life is without them, or it may be someone recovering from substance abuse who is finding their way into a new sober life. In all these circumstances people look at themselves and ask, “who am I? What is my identity?” And we can help people in that situation by sharing truths from the Word so that they can explore what it means to grow more as an individual by following the Lord and looking to be united with Him.

Just how we can serve those who are struggling with a lack of access to clothes by donating some of our own clothes, we can serve those who are spiritually naked by sharing with them some of the truths that we carry on us, that have helped us develop our own identity. Once we share those spiritual clothes with others, they will have the opportunity to develop their identity in unity with God, an identity that is not dependent on external appearances or labels, but rather an identity that is based on a deep connection with the timeless infinity of God. Amen.