Spiritual Longing

Preached on 07-22-01

SPIRITUAL LONGING

A Sermon by the Rev. Patrick A. Rose

"Salt is good; but if the salt has lost its flavor, how shall it be seasoned?" (Lk. 14:34)

ALL OF US, AT TIMES, get enthusiastic, get all fired up, about some idea, some project, that we want to accomplish. We convince ourselves that we have a good idea. We tell ourselves that nothing will stand in the way of our intentions. And if others suggest that perhaps we are not being realistic, we don’t listen to them: they are being negative, or overly skeptical. In our state of initial enthusiasm we don’t allow doubts of any kind to enter our minds. And yet, of course, initial enthusiasm rarely lasts. As time goes on, our eagerness begins to wane. Other things attract our interest. And after a while we simply move on to other things, other ideas, other projects.

Each of us can think of countless examples in our lives, examples of things that we initially decided upon enthusiastically, but which we then later lost interest in. And it’s part of human nature, isn’t it? Someone goes out and buys a treadmill because he is going to start exercising regularly. And for a few days, maybe even a few weeks, he enthusiastically exercises every morning. But all too often, in a month or so, that expensive piece of equipment lies idle, unused. Or we decide that we are going to completely reorganize our office or our house. We might even get folders, make charts, plans, whatever. Yet somehow projects such as this have a tendency to fall by the wayside as soon as life gets busy.

It is human nature to get enthusiastic. It is also human nature to lose this enthusiasm later on. Each of us can look back and remember very many things that we at one time intended to do, but then later failed to accomplish. Sometimes such failures are relatively trivial: it really doesn’t really matter, after all, if some new hobby is later abandoned. But then there are other more serious areas of life where failure, failure to accomplish what we set out to do, can have grave consequences. And nowhere is this more so than in the area of religion.

Whether or not we remain committed to our religion can have eternal consequences. There is a sense in which it might seem ironic that when it comes to the life of religion, -- something that is of the greatest importance -- -- we can find it so very difficult to retain a sense of enthusiasm. We can so easily end up feeling jaded, bored, uninterested, and perhaps even repelled, by those very things on which our eternal happiness depends. Now why is this? What causes us to lose enthusiasm for the life of religion? And what can we do when we find our interest in spiritual things has disappeared? What can we do to restore a sense of excitement and a feeling of commitment to our religion?

The Lord speaks of this subject a number of times in the New Testament. The Lord called upon people to follow Him. For those who decided to follow Him, it was a big commitment. It meant leaving behind their families, their homes, their possessions, so that they could follow the Lord as He traveled throughout the land. And this was not an easy thing to do. People would make excuses. One man told the Lord that he would follow Him after he had buried his father. But the Lord said to Him: "Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and preach the kingdom of God." (Lk. 9:60). Another wanted to return home briefly to say farewell to his family. But to him the Lord said, "No one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God" (Lk. 9:62).

It sounds as if the Lord was being harsh, but what the Lord saw was that these men were intending to use these and similar excuses to back out of their commitment to Him. The Lord knew that those who followed Him would have to leave behind the people and the places that they loved. The Lord knew that it was not easy, not easy at all, for them to follow Him. Nor is it easy for us to do so. For us to follow the Lord involves, in essence, a complete rejection of things that we love. It requires us to make sacrifices. The Lord expressed it this way: He said that, "If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple. And whoever does not bear his cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple" (Lk. 14:26-27). What the Lord was teaching was not that we should reject our families, but rather, that we should reject certain things we have inherited from them. We must reject those tendencies toward evil we have acquired through birth and may also have acquired through upbringing. If we are to follow the Lord, then we must put behind ourselves those evil things we might happen to love. And this is often not easy. The Lord said, "whoever of you does not forsake all that he has cannot be My disciple" (Lk. 14:33). Sometimes it can seem very hard indeed to follow the Lord. Therefore, it is not surprising, not surprising at all, that we can lose our enthusiasm. But then the Lord adds these words. He says: "Salt is good; but if the salt has lost its flavor, how shall it be seasoned?" (Lk. 14:34).

Now the reason the Lord speaks of salt here, is that salt is a symbol of that very thing, that very quality, which we must have if we are to remain committed to the life of religion. Yes, it can be hard at times to follow the Lord. Yes, it can be hard to resist things that we might love, and do what is good instead. But if, deep within us, we care, if we really care, about our religion, then it becomes far easier, far more palatable, to follow the Lord.

The Book of Job talks about salt. In the midst of his temptations, Job asks, "Can flavorless food be eaten without salt?" (Job 6:6). Just as food, which might otherwise seem insipid, can taste far more interesting when a little salt is added, so too there is something that can help us remain committed to the life of religion. Salt, you see, stands in the Word for "the longing of truth for good." (AC 10300:1). And the longing of truth for good -- if we have this longing -- can make all the difference.

Now the Writings of the New Church speak many, many times of the way in which truth and good are meant to go together. If you know the truth, you are meant to do what the truth teaches, and so live a life of good. But of course in practice this frequently does not happen. Those who know the truth can so often fail to live this truth. And so it is no wonder that people often separate these two things in their minds. On the one hand there are such things as truth, study, reflection, ideas, doctrine. On the other hand there are such things as good, love, caring, charity, and so on. And people often fail to see any real connection between these two things.

And yet there is a connection. There is a connection if you really truly care. You see, if someone really cares about the truth, then he will want to do what the truth teaches: he will want to do what is good. And if he really truly cares about what is good, he will want to know the truth, because the truth shows him how to do good that is truly good. The two really cannot be separated. They are meant to be joined together. And it is this conjunction, this desire to join the two together, that is represented by salt in the Old and New Testaments.

Now the Writings say that salt has this correspondence because "there is in salt something both fiery and at the same time conjunctive; as there is in truth an ardent longing for good and at the same time for conjunction" (AC 9207:7). Furthermore, the Writings say, salt "even conjoins water and oil, which otherwise will not combine" (C 10300:1). Now if you take ordinary table salt -- sodium chloride -- and add it to oil and water, it will not make them combine. But the term salt, as used by Swedenborg, included many other kinds of salts, some of which were extremely reactive and alkaline, which would break down oil and enable it to mix with water. And so it is that, spiritually, salt represents that longing, that ardent longing, which brings about the conjunction of good and truth.

This is why the Israelites, when they brought a grain offering before the Lord, were to season it with salt. "And every offering of your grain offering you shall season with salt; you shall not allow the salt of the covenant of your God to be lacking from your grain offering. With all your offerings you shall offer salt" (Lev. 2:13). And their incense, used in worship, was also to have salt added to it. "You shall make of these an incense, a compound according to the art of the perfumer, salted, pure, and holy" (Ex. 30:35). Salt was fundamental to the worship of the Israelites. And when we look to the Lord, when we worship Him, there also needs to be salt. In other words, when we turn to Him we need to do so with the longing, the prayer, the desire, that His truth, and His love, might be joined together in our lives.

All too often, though, such a longing is lacking. And there is a reason for this. It is because in our hearts we are longing instead to return to old habits, selfish habits, selfish ways. To follow the Lord requires that we dedicate ourselves to following Him. "Whoever of you does not forsake all that he has cannot be My disciple" (Lk. 14:33). Yet even though we may have started to follow the Lord, part of us longs to turn back, to go back to just doing what we feel like doing.

Now this kind of longing, a longing to return to a life of selfishness, a longing to give up the life of religion, is also represented in the Word by salt: for salt is sometimes used to symbolize what is dead and lifeless.

One of the best-known examples of this is the fate that befell the wife of Lot. Lot was urged by the angels to take his family and flee from the wicked cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. And after they had been led out of the city, the Lord told them not to look behind them, but to flee for their lives (Gen. 19:17). But Lot’s wife gave in to temptation. We read in Genesis that: "his wife looked back behind him, and she became a pillar of salt" (Gen. 19:26). What a lifeless image! No longer a woman, but dead, lifeless salt! In the original Hebrew, the very word that is used here for "pillar" has the meaning of something stationary, something that does not move (AC 2455). When Lot’s wife looked back towards Sodom, she represented truth as it becomes when we no longer try to live this truth. Truth that is not lived becomes dead, lifeless, meaningless: "when doctrine is separated from life, then because good, which is of the life, is laid waste, truth, which is of doctrine, is also laid waste, that is, becomes a pillar of salt" (AC 2454:5). Such dead, lifeless truth is also represented by the salt that in ancient times was sown on the soil after conquered cities were destroyed, so that they could not be rebuilt (Jud. 9:45; AC 2455:4).

Such truth, truth known, but not lived, is also represented, in the New Testament, by "salt that has lost its flavor." "By ‘the salt that has lost its flavor,’" we read, "is meant truth without any longing for good" (AC 9207:2). And when somebody knows the truth, yet does not care about living it, then this truth is useless. As the Lord teaches in Luke: "Salt is good; but if the salt has lost its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is neither fit for the land nor for the dunghill, but men throw it out" (Lk. 14:34-35).

The fact is that such truth, such dead, lifeless truth, truth that is never lived, is not really truth at all. As we read in the Arcana Cœlestia, "those who believe themselves to be in truths and do not long to do what is good, are not in truths; that is, they are not in the faith of these truths, howsoever they may suppose themselves to be so" (AC 9207:1). Yes, they may know truths. The things they know may be true. But they are not in the faith of these truths. In other words, within themselves they don’t have any insight into these truths; they don’t care about them; in fact, in their hearts they don’t even really believe them.

And so, if we are to follow the Lord . . . if we are to follow Him in such a way that we do not lose interest and turn away . . . if we are to remain committed to our religion . . . then we have to have salt, spiritual salt, within ourselves. In Mark, the Lord told His followers: "Salt is good, but if the salt loses its flavor, how will you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and have peace with one another" (Mark 9:50). To have salt in ourselves is to have this longing. To have a vision of the truth, a true vision, is to have a vision of a life in which this truth is actually lived. Within ourselves we must care enough about the truth to actually live it.

Now when the Lord tells us to have salt in ourselves, when He tells us to care about living our religion, it might seem that this is something beyond our control. After all, if, within ourselves, we don’t feel enthusiastic, and if, within ourselves, we don’t really care that much about living our religion -- if we have lost our enthusiasm -- then how can we regain a sense of commitment? We do it, quite simply, by taking truth and taking good, and putting them together. We take what we know to be true, and in some small way, perhaps in some small area of life, we put this truth into practice. We actually make ourselves do what the truth teaches us to do. And in this way we join this truth to what is good. And when we do this, the Lord can rekindle our love, our enthusiasm, our vision.

Truth that is not lived is dead, lifeless, useless. When we fail to live the truth, then within our hearts we grow cold towards religion. We find it difficult to care. Religion becomes as tasteless as food without flavor. But if we do what the Lord commands, if we take His truth and live it -- perhaps only in a small way to begin with -- we will find ourselves caring once again. We will find that once again we long to do the Lord’s will. It won’t always be easy. It never is. And we won’t always feel enthusiastic about obeying the Lord. But deep down, in our hearts, we will care. Deep down inside us, there will be this longing, this desire, to live according to the Lord’s truth, according to His Word.

To do this -- to follow the Lord with love in our hearts, and with trust and faith in our souls -- this is the pathway to heaven itself, and the gateway to everlasting happiness.

Amen.