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The Resurrection Hologram
Welcome to Today's Worship Service
April 4, 2010Easter Sunday
Resurrection Hologram
Open your Bible
Light a candle
OPENING SONG
>READINGS
1After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb.
2There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. 3His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow. 4The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men.
5The angel said to the women, "Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. 6He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. 7Then go quickly and tell his disciples: 'He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him.' Now I have told you."
8So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his disciples. 9Suddenly Jesus met them. "Greetings," he said. They came to him, clasped his feet and worshiped him. 10Then Jesus said to them, "Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me."
from Swedenborg
Suffering on the cross was the final trial the Lord underwent as the greatest prophet.It was a means of glorifying his human nature, that is, of uniting that to his Father's divine nature. It was not redemption TC 114:6
MESSAGE
THE RESURRECTION HOLOGRAM
Psychologist Carl Jung felt he had a quest to find the deep truths of existence, and his dreams led him to the ancient tradition of alchemy. Alchemy was based on the premise that ordinary lead could be transmuted into gold, if the right formula could be found.
Jung felt that alchemy was actually about changing the lead of ordinary experience into the gold of the mystical union with God.
Evelyn Underhill and other mystical scholars tell us that many alchemists were on a spiritual quest to find union with the Divine. They were trying to find an integration of matter and spirit.
Many images of the alchemists were based on Christian symbols of the Cosmic Christ – the union of human and divine. Most alchemists saw seven stages, ending in union with the divine.
Swedenborg, too, had seven stages of regeneration leading to union. This 7th stage was demonstrated by the resurrection. For Swedenborg, the resurrection was about union of humanity and divinity
Jesus spent his life living in times of “emptying”, when his human ego needed to be let go, and times of “glorification” – or union with the divine. The cross was the final emptying of his ego state when he felt abandoned by God. If you are abandoned by someone, then there are two of you – one does the abandoning of the other. When you become one, there can be no abandonment; only union.
Dr. Bob Kirven says that Swedenborg had a unique understanding of how the divine and human nature intersected. Swedenborg said that spirit and matter were both real, both different, and both the same! They are “distinguishably one.”
Swedenborg saw separate levels of reality connected by relationships called “correspondences.” All of existence begins with the pure divine, and flows downward – into the heavens, into humans on earth and the animals and plants of the earth. This pure divine keeps flowing down. If we take the very smallest possible thing that exists, even it corresponds to the divine. Everything corresponds to higher levels. That is how both matter and spirit are both real; through correspondence they are all the same.
That is how there is union between humanity and divinity. Swedenborg called it the “Divine human” or the “God-man”. And that is what Easter is all about: showing us the union between human and divine that unite us.
This is one part of Swedenborg’s concept of Easter: the union of humanity and divinity.
Another part of Swedenborg’s Easter can best be understood through the new physics concept of a hologram.
Physicist Michael Talbot wrote: “If Emanuel Swedenborg were alive today, it is likely that he would find many aspects of the new physics compatible with his own thought.” And he wrote: “perhaps the most astonishing foreshadowing of new-physics ideas in Swedenborg’s writings are the similarities between his world view and a revolutionary new way of looking at nature known as the ‘holographic paradigm.”
In an older, Newtonian model, we might take apart things in the world to see all their different parts. But from a holographic perspective, if we take things apart and get down to the smallest elements, we find the whole existing in the every part. Or we find the divine in everything.
Every part of a hologram contains the whole. Jesus was a correspondence of God – and we all are. God was not present in Jesus as something unique in existence, but rather in all of us.
Holography shows a process over time. Jesus was in a process between two states of being. In his human state on the cross, he felt abandoned by God. But this was followed by the state of union. “After this state comes a second one, the state of being in a partnership with God. In this second state, we do basically the same things, but now we do them with God . We no longer need to attribute to God everything good that we intend and do and everything true that we think and say in the same way as we used to, because now this acknowledgment is written on our heart. It is inside everything we do and everything we say. In this same way, … The Lord glorified his human nature [meaning that he made it divine], in the same way that he regenerates us [meaning that he makes us spiritual].”
George Dole says, “I see the holographic model as implicit in his [Swedenborg’s] Christology. In his view, it is intrinsic to the divine nature to be wholly present in every part of creation, and especially clearly in human beings.”
Dole says this helps us understand the resurrection. “It is wholly characteristic of the divine to be wholly present in every part of creation all the time.”
The Easter story is about how human and divine became one. It is about the divine being in the smallest pieces of existence. It is about God being written on our hearts. How do we live with God written on our hearts?
The first thing we notice is that God changed. The God that existed when Jesus came into the world was not the same God after human and divine became one. It’s like a human commitment between two people: they are each individual people. Yet in a commitment to each other, a new entity is formed: the relationship of the two of them.
God continues to change as we change. God changes us and we change God. We all change each other. That makes everything we do everyday extremely important, for we are impacting the entire holographic universe with every thought and action.
Swedenborg says that the resurrection shows that we live in partnership with God. What is this partnership? If we ask our partner: “what is Your will for me?”, our partner might respond: “what are you deepest loves? Those are my will for you.”
This partnership is relational.
How seriously can we take this Easter message that human and divine are one? We are part of God and God is in us. Do we allow God to be a partner in our lives? So often, we either put god out by the sides to be ignored, or we pray for God to tell us what to do. If we really believe there is a partnership, how would our prayer life change? How would our concept of God change? How do we bring God into the smallest, everyday acts of our day?
How can prayer become a dialog between partners? There is no one answer to that question, but perhaps we are each called to find our own answer. We each must figure out what this partnership with God is all about.
Easter reminds us that the Lord’s humanity and divinity are one; we are all part of the Divine human.
It also reminds us that we live in a holographic universe in which the divine is in the smallest of things. This divine is both permanent and changing. God changes as we change. Everything we do impacts everyone else.
What could be more sacred and joyful? We can never cease to exist because we are united with God. As the God-Human, we are always growing and changing. We have eternity in which to explore all that we can be in this universal hologram. Easter is a great day to begin to explore your unique eternal place in the universal hologram.
CLOSING SONG
Song of the Soul
Go in peace, celebrating the divine partnership.
