Even Heaven Has Its Ups and Downs
In life we go through alternating states of cold and heat as we are being spiritually remade. What is more surprising is that even the angels in the highest heaven go through alternations of spiritual summer and spiritual winter. So, too, can we expect the Church to continually pass through such spiritual seasons. When we are in winter, it is not our failure but an opportunity for learning. Have faith in the coming of summer.
To see what I'm talking about, read Genesis 8, Mark 4:26-29, and Secrets of Heaven 935, and then either read the following text version of the sermon on alternating states, or listen to the version preached at Pittsburgh New Church.
In His Word, the Lord talks to us in many ways. Sometimes He gives us warnings. Sometimes He gives us commands. And sometimes He gives us a promise. Today, we read about one of His first promises to humanity:
"While all the days of the earth remain, Seedtime and harvest, And cold and heat, And summer and winter, And day and night Shall not cease." (Gen. 8:22)
The Lord spoke these words to Noah at the end of a great catastrophe. Recall that the story of Noah began with the Lord commanding Noah to take his family, along with representatives of all the creatures of the earth, into an ark. Noah obeys, and it saves him from a flood that covers up even the mountaintops. For forty days and nights the waters gush forth and inundate the earth; it’s as if the world was broken. Then, when it was over, the Lord called Noah back out onto the once again dry land. In thanks, Noah builds an altar to the Lord, and the Lord responds with the promise that the various cycles of the world will never cease.
We are taught in the first volume of the work Arcana Coelestia
In the internal sense, Noah represents the Lord’s Church born anew. Because each one of us is also called to be a miniature of the Lord’s Church in our own lives, Noah also represents an individual member of the Lord’s spiritual church. What is said of the individual, here, is true also of the Church as a whole.
The portion of the Noah story we read today describes seven stages between temptation and regeneration that each of us is called to follow. The flood is a state of temptation itself. The first state after temptation is one of fluctuation between truth and falsity, as the waters begin to recede and the raven flits to and fro. Then, the dove is sent out, but comes back with nothing, because real truths of faith don’t exist with us, yet. Next, the dove goes out, and brings back an olive leaf, meaning truths of faith and also charity are sprouting in our lives. When the dove goes out a third time and finally finds dry land to rest on is when we first really connect our new truths with charity and so ground them. The next state—which is the first real state of regeneration itself—happens when we finally are just starting to act from and think from charity ahead of faith; this is Noah bringing everyone out of the ark and onto the dry ground. The next state, when Noah builds an altar, is the second state of regeneration, when we are fully in the life of charity. Then the Lord smells the sweet smell of the sacrifice, and the church is fully established in our hearts. It is here, finally, that the Lord gives His beautiful promise.
The Spirit of the Text
So let’s look at this promise from the Lord to Noah, which in spirit is really a promise to each one of us, and to the Lord’s Church as a whole: “While all the days of the earth remain, Seedtime and harvest, And cold and heat, And summer and winter, And day and night Shall not cease.” What do these words mean?
Alternating States…
We are taught in the Writings given to the New Church, first of all, that when the Word talks about time, it is the Lord’s way of teaching us about states. Because in the Word, the Church is often called "the land" or "the earth", "all the days of the earth" means in the internal sense, "all the states of the church", which is what this promise is all about.
"Seed" and "harvest" are obviously linked; one is what is put into the land, the other is what comes out as a result. This helps us to see that when the Lord speaks of “seed” and “harvest”, He is talking about how He plants and grows a new Church whenever the existing one is in danger of ending.
Consider our reading from Mark. There the Lord said that the Kingdom of God is like a man who plants seeds which, by powers beyond his control, grow up with the passing of time into a harvest which he then collects. This illustrates how the church grows in each of us, as well as on the whole. The seeds are good from the Lord and truth from His Word; if we take them in willingly, He will grow them for us over time into something good and useful. The Lord will not allow His field to go fallow for very long.
Next is “cold” and “heat”. When you think of yourself being spiritually cold, you can get an immediate sense of what the Lord is talking about, here. When we are cold, we pull into ourselves, we stoop as we walk, we cover up. Spiritual cold is being in a state of selfishness, in which we focus on the cares of the world and on our own personal concerns. Spiritual heat, on the other hand, is being in a state of charity. When warm, we open up, we relax our muscles more. In heaven, the Lord’s love is felt by angels as heat from the spiritual sun.
In life, we start in spiritual cold, just as our verse does. Cold comes before heat, and we cannot be simultaneously cold and hot. It is as we do the work of repentance, as we face temptation, and as we are in the process of being spiritually reborn that we move from a state of cold to one of heat. However, it’s not just a one-way trip. What in fact happens is we fluctuate between states of cold and warmth. Because warmth is from the Lord and cold is from ourselves, we keep going back down into our selfish states during this process.
What may seem surprising about this, though, is that such alternations back and forth are not just inevitable, but necessary. We are taught that regeneration is a cyclical process, in part because we need regular reminders of the evil that is inherent in our selfishness in order to more perfect our ability to receive the Lord’s love in the life of charity. The Lord, therefore, promises us that when we are regenerating, cycles of cold and heat will continue without failure.
What about “summer” and “winter”? Isn’t this just a repetition of “cold” and “heat”? In a way, yes. Arcana Caelestia teaches us that in essence spiritual summer and spiritual heat talk about the same state. However, there is this difference: “cold and heat” are the two states we alternate between before we are regenerate, but “summer and winter” are the states of charity and selfishness we go through after we are regenerate.
Think about that for a moment. Does this mean that even angels in heaven go through times of selfishness and worldliness? Yes, it does! The difference between “cold and heat” before regeneration and “summer and winter” afterwards is that before we are spiritually reborn, we start from a state of cold out of which we strive to become warm, but afterwards we start in a state of summer from which we sometimes fall down into winter.
“Day and night” is saying the same thing, by the way, only about the two states our understanding of the truth will alternate between when we are regenerate; we will always have times when the truth is not clear before our eyes, and times when it is.
…Make Us Happier
Why would someone who has been spiritually born again—let alone an angel—need to experience spiritual winter and night? Because make no mistake about it, this is something we all need. Remember, this is the Lord’s promise to Noah—His promise to the Church, to you and to me—that these cycles will never quit. He’s not warning us of a problem, but promising us a gift!
Our reading from Arcana Caelestia tells us that these changes back and forth, in and out of charity, from summer to winter and back, result in “a person…being ever more perfected and so made ever more happy.” Wow. Think about that.
It goes on to say that only through these changes can we be perfected and made happy. The very beginning of the work Arcana Caelestia, where we are taught the meaning of the story of creation, it talks about the alternations we go through between spiritual day and spiritual night. There, in paragraph 37, it says this
Life without such alternations and varieties would be uniform, consequently no life at all; nor would good and truth be discerned or distinguished, much less perceived….
This can begin to make sense when we think about natural winter, and about natural night: imagine life without change, without cycles. “Still,” we might say, “I feel like I could do without winter, at least some years.” Right? Well, not spiritually. We can move to the tropics to get away from physical cold, but our spiritual life absolutely must continue through the internal cycle of states meant in the Word by “summer” and “winter”.
Much later in Arcana Caelestia, in paragraph 9278, it says this:
...[B]y means of this alternation of states the external things are brought into agreement with the internal and at length made subordinate to them….
That’s what is meant by being “perfected”. The winter states are when the Lord allows us to descend into our external, uncharitable sense of self-possession, our proprium. He periodically allows this because it is the only way we can interact with our proprium in order to try and get it more and more in line with the inner self, the new will that the Lord gives us by means of regeneration. Why? Remember, we cannot be simultaneously hot and cold; we cannot serve ourselves and serve the Lord at the same time, and so must switch off between the two in order to effect change.
But this is perhaps an abstract way of looking at things. Arcana Caelestia 5962 gives further insight to help make this concept more real for us. It says that everyone in heaven goes through alternating states in order to be perfected, and that...
...[T]hose alternating states establish contrasts for them, and from those contrasts they gain more perfect perception, for from those contrasts they know what does not constitute happiness since they know from them what is not good and what is not true….
…and Grow the Church
So alternating states are how the Lord implants the Church within us. We need to go back and forth between spiritual cold and heat, to go through temptations, to deal with the stress between the life of charity and the life of evil. Even after the spiritual rebirth this leads to we need alternating states. The regenerate person experiences summer and daytime, but also winter and nighttime, so that they may grow to be more complete, more happy. This is what the Lord is telling us here, and it is true for every person, no matter how they find the Lord.
In addition to being true for the individual, it is also true for the Church as a whole. Let’s think a moment about what that means. We know from the new revelation given to us that throughout history, the Lord’s kingdom on earth—His Church—has gone through states of cold and heat. Each time the Church has fallen, He has planted new seeds and raised up a new one. Further, we are told that all churches fall, for basically the same reason every time: trying to separate faith from charity.
Now, we are also told that the New Church, the True Christian Church meant by the New Jerusalem, which is established by the new revelation now given to us, will never end. Does that mean that we who strive to be New Christians will never stumble? Hardly. Does it mean that the Church itself is done with alternating states? Definitely not. It seems, in fact, that the True Christian Church, once established, may mean an end to spiritual cold in the Church, but going forward it most certainly will experience times of winter. And now we know that it is for good cause. The Lord works to perfect His Church just as He works to perfect the individual person in whom is the Church, and alternations between spiritual summer and winter is how he does that. It’s what He’s promised us.
Conclusion
It’s amazing to think that even heaven has its days and seasons. Of course, the winters are milder in heaven than the spiritual seasons the Church goes through on earth. But without at least a little contrast, even angels would cease to grow, and in fact would cease to live.
So, in our lives there must be changes, and there must be seasons. Sometimes it seems it would be nice to go through life without ever again feeling spiritual cold, but then our ability to be happy would stop growing, would die. In the life of the New Church, too, there must be winters, so that there can be new summers.
So we need to remember, when we are in spiritual winter, when the Church seems to be struggling, when we feel we are losing our way in the growing dark, that it is all in the Lord’s order. It is an opportunity for learning, and is the only way we can continue to grow. Without winter, there can be no spring; without night, no day. We must remember this, and have faith in the coming of summer, and work to renew the Church, in us, and in the world. It is for this reason that the Lord has promised, “While all the days of the earth remain, Seedtime and harvest, And cold and heat, And summer and winter, And day and night Shall not cease.”
Amen.