Sermon

So David was crowned twice. Even though no mention is made of it, we must assume that the same held true for Solomon, because when he died, we find it taken for granted that his successor must be crowned twice. At the end of the eleventh chapter of First Kings it says that “Solomon slept with his fathers and was buried in the city of David his father, and Rehoboam his son reigned in his stead.” Then in the next verse, at the beginning of the twelfth chapter, it says that “Rehoboam went to Shechem, because all Israel had come to Shechem to make him king.”

Further, the northern tribes felt that they were under no obligation to make him king just because he was king over the southern tribes. They clearly assumed the right to negotiate terms, and when their requests were denied, they did not depose him, they simply refused to recognize him as their king. Everybody went home. Rehoboam thought about trying to force them to accept him, but the prophet Shemiah told him not to. This was the Lord’s doing.

To appreciate the spiritual sense of this, it is necessary to set it in its larger context, geographically and historically. As to geography, Swedenborg explains that the land of Canaan pictures our internal person, while the surrounding lands picture our external person (Cf. Arcana Coelestia n. 15854). For example, when the twelve men are sent from the wilderness to spy out the land, this pictures our self-examination, our discovery of those false ideas and inner inclinations to evil that the Lord wants us to overcome. When the Israelites actually cross the Jordan and begin to fight against the Canaanites, this pictures a time when we stop blaming all our problems on our circumstances and begin to face our own selfish attitudes.

When David finally becomes king, then, we have a picture of ourselves as young adults, finally taking charge of our own lives. For a while, this is usually a time of high energy and optimism, a time when the future looks bright, when we are sure that we will fulfill our promise. But it regularly happens that we meet with difficulties, that the world does not seem to share our own sense of our importance. In our struggles to deal with difficulties, we find ourselves becoming divided.

The northern kingdom, we are told, represents our understanding, while the southern kingdom represents our will. This fits very well indeed with the actual geography of the Holy Land. The Holy Land itself is a kind of land bridge between the much greater fertile areas of Egypt to the southwest and Mesopotamia to the northeast. The main routes pass right through the relatively open country of the northern kingdom, with the valley of Esdraelon (also known as the Plain of Jezreel) as the strategic center. In contrast, the southern kingdom was mountainous and off the beaten track. In a very similar way, our hearts, our wills, are our private kingdom, which we tend to keep sheltered from others. Our minds, our understandings, are where most of the commerce takes place.

At the point of division that we are looking at this afternoon, the southern king is primarily interested in extending his own power. His father Solomon had started on this course, disregarding the counsel of the law which said that kings should not amass great wealth or power (Deuteronomy 17:15-17), and unfortunately living up to all the warnings Samuel had made about the heavy demands the monarchy could make on ordinary folk (I Samuel 8:11-18). This warning concluded with the prophetic words, “And you will cry out in that day because of your king whom you will have chosen for yourselves.”

At this point in our lives, then, we have a very high opinion of ourselves. Living up to that high opinion, though, is a heavy burden. In order to maintain our self-image, we have to spend a lot of energy denying or explaining away our faults. The standard label for this is “rationalization,” and its main problem is that it gradually puts us out of touch with reality. If we are going to function in the world as it is, our minds have to rebel.

The Bible tells the story in a way that helps us see both sides of this decision. On the one hand, the secession of the northern tribes is caused by Rehoboam’s arrogance. On the other hand, Jeroboam, who is chosen as king by the northern tribes, promptly sets up two temples which stand as rivals to the temple in Jerusalem. This becomes known as “the sin of Jeroboam son of Nebat, who caused Israel to sin.”

In other words, while we cannot afford to let our minds be ruled by our will to self-exaltation, the alternative at this point seems to be to compromise our standards, to set up new criteria of judgment that are at home in our understanding but not in our will. In practice, that is, we find first that we have to follow the rules of the world around us, and then begin—perhaps without really realizing it—to internalize those rules, to accept the definitions of success that are taken for granted in the secular culture we live in.

As the story goes on, we do find that it is the northern kingdom that makes compromises with the religions of the surrounding nations, while the southern kingdom, for all its faults, does maintain the temple with the ark of the covenant at its heart. This would seem to say that while we are making compromises in our more public thinking, at heart there is still a desire to lead the kind of life the Lord wants us to, to live up to the promises of our childhood.

Swedenborg never mentions Jeroboam, but perhaps we can get an idea of what he must represent. As king over the secessionist north, he clearly represents the ruling principle of a mind that is rejecting the control of a self-justifying will, a self-satisfied ego. He is doing this because the burdens demanded for that self-justification are too heavy, and in our own lives, the reason we cannot carry these burdens is that they make it so difficult for us to function effectively in the world we depend on for our living.

All this suggests that Jeroboam represents our conviction that we have to deal with the world on its own terms, and this is not entirely wrong. We do have to earn salaries and pay bills and obey laws and generally observe the conventions of human courtesy as they are defined by the culture we live in. If the church roof needs repair, we have to pay the going price. Just because it is the church roof does not mean that it is exempt from the law.

Swedenborg defines charity as “acting with prudence to the end that good may result” (The New Jerusalem and Its Heavenly Doctrine n. 100). That is, true charity is not just a matter of good intentions or even of real effort. It involves doing the best we can to figure out what will actually work. It means paying attention to the results of our choices, and learning from them.

One rather harmless little illustration comes to mind. To get from our house to the Swedenborg School, you turn left out of our driveway, go about a mile to a traffic light and turn left again, and then go about half a mile and turn left again. It feels as though you are headed right back where you came from, but because of the way the roads curve, it is actually fairly direct. One of my former colleagues had a terrible time learning what actually worked, though, and got lost about three times. Doing what feels right needs to be checked against what actually happens.

In common language, then, Jeroboam is our practical side. There is nothing particularly wrong with that until it goes too far, until it says that nothing matters except the results. It starts by saying simply that we need to earn a living, but then slips into the belief that earning a living is an end in itself. Jeroboam not only declares independence, he sets up new temples.

One of these is in Bethel, which is not at all far from Jerusalem. The other is in Dan, up by the Sea of Galilee. Bethel was where Jacob had his dream of the ladder reaching up to heaven, the place he called the house of God and the gate of heaven (Genesis 28:17). Swedenborg identifies it as “the experiential knowledge (cognitio) of heavenly things (Arcana Coelestia 1453). We might translate this into contemporary language as our own experiences of peace of mind—something like the “bliss” that Joseph Campbell advises us to follow. To set that up as a rival to Jerusalem is to substitute our feelings of well-being for the centrality of the law.

Dan, on the other hand, lies near the northern border of the Holy Land, and as such represents something much more external. Swedenborg identifies it variously as “the affirmative of truth” (Arcana Coelestia n. 3923) and as “those who are in the good of life from truth but not yet from good” (ibid. n. 6396). We might put this in contemporary terms as the disposition to follow the rules—a disposition which is useful at times, but which proves problematic when the rules and deeper principles point in different directions, as they sometimes do.

We are left, then, with a picture that I believe characterizes much of our early adult life. Deep down inside, we really want to follow the Lord. However, we also treasure our sense of self-importance—I think of all the writing that is done about the importance of an affirmative self-image—and we keep finding it necessary to deal with the world on its own terms. What we cannot really see is what really offers hope in this conflicted situation, namely that the Lord is overseeing it all, to lead us to himself.