Foundation Day Pentecost

Deuteronomy 34: 8-9 8 And the people of Israel wept for Moses in the plains of Moab thirty days; then the days of weeping and mourning for Moses were ended. 9 And Joshua, the son of Nun, was full of the spirit of wisdom, for Moses had laid his hands upon him; so the people of Israel obeyed him, and did as the Lord commanded Moses.

Acts 2: 36-41 36 “Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah.” 37 When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?”

38 Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39 The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off—for all whom the Lord our God will call.” 40 With many other words he warned them; and he pleaded with them, “Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.” 41 Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day.

Rev. Dr. Sun Myung Moon, “The Owners of Re-Creation,” Little Angels Performing Arts Center Seoul, Korea, August 15, 2003

“Over the decades, the contents of my sermons have not changed. When someone lives for the accomplishment of God’s will for the new world, these teachings form the basic standard to determine if a person becomes a principal actor in the effort to bring about the ideal Kingdom of Heaven. So we must now live according to this basic rule. If our lives have been based on vague concepts, then we must now lead lives based on awareness of this reality that brings us into oneness with heaven, including both the spirit world and physical world. We should unify the spiritual and physical realms within our own lives and expand this to the national realm. This is the only way to bring about the Kingdom of God on Earth and in Heaven.

We must understand that the position of the owner of Cheon Il Guk, the Kingdom of Heaven, is someone who establishes a new standard that enables the peoples of nations around the world to transcend their current ways of thinking that have been based on traditional philosophies and concepts. The owner of Cheon Il Guk progresses to a new, higher dimension.”

Today I would like to share some thoughts on Foundation Day as we prepare for this milestone event to take place Thursday Evening, our time. This event can, in some ways, be compared to the Israelites entering the Promised Land, the Puritans coming to the New World, and the Christian Pentecost. We are at a phase where we take what we have learned from our founder and take society to a higher level based on it. This morning I will make some comparisons to the creation of the providential societies that have preceded us, but all such comparisons are limited because the new world we seek to create is without precedent in human history.

Our True Father spoke of this Foundation Day for some time before his ascension and made plans for it but, like Moses did not live on Earth to see the Israelites cross the Jordan, True Father did not live on Earth to witness his children reach the new Promised Land. True Father’s ascension was a traumatic event

for those who devoted their lives to following him. He was our leader and the source of legitimate church authority. We believed in his words and actions because of the spirit and truth that we felt when we were around him. Now we do not have him physically present and the society that we create will have to be based on more than his personal charisma.

In the field of religion, and particularly in the study of New Religious Movements, the death of a founder of a religious movement is the severest test of whether the movement will survive. Sociologist Max Weber used the term “routinization of charisma” to describe the process of relocating the authority that members vested in the leader into some institutional authority that provides ongoing legitimacy through its teachings, rules, and leadership.

Immediately after True Father’s passing, we were not focused on these changes of authority, but on grieving for our loss and paying highest respect and tribute to our True Father. I was fortunate enough to travel to Korea to pay my last respects, express condolences to two of his sons, and begin the process of determining what I would do next. We had an altar to his memory in our worship room for 100 days that served not only to give him a smooth ascension, but to help us heal from his loss and prepare to live on without his physical presence.

There is always a trauma around a death. Two weeks ago my dentist suddenly collapsed from a heart attack while skiing. His dental practice had another dentist, three dental hygienists and two other staff members left to figure out what they will do, whether they will continue this practice, and under what name. They are forced to step up to the plate after his death.

Deuteronomy 34 is about the death and burial of Moses. Verse 8 says that “the people of Israel wept for Moses in the plains of Moab thirty days.” And verse 9 says that Moses had laid his hands upon Joshua and the people of Israel obeyed him, and did as the Lord commanded Moses.

Jesus’ disciples also must have been thrown into confusion after his death. We read in the New Testament that after Jesus’ death, his disciples gathered on several occasions and Jesus appeared spiritually to them. We are told of his appearance to Mary Magdalene outside the grave, to doubting Thomas inside a room, to Simon Peter and John when they were fishing, and on Mount Olivet, near Bethany, where he gave the Great Commission and ascended.

In Luke 24:47-49 Jesus says to them,

47 and repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. 48 You are witnesses of these things. 49 I am going to send you what my Father has promised; but stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.”

This power from on high came dramatically on the day of Pentecost, where they had gathered for this Jewish holiday 50 days after the Passover when they had shared their Last Supper with Jesus. So their period of mourning lasted 40-50 days.

When Pentecost came, with a mighty rush of wind, the disciples were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in tongues. From this point the disciples went out and began to teach, prophesy, and heal. They went to many places testifying to Jesus as the risen Christ. In Acts the “Disciples” are referred to as “Apostles.” Is this just another name for the same followers, or did the disciples enter to a new stage of responsibility? UTS professor Dr. Michael Mickler recently posted this explanation in the UTS Alumni newsletter:

In March 1997, Rev. Joong Hyun Pak, then Continental Director of North America, delivered a speech in Chicago in which he made a distinction between disciples and apostles. He defined disciples as “volunteers who followed Jesus.” According to Rev. Pak, “They always beseeched him, ‘please help me.’ Like children.” After Jesus’ death, they were like “orphans.”

However, after the Pentecost experience, the disciples became apostles. In Rev. Pak’s words, “They no longer dwelled in the realm of “me”– “help me,” “guide me,” “care for me.” They “became second Messiahs, second Christs. From this dramatic changeover they became true leaders!” They spread out into the world becoming “owners” and “parents.” In short, “the ‘Acts of the Apostles’ began.”

The question is whether what was true in 29 CE is equally, or more true in 2013. True Mother, our Holy Spirit, has called upon the Unification Church to be a “living and breathing church … spontaneous, creative and dynamic … unrestricted by numbers or systems.” That sounds not unlike the situation of early Christianity. Unificationists need to decide whether they will persevere as disciples of a routinized, mildly-reformist sect or breakthrough as apostles of a world-transforming religious and social movement.

One thing that stands out for me Rev. Pak’s description is that the disciples were no longer followers, like little children, but adults who knew and understood God’s will and went out into the world filled with the Holy Spirit, actively testifying to Jesus and creating communities centered on Christian virtue. They were guided directly by God and did not have to wait for someone else to tell them what to do. In this way, Pentecost marked the beginning, or foundation day, of the Christian Church. It was the day its builders started building.

When Rev. Balcomb spoke here last month, he referred to Foundation Day as a beginning. Many of us have been waiting for this day as though it is an end. It is an end of one age, and it is also the beginning of another. Recently Dennis Pearson was visiting me and he mentioned that this concept of ending one phase and beginning another became clear to him at a high school “Commencement” ceremony. He realized that they were not just celebrating the end of school studies, but the commencement of a new life based on the learning period that prepared the graduates to “commence” their lives as free and responsible adults.

Foundation Day, in this context, not only marks a graduation as followers and children of Rev. Moon, but the commencement of our lives as responsible adults, parents, and citizens, living with heavenly laws, virtues, and principles ingrained in our hearts and minds. If we have received the words of our Heavenly Parents, understanding the purpose of the Creation and our Existence, and the Divine Principles that govern our world, then, like the Buddhist who has discovered Enlightenment and returned as a Bodhisattva to guide others, we should take ownership of our enlightenment, act responsibly within the boundaries of our freedom, and guide others into the era of Cheon Il Guk with the enthusiasm the apostles received at Pentecost.

No longer should we wait passively for instructions to come from our leaders. We have heard Hyung Jin Nim says that it will be quite the opposite. We will not await instructions from headquarters, but headquarters will instead play a role of service to our work as apostles of the True Parents, who have given us the formula to perfect our character, care for ourselves, for others, and our world.

This day is a glorious day, even if it is only a Foundation Day and not a Completion Day. We should have the excitement of a young family who lays the cornerstone in their new house. We need to develop the skill to construct this new heavenly house. If you think of building a house, you need skilled architects and laborers, using the highest quality plans, materials, and technical skills. And you begin with a solid foundation. Jesus told this parable in Luke 6: 47-49:

47“Everyone who hears my words and does them, I will show you what he is like. 48He is like a man building a house, who dug deep, and laid the foundation upon a rock; and when a flood arose, the stream broke against the house, and could not shake it, because it was well built. 49But he who hears and does not do them is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation; against which the stream broke, and immediately it fell, and the ruin of that house was great.”

We need to become the skilled architects and laborers and begin laying the foundation of Cheon Il Guk in the larger world, beyond our own family. But that strong foundation is our own family. The family is the foundational unit of society.

In his lectures for the preparation for Foundation Day, my former UTS student, William Haines, now a school teacher in England, has given a good series on YouTube titled “Foundation Day: How Do We Get There?” and “Foundation Day: What Lies Beyond.” These lectures are a look at the history of the Israelites and how the process of restoration in the formation of God’s chosen nation might help us understand how we can prepare ourselves to live as God’s people in our own time.

A theme in his lectures is that God wants human beings to live according to His Word and His Will ingrained in their conscience. In the Exodus, the Hebrews began in Egypt as slaves with a slave conscience. They needed a period of time and were required to make a number of conditions to change from their “slave mentality” to “the mentality of free people.” The physical distance from Egypt to Canaan was only a 21-day walk, but there was no way the Hebrews would shed a deeply ingrained slave mentality in 21 days. If they had crossed into Canaan at that time, they would have just set up another slave society like in Egypt. We recently witnessed the freeing of many African colonies from European rule, but the rulers these new states tended to act like their colonial masters, and new forms of tyranny arose, with some African masters being harsher than their colonial predecessors.

The 40 years in the Wilderness was a period in which the Hebrews could separate from the slave mentality; and live as a free people, with the Commandments and laws given by Moses in the wilderness ingrained in their consciences. It is very likely that this is the same reason the Unification movement had to go through a wilderness period, living a formula course of fundraising, study, and witnessing to reorient our unprincipled conscience so that we could live freely and be in accord with God’s Word. After going through the formula course we could conditionally receive God’s blessing through our True Parents. Something similar happened to the Hebrews.

In Exodus 19, we read as follows:

7So Moses came and called the elders of the people, and set before them all these words which the Lord had commanded him. 8And all the people answered together and said, “All that the Lord has spoken we will do.” …Then Moses told the words of the people to the Lord. 10And the Lord said to Moses, “Go to the people and consecrate them today and tomorrow, and let them wash their garments.”…

Then God appeared in a cloud at Mt. Sinai to all the Hebrew people to make His covenant with all of them—not just the leader. Then the Lord gave the 10 commandments and the other laws of the Torah for the people to learn in their hearts, so they could study them and learn to live by them as a free people, never straying beyond the boundaries of the law. Following God’s Word would keep them from repeating the Fall.

The Hebrew alphabet, with letters, rather than pictograms enabled the Hebrews to become a literate people. Unlike the Sumerians, Egyptians, and Chinese who used pictograms that had to be memorized by priests, the Hebrews were able to read the law for themselves, without an elite class telling them what the law said or what they should do. Thus, the Hebrew society could become egalitarian, with everyone standing equal before God. This was a radical change in human history, freeing average people from the necessity of being slaves to royal families. There are parallels to Martin Luther and the printing press, and to the Korean alphabet designed by King Sejong the great. Both these developments also enabled all people to read and not depend on what elites told them. These developments helped prepare those of second and third Israel.

After God’s words were delivered and accepted by the Hebrew people, their covenant was sealed by blood. We could call this the “Foundation Day Ceremony for Israel.” Let us read from Exodus 24: verse 3 and following:

3Moses came and told the people all the words of the Lord and all the ordinances; and the people answered with one voice, and said, “All the words which the Lord has spoken we will do.” 4And Moses wrote all the words of the Lord. And he rose early in the morning, and built an altar at the foot of the mountain, and twelve pillars, according to the twelve tribes of Israel. 5And he sent young men of the people of Israel, who offered burnt offerings and sacrificed peace offerings of oxen to the Lord. 6And Moses took half the blood and threw it on upon the people, and said, “Behold the blood of the covenant which the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words.”

The sprinkling of the blood is like the Holy Wine Ceremony, symbolizing a change of blood lineage from being slaves to Satan to the people of God. This was the Foundation Day of Judaism 3,500 years ago. These ceremonies might look like silly little rituals to outsiders who do not understand their meaning. In fact we may not fully comprehend their significance (I think of all the background noise as we conducted our ceremony last Sunday). That ancient ceremony by the Hebrews helped to change the world, and the Jewish people still exist today as a literate people, who following God’s laws.

This Foundation Day event for the Israelites was the Foundation of the Formation Stage of God’s society in the providence of restoration, a stage governed by law. The growth stage, as I explained at an earlier Sunday Service, is the stage of virtue.

Unfortunately, we can see that the Jewish people slipped backwards, and were forced to make new conditions as a result. For example, let’s look at 1 Samuel, chapter 8. Samuel served as a judge over the 12 tribes. These people who knew God’s Word and could live by themselves without a government, still got into disputes that needed a judge to make a decision on. But, in verse 5, the people say to Samuel, “Behold, you are old and your sons do not walk in your ways; now appoint for us a king to govern us like other nations.” Samuel was upset when they said “Give us a King to govern us,” because they had been a free people governing themselves with God as their king. In reply to his prayer, the Lord told Samuel, “they have rejected me from being king over them. Warn the people about what will happen to them if a king rules over them.”

10 So Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking a king from him. 11 He said, “These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen, and to run before his chariots; 12 and he will appoint himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. 13 He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. 14 He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his servants. 15 He will take the tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and to his servants. 16 He will take your menservants and maidservants, and the best of your cattle, and your asses,

and put them to his work. 17 He will take the tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. 18 And in that day you will cry out because the Lord will not answer you in that day.

19 But the people refused to listen to Samuel and they said, “No! but we will have a king over us, that we might also be like all nations, and that our king may govern us and go out before us and fight our battles.”

Does this message sound familiar to you? Think about the Freedom Society message and the relationship between freedom and responsibility. If you ask the government to do what you should do yourself, you voluntarily give up your freedom and become a slave. Those who ask for a welfare state are ultimately asking for a slave state. If a people govern themselves, they are free. If someone or some government governs over them, they will become slaves.

The growth stage of society is the stage of virtue. Virtue goes beyond passive obedience to laws, to proactive behavior that helps and serves others and the wider society. Virtuous behavior is the opposite of selfish behavior. The Romans and Greeks promoted several important virtues, and Jesus came with the teaching of the highest virtues in his Sermon on the Mount and in his parables. He taught not just virtues that served the state, but an unselfish love for all others that resembles to love of a parent, and he taught that God is our Father, and that we ought not just live according to the law, but fulfill the law with love of others.

If Jesus could have united the Hebrew and Hellenistic civilization of his day, the Kingdom of Heaven could have come at that time, but, the Jewish people rejected him, having themselves become slaves to the Law. When Pentecost came, those apostles went out filled with the Holy Spirit and the Word of God that went beyond the law. But Jesus’ crucifixion had set back the providence, and it took a long time period to reach the point where law and virtue could be merged in a free society. Thomas went to India, Peter to Rome, and Paul to Greece and what is today Turkey.

The Roman Republic, was founded with much freedom under twelve tables of law, and there were still large and prosperous middle classes at the time of Jesus. But at the time of Ceasar, Rome fell under the rule of an Emperor. Then, during the next 200 years, something similar to Samuel’s prophecy about the Israelites happened to Rome. The Emperor made more demands, raised taxes, passed unprincipled laws, and eventually destroyed the middle classes. The middle classes are people who can live on their own, not dependent on a king or government to care for them. Then came the Decline of the Roman Empire and a type of slavery called serfdom. The generations descended from Rome’s prosperous middle classes became serfs, beholden to the whims of feudal lords. They had little freedom and dreamed of escaping their plight by marrying a handsome prince or princess. In Freedom Society language this would be like seeking to save yourself by marrying Lucifer; for feudal Lords were very much in the position of Lucifer. Do you see any parallels between the Roman Empire and the United States today?

A new foundation had to be laid. The Dark ages, were Dark in part because most people were illiterate serfs. The Catholic Church had a monopoly control of the Word of God. In feudal hierarchical society, the kings and priests interpreted the laws for the people, often telling them what was best for themselves— like the selling of indulgences poor people to host lavish parties in Rome. This was not a period where all people lived in freedom, ruled by their own conscience, with God as their king. Christianity had become the religion of the Empire, but the people were not free. They now suffered from “serf mentality” and the fairy tale stories about marrying the handsome prince, or rescuing the fair princess, show just how deeply ingrained this slave consciousness was in their collective psyche.

Luther and Calvin arose to separate religion from the Pope and restore sovereignty to God. This compares to the Hebrews separating from slave mentality in the wilderness. Luther translated the Bible into German, and people learned to read God’s word. The printing press, like the Hebrew alphabet, enabled widespread education to all people, not just elites. The protestant reformation taught people how to study and digest God’s Word, and to become ultimately accountable to God, not to priests or popes. Priests could be guides and assist people with God’s Words, but ultimately people had to become responsible adults in the eyes of God. Luther emptied out the monasteries and married priests and nuns. The new model of a Christian family was that people would marry after living in purity and having studied God’s word and learned Christian virtues. This Christian family became the foundation of a new society. A society populated by virtuous people capable of freedom, responsible for themselves, and for raising their children in the ways of the Lord.

Protestant descendants, after wandering 100 years in a European wilderness, became the Puritans who went to America to establish “God’s New Israel”—hence the names of towns like New Canaan, Connecticut. This was a people capable of freedom, who gave up their past to cross the Atlantic, like those Israelites who crossed the Jordan and lived in the first Canaan. It was for this responsible people with an internal moral compass that the United States Constitution was created. The American experiment required people capable of freedom, people who understood God’s words and would naturally obey them, people capable of living with little need of external laws because their moral compass already guaranteed

they would not steal, kill, lie, cheat, extort, or use the government to redirect someone else’s tax dollars to themselves.

But, like the Hebrews did some backsliding, so have the Americans. The Anti-Federalists warned the new constitutional order left some dangers lurking, where the central government could become a new form of tyranny. Above all, they were concerned that the new Constitution lacked attention to civic virtue, civic education, and citizen participation among the mass of the populace. It was not just the rights that the government guaranteed that would make the system function, but strong families, churches, and schools that raised citizens with highest moral virtue—those that could naturally live according to the laws of God.

More recently, we can see the same problems happening with African-Americans after being freed from slavery, as happened to the ancient Hebrews and also white Americans after gaining freedom. The political freedom won by Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Civil Rights movement he inspired, did not mean a complete separation from what we can call “slave mentality.” Today many African-American leaders are demanding that government provide leadership and care. Are such people acting as if God is their King? Even before this, many whites began demanding more from the government, These tendencies will inevitably lead to a repeat of the Israelites in Samuel, and we are advised to hear the warning that Samuel gave when the Israelites asked for a king to govern them.

When the True Parents arrived in America, enough freedom and moral foundation existed in the United States so that if people could hear and learn the principles of the completion stage, they could enter the age of Chung Il Guk, the age of freedom and responsibility in the bounds of principle. This stage comes on the foundation, of Old Testament laws, and New Testament virtues, and involves a higher knowledge of the principles that govern individuals and society. These principles can unify the knowledge of both science and religion, and both East and West. Through following our True Parents, we can separate our consciences from a slave mentality and learn to live under heavenly principles by ourselves. I think we should view this Foundation Day ceremony as marking that change of conscience and lineage, to a new society based on freedom as second True Parents.

1. Like the Israelites, we need to know and understand God’s Word and law in our heart and naturally obey God’s laws. (law)

2. Like Pentecost, we need to be filled with the spirit of our Heavenly Parent, and naturally live unselfishly and enthusiastically for the sake of others. (virtue)

3. In addition we need to learn heavenly principles that transcend to conflicts of science and religion, East and West, and between religions in our time. (principle)

4. With the Foundation Day ceremony we have a heavenly wedding ceremony establishing heavenly tradition in the apostolic families that we are responsible to create.

5. We restore our heavenly parent’s dominion over the earth through these families that are the foundation of the third Canaan, the Cheon Il Guk.

There are three key principles related to the three blessings:

1. Moral Purity for the first blessing

2. Complete respect for the human rights of others for the second blessing

3. No misuse of public funds or abuse of the natural world for the third blessing.

If we can prepare our hearts and minds to live this way as a free and responsible people, we can lay a good solid foundation for the age of Cheon Il Guk.

Our Heavenly parent,

May the words of our mouths, the meditations of our hearts, and our actions in the world be acceptable in your sight.

Amen and Aju