Readings: Revelation 21:1-5, 10-11, 22-27, Apocalpse Revealed #918 (see below)
See also on Youtube
Photo by Lucas George Wendt on Unsplash

​Today we begin a series that explores themes from the book of Revelation. The book of Revelation looms large over the imagination of the New Church, over the religious movement that has been inspired by the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg. It is important to us, not because it tells of our future, but because it speaks of God’s vision for us, as individuals and for humanity as a whole. It tells a great cosmic story about the forces of good and of evil, forces that are operative both systemically, in the world, and psychologically, in our minds and hearts. And this great cosmic story is true, not because it happened as written, not because it will come true, but because it’s themes have always been true; it is God speaking to us about what is, both then and now.

Chapter 21 in the book of Revelation is a triumph, a moving and poignant climax for the whole of the biblical story. It describes the descent of the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven, accompanied by a loud voice “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people…God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes.” (21:3-4) The city is unimaginably big, with twelve gates that never close, walls made of precious stones, and streets made of gold so pure that it is transparent. There is no night there, nothing that hurts or diminishes others. “The glory and honor of the nations will be brought into it.” A river flows down the middle of the city, and on either side there are fruit trees which grow different fruits each month. 

To Swedenborgians, this descent of the holy city is our guiding star, our reason for being. As in heaven, so upon the earth; this is the future that we pray every week in the Lord’s Prayer. We wait not for a tribulation that will destroy the earth, we wait not for a rapture that will take us away from here. Rather, we look to, in the words of Verna Dozier, “The Dream of God” for the whole earth, the New Jerusalem. We don’t expect a literal descent, but a spiritual one, a new consciousness for human beings leading to a new way of living. A new future wrought one changed heart and mind at a time, each life transformed placing a stone. 

And so while not literally expected, the vision of the New Jerusalem in the book of Revelation tells us something symbolically about that God’s dream looks like. In just a few of the details, we can see that the city is big enough to hold everyone and is always open to whoever wants to enter. But it is not without walls or boundaries; those who want to hurt and destroy cannot be a part of a city community dedicated to collective thriving. There will be no night there; no darkness that clouds our vision of truth, no falsity that convinces us to forget the command to love others, and to forget that God loves us. The “nations” are welcomed; we will retain our individual identities, our uniqueness, our relationships, but all will walk together by the light of a higher power. In the middle of the city there are symbols of abundance and plenty; water flowing down the center, ready to refresh and renew; trees that feed and heal, and all will have access. There is much to aspire to in this beautiful, symbolic vision.

Our little church takes its place in that story, named for the holy city for which we work, strive and yearn. There is one interesting aspect of the holy city Jerusalem that I would like to explore in particular, and I quote from verse 22: “I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple.” Perhaps we might find it more than a little ironic that our church should be named after a city in which there will be no temple, and no churches. What are we to make of that? Are we to aspire ourselves out of existence?

Perhaps. Certainly, we can identify this line of thinking in the bible if we wish to see it. In the gospel of Matthew, it is made clear, in the words of one of my commentaries: “Immanuel, God with us, is not housed in a building, but is met in the persons of the hungry, the thirsty, the naked and the imprisoned.” (1) And Karl Barth, arguably one of the most important Christian theologians of the past century wrote of this chapter: “…nothing is more finally significant than the church’s complete absence.”

Swedenborg, however, looks at it a little differently. As we heard in our reading, to him, having no temple means symbolically:

…that the New Church will have no external element divorced from an internal one, because it turns to the Lord Himself in His Divine humanity, from whom comes everything connected with the church, and worships and adores Him alone.

John's not seeing a temple in the city does not mean that the New Church, or New Jerusalem, will not have any temples in it, but that it will not have any external element without an internal one.

In Swedenborg’s spiritual worldview, all external earthly things are created and maintained by the spirit that flows into them internally. When we acknowledge that inflow of spirit, we can consciously connect with it. But, that inflow of spirit will often call us to grow and stretch and love in ways that we do not want to. So we sometimes confine ourselves to the natural, external side of things, we put our blinders on, because it is more comfortable to be blind. However, true connection with the spirit requires alignment with the spirit’s purposes, alignment with what God’s presence calls us to. So when Swedenborg says the church will have no external element divorced from an internal one, he means no faith without the willingness to love and serve others, no empty rituals, no automatic creeds. There shall not be a place where we can go purchase our salvation, some box we can check that will absolve us without doing the work, no place where we can just say the right things and then go about our business. No place that we have to go to “find” God, or request God or invoke God, because we believe that God isn’t in our day-to-day spaces. In the New Jerusalem, God is in all things, and specifically, the Lamb, God’s Divine Humanity, the part that reached out to us and died for and with us, permeates the city. God walking with us, God crying with us, God present with us, God holding the umbrella, God being the flashlight that shows us the way. God close, like a friend, like someone who knows us, like someone who was us. So therefore, in the holy city, there will be nothing external, nothing good that we can see or or hold or create that we can pretend doesn’t come from God, or isn’t filled with God, or isn’t connected to God. Nothing that we can pretend to hide from God. “The Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple.” The Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are to be found everywhere, and are to be given praise everywhere. No external element without an internal one.

And this is where I part ways a little bit with Swedenborg, although I imagine we may actually be in agreement in the end. I think this means that in God’s vision of the New Jerusalem, we won’t be needing to have churches. We might want them. We might choose them. But we won’t need them. For this is one of the lies of earthly temples and churches that the New Jerusalem overcomes: that they are needed. Needed for us to secure salvation, needed to get right with God, needed to get close to the sacred, needed to gain forgiveness, needed become worthy, needed to proclaim who is in and who is out, needed for divine access. If there is one thing the New Jerusalem communicates, it is God’s unmitigated love, presence and closeness. The temple is not needed because God dwells with humankind, in our hearts, in our minds, in our actions. We will worship, we will gather, we will love and hold each other by the river, under the tree of life, in our homes, in the marketplace. When all externals are acknowledged to be filled with God, and we strive that all our actions shall reveal the God that is within them, all the world is a church, all the world is a temple, all the world is holy. This we know is true, even now.

Why have church then? When the whole world is a church, what is the point? Perhaps there will be none. But human beings are relational creatures. I truly believe that churches and temples in God’s dream may not be needed but they will be wanted. Not as places that enact boundaries around God but as places that embody our relationship with God, that are dedicated to our commitment to be co-creators of the reality of the holy city with God. Places that celebrate, places that connect, places that express gratitude in the language of bricks, mortar, glass, stone and wood, places where we honor our journeys together. There is a reason that communal barn-raising in rural areas is a time-honored practice, why projects like Habitat for Humanity exist now. Joining our hands together in work is not only practical but connective; building structures and continuing the life held within them, also builds community.

So, here we are today, in church, as we celebrate the New Jerusalem, we look also towards the possibility, nay the necessity, of our obsolescence. Even as we recognize that God’s dream of the New Jerusalem is a long long way from being realized, far beyond our lifetimes, we might wonder, are we being asked to joyfully plan and work for our own demise? I think rather, we are being asked to joyfully work and plan for our own transformation. As the New Jerusalem descends into human consciousness, the world will change and so will the church. And this will be a very good thing. 

In Revelation, right after the the New Jerusalem descends, right after the voice from the throne declares that God will dwell with the people, we hear: “He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” (21:5).  Newness can be scary, but it is also liberating. The symbolism of the New Jerusalem intentionally echoes the story of creation, a story of abundant and teeming newness, where God hovered and planned and then brought something beautiful out of chaos. God is doing the same thing now. May it be. Amen.

1. The New Interpreter’s Bible, p1098
2. The Word of God and the Word of Man, p72
   

Readings:

Revelation 21:1-5, 10-11, 22-27

1 Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. 2 I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. 4 ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” 5 He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”

10 And he carried me away in the Spirit to a mountain great and high, and showed me the Holy City, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. 11 It shone with the glory of God, and its brilliance was like that of a very precious jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal.

22 I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. 23 The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp. 24 The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it. 25 On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there. 26 The glory and honor of the nations will be brought into it. 27 Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life.

Apocalypse Revealed #918

“But I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple.” This symbolically means that the New Church will have no external element divorced from an internal one, because it turns to the Lord Himself in His Divine humanity, from whom comes everything connected with the church, and worships and adores Him alone.

John's not seeing a temple in the city does not mean that the New Church, or New Jerusalem, will not have any temples in it, but that it will not have any external element without an internal one. That is because a temple symbolizes the church in respect to its worship, and in a higher sense the Lord Himself in respect to His Divine humanity, which is to be worshiped… Moreover, because everything connected with the church comes from the Lord, therefore we are told that the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the city's temple, which symbolizes the Lord in His Divine humanity. The Lord God Almighty means the Lord from eternity, who is Jehovah Himself, and the Lamb symbolizes His Divine humanity…

A sermon by Rev. Nancy Piorkowski
Readings: I Thessalonians 5:12-28, Secrets of Heaven 2535
See also on Youtube
Photo by Wendy Van Zyl

To begin with, I started out with the revised common lectionary which had a great Bible reading and lesson for today, but as I looked at it and pondered and prayed over it I really did not have any idea or any strong idea of thoughts that would form what I thought was a cohesive message for today that is beyond about one or two sentences. I reviewed my books in search of inspiration and was pleased to find two books by Anne Lamott that Millie Laakko gave me. The first book, entitled Traveling Mercies, offers ‘some thoughts on faith.’(1) I grabbed that book because I had begun reading it a while back and thought it might be a useful resource for a sermon topic. Coincidentally, my affirmation solidified when I found a handwritten note from Millie tucked inside one of the pages. I do not remember seeing the note before but finding it in those moments gave me hope that I could pull off a sermon!
I paused at the chapter titled "Hearth Cake," and the first sentence captured my attention: Anne starts the chapter out with the following statement: "Some people think that God is in the details, but I have come to believe that God is in the bathroom. “I initially found it unusual, but upon reflection, I can recall several instances of severe illness involving either myself or another person, where I found myself praying in the bathroom." Well, this caught my curiosity. I read about a young mother's experience of having her child undergo blood work, which led to concerns when they visited an oncologist, as it suggested the possibility of cancer. 
The possibility of her child having cancer made the mother very concerned. She felt uncertain and afraid of what might happen next. It reminded her of the story of Elijah waiting in a cave, facing the threat of being killed by his oppressor or saved by God.(2) An angel appeared to him telling him to eat, rest and go back to the cave to await further instructions. Elijah followed the angels’ instructions. Elijah first heard the howling wind, but he did not go to the mouth of the cave, because he knew that the loudness was not God. Neither was God in the earthquake or the fire. After the fire Elijah heard a voice, and indeed that voice told Elijah what he must do to save his people. (3)    Anne followed this example and spent the next two days eating muffins in lieu of hearth cakes and drinking lots of water. She washed windows and gave the dog a flea bath. She went into the bathroom a lot to pray for patience. Anne remembered that it is sometimes the daily rituals, the ordinariness that helps one navigate through these times of the agonizing unknown. While waiting for answers. She knew that she was going to be “more or less okay “– when she discovered patience and serenity in the warmth of the sunlight streaming into her living room. Thankfully, this story has a happy conclusion. The child was diagnosed with an allergy, not cancer.  WOW!
I had my own experience of waiting. I remember my dad coming into my room to tell me the hospital had called him and wanted him to come to the hospital. My father would not let me go with him. I got up and knelt by the bed and said the Lord’s Prayer. So many thoughts going through my head as I realized how my mother’s death would change my life. I remember very well flying from one unfinished task to another after my dad called to tell me that mom had died. These of course were distractions to help me cope with this devastating loss. I was home alone at the time with my siblings asleep. At one point the kitchen sink was overflowing – which gave me another mess to clean up! If you are not careful, your overzealous attempt at distracting yourself will backfire!
Anne’s reflections affirm that the Divine is present in life's small moments. Her journey of surrender, whether through daily tasks or solitary prayers, teaches that faith grows in quiet honesty. This mirrors my own experience of finding solace in prayer during times of personal loss, where it became a comforting conversation with God. Moments of connection can transform despair into hope and uncertainty into strength.
In her prelude, Help, Thanks, Wow, Anne Lamott recommends we keep prayer simple. Prayer is not for display purposes, Prayer is private, even when we pray with others. It is communication from one’s heart to God. One can pray anywhere, walking along a path, doing the dishes or any other common task. Prayer is talking to something with which we seek union, or as e.e cummings put it—reaching out to something having to do with the eternal, with vitality, intelligence, kindness even when we are at our most utterly doomed and skeptical of everything God can handle honesty, and prayer begins an honest conversation. Lamott goes on to say that she believes that when you are telling the truth, you are closest to God.
Years ago, when I was in crisis, I poured out my prayerful pleas for help with journal writing. I wrote in journal after journal for several years. I found that writing to God would put my thoughts out there where I could see them. Writing was a way of calming myself by putting my feelings into words.  I consider my journal writing as honest conversations with God. 
As time progressed, I found the ability to say thank you to God, which is Lamott’s second prayer. Anne states that “gratitude beings in our hearts and then dovetails into behavior.”(4)  Lamott also tells us that gratitude often makes us want to serve others. I know that often feeling gratitude gives me the desire to do something good for someone else. When all humbles us, especially when we recognize all the ways we have been blessed, there is a desire to be of service to others.  
This does not have to be anything big or grand. Picking up litter, volunteering at a homeless shelter or soup kitchen are all ways to share our gratitude with others. Smiling and listening to a stranger in the grocery store or making eye contact with a homeless person and genuinely asking them how they are doing.  It is being respectful and receptive to others. The list goes on and on. Small things that may not seem all that important shine as beacons of love to someone struggling on the fringe of being accepted by society. 
When I am feeling so distressed that I shut down completely, I know that getting up and doing something, anything will redirect my energy. When I am at an emotional standstill it helps when I remind myself to ‘Just Keep on going’. 
Have you had any experience that made you proclaim “Wow” with a sharp intake breath or a gasp of air? There are two kinds of “wow” the one in all lower case that happens when we experience something modest, such as getting the TV controller to do what you want it to do!  The other wow, with a capital “W” are things in nature that wow us. When I was in the Muir woods for the first time, the sheer magnitude of the redwoods! My sister kept saying “oh my God!”, which the equivalent of wow! Has anything wowed you lately?
I loved reading Anne Lamott’s insights on praying using thanks, help, wow as a guide Anne gives very concrete examples from her life experiences. She does so with humor along with the reality of how hard life really is.  
In closing I want to share an encounter I had with a neighbor/friend who shared his experience of attending a family funeral on Friday. I was experiencing writers block, at the time, so this became a wow for me!
Al called me yesterday morning expressing distress about the way his cousin’s body did not look like he was sleeping!  There was no makeup, so the cousin looked like a dead person!  As we went on talking about the funeral, Al shared his personal relationship with God. He talks to God all the time and relates that he has experienced events before they happened. 
There was torrential rain as the funeral entourage headed to the cemetery for internment.  Al told me he prayed to God that it would not be raining at the cemetery.  When they arrived at the cemetery, the sun was out! WOW he exclaimed over the telephone!   This was a WOW experience for him. I thanked him for sharing his experience.  He did not realize what a gift he had given me by sharing his wow experience. Little did he know that he just had given me the closing of my sermon today!  WOW, God is real and always present in our lives!

(1)  (Lamott, Traveling Mercies, 1999)
(2) (Holy Bible, 1972) I Kings 19:7-12
(3) Ibid
(4) (Lamott, HELP THANkS WOW The Three Essential Prayers, 2012)p.56


Bibliography
Holy Bible. (1972). Yew York: Thomas Nelson .
Lamott, A. (1999). Traveling Mercies. New York: Penguin.
Lamott, A. (2012). HELP THANkS WOW The Three Essential Prayers. New York: Penguin Group.

Readings: Exodus 15:1-13, 17-21, Secrets of Heaven #8265 (see below)
See also on Youtube
Photo by Matthew Barra

Good morning friends, here we are on Mother’s Day, and on this day, I was drawn to feature the prophet Miriam. Our text begins with a song from Moses and all of the Children of Israel, but ends with the Song of Miriam, leading the women in dancing and song.

To give context to this story: the Children of Israel were an enslaved and marginalized population within Egypt. Moses rose up as a leader and advocated for their liberation. After a protracted negogiation with the Pharoah, which involved the famous ten plagues, the Pharoah finally agreed to let the Children of Israel leave. They were on their way towards the Red Sea, when Pharaoh changed his mind and sent his army after them. They were trapped between the army and a vast body of water, and we can only imagine their terror at having their newly found freedom endangered so soon. But through Moses, God parted the waters of the Red Sea and allowed the Children of Israel to walk over the sea bed to safety. Pharoah’s army followed them, but as soon as the Children of Israel were on the other side, the army was swallowed by the sea. 

It is the subsequent song of relief and praise that we hear in our text today. The Song of Miriam in particular is understood to be one of the oldest pieces of poetry included in the Hebrew Scriptures.(1) If we are wondering how the story of the crossing of the Red Sea was described and celebrated by the generations very close to these remembered events, these words are as near as we are going to get.

And as I was reading the text, one thing stood out to me, something that I did not expect. I resonated very strongly with the idea of God being a warrior in verse 3. For myself, I normally shy away from the militaristic and battle language in the bible. I recognize, of course, that this is partly because of my privilege. I have had the blessed luxury of not needing to see God that way for my own survival.

But we cannot get away from the fact that liberation is an integral theme of the bible, and has been an irreplaceable strand of life-giving theology for marginalized people throughout the ages. And through our Swedenborgian lens, we recognize how it also speaks to our own personal battles as well. Liberation speaks powerfully, on many levels. And in this moment, I am grateful that our God is a warrior. 

What does that even mean though? When we think of the notion of warrior, what do we think of? There is more there than the act of fighting, I think. When I hear the word warrior, I think of determination, of steadfastness, of courage, of foresight. But interestingly, I also think of empathy. Because, what is it that, in the best most ideal sense, causes one to want to protect something, to want to battle on its behalf? It’s an acknowledgment of that thing’s worthiness. We stand up to fight for something that we love, something that we consider worthy of protection. This might include people, places, institutions, or ideals but they are all things that we have feel are worthy of existence, dignity, and autonomy. Believing in these things for something other than ourselves requires a fundamental level of empathy.

Because certainly we humans fight for more selfish things: we fight for ourselves, and for the prevalance of our egos. We fight for dominance, and power, for resources and wealth, for superiority. We might even try to disguise what we are fighting for with delusion and propaganda of many kinds, trying to say we are fighting for others when we are really fighting for ourselves.

But when God is a warrior, God is fighting for our dignity, our automony, and our well-being, and not just for some but for all. And when we are our best selves, we fight for these things too, each in our own way.

Reasons to fight will keep showing up in ourselves and our world. The metaphorical pictures of slavery and danger in the Exodus stories feel very familiar because they are tendencies that keep showing up in human life and human society. 

Pharoah represents false ideas, ideas that perpetuate servitude, marginalization, suffering, and cruelty. The horses, and the riders who guide them, represent religious understanding that is falsified, potentially good ideas literally made false and wrong by selfish reasoning. Examples might be: trying to say that some people are our “neighbor” and some people are not, and so therefore do not need to be loved, or do not need due process. Or trying to say that cruelty is fine and even admirable if it is in service to faith. Or trying to say that some people are better to guide society than others and that allegience to God’s kingdom justifies such exclusion.

Swedenborg deployed these metaphors in the context of religious ideas, but we can certainly also see a simliar application to civic ideas. For example: politicians ignoring the constitution or the rule of law because they think their agenda is too important or popular to be weighed down by them. The rule of law for you but not for me.

And as we look at verse 9 we see a particularly chilling representation of the quality of these Pharoah tendencies: The enemy said, "I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the spoil, my desire shall have its fill of them. (And to be clear, the spoil is not just treasure but people). The “enemy” speaking is any parts of ourselves or our world that thinks of others as playthings, without rights or dignity. The parts of us and our world that believe that our desire is the highest and most important thing, and that it should always have its way. When this worldview runs rampant, it leads to cruelty and delusion. It is worth fighting against when it rears its head. 

What we learn from this story though, is that God stands firm against this worldview. God will throw those horses and riders into the sea. Pharoah’s system of domination will not prevail. In the Swedenborgian thought-world, water always represents truth, and so we see that the corrupted truths represented by the horses and riders, will ultimately be swallowed up by a larger, greater, more genuine truth. I know this seems hard to believe, in this current divided post-truth world. But it will happen, it is happening, even if it takes longer than we might wish, even if the road is winding. I was speaking with a friend the other day when she related watching a movie from our teenage years with her own teenage daughter now, noting a sexist reference in the movie that was par for the course thirty years ago but plays so very differently now. People can change, cultures can change, for the better. 

Liberation is possible, on every human level, because it is one of God’s central desires for us all. God will lead the people to safety, across dry ground that couldn’t be seen before, a way made out of no way. This is one of the most fundamental stories that we tell about our God. We say that God creates, God calls, God waits, God loves, God accompanies, but most importantly we say that God redeems us. We human beings will screw up big time, alone and in concert. But our God is a warrior who says we are worthy of saving and extends a hand. And we are called to take that hand, and turn around to extend our hand to another. 

Strangely, cannot think of a more appropriate text for Mother’s Day. One expression of the warrior-spirit is in mothering, for we all know many mothers who are everyday warriors. Because fighting doesn’t always look like warring; fighting for something good and true can look like organizing, advocating, communicating, connecting, standing strong. It can look like a hug just when we need it. It can look like giving love freely when love is denied. It can look like believing what is true when no one else does.

And so this brings us back around to Miriam. Miriam the prophet sings an unassailable truth about God, and leads us to dance and make music in the midst of challenging times. Her prophetic truth was embodied and connective and celebratory. It speaks of a powerful and compelling hope that we all need in difficult times. That our God works for our liberation against tools of domination, the God works for our well-being in the face of chaos. Let us always sing to our Lord, this very song. Amen.

(1) The New Interpreter’s Bible, pg 375


Readings:

Exodus 15:1-13, 17-21

1 Then Moses and the Israelites sang this song to the Lord: "I will sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; horse and rider he has thrown into the sea. 
2 The Lord is my strength and my might, and he has become my salvation; this is my God, and I will praise him, my father's God, and I will exalt him.
3 The Lord is a warrior; the Lord is his name.
4 "Pharaoh's chariots and his army he cast into the sea; his picked officers were sunk in the Red Sea.
5 The floods covered them; they went down into the depths like a stone.
6 Your right hand, O Lord, glorious in power— your right hand, O Lord, shattered the enemy.
7 In the greatness of your majesty you overthrew your adversaries; you sent out your fury, it consumed them like stubble.
8 At the blast of your nostrils the waters piled up, the floods stood up in a heap; the deeps congealed in the heart of the sea.
9 The enemy said, "I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the spoil, my desire shall have its fill of them. I will draw my sword, my hand shall destroy them.'
10 You blew with your wind, the sea covered them; they sank like lead in the mighty waters.
11 "Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in splendor, doing wonders?
12 You stretched out your right hand, the earth swallowed them.
13 "In your steadfast love you led the people whom you redeemed; you guided them by your strength to your holy abode.

17 You brought them in and planted them on the mountain of your own possession, the place, O Lord, that you made your abode, the sanctuary, O Lord, that your hands have established.
18 The Lord will reign forever and ever.”
19 When the horses of Pharaoh with his chariots and his chariot drivers went into the sea, the Lord brought back the waters of the sea upon them; but the Israelites walked through the sea on dry ground.
20 Then the prophet Miriam, Aaron's sister, took a tambourine in her hand; and all the women went out after her with tambourines and with dancing.
21 And Miriam sang to them: "Sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; horse and rider he has thrown into the sea.”

Secrets of Heaven 8265

'The horse and its rider He has thrown into the sea' means in that as a result simply of [God’s] presence falsities arising from evil have been damned and cast into hell. This is clear from the meaning of 'the horse' as falsities belonging to a [corrupted] understanding, for 'horse' means the power of understanding, and in the contrary sense a [corrupted] understanding, which is no understanding at all, and therefore falsity is meant in that contrary sense by 'horse' and…from the meaning of 'rider' (or 'horseman') as reasonings based on that false knowledge…

Readings: John 21:1-19, True Christianity 364 (see below)
See also on Youtube
Photo by Fatih Encan on Unsplash
​
I know that I say this all the time, but this is one of my favorite bible stories. There is something so simple and beautiful about Jesus inviting his disciples to sit down to a meal on the beach. Jesus says a lot of inspiring things in the gospels, but the invitation “Come and eat breakfast” just lets my heart and soul exhale. In the aftermath of something as momentous as the resurrection, Jesus bids us find nourishment in the realities of the everyday. 

After the post-resurrection appearances in Jerusalem, we suddenly find the disciples back in Galilee. We don’t actually know what brought them back there, the text doesn’t tell us. Perhaps they were uncertain and afraid, so they returned to what they knew. Perhaps they were confused as to what their mission was to be. Perhaps they were simply preparing themselves for what they imagined was to come. Either way, returning to something familiar is a common response to uncertainty and change. There was so much for them to process; not only had they witnessed Jesus’ death and return, one of their own group had been the one to betray Jesus in the first place, and Peter himself had denied him. There was plenty of cause for both lament and hope, so they were probably experiencing some pretty complicated emotions. In the end, I think they were mostly just waiting to see what was going to happen.

What happens is that Jesus appears to them again, and invites them into the experience of a miraculous catch and then a meal of fish and bread. The simple meal recalls earlier in the gospel of John, when Jesus fed the multitude with the same food, at the same location. John does not have a communion episode as the other gospels do, where Jesus shares a meal with the disciples and says the familiar words, “this is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.” What Jesus does say after the miracles of the loaves and fishes is, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” (6:35) This final miracle also recalls the first of Jesus’ signs in this gospel: the miracle of the water turning into wine at the wedding at Cana. In John’s gospel, in the beginning, middle and end, in celebration, in a crowd, with an intimate few, the point is clear: God is the source of life-giving nourishment.

God is constantly being that source for us and we don’t always notice. When we do notice, it is often because something has turned out differently or better than we expected.  And so we see in this gospel, how the notion of God as source of life-giving nourishment is communicated and recognized through abundance. Wine where there was none, fish and bread for everyone when there was only a little, full to bursting nets when the fish weren’t biting. The epiphany is that God’s presence is revealed to us when we recognize the abundance available to us. All of God, all the time. We read this  in our Swedenborg reading for today as well, that God is always giving the whole of God’s self to us all the time, in everything, and we have the choice of how much we wish to partake.

And so God shows up on a beach and invites us to breakfast. Oh, how I love Jesus’ super-casual question: “Friends, haven’t you any fish?” The whole serious and poignant episode is leavened with Peter’s bumbling enthusiasm, as he frantically pulls on his clothes and jumps into the water. Peter has always been all in, even if he couldn’t always follow through. We all need to grapple with how we deny or avoid the fullness of God’s presence with us. We will soon get to Peter and his conversation with Jesus that reads as a redemptive replay of his three-fold denial. But, first, even here on the beach, his failure is already subtly referenced by the fire of burning coals. It had been around such a fire that Peter had repeatedly denied knowing Jesus. Here, the fire reappears, a reminder to Peter, and to us, of how we need to improve, where we need to open up our hearts, how we need to re-evaluate our habits and our ways of thinking.

But it is important to note that this fire is not meant to hurt us. The bible often uses fire language in the sense of purification, but that is not the purpose here. This is a gentle fire, used to cook a meal that will nourish.  So, it is with our process. We should face our failures unflinchingly but not because we deserve punishment, or that it is good that we should suffer for our wrongs, it is rather so that we might learn how to act differently. The power from those red-hot coals, the power of self-reflection, is converted into making something useful, a meal, that will nourish our further journey.

Then Jesus says: “Bring some of the fish you have just caught.” As we look to this story to metaphorically represent our own journey(1), we see that God asks us to bring what we ourselves have caught. To this meal with God, to our life with God, we are asked to bring the fruits of our own experience, our wonderings, our questions, our realizations. We and God both bring something. We bring what we have gleaned from God’s great abundance and we offer it back up to God. And God brings the gentle fire of love to helps us to transform our offerings into a regenerated life. We eat, we notice, we learn, we are changed.

So, in this story, we see a different kind of eucharist, something grounded in our daily life, something grounded in the ordinary. A kind of eucharist that tells us All things are full of God…that every meal is communion, every breath is sacred space, every pause is pregnant with the fullness of God’s presence.  We gather at the Holy Supper together, as we will today, because sometimes we need to remember just how holy the world really is.

Then, after they had eaten, Jesus has a conversation with Peter, and from this we come to understand that our journey is not just individualistic, that our nourishment at the meal calls us into mission, that taking our portion from God’s fullness must open our eyes to what being in God’s fullness means. When Peter denied Jesus around that fire in Jerusalem, it was not that Peter had denied who Jesus was, it was that Peter had denied his relationship with Jesus (2). “Aren’t you one of his disciples? Peter was asked, to which he replied “I am not.” Another asked “Didn’t I see you with him?” and Peter denies it again. He didn’t say Jesus wasn’t Lord, he said he wasn’t one of his followers. In that moment, in talking with Jesus, Peter is getting to reclaim that relationship, to recognize that loving Jesus is not only about recognizing him, but also about transforming that love into useful action, about following him, following him everywhere. And following Jesus meant promising to “take care of my sheep.” In the words of theologian Karoline Lewis, this is one of the ways that God was going to love the world now, by encouraging Jesus’ followers to be good shepherds, to take care of each other, and to take care of the vulnerable (3).

Ultimately, this story is about what discipleship would look like post-resurrection. Jesus was not always going to be with them. In the absence of clear direction, the disciples returned to fishing. Jesus gently reminded them that they had more to do. He reiterated his call to them: “Follow me.”  But before that he said “Come and have breakfast.” Discipleship is sometimes difficult. Peter would lead a whole movement, and his commitment to it would would eventually cost him his life. But discipleship is also in the small things. It looks like sitting down at a meal together. It looks like forgiveness. It looks like being reminded who we are and what we value. It looks like communion in the middle of everything. It looks like being a good shepherd to others. It looks like fish and bread on a fire, shared in community and love.
Amen.​

(1)  Secrets of Heaven #991
(2) Sermon Brainwave #661 https://www.workingpreacher.org/brainwave.aspx?podcast_id=1134
(3) Ibid


Readings:

John 21:1-19

1 Afterward Jesus appeared again to his disciples, by the Sea of Galilee. It happened this way: 2 Simon Peter, Thomas (also known as Didymus ), Nathanael from Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two other disciples were together. 3 “I’m going out to fish,” Simon Peter told them, and they said, “We’ll go with you.” So they went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing. 4 Early in the morning, Jesus stood on the shore, but the disciples did not realize that it was Jesus. 5 He called out to them, “Friends, haven’t you any fish?”“No,” they answered. 6 He said, “Throw your net on the right side of the boat and you will find some.” When they did, they were unable to haul the net in because of the large number of fish. 7 Then the disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, “It is the Lord!” As soon as Simon Peter heard him say, “It is the Lord,” he wrapped his outer garment around him (for he had taken it off) and jumped into the water. 8 The other disciples followed in the boat, towing the net full of fish, for they were not far from shore, about a hundred yards. 9 When they landed, they saw a fire of burning coals there with fish on it, and some bread. 10 Jesus said to them, “Bring some of the fish you have just caught.” 11 So Simon Peter climbed back into the boat and dragged the net ashore. It was full of large fish, 153, but even with so many the net was not torn. 12 Jesus said to them, “Come and have breakfast.” None of the disciples dared ask him, “Who are you?” They knew it was the Lord. 13 Jesus came, took the bread and gave it to them, and did the same with the fish. 14 This was now the third time Jesus appeared to his disciples after he was raised from the dead.

15 When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?”“Yes, Lord,” he said, “you know that I love you.” Jesus said, “Feed my lambs.” 16 Again Jesus said, “Simon son of John, do you love me?”He answered, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” Jesus said, “Take care of my sheep.” 17 The third time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?”Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, “Do you love me?” He said, “Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.” Jesus said, “Feed my sheep. 18 Very truly I tell you, when you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.” 19 Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God. Then he said to him, “Follow me!” 

True Christianity 364

[1] The Lord flows into everyone with all his divine love, all his divine wisdom, and all his divine life….God could not and still cannot divide his own essence - it is an indivisible oneness. Therefore since God alone is life, it follows without a doubt that God uses his life to bring us all to life….Divinity is indivisible. 

[3] The Lord is omnipresent; and everywhere he is present, he is present with his entire essence. It is impossible for him to take out some of his essence and give part of it to one person and another part to another. He gives it all. He also gives us the ability to adopt as much as we wish of it, whether a little or a lot. The Lord says that he has a home with those who do his commandments, and that the faithful are in him and he is in them. In a word, all things are full of God. We each take our own portion from that fullness.