Present Joy
Jay Rowland
(Deuteronomy 34:1-8,10-12) & Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5
Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5
10 And in the spirit[a] he carried me away to a great, high mountain and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God.
22 I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. 23 And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb. 24 The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. 25 Its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there. 26 People will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations. 27 But nothing [foul] will enter it, nor anyone who practices abomination or falsehood, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life.
22 Then the angel[a] showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb 2 through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life[b] with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month, and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. 3 Nothing accursed will be found there anymore. But the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him; 4 they will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. 5 And there will be no more night; they need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.
Present Joy
Where are you right now?
Yes I know you’re here but … are you? Are you all here or partly here?
It’s always fairly obvious when our body is present. But our mind? Not so obvious. Our attention, our thoughts can leave our body without any warning or outward indication. At any moment our minds detach from our body. That’s quite a trick. Sometimes this can be a good thing--a defense mechanism; the mind’s way of protecting the psyche and the overall person. But sometimes it’s not a good thing. Especially when we get stuck spending too much time in our head, absent from the present moment where life happens.
I wonder about the states of mind of our spiritual ancestors the Hebrews as they follow Moses out of Egypt and slavery in the pages of Exodus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. I can imagine their minds in constant motion just like their feet as they walk and walk and walk through the wilderness to wherever Moses is leading--remembering the past, wondering about the future and increasingly dissatisfied with the present.
Any relief or joy they feel over their freedom from slavery is quickly overtaken by the demands of the present moment—survival in the wilderness. As they make their way to the land God has promised, their minds must be overwhelmed by the abrupt changes they’ve experienced. Life in Egypt wasn’t good but at least it was a world they understood. Their current reality—life in the wilderness without any clarity about how long it will take to get where they’re going and how they’ll survive—was becoming more and more terrifying by the day.
They want their new life in their promised new land. They are anxious to be there--anywhere but “here” which is an endless transition between past and future. And they’re not handling it very well. They’re tired. They’re on edge. There’s division in the ranks. They start taking out their fear on Moses and they begin to doubt God. Moses is exhausted by their incessant conflict and complaining and worried about mutiny, and revolt.
Fast forward a couple of thousand years to the final book of the Bible. At the time of Revelation, God’s people are struggling and suffering in a completely different period of history. Violence and persecution by the Roman emperor have them on the run also--but there’s really no place for them to go. It simply looked to them like the world was ending as human violence and cruelty freely devoured anyone and everyone who believed in Jesus Christ.
I suspect that every period of history-including the current one-brings profound challenges to the people living in it. The two scripture passages before us today offer us glimpses into the lives of God’s people during two vastly different historical periods. The threats to their existence in each period are unique to their time. But both periods are marked by great suffering and grief, many good people have suffered and died along the way. Daily life is filled with uncertainty and fear, doubt and despair, threatening to drown all of God’s people.
But God’s people did not drown. Despite all the adversity, suffering, conflict and division the church doesn’t drown in despair and doubt. The wandering Hebrew people eventually enter the promised land as God promised. The convulsions of violence and persecution and mayhem against the church during Revelation ceased.
In every generation God’s people are threatened from without and within but the faith and the church survive. During WW1 and WW2 and after many openly wondered if God was dead. But the faith and the church have survived to endure yet another generational crisis.
Here in the year 2022 the future of God’s people is uncertain--again. The threats to our existence seem far worse to us than anything our ancestors may have faced--unrestrained gun violence. Racial conflict. Pandemic. Climate change. Long-standing economic and political morals and assumptions and presumptions have all changed. Democracy and governing and voting has changed. Education has changed. It’s hard to think of some aspect of life that has not changed in some fundamental way in recent years.
In other words the future is uncertain. Again. We don’t yet know how all of this will turn out. Just like the Hebrew people in the wilderness. Just like the disciples and followers of Jesus after Jesus was murdered by authorities. Just like the early church when it appeared all hell broke loose to burn it down.
But the faith and the church have survived every change the world has thrown up. The Church has changed right along with it--that’s what a living breathing organism does. It changes. It adapts. It responds. We don’t know what the church will look like in 20 years or 50 years, or even five or ten years from now. But no matter what it looks like, rest assured that, as our Hebrew ancestors discovered, and as the first-century church discovered, and as the church all through the ages from its high-water mark of membership to its weakest pulse discovered, the church will survive.
The church has always survived because its survival doesn’t depend upon individual efforts to keep it alive, but rather the church survives because God is in the business of bringing dead things to life.
Above all else, the church will continue because people are still people—every generation proves that we are utterly lost without God. And every generation has witnessed God’s faithful shepherding through what appeared at the time to be the end of the world or the death of the church.
Because God took on human flesh and bone to become our forever shepherd--the One and Only Shepherd who knows how to navigate through every nook and cranny, every hairpin turn, every Exodus and exile, every sandstorm and hurricane, every change, every crisis, every death, and every end. “Jesus is the great pioneer in every realm of life. … The world of things as they are has changed. This means that men and women must learn to live for others. It is only when we can live a life of service that we get our truest joy out of life.” (Alexander Stuart Baillie, “The Seven Last Words”)
God created us to be spiritual beings. Though our spirit is framed in flesh and blood and bone what keeps us centered in any storm is our spiritual nature … our interior spaciousness. The things that expand our interior spaciousness are things like silence, meditation, prayer, music, nature, art, worship, poetry, etc.
The less time we spend with those things that expand our interior spaciousness, the more we find ourselves reeling from disorientation, alienation, isolation, anxiety, and our minds detach from our body leaving us fear, jumpy. Whenever our groundedness in the present decreases we lose our bearings. Increasingly, it seems to me, we’re bombarded by hurricane-force winds of change and panic, reacting to events rather than seeking to find refuge in God so that we can keep our hearts open in spite of all the fear and anxiety and uncertainty that compels us to react or become overwhelmed.
The greatest challenge to this generation is to carve out time for our spirit, time for expanding our interior spaciousness so that we may always have access to calm in the present moment where life happens—no matter what is happening in the moment. The pace of life moves at warp-speed. We don’t take time to process or feel. It’s so easy to immerse ourselves in social media, scrolling the day or the night away, or follow the wall-to-wall coverage of the latest crisis breaking news. We are daily bombarded with information and misinformation nearly everywhere we turn. And so it’s too easy to forget or neglect our heart/spirit and our deepest need to commune with the Lord.
Tara Brach writes “We can find true refuge within our own hearts and minds—right here, right now, in the midst of our moment-to-moment lives. This refuge does not depend on anything outside of ourselves—a certain situation, a person, a cure, even a particular mood or emotion. The yearning for such refuge is universal. It is what lies beneath all our wants and fears. We long to know we can handle what’s coming. We want to trust ourselves, to trust this life. We want to life from the fullness of who we are.” 1 It seems to me that’s what Jesus came to show us.
“We find true refuge whenever we recognize that silent space of awareness behind all our busy doing and striving. We find refuge whenever our hearts open (and expand).” We find refuge whenever we connect with our interior spaciousness where we have access to spiritual clarity and wisdom, and to our true nature, our spiritual nature.
A place of refuge is available no matter where our body is and wherever our mind may have gone. This refuge is always available, even in the present moment where life happens. And that’s because God isn’t out there somewhere, but is right here with you now, not in the abstract, but in the very center of your heart and spirit. “No matter how challenging the (current) situation, there is always a way to take refuge in a healing and liberating presence,” Brach writes. “This presence is hard to describe because it is an embodied experience, not a concept. … when I sense the silent, inner wakefulness that is here, I come home to a sense of wholeness. I’m at home in my body and heart, at home in the earth and with all beings. Presence creates a boundless sanctuary where there’s room for everything in life.”
It is the answer to the question nobody is asking but everyone yearns for. It is the kind of presence and joy Jesus came and gave his life to reveal.
Notes
This and the other quotes below it, Tara Brach, True Refuge—Finding Peace and Freedom in Your Own Awakened Heart (2013), p.14-16
