“See, the home of God is among mortals!”
The scene is one that we last saw just over a month ago, as part of the readings for Maundy Thursday. Jesus is in the upper room, with his disciples. They have shared a meal, or are in the process of sharing it and Jesus is teaching while they eat. This is the Last Supper, the day Jesus was arrested, and we are hearing his instructions to his disciples, how they are to care for each other, to hold together, to cope with his absence, to survive until the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, is given to them. Love one another. Even in the deepest darkness, love each other and you will survive the worst that the world can throw at you.
In Holy Week we focus on the way of the Cross that Jesus was willing to walk as an incarnation of love for us. How do we find Jesus? Love. How do we know Jesus when he is not with us the way we expect? Love. How do we treat each other when the world around us seems to assault us on every side? Love. The circle of love. But we hear this commandment on the other side of Easter. And if we look we can see that there is more to Jesus’ new commandment than just survival of a persecuted group waiting for someone to come and punish their oppressors.
After Easter, the disciples think in a new way. They live a different kind of life. Instead of huddling together in fear, hoping only for bodily survival, they open themselves to the Spirit. They live their life in the sure knowledge that the love of God is stronger than anything, even whatever suffering may come their way, even death which will come eventually. They have a vision of what the world can be and they are sent out to make that vision real, by living the love they have received and offering that love not just to each other, but to the whole world.
That vision is articulated most deeply, most fully, most majestically in our first reading this morning. John the Divine gives us his scene, this grand and glorious moment of renewal and re-creation. And I saw, not just a new world, but a new heaven and a new earth, and the new Jerusalem, the holy city coming from God. And I heard a great and mighty voice saying to the whole creation “See! The home of God is among mortals.” The home of God is among humans. The home of God is…us. In our love we find God. And when we look for light in the darkness, the deeper the darkness, the more the light of love shines out.
But all too often, religious groups throughout history have reversed the order. They, we, have focused on getting out of this world. It’s what I call the superhero plan, “Up, up, and away!” The story they tell is all too familiar to most of us on some level. Creation at one point might have been good, but long ago it became evil, fell, as it were, and things have only gotten worse since. Jesus came, but only for the select group who follow him, and follow him in a particular right way, usually, and everyone and everything else is, more or less, irredeemably evil. Depending on the strain of religion involved, there might be a greater or lesser degree of feeling sorry for ‘all those poor people’ who are on the outside but there’s still no doubt that they are on the outs. And because most of creation is thought of as fallen, as evil, there is no solution for the chosen few except to escape in some way. And certain artificial concepts, such as “the Rapture” have been read back into the Bible (although they’re not actually there) to reinforce such beliefs. And so the circle of community faces almost exclusively inward, turning its back on and rejecting the rest of the world.
Up, up, and away is not the direction of the story of God and God’s ongoing creation and healing of the world. In fact, God’s direction is quite the opposite. From the first moment of the Bible as it has been put together, when God looked at the world and said “it is very good” to the final of the 66 or so books, the world is thought of as essentially, in essence, good, And here near the end of the book that has the longest and most detailed vision of the future yet to come, we find, not a detailed description of how a select few are magically swept up into the air, but this resounding proclamation: “The home of God is among mortals!” We, right here, right now, are God’s home. We are called not just to see the light in each other, but to be the light for each other, and to be the light for the world. The circle faces outward.
Last week I went caving for the first time since I was in college. We took several of our youth to the mountains and went to Worley’s Cave, where we were underground for several hours. It was, for me a transformational experience and I have no doubt that various aspects of it will show up in multiple sermons for quite a while to come. There were lots of pieces of the experience that dramatize our faith journey, everything from tight squeezes that suddenly open up into glorious caverns, moments when you unexpectedly find still clear pools of water, slipping and falling and getting up again, lots of good stuff! But the piece I started thinking about for this sermon had to do with light. Because, you see, we had helmets that had headlamps on them so that our hands would be free. And those helmets had lights that would barely show up in this room this morning. They were LEDs deisgned to save battery power and they really weren’t very bright. Outside even on a cloudy day you could barely tell the difference between on and off. But once we got away from the daylight, down, down, and in, those lights became very important. In the darkness, our eyes opened wider and wider until those small lights allowed us to see the caves in a way that would have been utterly impossible without them. In a sense, the light itself transformed the absolute blackness, absolute darkness, into a place where we could, if not live comfortably, at least travel through for a few hours.
At one point, after a scramble up a steep slope inside the cave, we reached a point where there was enough space for everyone to sit down and take a rest. And at that point, our guides told us to turn all our lights off. I have never in my life experienced that absolute darkness before. It was not the darkness of closed eyes, or even the darkness of a moonless night in the country. There was absolutely no ambient light, of any kind. A hand could be waved immediately in front of my face, and I could not see it, not even a hint. There was nothing to tell that the slope we’d come up existed, or that the tunnel we were about to follow was there. There was no way to know what direction to travel or even which direction was which. All at once I realized both how dependent I am on my sight. The whole world had shrunk to whatever I could tell with my other senses. I could hear the echoes of the water dripping, I could feel the air move and shift, I could smell the mud and the dirt, cleaner than it ever smells above ground. I knew that the stone I sat on was there. But that was it. Beyond those immediate sensory inputs, I had nothing. I was in deep darkness, the likes of which I had never ever known. And then one light was turned back on. And the shining, of those little LEDs, was like a star, like a gift from heaven, come down to us, so bright that for a moment I even had to squint! And the world came back again. Transformed. Made new.
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has never overcome it. See! The home of God is among mortals! God will dwell with us, among us, within us, between us, and will be our God, right here and now! And when the fullness of God is with us, when this limited world meets the unlimitedness of God, then God will wipe away every tear from our eyes and mourning and sorrow will be no more.
And in the light, in the light of this vision of this creation healed and made whole, the vision of Jesus’ new commandment reveals an Easter meaning. Jesus’ words are not just about allowing the disciples to support each other and to survive, although they are about that. I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. But by living this way, the disciples make a proclamation to the rest of the world. By this the world will know that you are truly my disciples, my followers, my friends, if you love one another.
The world will know that you are followers of the Way if you live in love. If love is your way of life. Because by living in love, you will become lights to this world, showing them that there is another way, a way in which the love of God, the compassion of God, the wildness and warmth of God, flows among us and through us right here and right now. You will show them what is proclaimed, that the home of God is among mortals, among the least of these, among even such imperfect creatures as, well, as us.
There was something else I noticed during that caving trip. In an effort to preserve battery power (which we never actually had any problem with!) I realized early on, that I could turn my light completely off as long as I was near the other members of the group. That as long as even half of us had our lights on, that there was enough light for me to see the next few steps in front of me. The light did not all depend, in other words, on me all the time.
The home of God is among and within all of us, not just me individually. In other words, we are not the sole keepers of the light. We are not the only ones called to live in love. And when we fail, when our light goes out, extinguished by external forces or because the batteries have run out, there are others, other lights, others who love us, who share their light with us, so that the home of God among mortals, the light of love is never put out completely. Even in moments that feel like absolute darkness, there is still light we cannot see, and sometimes, in those darkest moments, the light, the love, the home of God among us, bursts into brilliance in a way we had never seen before.
How does the light come? In love. In love together. In the love of parent for child, of spouses for each other, in the love of family. In the love, although we don’t often use that term, that friends have for each other, the love that lets them rely on each other, reach out to each other offer and receive support, share laughter and pain. In the love of the community for its own. In the love of this community both for its own, for those who are integral to the life of the community, and for those who are outside. By this the world will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.
The circle does not face inward. It is not defensive, huddled, together, rejecting the world in favor of the warmth of the tomb. Instead, the circle stands together, each member connected to every other, facing outward, arms reaching out to the world, welcoming, embracing, shining. And every person in that circle shines to every other person, both within and without, shining that same proclamation, as strongly as an LED in absolute darkness…
“See! The home of God is among us all.”
Amen.