Episode 1486: The Home of God

[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: Thanks for joining me on episode 1486 of the Inspired Stewardship Podcast. In today's Spiritual Foundation episode, I talk about Revelation 21 verses 1 through 6, I share how paradise is found in a place with God, and I also share how that is found in relationship and not from individual experience.

[00:00:28] Of all walks, those of all looks, those that look like us and worship with us, and even more so those that are alienated and pushed away and mistreated by us and by the world. In that moment, we can recognize that the home of God is truly among us. Welcome and thank you for joining us on the Inspired Stewardship Podcast.

[00:00:56] If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to [00:01:00] be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent, and your treasures for your true calling. In the Inspired Stewardship Podcast, you will learn to invest in yourself, invest in others, and develop your influence so that you can impact others.

[00:01:23] Revelation 21 verses 1 through 6 says, Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth. For the first heaven and the first earth had passed away and the sea was no more, and I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband, and I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, See, the home of God is among mortals.

[00:01:48] He will dwell with them as their God, they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more. [00:02:00] Mourning and crying and pain will be no more. For the force things have passed away. And the one who was seated at the throne said, See, I am making all things new.

[00:02:10] Also he said, Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true. Then he said to me, It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. This last Sunday was celebrated as All Saints Sunday in many churches, a Sunday where we recognize grief and hope. It's a worship event to celebrate the promise of eternity and also to remind ourselves of the grief we feel for those that we have lost during the year, the saints that have gone before us.

[00:02:47] So this passage from John concludes a rather amazing story that is shared in the Gospel of John. And in here, he's asking us [00:03:00] to hear echoes from the very, very beginning. In the beginning of the Bible says, Let there be and there was and God said, It is good. It's good. Creation, the new heaven, the new earth, it is good.

[00:03:17] So there's a way of starting over or returning to what is intended from the beginning. John here isn't describing it in a way that is about the philosophy or the thought behind it, but rather giving a description. A description of a new Jerusalem adorned like a bride, beautiful, presenting the best that could be, dazzling in glory and wonder, and saying that, that is us, that's our home, our community, that's our part in the new creation.

[00:03:53] Why a city? Some might ask. If you're somebody that loves the country and the wilderness and being out in nature, you may think to [00:04:00] yourself, wait a minute, a paradise is a city? What about the nature the vast expanses, the rolling hills? Where is the privacy, the separateness? Why a city?

[00:04:11] And part of that is, I believe, that the analogy that's being made here is because the kingdom of God is about more than being separate. It's about being connected in community. When we reflect on the words of Jesus, Jesus shares hundreds and hundreds of stories and images about community, many more than about individualism.

[00:04:33] It makes sense, at least from John's point of view, to present this culmination as a city. In a city where we have to learn to live together, in a city where we are dependent on one another, even for the very basic things in life. In a city, John is proposing, we might find it harder to fool ourselves into thinking that it is about us and only us, it's all about me.[00:05:00]

[00:05:00] And what's more, he says, it's a dry city. The sea will be no more. The sea is a representation of those things that separate us, those things that divide us between people, create categories like us and them. The sea harbors the unknown. The sea is a representation of chaos and evil. In fact, the beast rises from the sea in Revelation.

[00:05:23] This new city, this dry city, is a place of safety and community. Those walls that separate us are gone. The sea that separates us is gone. That thing that terrorizes us is gone. There's no more tears. There's no more grief. There's more, no more death. There's no more pain, but it's more than just the removal of the sea that was meant to give us that sense of wholeness and security.

[00:05:52] It's because we've got a new neighbor. God, John points out, has moved into the empty house down the [00:06:00] road. God moves in and everything changes. When God takes up residence, then our sense of aloneness, even when surrounded by people, even when surrounded by others who are also alone in their own thoughts and fears, is transformed into a moment of hope and joy and connection.

[00:06:21] When we discover first what God moves in is our desire to be connected, to be in relationship. We discover that our never ending search for self is the misdirected search from the beginning. Instead of moving inward to discover who we really are apart from everything and anything, we should have been moving outward towards connection.

[00:06:43] After all, we really find out who we are out of relationship with one another. We find ourselves When we lose ourselves, which kind of sounds like something Jesus said, doesn't it? That brings other echoes to this [00:07:00] passage. John is standing at the end of history and reaching back to the very beginning of the age.

[00:07:07] Revelation is meant to be a work that describes the work of Christ. It's a culmination of the work that was begun with Christ. And John points to the watershed moments upon which history turned. John looks back at the cross, standing at the end. Verse 6 of this passage begins, It is done. Thus fulfilling what was proclaimed from the cross because from the dying words of Jesus are it is finished Not a statement of despair, of giving up, of surrender, but a triumphant shout.

[00:07:44] Struggling for that last breath, but saying, it is done. It is finished. And this is what was done. A new creation where death will be no more. It was the next to the last thing that Jesus said for the cross that [00:08:00] becomes an invitation to enter this kingdom. Before he said it is done, he said, I am thirsty, and a voice from the throne now declares to the thirsty, I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life.

[00:08:15] So that's the question. Are you thirsty? Are you thirsty for this? There's a passage from John chapter 11 verse 26 that seems to be the question that this passage is the answer to. The question is, do you believe this? Do you believe Jesus asked Martha during the story of Lazarus and the rising of the dead?

[00:08:39] Do you believe that death as commonly understood is not a part of God's design for eternity? Do you believe that what seems to be the end is not really the end? Do you believe that separation and abandonment and aloneness is not what God had in mind for creation or for us? [00:09:00] Jesus's tears are about the grief that surrounds him that limits the vision of those who are left behind when a loved one dies.

[00:09:10] All Saints is a sad occasion on a profoundly human level, and we have to give space for that grief and recognize it, but we also have to recognize that those tears and that sadness are not a denial of faith in eternity or the hope of reunion in a heaven beyond description. We can hold both things at once.

[00:09:33] It's a both and situation. We can hold grief at the same time that we hold to hope. We can have joy and sadness that are setting side by side in our hearts and in our communities. That's part of the representation of coming together in community to call out the names of those we have lost. to recognize those saints of the church, to recognize the [00:10:00] innocents who are being lost every day in our broken world, and to hold out hope for the vision of kingdom described here.

[00:10:10] All Saints is not meant to be an individual experience, but rather a corporate one, a collective one. We've grieved alone, but we're here to grieve together. We're here to connect and reach out you. to those saints who we miss, but bound together to celebrate also this common vision of hope. We long for and seek relationship with God as we walk in faith, but we also seek communion and connection in our communities and with each other and into the world, trying to make the kingdom a little bit more perfect each and every day as we connect with those.

[00:10:55] of all walks, those of all looks, those [00:11:00] that look like us and worship with us, and even more so those that are alienated and pushed away and mistreated by us and by the world. In that moment, we can recognize that the home of God is truly among us. Thanks for listening.

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