Church of the Holy City

I in You and You in Me

I in You and You in Me
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
May 9, 2010

John 5:1-9 Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5 Psalm 67

Last Sunday I talked about God’s presence with everyone. Today I would like to talk about our reciprocal presence with God. There is a difference between God’s presence with us, and our presence with God. God is continually reaching out to us, and in our inmost soul, God is present with everyone. In this sense, God is always in us. But we are not always in God. We have a responsibility to respond to God and to let God into us. When we let God into us, then we are in God.
Our Bible readings this morning speak to this issue. In our reading from John, we heard about a man who had been sick a long time. He was lying beside the healing waters of Bethzatha. Jesus asked him if he wanted to be healed and the man responded that he never got the chance to enter the waters. Jesus then said, “Take up your bed and walk.” The man was instantly healed. This healing, as with all Jesus’ healings, symbolizes God’s deliverance from evil. We are spiritually sick when we let evil have power in us, and it is God’s own power that lifts us out of evil and holds us in God’s heavenly joy and love. This is the picture we have in our reading from Revelation. There we have that beautiful vision of the Holy City New Jerusalem. There is no need for the sun to be there because God Himself is the light. Nor is there a temple because there is a direct relationship with God in the Holy City. This vision of the Holy City comes after all the tumult in the earlier parts of the Book of Revelation. It comes after the horrors of the four horsemen, the plague, the sword, famine, and wild beasts. It comes after the dragon tries to swallow up the new born baby from the woman clothed with the sun. The Holy City New Jerusalem comes after the victory is won. It comes after our spiritual sicknesses have been healed by God. Then God is in us and we are in God.
This end of times vision in Revelation is our birthright. We are born to be in harmony with the created order. And the created order is good, as we read in Genesis, “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good” (1:31). The whole created universe was created by God and as such, is full of God in every aspect of it. Swedenborg tells us, “the universe as to essence and order is in the fullness of God” (TCR 63). Since God is goodness itself, so, also, the universe is full of God’s goodness,
Because he wills nothing but what is good, he cannot do anything but what is good. . . . God is in fact goodness itself. When he does something good, he is in himself. He cannot walk away from himself.
Clearly then, his omnipotence fills, and works within, the sphere of the extension of goodness, and sphere that is infinite. At a deep level, this sphere pervades the universe and everything in it (TCR 56).
So the whole universe from the smallest to the largest is filled with the order God has imposed on it, and that order is good.
Genesis tells us that we are created in the image and likeness of God. This means that we are created according to God’s divine order. We have been created in the form of goodness that the universe is created in. We are in the same form in which the whole created universe is, and we are created in the order in which the whole of heaven is. That form, or that order, is a form of love and wisdom.
We have been created as forms of the divine design because we have been created as images and likenesses of God, and since God is the design itself, we have therefore been created as images and likenesses of that design.
The divine design originally took shape, and it continues to exist, from two sources: divine love and divine wisdom. We human beings have been created as vessels for these two things. Therefore the design that divine love and wisdom follow in acting upon the universe, and especially upon the angelic heaven, has been built into us (TCR 65).
We are created in the same form as heaven and the universe. If we follow our nature, we will be at one with the universe, at one with heaven, and at one with God.
This is where our responsibility enters the equation. We have been created in the order of heaven, which is a vessel that can receive love and wisdom. But we need to allow that love and wisdom to enter us. We need to respond to God’s call. We need to turn ourselves to God and ask Him into our hearts and minds. When we do this, we are in God. If we do not allow God into our lives, we will not be in God. God is present to everyone in the deepest parts of our soul. But God needs to come down through all the levels of our consciousness in order for us to have God in us fully. The difference is whether God is only in the highest parts of our soul, or whether God is in our whole being and all the levels of our consciousness.
Now because a person was created a form of divine order, God is in him or her, and so far as he or she lives according to Divine order, fully; but if he or she does not live according to Divine order, still God is in him or her, but in their highest parts . . . But as far as a person lives contrary to order, so far he or she shuts up the lower parts of his or her spirit, and thus prevents God from descending and filling them with His presence; consequently God is in them, but they are not in God (TCR 70).
God is present with everyone and God is in every part of the universe. This is possible because God is not in space or time. All the dark spaces of the universe that appear to us as being empty and vacant are filled with God. The psalmist says,
Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
If I make my bed in hell, you are there.
If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
If I settle on the far side of the sea,
Even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast (139:7-10).
God will be with us wherever we are. And God’s love will never cease to draw us toward Himself by the mighty force of mercy. Swedenborg writes, “The absence of God from a person is no more possible than the absence of the sun by its heat and light from the earth.” But we can turn away from God. Then God will not be present in our whole being.
Therefore, as far as a person suffers him or herself to be brought back into order, so far God is omnipresent in the whole of him or her; consequently, so far God is in him or her and they are in God. The absence of God from a person is no more possible than the absence of the sun by its heat and light from the earth. The objects of the earth, however, are not in the sun’s power except so far as they receive the light and heat proceeding from it, as in the time of spring and summer (TCR 70).
We are in God, then, when we ask God into our lives. An image I have of this is God beginning in our depths and working His way down into our behaviours. This is a lifelong process, and even continues for ever in the next life. This process may involve struggle at times. This process may involve the spiritual equivalent of all those calamities in the book of Revelation. But to the victor goes the crown. When we have consistently prayed and acted in Godly ways, God’s omnipresence will be in our souls, minds, and spiritual bodies. God will be in us and we will be in God. God will be with us always, even to the end of the age, as he tells the Apostles at the very end of Matthew, and as we read at the end of the Book of Revelation. “The throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it, and his servants shall worship him; they shall see his face, and his name shall be on their hearts” (Rev. 22:3).