Church of the Holy City

Nearer, My God, to Thee

Nearer, My God, to Thee
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
May 2, 2010

Revelation 21:1-6 John 13:31-35 Psalm 148

Today I will talk about God’s presence with us. In our Revelation reading we find a loud voice saying, “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God” (21:3). This passage is related to the reading we heard from John. In it, Jesus says, “Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another” (13:34). God is present with us in the love we feel for one another. As God is love itself, when we have love in us, we have God in us.
This brings up a very difficult doctrine in Swedenborg’s theology. In order to understand God’s presence with us, we have to leave behind all thought based on time and space. And it seems everything we know is based on time and space. In fact, the philosopher Immanuel Kant said that in order for us to know anything, we need to think in terms of time and space. So for Kant, an idea that doesn’t have time and space in it can’t be known.
But the laws of spirit don’t involve time and space. We can feel close to someone who is way across the country. And we can feel distant from someone right beside us. The laws of love are apart from distance. In fact, at times we can feel close to people we have known who are now in the spiritual world. It looks to us like we are separate from each other, since our bodies can be at a distance from each other. But our emotions obey a different law. Emotionally, there is no separation of one from another. Love connects the whole universe and each individual is a part of the whole. The idea that we are separate people living in separate bodies is an illusion. The great Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor says that this is a distinctly modern idea. In the past, people thought that their minds were open to all sorts of spiritual influences and that actual angels and demons could enter their heads. Swedenborg agrees with this. Our thinking and our emotions are connected with each other and with the whole heaven. Our thinking and emotions are connected with the thoughts and feelings of angels and demons. And ultimately, our thoughts and emotions are connected with God, no matter where we are.
So in order to understand how God is present with us, we need to forget about distance and space. This is not easy for us to do. But it is the only way to understand how God is with us. It can cause confusion when we hear Jesus say, “I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you” (John 14:20). “What exactly does ‘in’ mean, here?” we may ask ourselves. We think “inside” and the teaching doesn’t make sense. What is inside me are organs and a heart and lungs and blood. There is no one inside me, we may think. So in order to understand the reality of God’s presence with us, we need to remove ideas like “inside,” “separation,” and “distance.”
From God’s point of view, God is present equally with everyone. But from our point of view it looks like God is close or distant depending on the person or circumstance. We hear Swedenborg talk about the highest heaven being “above” the lowest heaven, or more “interior.” These are spatial words. They are words based on space and distance. The truth is that God is just as present with angels of the lowest heaven as He is with angels of the highest heaven. Swedenborg tells us,
As a result of the differences in angels’ acceptance of the Lord, the heavens appear to be marked off from each other. The highest heaven, called the third heaven, seems to be over the second, and the second over the first. It is not that the heavens are distant from each other, but that they seem to be. In fact, the Lord is just as present with people in the most remote heaven as he is with people in the third heaven. What causes the appearance of distance is in the subjects, the angels, and not in the Lord (DLW 110).
God is equally present with all of us. But we do not feel God’s presence the same. Some of us feel God’s presence more intimately and others less so. And sometimes we feel God closer to us than we do at other times. Some of us have embodied much of God’s wisdom and love and others of us have embodied less of God’s wisdom and love. So our feeling of God’s presence will vary. This difference is in us, not in God. So Swedenborg tells us,
It does seem as though the Divine were not the same in one person as in another–that it were different, for example, in a wise person than in a simple one, different in an elderly person than in an infant. But this appearance is deceptive. The person is a recipient, and the recipient or recipient vessel may vary. A wise person is a recipient of divine love and divine wisdom more aptly and, therefore, more fully than a simple person and an elderly person who is also wise, more than an infant or child. Still, the Divine is the same in the one as it is in the other (DLW 78).
An example that Swedenborg uses to illustrate this idea is the way the sun interacts with the different planets. The sun is the same, but some planets are hotter than others. Mercury and Venus are closest to the sun and their temperature is very hot. (And as Armand will tell us, Velikovsky anticipated this before scientists did.) Mars is farther away, and it is colder. But the sun is the same. Likewise on our planet earth, we find different parts of the globe with different weather patterns. Florida is warmer than Alberta because it is farther south. The sun shines the same, but the earth is on an angle so that some parts of it get direct sunlight and other parts get slanting rays of the sun.
God is in us as love and wisdom. True love and true wisdom are not ours. They are God’s in us. So when the book of Revelation says, “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God” (21:3), it is referring to God’s love and wisdom in us. God is in us to the extent that love and wisdom are in us. Everyone who has embodied love and wisdom is in heaven. And since that love and wisdom is actually God, God is in heaven.
Given the fact that distance is only apparent, then, it follows that the Lord himself is in heaven. He is in the love and wisdom of heaven’s angels; and since he is in the love and wisdom of all the angels and the angels make up heaven, he is in all of heaven (DLW 113).
And since love and wisdom are God’s in us, God actually is heaven.
The reason the Lord is not only in heaven but actually is heaven itself is that love and wisdom make an angel, and these two are properties of the Lord in the angels. It therefore follows that the Lord is heaven (DLW 114).
This is as true for us here on earth as it is for angels in heaven. After all, we are material bodies that have a soul within us. Our soul is actually in the spiritual world right now. So we are in a heavenly community or a hellish one right now.
This may seem like a matter of higher wisdom since it is being supported by reference to havens and angels. However, the same holds true for us. As far as the deeper levels of our minds are concerned, we are warmed and enlightened by that same sun, warmed by its warmth and enlightened by its light, to the extent that we accept love and wisdom from the Lord (DLW 112).
So when Jesus tells us to love one another as He loves us, He is talking about His own presence with us. He is in us, when we are filled with God’s love and wisdom. Then the relationship is mutual. When we love God back, then we are in God and God is in us.
Perhaps it isn’t so hard to think about God apart from space and time. We use such language all the time. We say things like, “You are in my thoughts.” Or, “My heart is with you.” The same is true of God. God is very much in our thoughts. We think because God is in our minds. We love because God is in our hearts. God is with us everywhere. All we need to do is to realize this, and to open ourselves to the warmth and light of God’s real presence with us. Then God Himself will be with us and be our God.