Everything Will Live Where the River Goes

Fruitfulness, Part 4:

May 12, 2024

Ascension of the Lord

Pastor Mike

Revelation 22:1-7

The Apostle Paul once prayed that Christians of every time and place would live lives worthy of God by “bearing fruit in every good work” (Col. 1:10). This is our fourth week meditating on that fruit-bearing theme. So far, it’s been my goal to root fruitfulness in God’s own character. God is a fruitful being, who brings forth life from life and plants the seed of his image in human beings. God is a lover, who seeks us out and showers us with delight.

Fruitfulness, then, is very different from productivity. We don’t labor out of anxiety. We don’t work to try and fill an inner emptiness. Our fruit is not the price of God’s blessing or God’s approval. Rather, we “love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19). As Paul says, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Eph. 2:8-9). The good works come; they are prepared for us. Yet they come on the other side of knowing God. Our roots must first plunge into the nourishing waters of God’s grace and God’s love.

This morning’s verses from Revelation 22 present us with a very simple point: God never stops reaching out to embrace the world. The fruit we bear through Christ is never just for us, never just for our families, never just for our small bubbles of belonging. Fruit is meant to freely flow beyond our immediate horizons – stretching farther, sharing more widely. Although it’s a simple point, to make it we’ll need to wend our way through several scriptures, beginning with the apocalypse itself.  

Ἀποκάλυψις Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ… “The apocalypse of Jesus Christ” (Rev. 1:1). These are the opening words of the Bible’s final book. Apocalypse brings to our minds the end of the world, yet the ancient Greek meaning of the word is to uncover something that was hidden, to reveal something that was concealed. If this Apocalypse, Revelation, is about the end of the world, then it must be about the end of every world. The visions John saw and recorded while imprisoned for his faith on the island of Patmos have helped the Church discern what is always going on just below the surface. Evil wages war against God, and we, the saints of God, are caught in the middle of the struggle.

I’ve been rereading the His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman, which is a brilliant work of fantasy, and a top-five book in the Conner household. There is a scene toward the end of the first book, The Golden Compass, in which several of the main characters – an English girl named Lyra, a Texan mercenary named Lee Scoresby, an armored bear named Iorek Byrnison, and a witch named Serafina Pekkala – are traveling by hot-air balloon to the North Pole. While everyone else sleeps in the basket bobbing through freezing air, the Texan and the witch talk. Scoresby wants to know what exactly he’s getting himself into, as he never intended to enter into a full-blown war:

‘Mr. Scoresby,’ said the witch, ‘I wish I could answer your question. All I can say is that all of us, humans, witches, bears, are engaged in a war already, although not all of us know it. Whether you find danger on Svalbard or whether you fly off unharmed, you are a recruit, under arms, a soldier.’

‘Well…Seems to me a man should have a choice whether to take up arms or not.’

‘We have no more choice in that than in whether or not to be born.’[1]

And that’s very much what Revelation shows those who follow Jesus. No matter what we would like to think, and regardless of if we know it or not when we first become believers, we are caught up in the struggle between life and death, and there is no neutral position, no privileged place of escape. The promise of Revelation is that Jesus will ultimately triumph over the forces of death, that the earth will one day be cleansed of its curse. God will once again live us, and God’s light will suffuse all beings and things. All we are called to do is endure to the end.

 The book’s final two chapters, 21 and 22, present us with the consummation of that promise. After the seven seals have unleashed their seven plagues upon the earth, after the beast and the whore and the antichrist have risen up to clash with Christ and the angels, after the dead have been raised and judged by God – after all this, John sees the end:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away… 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. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them and be their God; he will wipe every tea from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away. (Rev 21:1-4)

What does this city / bride / home-of-God look like? The verses read for us a moment ago depict a great garden-city, with a river of life coursing down its street and the tree of life flourishing along the banks of the river. The tree of life bears fruit for food and leaves for medicine. Light fills all things. The division between heaven and earth dissolves.

One of the delightful things about our passage is that it builds upon earlier stories and prophetic visions. Back at the very beginning, before sin, before separation, before conflict, there was a garden, and trees, and a great river. Here’s how Genesis 2, the story of Creation, puts it:

Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the [human] he had formed. The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. A river flows out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it divides and becomes four branches.

After Adam & Eve were deceived by the serpent and ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge, God banished them from this Eden, from its tree of life. The scripture says, “After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life” (3:24). And ever since then, we have all come into life estranged from that sacred center of our being, the essential truth of who we are in God and what we were made. We’ve all had to seek our way back there, “through many toils, dangers, and snares.”

Much, much later, deep into the history of God’s covenant people, Israel, a prophet named Ezekiel was granted a vision of salvation. What he saw drew upon the Eden story, and it gestured toward the future consummate vision of John. Ezekiel also saw water, trees, fruit, and God’s presence. Here is how he puts it down, in his forty-seventh chapter. It’s a long quotation, but worth sharing in its fullness:

Then he brought me back to the entrance of the temple; there, water was flowing from below the threshold of the temple toward the east… [He] led me back along the bank of the river. As I came back, I saw on the bank of the river a great many trees on the one side and on the other. He said to me, ‘This water flows toward the eastern region and goes down into the Arabah; and when it enters the sea, the sea of stagnant waters, the water will become fresh. Wherever the river goes, every living creature that swarms will live, and there will be very many fish, once these waters reach there. It will become fresh; and everything will live where the river goes.  People will stand fishing beside the sea from En-gedi to En-eglaim; it will be a place for the spreading of nets; its fish will be of a great many kinds, like the fish of the Great Sea.

… On the banks, on both sides of the river, there will grow all kinds of trees for food. Their leaves will not wither nor their fruit fail, but they will bear fresh fruit every month, because the water for them flows from the sanctuary. Their fruit will be for food, and their leaves for healing.’

Notice the river flowing out from the sacred center of God’s presence, in this case it is no longer Eden but the Jerusalem temple. Notice that trees line this great river on both sides, bearing fruit for food and leaves for healing. Notice that wherever the water of God flows, life springs up around it, and whatever it touches it heals. Stagnant waters become fresh again. Lifeless waters teem with fish. Communities regain their livelihood. This river begins in God and flows outward and on. Who knows where it ends?

Now, back to the Revelation vision. In it, elements from Genesis and Ezekiel are combined. The new creation is a new Eden, because the tree of life is there. Only, the tree of life not just one tree but, it seems, all the trees. The trees spring up along the banks of the river, as they did in Ezekiel’s vision, and they are all called the tree of life. (It’s like the Pando aspen clone in central Utah: 40,000 trees that are all genetically identical and bound together by a massive root system.)

The tree brings forth twelve fruits, one every month, and offers its leaves for salves and bandages. What human beings once lost access to is opened to them again. The fruit we were intended to eat from the beginning becomes our daily bread. And just like in Ezekiel’s vision, the great river flows from where God is. Only, it’s not a temple this time, for in the new creation it is pointless to restrict God’s presence to a building. All beings and all things are filled with God’s glory and light. And the river flows from the throne of God and of the lamb, set in the center of the garden-city.

          The river flows. The river flows. And everything will live where the river goes…  

What God does in the midst of God’s people tumbles forth as a pure, clear, life-giving force.

Friends, when we gather in this Sanctuary for worship, let us never assume that the healing waters which flow from Table & Font, from Word & Altar, flow only for us. God’s love courses far beyond our walls and imaginations. If we are stagnant and lifeless, it will touch us here, but it will not stop here. The river spreads out to touch all who live as though under a curse.

Imagine if we treated our neighborhood like that – Pocatello heights, Green Acres Elementary, the pockets of poverty between 15th and 5th. Imagine if we believed this neighborhood to be a place touched by the river of God, whose touch brings forth the tree of life, whose touch heals. Imagine if we saw that river gushing out of our heavy red doors. Where would it go? And what rivers of life would it converge with, flowing from other people of faith in our community, from other little Edens?

And it’s not only for our neighborhood. There are so many people in our world whose daily struggle is to survive, who live driven by desperation, who know what the end of the world, the end of their world, is like. Those without homes, without food, without friends. Those who are confined in nursing homes or prisons. Native peoples banished to the worst lands and locked in cycles of poverty. Gazans malnourished, bombed, pushed to the brink. Sudanese children piled in mass graves.

What we do here matters to all of them. When we pray, we are flowing with the river to touch the sick and suffering. When we open our wallets and give from our positions of privilege, we are casting our resources into the streams of God’s generosity.  When we learn to forgive and serve one another in our day-to-day fellowship, we unblock channels through which the healing waters can flow. When we learn, it is so that we can apply; we are hearers of the Word so that we might be doers of the Word.

Our personal holiness, as John Wesley used to say, means nothing if it does not reveal itself in social holiness. Feeding the body and the soul, healing wounds of body and spirit – that is the work of the Body of Christ. It is not just a spiritual truth but also a scientific fact that all things are connected, intertwined, in relationship. You say a prayer here and you never know what mountain you might be moving. You pour out your gifts and your resources and who’s to say what balance you’re setting right, what stagnant dream you’re refreshing.

          Everything will live where the river goes…

I have suggested that we come to the headwaters of God’s healing river whenever we gather together to worship. But can I tell you an even deeper mystery? Every single one of you can become a source of God’s river of life. Your own heart can be the headwaters.

Listen to the words of John’s Gospel:

On the last day of the festival, the great day, while Jesus was standing there, he cried out, ‘Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, ‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.’ Now he said this about the Spirit, which believers in him were to receive; for as yet there was no Spirit, because Jesus was not yet glorified. (John 7:37-39)

Friends, today he is glorified. He is the ascended Lord, seated at the right hand of God, ready to pour his Spirit into the heart of any who come to him thirsting for more. More life, more purpose, more holiness, more beauty, more depth, more wisdom, more joy, more hope, more healing, more freedom. You can be empty, and you can come to him, and you will not just be filled up, but filled with more of him than you could ever contain or enjoy for yourself.

        You could be the new creation.

You shall be the city of God.

All you have to bring to him is your thirst, your need, and you will become the very stream itself, quenching the thirst of the world.  If indeed it is God, the source and end of all love, who sits upon the throne of your heart, how could any of us settle for anything else?

          Yes, we’ll gather at the river,

          The beautiful, the beautiful river,

          Gather with the saints at the river

          Flowing from the throne of God.

Amen.

[1] Philip Pullman, His Dark Materials, Everyman’s Library edition, 262.