Rev. Jared Buss
Pittsburgh New Church; March 30, 2025
Readings: John 11:20-44; Revelation 1:17, 18; Apocalypse Revealed §58
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The Lord says, “I am the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25). He doesn’t say that He’s alive, or that He has life. He says He is life. And that’s the idea we’re going to be focusing on today—the idea that all life, including the life that we feel within ourselves right now, is the Lord’s.
The number of passages in the Word that assert this truth is significant. Clearly this is an idea that we’re supposed to pay attention to. We’re only going to hear a few of those passages today. Our first reading is from the first chapter of the book of Revelation. This is a description of what happens after John sees the vision of the Lord in the midst of the seven lampstands. We read: [vv. 17, 18].
So John is overwhelmed by what he sees, and he falls down as dead. But the Lord touches him, to comfort and revive him (v. 17). And as He comforts John, the Lord says, “I am He who lives” (v. 18). Now we’re going to turn to the Heavenly Doctrine of the New Church, and look at what we’re taught in the book Apocalypse Revealed about the meaning of these words. This reading is printed on the back of your worship handout. We read: [§58].
There are a lot of important statements in that reading. “There is only one life, namely God.” We are merely recipients of His life. And He is life because He is love and wisdom—these things constitute life. The fire in our hearts and the light in our minds are what make us feel alive. That fire and that light are the Lord’s. The bottom line is just what the Lord says in that closing quote from the gospel of John: “Because I live, you will live also” (14:9). We live because He lives.
So why is this teaching significant? Rather, what changes when we understand it? It’s one of those ideas that’s easy to accept in a general way and hard to accept in a specific way. If God is God, then of course life, in general, comes from Him. That isn’t so hard to believe. But to believe that my life—the life that I feel in my mind and in my body right now—is His is a little more challenging. It takes some humility to accept this. Actually it takes a lot of humility. Humility doesn’t always come easily. But if we push ourselves into a humble state of mind, what we find is that humility is liberating. Because we get to stop pretending. Yes, we depend on God. He gives us everything, which means that we have everything to be grateful for. To see our lives that way is wonderful.
And of course, we all want to feel alive; and if we want to feel that way, we should know where to find life. Medically speaking we’re all completely alive. We’ve all got beating hearts. But it’s obvious that there’s more to life than having organs that function. People sometimes say that they don’t really feel alive. Think of someone who lives to work—someone who has no time for anything except work and maybe a bit of sleep. Or think of someone who’s incapable of trying anything new, because they live in fear. We might say that those people aren’t really living.
People try lots of things to make themselves feel more alive. Some of these things are constructive—or at least not destructive. They go for walks in gardens. They take vacations. They splash cold water on their faces. But people also do destructive things in the name of “really living.” They take crazy risks. They do things that are deeply selfish, imagining that selfishness will make them feel free and therefore more alive. We all want to feel alive. It makes such a difference to know where that feeling actually comes from.
Our reading from Apocalypse Revealed said that people are merely recipients of life. This is one of those foundational truths that the Heavenly Doctrine repeats over and over. So, for example, in the book Secrets of Heaven we’re told: “A person is nothing other than an organ or vessel which receives life from the Lord, for a person does not live of himself” (§3318.2). We are organs that receive life—just like a lung is an organ that receives oxygen. We can also think of ourselves as vessels that receive life. A “vessel” can be a cup or a bowl, and that image works well enough—we hold up the cup, and the Lord fills it. But there are also vessels in our bodies. Maybe when that passage says that we’re vessels that receive the Lord’s life, the real meaning is that we’re like blood vessels through which His life runs.
If we think of ourselves as organs or vessels that receive life, then our responsibility or our role in the process of living becomes clear: we need to make ourselves ready to receive. A cup cant receive anything if it’s turned upside down. A clogged or blocked blood vessel can’t do its job, and can even cause us to die. We need to clean out the vessel, and turn it right way round. Here’s what we’re taught in Secrets of Heaven:
On account of the hereditary evil into which a person is born, and on account of the evil of his own doing which a person acquires to himself, these vessels with him are set the wrong way round for receiving [the life that flows from the Lord’s love]. But insofar as it is possible for this inflowing life to do so, it resets those vessels to receive it. (§3318.2)
This passage goes on to say that the vessels in our minds can’t be reset until the selfish loves that hold them in place are softened. Love of self and love of the world calcify our minds and keep them in an unreceptive state. That calcification needs to be broken up, and this is accomplished by temptations. Temptations are about letting go of the hard loves we cling to—especially our pride. Pride is the most brittle of all things. To relinquish those hard things is to choose humility, which is soft. Humility is willing to be worked with. When the Lord’s love flows into a willing mind, it resets those vessels that were turned the wrong way round. Little by little His inflowing life takes those parts of us that were backwards and brittle and selfish, and heals them, so that we can receive His life—and feel His life—like never before (see §3318.3, 4).
What this means in practice is that we feel more alive the more we cooperate with the Lord—the more we work with Him, the more we listen to Him, the more we obey Him. We feel more alive the more we “do it His way.” And that’s because all of the teachings that He gives us in His Word are instructions on how to turn the cup the right way round. He tells us not to murder, commit adultery, steal or lie—and that’s because those behaviors invert and calcify our minds. To put it really simply, we feel more alive when we do the right thing. Because when we do the right thing the Lord can be present, and the Lord is life.
The catch is that we don’t feel more alive when we do the right thing, and then try to fill our own cups. It’s not uncommon for people to lead functional, orderly lives, and wonder why they don’t feel happier. The problem may well be that they’re trying to do it on their own—from themselves and not from the Lord. We can check all the right boxes on the outside—get our work done, drive the speed limit, clean the house and kiss the kids goodnight—but if we aren’t choosing to open our spirits to the Lord, then there’s no life flowing into us to fill those good deeds. We’re meant to be like blood vessels through which His flows. The vessel needs to be open at both ends. Love and life are meant to flow from Him into the works of our hands, and so into the world. If we’re doing the right things, the vessel is open at the bottom; but if it’s pride that’s driving us to do the right things, then the vessel is closed at the top. That stream of life—that awareness of being unexpectedly filled with the breath of life—comes to us when we wrestle our pride to the ground. When in our hearts we say, “Thy will be done” (Matt. 6:10; Luke 11:2).
Of course there’s that part of us that doesn’t trust the Lord—that doesn’t believe that obeying Him will make us happier than doing what we want, doesn’t believe that we’re stronger when we admit we need Him, doesn’t believe that humility will set us free. It appears to us that we live on our own and that we’re happiest when we rule our own lives—and to our pride, anything that challenges these appearances is a threat. The Lord’s teachings, the teachings we’ve looked at today, can feel threatening. Trusting Him—believing Him—is something we choose to do. In John He says, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?” (11:25, 26). The first step is to believe Him; the goal is to live and believe in Him. In Secrets of Heaven we’re told:
[Evil spirits cannot comprehend] that they do not start to live until the life of evil desires and false persuasions in which they are immersed is annihilated. They believe that if they were deprived of these no life at all could possibly be left to them, whereas the truth of the matter is that once they have got rid of the life of evil desires and of false persuasions they start to live for the first time…. (§2889)
When we get rid of the junk and let the Lord flow in, we start to live for the first time. We won’t know what we’ve been missing until we give Him a chance.
He wants us to feel alive. He wants that because He loves us, and He knows that if we didn’t feel alive we would have no identity, and could feel no joy. Here’s another teaching from Secrets of Heaven:
The reason why the life which comes from the Lord alone seems to everyone to be intrinsically his own lies in the Lord’s love or mercy towards the whole human race. That is to say, His will is to make that which is His every person’s own and to confer eternal happiness on every person. (§4320).
Life is His, but He lets us feel His life as though it were our own because He loves us. It’s that simple. The takeaway from this is that He doesn’t want us to feel like we have no life or identity of our own. He doesn’t want us to feel like we’re just extensions of Himself, or like we’re just robots that are operated by His spirit. He wants us to feel alive, and free.
It seems like a paradox, but we’re told that the more closely we’re conjoined with the Lord, the more distinctly we appear to ourselves to be our own person, and at the same time, the more clearly we recognize that we are the Lord’s (Divine Providence §42). The angels in heaven know that the Lord alone is life. They can actually feel His life flowing into them. They know that it would be outrageous for them to claim that they have anything good apart from Him. They also know that He wants them to make His life their own—so they make it their own (Secrets of Heaven §3742). They live the life He gives them. They are alive, and they are free.
That’s what He wants for us. He says, “Because I live, you will live also” (John 14:9).
Amen.