We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard
so that you also may have fellowship with us.
1 John 1:3
The heavenly throne room is a crowded place. At the very center, of course, is God, who is so blindingly resplendent that John can only describe him as the one seated on the throne. Next to him is the risen Son, depicted as a Lamb looking as if it had been slain, standing at the center of the throne. Near the center of the throne hover the terrifying four living creatures with their strange personas, numerous eyes, and multiple wings. Circling these creatures are twenty-four elders whose main job, it seems, is to throw off their crowns and fall down in worship whenever God does something cool (which is a lot). Around them are a sea of angels, numbering thousands upon thousands, and ten thousand times ten thousand. And surrounding all these is a great multitude that no one can count, from every nation, tribe, people and language. It’s a packed house for the ongoing premiere of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Kind.
The scriptures are emphatic that God’s desire is for a people. And although occasional superstars arise when the situation calls for it, it’s the team that matters. Redemption is about bringing the exiles home. As the psalmist notes, God sets the lonely in families. The singular becomes plural; the me becomes the we.
This is more than simple club membership. Jesus tells his anxious disciples, “It is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the helper will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.” The gift of the Holy Spirit to believers is not simply a seal of salvation or the presence of Christ in each redeemed heart, it is the antidote to existential loneliness. Unlike unbelievers who are fundamentally isolated as individual beings, all Christians share the very same Spirit. Paul writes, We were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. The Holy Spirit realizes the purpose of Jesus “that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one.” The kingdom of God is community.
Which is why it seems strange that prayer is often a lonely experience for me. I’m referring now to private times, of which Jesus speaks: “When you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret.” I have found that when I am visiting the Holy of Holies—where I am bidden to come—that I can experience loneliness. How, I have wondered, can being in the very presence of God provoke a sense of detachment and even lack? Shouldn’t it be precisely the opposite? In God’s presence should I not experience utter completeness?
Only recently I have begun to understand the problem—or, rather, to understand my problem—which is, quite simply, a misunderstanding of the gospel. I was born (again) into a distinctly American gospel which champions a personal relationship with Christ. To be saved, I was told, all I need to do is ask Jesus into my life as my personal Lord and savior. He will download into my soul all that is necessary for salvation. And although I may find encouragement among other Christians, I do not need them to be saved. As far as my salvation goes, fellowship with the saints is optional. With the American gospel, each believer gets his own personal pan Jesus.
The late Harold Bloom, whom I have mentioned before, begins his study The American Religion with the following observation:
Freedom, in the context of the American Religion, means being alone with God or with Jesus, the American God or the American Christ. In social reality, this translates as solitude, at least in the inmost sense. The soul stands apart—free to be utterly alone with a God who is also quite separate and solitary.
This deep-seated assumption has been the source of my spiritual disquiet. I have been coming to the throne room expecting my personal relationship with God to be sufficient, only to discover how much I need the saints. I need the fellowship of believers to know God as I long to know him—to know him as he wants me to know him. Intimacy with God does not mean solitude; intimacy with God means a crowd.
And it’s not just our current Christian neighbors. My spiritual loneliness will not be completely healed until all the saints of history join together (that great multitude that no one can count) in one everlasting celebration. Our saintly forebears, too, await that great day. These were all commended for their faith, the book of Hebrews tells us, yet none of them received what had been promised, since God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made complete. We’re talking the mother of all reunions.
I’m learning that intimacy with God is not about solitude. Intimacy with God is a jubilant, jabbering, jam-packed, Jesus jamboree.
(I hope we get a few quiet times, though.)