The Good Things That Are There at the Beginning Are There at the End
Prepared message given as part of Three Rivers worship on Zoom, 8 May 2025.
When we gather here, we often start, usually, by honoring the land, the watershed that sustained us, the Indigenous folk who've cared for this place, and the histories that flow beneath our feet. And today's spirit is going to begin the same way. We're going to start by paying attention to the land, not just the rivers that flow through our lives here and now, but the rivers that have been flowing since the very beginning of our shared story. And if you're willing to hold this in your hearts as you go, I think by the end of the message you may hear things in a slightly new way. So we're going to start now with some words from the Book of Genesis, a small little moment when we're exploring the area and the land around [00:01:00] one of Eden's four rivers.
The name of the river Pishon, and it flows around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold, and the gold is good, and there is pearl and onyx there. That's Genesis 2:11-12. Even in the earliest times of our story, the land is full of possibility. There's beauty in the soil. There's gold, precious stones and treasures waiting beneath the surface.
And don't forget the dust of that land itself in Hebrew, which is Adamah, the very thing that Adam was made of – that's Adam, of Adam and Eve fame – is the dust of that place. So hold onto that image. There's gold, a clear river, precious stones, pearl, onyx, and the dust and soil of the earth. Because today we're going to journey forward across generations of hope and struggle [00:02:00] and longing, and that image will come back.
But now we go from Eden to another beginning in the life of Jesus. Now, when Jesus stepped into the world, the world was thick with tradition. It was a world where the treasures of faith had been loved and guarded, but also sometimes misused and abused and hidden from view. And the people of Israel had carried the story of the covenant across centuries. Through exile, through empire, through occupation and exhaustion, their faith had sustained them. Their laws and their teachings had helped to hold the community together, but by the time Jesus walked among them, some parts of that tradition had become heavy, burdened with fear and entangled with power.
And, not everyone liked what Jesus was doing. Some among his own people looked [00:03:00] on him with suspicion: his healings, his teachings, his way of crossing boundaries and crossing binaries. Jesus' third way. To some, this always seemed reckless or dangerous or blasphemous. And I can imagine that, for the disciples at least, it must have been very tempting to grow impatient and to say about the non-believers, "They don't get it, forget those guys, forget the old ways. We've got something better. We are better."
And that's the same temptation I know we have today. At least I feel that way sometimes. I want to throw out what came before when it feels hard or resistant or broken, but Jesus does not give me that instruction. Instead, he says in Matthew 5:17, "Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish, but to fulfill." [00:04:00] Jesus is not discarding the tradition. He's carrying it to its fullness. He's bringing out the beauty that was always meant to shine. And that, Friends, is sometimes harder work. Because it can be easier to tear down. It can be easier to walk away from what feels heavy, from what feels broken. But if we're to be faithful, if we are to prune wisely and nurture rightly, we have to know the living tree. We've got to know what is found in the soil, where our roots are. Without intimacy with the tradition, we risk clinging to what is dead, or cutting away what is still alive. Faithful imagination of the future requires faithful memory of the past.
And if we're going to walk faithfully through change, through pruning and replanting, [00:05:00] through reimagination and reinterpretation, then we have to know what it is we're reimagining. What we're reinterpreting, what we're called to tend. We have to know the tradition, not because it's old, but because it carries life. And because without knowing it deeply, we might mistake the rot for the root or cut away the living branch along with the dead wood.
Faithful change doesn't come from rejecting what has been. It comes from loving it enough to discern what still carries the breath of God and what does not. If we want to be serious about discerning how to live more fully into flourishing and into goodness and into justice, then we have to first know the soil It comes from.
We don't deepen into tradition because it's old or because it's [00:06:00] flawless. We deepen because, without real intimacy, we are likely to mistake what is empire for what is spirit. Or, to tear up new living roots when they are still young, thinking they are weeds.
Faithful change requires tender searching knowledge. We must learn our tradition well enough to love it and love it well enough to know where it must be healed and set free. Faithful imagination requires faithful memory.
One of the most powerful ways I've seen this at work is through our dear friend Lisa, who many of you know as part of this community. Lisa does not identify as a Christian, but Three Rivers is her home, and she knows that the roots of our practice and of our faith, the life of Quakerism, grow out of the Christian story. And so she has become a student of who we have been so that she [00:07:00] can better name who we are and who we can yet become. And she's been doing that for years, long before there was a Three Rivers meeting. When she was asked to offer the plenary at New England Yearly Meeting in 2019, she delivered what was one of the most powerful talks I've ever heard. And it was full of scripture, full of the kind of Christian theology that is deeply embedded in the early Quaker history. And she did that not because it was her natural speaking voice, not because it was the easiest or most comfortable path, but because she too knew that faithfulness requires intimacy. Because she knew that if we're going to resist the empire that deforms our souls and separates us from one another, creation, and God – if we're going to let Spirit remember us into the fullness of life – then we have to know the story we've inherited. Both its beauties, and [00:08:00] its betrayals. She knew that we can't simply react. We have to remember. We must become grounded enough in the roots that we can tell when a branch will bear fruit and when it has withered under the weight of empire.
Lisa offers a voice seasoned by tradition not to repeat the past, but to help us reckon with it, to help us discern what must be carried forward and what must be lovingly laid down. And Friends, this is all of our work too, and many of you do this on the daily already.
If we are called to honor the treasures and gifts entrusted to us, to know them and to cherish them and to imagine their fulfillment, then maybe sometimes we have to ask what happens when [00:09:00] the treasure hidden at the beginning is finally revealed in its fullness? What happens when the life planted in the soil of creation is allowed to flower all the way?
Scripture, luckily, gives us a glimpse of the answer. The beginning of the Bible gives us the images of Eden, remember? Gold, clear river, jewels, onyx pearl, the dust and soil of the earth. That's in the second chapter of the Bible, there at the very beginning of the Book of Genesis. And if we zoom all the way to the end, we can get to the book of Revelation. And there in the second-to-last chapter, we find our glimpse in a description of New Jerusalem, that great garden city that comes at the end of all things. Listen. "The wall of the city is built of jasper, while the city itself is pure gold, clear as glass. The foundations [00:10:00] of the wall of the city are adorned with every jewel: jasper, sapphire, agate, emerald, onyx, carelian, chrysolite, beryl, topaz, chrysoprase, jacinth, and amethyst. The twelve gates of the wall were twelve pearls, every gate made of a single pearl." That's Revelation 21. Heck of a city, heck of a wall. Those are the treasures from Eden. The good things there at the beginning are there at the end. Even the dust and the children of the man of dust, Adam, are there at the end.
Through all of the wandering, all of the loss, all of the hope and the heartbreak, God carried it all forward. And at the end of the story, they shine forth in glory, not replaced, not discarded. Fulfilled. And, [00:11:00] Friends, in the tradition of our religious society, we have always said that the reign of God not only is some future hope, but a present reality that can break in at any time. From the very earliest days of the Quaker movement, Friends have testified to what gets called technically a realized eschatology. The understanding that God's reign can and does break into the present, not only at the end of time, but in the midst of our lives. We do not passively wait for some distant heaven that happens when we die. We listen now, we open now, and sometimes, when we are willing to be tender and faithful, we catch sight of the garden city shining through the cracks of our daily life. Our inward landscape, ablaze with God. Our lives and the soil and grit and dirt of our lives shines in glory. [00:12:00] The treasures planted in the beginning are alive among us even now.
So as we move into groups for prayer, I invite you to hold these queries. If you need prayer, certainly ask for prayer. And you are also invited to see if there's anything in these queries for you too. I'll say him twice. Where and when have I glimpsed to the inbreaking already present among us? Where have I felt the fullness of life in my life? Where and when have I glimpsed to the inbreaking already present among us? Where have I felt the fullness of life in my life? Or, what treasures buried in my own life, in the life of this community, in the deep soil of our tradition, are waiting to be remembered, [00:13:00] honored, and fulfilled? What treasures buried in my own life, in the life of this community, and in the deep soil of our tradition are waiting to be remembered, honored, and fulfilled?
