 |
seaster504
The Newness of Heaven
Text:
Revelation 21:1-5
Date: The Fifth Sunday of Easter
5/9/04 Spy Remover rus
Last
February, on Super Bowl Sunday, I bragged after the second service
how I had gotten through the entire morning without even mentioning
the Super Bowl. The Super Bowl, after all, while it is a pretty
big deal in the public consciousness of Americans, still has little
to do with the proclamation of the Gospel. No one complained that
I didn't mention Super Bowl Sunday. Mother's Day, on the other hand,
is a touchier subject! So how do we work in Mother's Day in today's
lessons or today's lessons into Mother's Day? There are the “women
of high standing” in Antioch in our first lesson, but they were
among those who stirred up persecution against Paul and Barnabas.
Well, there's the more generic connection with Jesus new command
to love one another in today's Gospel. That could work. But there's
a better connection.
During
this Easter season we have been hearing readings from the Book of
Revelation inviting us to hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ from the
perspective of its sure and certain conclusion and final victory
in the new creation of eternal life in the paradise of heaven. Today
we hear of that final victory from Revelation chapter 21. This is
the conclusion of the entire prophetic message of Revelation. St.
John sees the new Jerusalem “prepared as a bride adorned for her
husband.” And there is our connection. As our mother's gave us birth
and life and nurtured us to grow into adulthood, so the Church is
the Bride of Christ, the mother of all the faithful, born again
through the womb of the baptismal font to be presented to himself
at the last as St. Paul said, “in splendor, without spot or wrinkle
or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish” [Ephesians
5:27 (ESV)].
The
Revelation to St. John was given and commanded by God to be written
down for the comfort and encouragement of Christians struggling
to remain faithful in the time between our Lord's ascension and
his final coming on the Last Day. We need to be reminded that God
is faithful. In Isaiah's day, when the people expressed fear that
the Lord had forgotten them, the Lord said through his prophet,
“Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion
on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget
you. Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands” [Isaiah
49:14-16 (ESV)].
Here
at the end of Revelation John had seen the end of the first world,
the judgment, the marriage of the Lamb and the second coming of
the Lord Christ. “Then he saw a flashback of the binding of the
dragon at Christ's first advent, followed by the millennium, the
loosing of the dragon for the battle of Gog and Magog just before
the End, and the resurrection and the judgment of [the] human race.
John is now prepared to see beyond the end of the first
world to the creation of ‘a new heaven and a new earth.'” [Brighton,
Revelation, p. 591]
Recall
how God said through Isaiah, “Behold, I am doing a new thing; now
it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” [Isaiah 43:19 (ESV)].
And again, “Behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, and the
former things shall not be remembered or come into mind” [Isaiah
65:17 (ESV)]. Because of its participation in sin the first creation,
this present world is not fit for resurrected saints. And so, as
St. Peter tells us,
“But
the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens
will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned
up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it
will be exposed.
But
according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new
earth in which righteousness dwells” [2 Peter 3:10, 13 (ESV)].
The
new creation will endure forever.
Then
John says he “saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out
of heaven from God.” Like the old creation, this is not the old
Jerusalem with its temple of Law but the new Jerusalem that is free
by grace and is, as St. Paul called it, “free, and she is our mother”
[Galatians 4:25-26 (ESV)], the mother of Christians as the true
heirs of Abraham by means of the covenant fulfilled in Christ.
John
hears a loud voice from the throne, the very Word of God, saying,
“Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with
them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with
them as their God.” Remember that there will be no need for “means
of grace” anymore, no temple, no sacraments, for God's actual and
personal presence among his people will have become the permanent
reality. Until then we meet God where he promises to be, in the
place where his Word is preached in its purity and his sacraments
| |
