Monday, May 20, 2019

Sermon - Easter 5 - Rev. 21:1-7


Rev. 21:1-7
Easter 5
May 19, 2019
“All Things New”

I think most of us can appreciate when things are “new”.  A new baby is a joy like nothing else.  A brand new article of clothing.  That new car smell.  A new job.  A new home.  A new store.  Even a new friendship.  There’s an excitement when something is new. A whole new set of possibilities is opened up.  But also, in contrast to something old, there’s no baggage.  That new baby hasn’t made the mistakes of life we have.  The new car hasn’t had anyone spill coffee all over it yet.  I like the new Walmart where everything is still relatively clean and fresh.  The new friend doesn’t know all your flaws and failings, and wasn’t around all those times you did something embarrassing.

And in spiritual terms, it is much the same.  When God made the world, when everything was new and fresh – it was perfect.  Creation was without a flaw.  God even declared it “very good”.  He made everything and every creature according to its kind, and with perfect purpose.  And finally he made man, and also a helper suitable for him.  A perfect match.  There was no sin – and so there was no disease, no corruption, no chaos.  Nothing broken down and in need of repair.  Nothing worn out.  No crying, no pain, no death. 

Furthermore, their relationships were also unbroken.  They had perfect communion with God and each other.  There was no sin or shame to mar the “very goodness” of it all. 
It’s hard even to imagine such a world, what it must have been like.  “Paradise the blessed” we sing about it, but we can barely conceive of it.

Because our everyday experience is with the broken world that followed.  We know only the corrupted and chaotic world that is stained and shattered by sin.  This old thing.  Age has not been kind to this creation, now under the yoke of death.  Nothing good seems to last forever.  Things wear out.  Things break down.  So much of today’s world is disposable – we just throw things away when we’re done with them.  You drive a new car off the lot and it instantly loses much of its value.  You start a new job and you find out it’s not all you’d hoped it would be.  You marry a spouse and you start finding out they aren’t always so easy to live with.  Or you buy a new home and you find yourself longing for the place you left. 

Jesus describes this phenomoneon so poetically in the Sermon on the Mount, where we warns us not to get too attached to this world: 

Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. (Matthew 6:19-20)

It’s true.  This side of heaven, moth and rust destroy things.  Thieves break in and steal things.  Nothing good seems to last forever, but it fades, it falls, it breaks, it dissolves. 

And you and your coffee mug might say, “some things get better with age!”  And of course it’s true.  Wisdom comes with age, sometimes.  But so does the accumulation of a lifetime’s sin and that thing we call regret.  Experience and confidence may come with age, but so do the aches and pains of a body that is giving in toward the grave, inching ever closer to its end.  So while there are joys and blessings of old age, they are tinged with bitterness and marred by decay and imperfection.
What it comes down to for us, is that our predicament is so bad that we don’t just need a spiritual makeover.  We need a complete and total do-over.  We need a full and perfect renewal that is just as thorough as the corruption under which we labor.  

Thank God we have a Jesus who does it for us.  And by the way, the promise of Jesus in our Gospel reading - to send the Spirit who will declare the things to come - is fulfilled, at least in part, by our reading from Revelation 21, where John is blessed to see in his vision a future day when all things are made new.  And that day is the day of Christ’s return:
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.

Along with Christ’s second coming, the final judgment, and the resurrection of the dead – we have this other detail about the last day: This world will pass away.  Scripture speaks in various ways about it.  The world will “pass away” (our text), also Matthew 24:7, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.”

“The heavens vanish like smoke, the earth will wear out like a garment” (Isaiah 51:6)

2 Peter 3 puts it this way:  “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 far less important than exactly how it happens is that this broken, fallen, corrupted world will not simply be “fixed” or made better.  It won’t be healed or patched up.  God is starting anew.  Afresh.  From scratch.  So complete will be the change, it is an entirely new re-establishment of creation – and we will live there with our resurrected and glorified bodies, in perfect communion with our Triune God forever.  The pictures of John’s vision continue:

And I saw athe holy city, bnew Jerusalem, ccoming down out of heaven from God, dprepared eas a bride adorned for her husband.

What John sees next is a strange but joyous thing – a mixed metaphor of sorts – it is a vision of the church as both a city and a bride.  All of this is simply a picture of the church in her glory.  The sum total of all believers in Christ, ushered into our blessed eternity.  A New Jerusalem – and just what was wrong with the old one?  It was corrupt.  But not this one – as John later sees its magnificence – pearly gates, streets paved with gold.  And adorned as a bride – the Bride of Christ, that is!  Holy, blameless, without spot or blemish.  The entire people of God united with Christ for eternity.  And if an earthly wedding is a time of great celebration, how much more the marriage feast of the Lamb in his kingdom that has no end?  And by the way, also, we get a foretaste of this in the Lord's Supper even today!

 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, fthe dwelling place1 of God is with man. He will gdwell with them, and they will be his people,2 and God himself will be with them as their God.3 

Perhaps the greatest sadness of the fallen creation is that it separated us from God.  But now all that is changed, reversed, overturned.  In the New Heaven and Earth, God dwells with man once again.  They are his people, and he is their God – without anything to get in the way of it.  Perfect unity.  Perfect communion.  A perfect relationship and the privilege of his perpetual presence.

hHe will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and ideath shall be no more, jneither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”
All the troubles that flow from sin are wiped away with the very tear from your eye.  And what a tender and intimate picture, of God wiping away your tears – like you’d dry the eyes of a little child.  All the hurts are now “former things” and they are passed away – never to bother us again.

And khe who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I lam making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this down, for mthese words are trustworthy and true.” And he said to me, n“It is done! oI am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. pTo the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment. qThe one who conquers will have this heritage, and rI will be his God and she will be my son.

He reiterates these promises – he who makes all things new – that is, the Alpha and Omega, that is, the beginning and the end, that is, Jesus.  The one who declared “it is finished” at the cross, is the one who declares here, “it is done!”  For us, it’s a future promise as good as done – we rest so secure and sure in the promise of all things new – because we have heard the news of Jesus – who conquered death by death and brought life that death cannot destroy. 

And of all the things he makes new, it begins with you.  The New Creation that he has made you in baptism.  The daily renewal he works in you by repentance and faith.  The New You still wrestles with the Old You, and that’s nothing new.  But it won’t last.  A time will come when even our Old Adam is entirely destroyed, and only the New will remain.  Whether by the gate of death, or should we live to see the last day – either way – God will bring us to this fulfillment.

Far better than that new car smell is the promise of the new heaven and earth.  Far better than this old corrupt creation is the eternal home God will provide for us all.  A blessed promise from Jesus, who makes all things new.  John saw it, and we believe it.  In Jesus’ name.  Amen.

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