Revd Len Abrams Revelation 21 & Romans 8
Reference: Tom Wright – “Surprised by Hope”
This is the sixth and final of the series on celebrating creation. Today we are going to look at the full cycle of the creation story. How do we understand creation – the beginning, in the context of where we are now and where we are headed in the future – the ultimate future?
There is a great deal of very fuzzy Christian thinking about this. What do the new Testament Scriptures tell us about the continuing saga of creation and the fulfilment of the creation story? I don’t believe we can be proper stewards of God’s creation today without understanding both the beginning and the end.
The Cosmos began with God creating everything from nothing – and it was GOOD and remains GOOD but has become corrupted. Death has entered the scene which is not good. Then God reveals his hand in salvation history through the Israelites who spend most of the time in rebellion against God.
The Exodus happens which sets up a motif of redemption – God breaking into history to miraculously save God’s people. Then, after more rebellion and exile, God breaks into human history again, becoming fully human whilst remaining fully divine. Then the impossible happens – God is killed, Jesus is crucified.
Then the impossible happens again – Jesus is resurrected in physical bodily form. This is the pivotal point in the ongoing, still emerging creation story and is the centre point of human history. The apostle Paul describes the resurrected Jesus as “the first born of the new creation”.
The resurrection of Jesus electrifies the early Christians. Realisation dawns what the Hebrew Scriptures (the old Testament) have been pointing to all along and what the resurrection means regarding the future of creation and life. Paul writes about it in numerous places – 1 Corinthians 15 and Romans 8, for example, and John brings it to a climax in Revelation chapter 21 and 22.
The future will bring bodily resurrection in a new earth and a new heaven. The ultimate state is not so much the destruction of the original creation (which was good) but rather the completion of it, bringing it to fruition. These are not so much the “end times” as the completion of the first chapter of creation and the beginning of a new creation which is even more amazing then the first.
The Bible points to the transformation of those living at that time and that those who are “asleep in Christ” will be raised in bodily form, not with the old corruptible bodies but with incorruptible bodies, of which Jesus was the first fruit. Death will be no more.
This is the Christian belief which is included in the creeds with which we are all familiar: I believe in the resurrection of the body. Onwards to a new Eden, as it was meant to be!
The problem is that we have become so woolly in our thinking about this over the years and centuries. We have lost the revolutionary perspective which the early Christians had.
Greek philosophy which regards the physical as corrupt and subject to decay has permeated western thought. In death the spirit or soul is released from bodily imprisonment to continue a disembodied existence either retaining its identity or merging with the divine, the life force – as a drop merges with the ocean. How persistent is the notion that we will all end up in a spiritual heaven either with or without clouds and harps, and creation as we know it will be rolled up and will cease to exist.
This is not Christian. We are humans, created as the image bearers of our creator. We were created to be physical beings with the rest of creation and it was good. Our destiny is to live as we were created to live, without death, in a new earth. We are not meant to go to heaven, that’s not how we were made, heaven is meant to come to earth where we will experience the perpetual presence of God which is the picture given in Revelations chapter 21.
And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.
2 And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
3 And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God.
4 And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.
What has all this got to do with Saint Francis of Assisi? Francis of Assisi lived from 1182 – 1226. He was born into a wealthy family but renounced his wealth and became one of the most revered and influential of all Christians. Whilst his life is surrounded by myth, his love for nature and animals is well known and he is regarded as patron saint of animals and the environment. He had a deep understanding of creation and of being part of it. We need to love and care for creation as he did because it is our home, it is what we are part of.
We live now in the “in-between” age – the age between the resurrection of Jesus as the first fruits of the new heaven and new earth. We, together with all creation, groan together as we await the fruition of history –
Romans 8: 22-24 – 22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. 23 Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. 24 For in this hope we were saved.
And so we come full cycle – we need to love and care for this world because this is our home, this is where we were created to be. It has been our home from the first Eden and will be our home in the renewed, recreated earth – the second Eden.
Amen.