“All Things New”

Revelation 21:1-6

Heart of the Rockies Christian Church

Wendy plays Stump the Pastor occasionally with our youth and children. She invites them to ask her any question. Two thousand years ago, the children of God were asking, “What’s this world coming to?” and their pastor named John, said, “Be not afraid.  Rejoice and be glad. This world is coming to its fulfillment in Jesus Christ. God will wipe away every tear from our eyes. Death will be no more.  Neither will there be suffering nor sorrow nor pain any more. Our God is making all things new.”         

By way of reminder: the purpose of Revelation is not to scare, but to reassure. Not to fear monger, but to fortify. Revelation says the end comes not with a woeful war, but a beautiful wedding uniting God and humanity. Bride and groom, not fire and brimstone. If you had the notion Revelation’s purpose is to induce fear and trembling or to provide a countdown calendar to Armageddon, go back to whoever sold that to you and get your money back. You were sold a bill of goods, or bill of bads as the case may be. Revelation ends the Bible on a good note. Cue the Wedding March or Purcell’s “Trumpet Voluntary” or the “Hallelujah Chorus.” Cue “Love divine, all loves excelling, joy of heaven to earth come down.” It all ends in light and life everlasting.     

Speaking of “joy of heaven to earth come down,” John wrote and I quote: “I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God.” Got that? It all ends with heaven coming down to earth. We often speak of “going to heaven,”  departing from “down here” and going to a better place “up there.”  But John sees the end and sees “the Holy City... coming down out of heaven from God,” “up there” coming “down here,” which, when you think about it, is the ultimate answered prayer. Think about it. Every Sunday we pray the prayer Jesus taught us: “Thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.”  Jesus taught us to pray that “up there” would come “down here.”

There’s a huge difference between praying that one day we’ll be in God’s kingdom up there and praying and living so that God’s kingdom will come into more and more of its fullness down here. On earth as it is in heaven. John Ortberg wrote “Sometimes we pray the Star Trek prayer:  ‘Beam me up, Scottie.’  As if the essence of Christianity is to get our afterlife reservations taken care of by making a confession of faith and being baptized and then biding time until we go ‘up there.’ But Jesus never told anybody to pray, ‘Get me out of here so I can go up there.’” The Lord’s Prayer, Ortberg says, is “the Faith Trek prayer: ‘Make up there come down here.’  Make things down here run the way they do up there.”[1] Jesus doesn’t divert our attention from earth to heaven; he encourages us to pray and live for heaven to come on earth.

In his book, The Divine Conspiracy, the late Dallas Willard bemoaned what he called “barcode religion.”  It works this way: You make a Confession of Faith, get baptized, and the Holy Spirit slaps a bar code on you so that when you pass through the checkout line at the end of life, the scanner at the pearly gates will read your bar code and beep and you’re in. If you’ve got the barcode, you’re good. To which Dallas Willard asked, “Good for what?” According to Paul’s letter to the Romans, after we’re baptized we’re to “walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4), live down here so that some of “up there” comes “down here.” Oliver Wendell Holmes captured the fundamental flaw with barcode religion and “Beam me up Scottie” prayers when he said “Some Christians are too heavenly minded for any earthly good.” Christianity isn’t otherworldly, it is profoundly this worldly. Heaven is the completion of what is, not an escape from it. We’re to live our lives in ways that flavor earth with a taste of heaven.

One of the reasons for our ecological crisis is bad theology -- the belief that it doesn’t matter if we use this world up because God will take us to a new one anyway. Somebody said, “In the history of the world, no one has ever washed a rental car.”[2] I’ve used it.  I’m done with it.  I’ll never see it again. It’s not my problem. And by that twisted logic, so is everything else  “down here” not my problem-- I’m just passing through, using whatever I want, then I get a new one because I’ve got the barcode. A great big buzzer to barcode religion! Disciple Bible scholar Gene Boring brilliantly pointed out that God says, “Behold, I make all things new,” not “I make all new things.” We enter heaven not by being raptured from earth’s problems, but by joining God in redeeming them. Christian ethics-- how we act-- is rooted in and motivated by a vision of the end-- God’s desired end-- “Wiping away tears. Death no more.  Neither suffering nor sorrow nor pain any more.” With that blessed end in mind, Christians ask, “By what earthly means might we accomplish those heavenly ends?” How can we speak, live, and legislate so as to make thy kingdom come on earth, flavor earth with a taste of heaven?

Which raises the question: what does heaven taste like? I used to play Stump the Pastor, too, and nearly every time got a question or two asking  what heaven is going to be like.  The end of Revelation gives us a foretaste.

For instance, heaven means reconciliation. We human beings say and do things that leave a trail of strained and broken relationships behind us. Some are forgiven and healed, but some are deeply regrettable and leave deep-seated bruises that time does not heal. The good news is we can hope for reconciliations in heaven that we’ve not been able to effect here on earth. Someone said, “If you want to know how God will act in the future, all you have to do is notice how God acted in the past.” Well, if it’s true that God at long last reconciled Esau and his conniving brother Jacob and if it’s true God reunited a given-up-for-dead Joseph with the brothers who conspired to do away with him and if Jesus forgave those who crucified him from the cross, then heaven surely means the reconciliation of even the most alienated antagonists. 

And nations and societies will be reconciled, too!  Says Isaiah:  “They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore”  (Isa 2:4).  Says John upon seeing the Tree of Life in the center of the New Jerusalem as it was at the center of the Garden of Eden: “the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations” (Rev 22:2).  That means in faith we can look forward to “justice for all.” And we can imagine a sign hanging on the door to The Murphy Center that reads: Out of Business. The Lord’s Prayer has been answered: all have been given this day their daily bread. The heavenly promise of the reconciliation of society means Dr. King’s dream come true of a day when “the sons and daughters of former slaves and the sons and daughters of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.”

And not just all peoples and nations reconciled, but all creation redeemed. In Paul’s words, “Creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay” (Rom 8:19, 21). 

Heaven will have the sweet taste of the reconciliation of people and nations, the redemption of creation, and reunion.  Who among us doesn’t yearn to believe that heaven promises reunion with beloveds who have gone before us?  On the occasion of their 50th wedding anniversary, my father-in-law Dick Taylor gave thanks to God for his wife, his son, his two daughters, and five grandchildren (maybe even his sons-in-law) and then he remembered aloud a son born prematurely who lived but two or three days and the son who at age three-and-half was struck and killed by a car while crossing the street to church on Palm Sunday, 1950.  “The joy of my life,” he said to his family at table with him that day, “is all of you and the hope I have that one day I’ll see my sons again.” Tell me:  Is the hope for reunion an old man’s fantasy or the gospel’s blessed assurance? 

Heaven will have the sweet taste of reunion with beloved others and above all else, full and complete union with God. Says John, “I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven to earth and a loud voice said, “See the dwelling place of God is now among mortals. God will be their God and they will be God’s people.” The thought of being in full and complete union with our Lord and our God. Words fail!  Only poetry suffices: “When we’ve been there ten thousand years bright shining as the sun, we’ve no less days to sing God’s praise than when we’d first begun.”  Or Paul, “Now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face-to-face” (1 Cor 13:12) 

What’s heaven going to be like? The reconciliation of people, society and nations. The redemption of creation. Reunion with those who have gone before and with the One who is the Beginning and the End, “the Alpha and the Omega” (Rev. 21:6). Don’t take my word for it. The voice from the throne says, “These words are trustworthy and true” (Rev. 21:5).

We dedicated dear Violet this morning. A new generation added to God’s people praying for and living for the glad day when God’s “up there” fully come “down here.”            

I can’t help but to remember when our firstborn entered this world. I dropped a handful of quarters into the pay phone and called my grandmother Clarabelle.

"Mama,” I said, “You've got a great-grandson."   

"Oh David,” she said, “I don't know what this world's coming to. What a time for a baby!"

Three years later, I called her with news of a second great-grandchild. "Mama, you’ve got a great-granddaughter.”

A pause and then, "Oh, David, I won't live long enough to see her grow up. But I can't imagine the world she's going to grow up in. What’s this world coming to?"

When our youngest was born, I decided not to call. I didn’t want to ruin her day.

What’s this world coming to that Violet has entered into? It’s coming to its fulfillment in Jesus Christ.  God is making all things new. Reconciling, redeeming, reuniting. 

Let all who pray and live the Lord’s Prayer so that “up there” comes “down here” say the last word of the book of Revelation which is the last word of the Bible which is AMEN.

[1] John Ortberg, God is Closer Than You Think, p. 176

[2] attributed to Lawrence Henry Summers, b. 1954. Chief economist of the World Bank, adviser to US presidents, president of Harvard, director at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.