Scripture readings: Isaiah 52;
Revelation 21
We are reading about God
making things new.
God tells Isaiah about a
new Israel and a new Jerusalem. He says they will finally be safe, in the end,
because no one who is uncircumcised or unclean will enter.
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| Christmas lights: Desert Aire/Mattawa, WA December 2017 |
The uncircumcised and
unclean are really the same thing, so all the nations except Israel are shut
out. But, in the end, God tells Isaiah that many nations (which really means
all nations) will have something done to them that will change them completely.
They will be sprinkled by the Servant (the Messiah,
the Christ). And, so, they will all be clean. They will become citizens of the
kingdom of the Messiah. But the kingdom of the Messiah is Israel.
This means that Israel
will be new indeed; new in a way it has never dreamed of. Israel and Jerusalem
will be everyone. The unclean will be gone.
The same is true in the
Book of Revelation. The gates and foundations are labeled with the names of the
tribes of Israel and the apostles of the Church. All of the nations will come
to the New Jerusalem to give their praise and glory to God; their praise and
glory to the Lamb. The New Jerusalem will be home for everyone. And the gates
will always be open. There will be no cover of darkness for evil and enemies to
enter and destroy. But the truth is that all evil and all enemies will be gone.
They’ve been put out of the new creation forever. They have disappeared into
the Lake of Fire.
When we have a solid feel
for what Israel and Jerusalem have been, through the centuries, and what they
are now, we can only say: “Well! That will be different! That will be something
new!”
The same has begun to be
true for us. Some glad day, it will be completely true for us; true for
everyone who truly wants it. But it has begun to be true now. We have been
given the first installments of something totally different, something totally
new.
Have you ever been made
new before? Have you ever felt that your life had become completely different
than it was before?
If we must be spiritually
correct, we would say that we became new and different people when we
wholeheartedly opened ourselves to God in Christ. One of my most favorite
sentences in the Bible was written by Paul, in his letter to the Galatians.
It’s his description of being completely new and different. Paul wrote: “I have
been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in
me; and the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God,
who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20)
I have another favorite
line by Paul. It comes from his Second Letter to the Corinthians: “Therefore,
if any one is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold,
the new has come.” (2 Corinthians 5:17)
We, as Christians,
honestly, don’t always look to others as if we were completely new and
different. We can look like we think we’re members of some sort of exclusive
club or lodge. Even Christians forget that being a member is not a matter of
having your name on a roll, or in a record book. Being a member is not about
being on the list of past or present officers.
Being a member of the
Church is about being in Christ: a part of Christ. It’s about being a member of
his body, as opposed to being dismembered. A member is someone who is an organ,
or a ligament, or a muscle, or a finger, or a mustache in the Body of Jesus,
the Body of Christ. The head of this body is Jesus, although we might serve as
one of his many, many eyes, or tongues, or ears, or mustaches.
What would it be like, as
a member of the church, to be a nose in the body of Christ? It would have to be
much more than being able to say that the potluck was ready to eat. What would
it be like to be a completely new and different nose than you are right now?
Have you ever become a
completely new and different person?
There was a guy in my
first church who became a new Christian. He was talking a lot about this. I
thought it must have happened before I had arrived, because I was a really new
arrival. But, when I said this to him, he grinned and tapped his finger on my
chest. He gave me the credit. That was such an honor.
Ralph was a lumbermill
worker, and he had been most of his life. If I recall correctly, his youngest
son was still in high school. Some of Ralph’s older kids had given him and
Virginia grandkids. So, he had lived long enough to have formed a very definite
pattern of personality and abilities.
Before he was found by
Jesus, Ralph had been a harsh, critical, and judgmental man, even within his
home and family; or especially there. He had also been functionally illiterate.
Now the obvious miracle
was that he could suddenly read, and he soon loved to read. His favorite
reading was the Bible, and he absorbed it like a sponge. He also began, at once,
the new habit of reading the newspaper every day.
There was once a famous
theologian who said that a good Christian was one who held a Bible in one hand
and the newspaper in the other. That could be true.
Ralph also began reading
books like “The Works of Flavius Josephus”. Flavius Josephus was a Jewish army
officer at the time that the people of Israel rose up in rebellion against
their Roman overlords, in the middle of the sixties, and up to 70 A.D., or so.
He wrote a first century history of the Jewish people down to the time right
after Jesus: the time of the Roman destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple. In
fact, Josephus mentions Jesus in his history, briefly. Josephus is not easy
reading.
So, that was brand new.
That was different. That was Ralph and Jesus.
But there was something
just as good and even better for those who knew Ralph, and even better for his
wife and family. Ralph became a loving, gentle man. He became patient, and
compassionate, and generous. His wife would talk to me, personally, about the
wonderful change in Ralph.
The change was so impressive and persuasive
that Ralph’s eighty-five-year-old father-in-law (Bob) became a disciple of
Jesus after a lifetime of scorning religion in general and Christians in
particular. Of course, he had never scorned his own wife Nellie, or his
daughter Virginia. For years Bob, like Ralph, had tolerated their faith. Now
they embrace that faith. So, Bob’s wife, Nellie, and Ralph’s wife, Virginia,
were having a good time with this.
But how can someone, who
doesn’t know this peculiar brand of newness and differentness, understand, by
looking at us (when we don’t look all that new and different) understand what
we hope and pray that they will understand?
We long for them to
understand what they can become with Jesus. Is there something that anyone can
understand about being a new person (a different person) than you were before?
What has changed you into a new and different person? What, in life, has
changed your life?
In the Book of Revelation,
the new universe, the new heaven and earth, the new future life of all believing
human beings who will ever live, can be described and pictured in the same,
common ways that our current lives are changed.
It isn’t so much a matter
of having a new life merely because you have a new house. It isn’t the kind of new
life that comes with a new job.
A real-life change might
come with the birth of a child. Such a thing changes a woman into a mother,
which (I’m told) is a complete difference.
I’ve known men who told me
that the first step they took toward Jesus was completely unconscious and completely
unintentional. It was simply the fact that they held a child of their own flesh
and blood in their arms.
The experience told them
that they needed to become something they had never been before. It opened them
to change on an almost miraculous level or depth.
This is the change in life
described to us when we learn that the new universe and the new way to be human
is to truly be born again. In the world to come, we will become, like never
before, the direct children of God. “The one who conquers will inherit these
things. I will be his God and he will be my son (my daughter)” (Revelation
21:7)
I’m also told that
marriage changes your life. I also suspect that, if it doesn’t make you a new
person, you will not be about what marriage is for.
The future world, and the
future you, will be “prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.”
(Revelation 21:2) The Christian hope is that the future world, and the future you,
will be like a wedding that won’t stop. There will be enough joy, and giving,
and love, and passion for that wedding to go on and on in that timeless world.
A member of one of my
churches, whom I’ve known for decades, passed away recently, and I was suddenly
reminded of the terrible auto accident she had been in with a friend, years ago.
The friend had died. Linda was about seventy years old when she was injured.
She was in the hospital for weeks. She was in physical therapy for months.
Linda, and her husband Bob,
had been living in the grand, old, brick, family farmhouse that Bob’s father
had built. They had been living independently, and graciously, and generously,
and hospitably, and deeply spiritually for many years.
Linda’s good friend had
died, and Linda almost died. She, herself, when she was in the greatest danger,
had an encounter with Jesus beyond this world. Afterwards, in her humility, she
said little about that experience, but the whole thing touched her deeply.
For months no one knew
what progress she would make, if any, in the end. After months, she was well
enough to return home and live, very much, the way she had before, at least for
a while.
She was a saint before.
That never changed. But she saw her physical presence in this world very
differently. And she saw all her relationships much more preciously than ever.
After my dad had heart
surgery (a triple by-pass), he wasn’t in the hospital very long, but he
changed. This happened shortly after he retired, so he was in his later
sixties. Suddenly he would tell us grown up kids (I was in my early forties)
that he loved us. He would say (out of the blue), “Son, I love you.” I had
never heard him say this before. I’m sure he never, in my life, told me that he
loved me until that time. It was so strange. I never got used to it. My dad had
become very different and new.
I understand that
recoveries like these can make you a new person. Recoveries can make you a
truly different person than you were before. I believe this.
The Christian hope, the
future world, the future you, will be a recovery like that. John tells us that:
“God will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or
mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” (Rev.
21:4)
We have lived in a world
that has borne a long illness, with its long history of death, and mourning and
crying, and pain. Whether we have heard, and believed, the promise of recovery,
or not, we have known no other world than the one in which we have been living,
under the influence of this long sickness, and all our lives have shared this
sickness in common. We may have begun the gift of recovery in our own lives,
but we know no other world.
But now, our lives have
seen some of the future change. When the fullness of time has come, the change
will be perfect. We and the new world will be well. A medieval nun had a little
song that went: “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of
thing shall be well.” (Julian of Norwich)
Sometimes life changes
when someone comes to live with you. When my Polish Grandmother (my Baci, or
Babcia) retired, she didn’t come to live with us. She went to live with her son
(my mother’s brother, Uncle Eddie, and his family). I know this changed my
cousins’ lives.
But Baci would come and
spend her summers with us. I was about thirteen or fourteen, when this began.
I changed because I became
Polish. My Baci would teach me to talk with her in Polish, and to help her cook
Polish food. I learned to make pierogi. I thought that, when I got older, I
might do some college work in Poland. Maybe I would get some experience that
would qualify me for working with the State Department.
Of course, God had other plans
for me that I was already seriously resisting. When Baci, or some of my other
older Polish relatives, would come and visit us, they would talk with me and
tell me that I thought like a Polak. I had changed.
This was quite a compliment.
No one can receive a finer compliment than to be called a Polak. It’s a Polish word
that means a Polish person. What could be greater than that?
Change comes, and it makes
all the difference in the world, when someone comes to live with you. John
tells us that: “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with
them.” (Revelation 21:3) Surely everyone here knows something about this, even
now.
The newness described all
through the Book of Revelation is a special kind of newness. There are two
words for newness, in the Biblical Greek.
There is an ordinary,
standard newness called “neos”, which is like getting a new computer, or a new
car.
Then there is a radical
newness called “kainos”, which means a whole new order of change, as if change,
itself, will change into something else.
New heavens and earth
don’t mean that heaven and earth will be replaced. Becoming a new creation
doesn’t mean that we will have the secret of eternal youth, or an intelligence
boost, or an altered memory.
What you will be, and whatever
this world will be, will become something we can’t even imagine now. What we
want will change. What we enjoy will change. What we’re able to do will change.
What we see, and hear, and take into ourselves will change. What others are for
us, and what we are for others, will change.
We, and the whole world,
will be so surprisingly new. And yet we will be ourselves. What we are now will
be recognizable in what we will be. What we are now will have played its part,
in the love of God in Christ. What we are now will have played its part in the
person that God has planned us to be, all along.
How will this new change
become ours? How will this future hope, this future world (this future heaven
and earth), become ours? Two things go together in this, in a way we don’t
ordinarily notice.
The language of the Book
of Revelation is Greek, but the thinking in it is Hebrew. In Hebrew thought you
can put things together that seem different, side by side, and they really are
part of the same, single thing. The different things share one meaning in
common.
So, John hears about the
Lion of Judah and he looks and sees a Lamb that was slain. These are two different
things that are the same thing. John hears about the Bride, and he looks and
sees the New Jerusalem City. And all that we are told about what’s in the city
is that there is a throne, with God and the Lamb sitting on it, and fruit
trees, and a river, as if it were a garden: maybe even the garden of Eden, all
over again, but safe and complete. These all seem like different things, but
they’re the same thing.
John hears about two
things that don’t sound like the same thing. He hears that the thirsty will receive
the water of life: which means that they will live in the New Jerusalem. He
hears that the ones who conquer, or overcome, “will inherit all of this”: which
means that they will live in the New Jerusalem.
John is telling us that
the one who thirsts and the one who conquers are the same. You conquer by
thirsting. You thirst by conquering.
It’s the same thing. You
want something so bad, or (better yet) you want something so good, that your
desire and your commitment become your deepest need, and your deepest need grows
to become your greatest strength.
You want just one thing,
and you don’t settle for anything else. You don’t settle for anything less. You
become true, as in true-blue, to your need, and to your strength, which is God.
This need and this
strength begin with what Isaiah tells us comes from being sprinkled by the
Servant, the Messiah, the Christ. John tells us that this need and this
strength come from being washed in the blood of the Lamb. This comes from the
love and grace of God, in our Savior Jesus Christ.
John tells us to thirst
and to conquer. Isaiah tells us to wake up, and get up, and sing out, and to
come out, and to chill out (don’t rush, don’t worry). Read more about this in Isaiah
chapter fifty-two.
But, a little bit later
(in chapter fifty-three), Isaiah says that the servant who is the Messiah, will
change us, because he has carried our sorrows and our sins. Carrying us gives
him the ability to do something he calls sprinkling us. The sprinkling power, coming
from suffering, will be able to make us all into new people. The sprinkling
that comes from his suffering is intended to enable all who desire it to enter
into the new future creation of God.
The servant Jesus was born
in Bethlehem to carry, on himself, our sufferings and our sins, on the cross. Doing
this, he has made newness and difference possible.
John tells us that it is
the Son of God, the Word of God, the Lion who is the Lamb who was slain for us
on the cross, who is responsible for making the great thirst and the great
overcoming possible.
If we do hold onto that
overcoming thirst, as if our life depended on it, that newness, and that
difference will become our abundant life. It will become our everlasting life.
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