So far in our series on Revelation we have asked what God is revealing as the Alpha and Omega in your life while also having praised God with a standing ovation. Last week we heard about the cosmic battle for salvation found in Jesus- Yahweh is Salvation. Since then a few other things have happened. The opposition to the Lamb has been crushed. The dragon (also known as Satan) as well as the beast and false prophet have been cast into the lake of fire. So the chaos and the cosmic struggle is coming to a close. We can see this with the arrival of the Bride, the Holy City, the one who is going to marry the Lamb. We hear this earlier in Revelation with the declaration, “Let us rejoice and exult and give him glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready…” 19:7 So do you see the final vision? – Christ the Lamb is preparing to wed his beloved bride the Holy City, the New Jerusalem coming down from heaven…. Listen Now for God’s word to you.
I have been thinking about old and new contemplating this sermon. So Parker and I brainstormed several things. He said an old man and a baby, a typewriter and a laptop, pen and ink and a ball point pen. Then I said how about a phonograph and he said a what? and that just made me feel really old. Then we came up with a model T and a hybrid car. Two cans with a string to smart phones. We threw in a few more for good measure but that gives you the flavor. Then I noticed that most of the things we mentioned had to do with technology. The things that we have not encountered yet, are more often things that have recently been developed. Of course there are the exceptions: exploring other countries and cultures, becoming a parent, going off to college, taking up a hobby, starting retirement. But for most of us, new things often come with technological advancement. And sometime those advances are wonderful and other times they overwhelm us because we just are not ready for them. I’m guessing we can all relate to getting a new phone and how much there is to learn with the new technology. Every time you think you have got it down, it’s time to get a new device and you have to learn all over again. Now I am really feeling old. Old and New- sometimes we are ready to embrace the new change and other times not so much. Well at least the things we have been talking about we can see and touch, things we can choose or reject. The old and new of our passages today are a bit different.
First let us consider what Luke wrote about Peter and who is in and who is out. As you know the common Jewish practice was to remain ritually clean and you did this by the keeping the laws and eating the right food. Moreover, all believers were circumcised and set apart. But Peter had started baptizing Gentiles and that raised a ruckus. The Gentiles were the non-Jewish people, people who were not raised to follow the traditions and laws of God. But Peter chose to eat with these outsiders, these new people that got the Jewish Christians upset. Not only that, but what they ate was a concern. And that is why we have the vision of the sheet with animals coming from heaven which was a sign that the old dietary laws no longer applied. Three times Peter saw the change before he was willing to embrace it. It took Peter hearing this new law three times for him to believe that God was changing the old into something new. “What God has made clean, you must not call profane” (vs. 9).
Often it takes us several times to get that this is what God is calling us to do, to change our ways to come to a new place in our walk with the Lord, to let go of the old and do something new. Raise your hand if you like change? How many of us really want to embrace something new and different when it is right in front of us? There is an old saying that when you get in enough pain then your will be willing to change. I think there is some truth to that. We might need to be pushed to think outside the box and see that God really might be saying the old ways have merit and might been time for a new plan.
Our church might be in need of some change- we might have to think outside the box to see what our options are for what God is calling us to do and be. I have felt that God is calling us to embrace visual technology so that we can see as well as hear God’s inspiration- hence the TV screens. Joy of our salvation can be expressed in new life music Shari spoke about as well as traditional hymns. So we seek to enliven our music every month as we invite younger families to join in our ministry to Christ. I just pray in the midst of change we all continue to listen for what’s new in how we are the church. We may need to hear God showing us several times to get the message God is placing on our hears- just like Peter.
Because what led up to this event in Acts was Holy Spirit had been poured out on the Gentiles, the ones the Jews stiff armed, the ones who were not like them. They knew this because they were speaking in tongues- a well establish practice in the early church. A topic Don will be preaching on in two weeks on Pentecost Sunday. Peter said if the Holy Spirit is upon them, we should baptize them, welcome them, eat with them. In other words, we should let go of the old and accept them as the new. Will we accept the TV’s as the new?
New is exactly what God is revealing in our second reading; a new heaven and a new earth. We see a new union between Jesus the Lamb and his bride the Holy City. This idea of a Holy city or even marrying a city seems odd, but what it is really saying is that God’s heaven will now abide here on earth, that God’s complete act of reconciliation which started on the cross is coming to fruition in this new union- this new heaven on earth.
But what happened to the old? The first heaven and first earth had passed away- and the sea was no more. Why the sea? Here we see the old image of the creations story. God had calmed the waters and formed everything from the chaos with all creation coming out of the depth of the water. But now as God’s new heaven and new earth become the home of God where mortals dwell, the chaos is gone, the sea is no more and water of life is a gift to those who thirst. God is making all things new.
Dana Ferguson was a classmate of mine in Seminary. She was a spunky southern woman who started dating Wayne a quiet northerner. Before we graduated they were married and started their new life together. I lost touch with them over the years so I was really surprised when I open my commentary and found an article written by Dana about this passage. She wrote the new heaven is plainly and simply the place where God is. And that “heaven is the place where God is and humans are fully united with God.” So the New heaven is when you and I will be utterly in the presence of God; with no earthly distractions, just bathed in God’s love. But then she wonders why a City and concludes that cities are places where people live together dependent upon each other. So the holy city is where God lives and we all live in communion together. Soon we will come to table to share in sacred communion, God’s heaven made real on earth at Christ’s table. A wedding feast for the Bride and Groom (Lord). A foretaste of us being reunited with God in heaven. Joy of salvation and the end of grief are ours with this new heaven. God will wipe away every tear and death will be no more- mourning and crying and pain will be the old way, but our loving and caring God is bringing us a new heaven here on earth.
Dana goes on to tell of her own struggle with cancer how she is lying in her hospital bed pondering the fact that she has a vicious and sneaky kind of cancer with no survival rates. One day a doctor who as long since become a friend came to see her and she asked him, “Will I survive this?” and he replied “Yes, but you will have to fight.” During the months that followed those words grew in meaning, as each day she struggled to simply get out of bed and make it through another day. As she did, she heard the words, “You will have to fight.” So that is what she did, leading her into a new day that dawned many months later.
Last year I got a letter asking for donations for the Dana Ferguson Memorial Fund from Princeton. She fought the good fight and now she is with God in the new heaven. I want to share with you her closing words. “The words we hear today in Revelation have the power to become such life-altering words for God’s people, especially those who find themselves in the midst of struggle and turmoil. ‘It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.’ These are words that matter at the very heart of life, where we ask who we are, who God is, and what is the value of the Christian pursuit. They tell us that there will be a new day when we live face to face with God. All that has hindered, hurt, and hampered us will be gone. What will be left is a life with God filled with relationships of joy and strength with God’s people” (Feasting on the Word, C2, p. 466).
To that I echo God’s Word, “See I am making all things new.” Dana is now in her new life, in the new heaven where she abides with God. And just as we cannot imagine new technology before it is invented, we cannot fully understand heaven before we are united with God. The new heaven will be so much better than we can imagine, created by God, perfected in love where God dwells with us and we abide with him.
Let us pray….
God of new beginnings and God of wholeness help us to see the new heaven you will call into being, but until we are able to do that continue to grant us new life in the wonders of your Son in the living waters of your Holy Spirit, in the eternal love that abides and dwells in you. May we release the old, claim the new, and await the time when you will dwell among us within your new heaven here on earth. In your gracious name we pray.
Amen.
