The New from the Old

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November 17, 2013

Isaiah 65:17-25

¹⁷For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. ¹⁸But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating; for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight. ¹⁹I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and delight in my people; no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it, or the cry of distress. ²⁰No more shall there be in it an infant that lives but a few days, or an old person who does not live out a lifetime; for one who dies at a hundred years will be considered a youth, and one who falls short of a hundred will be considered accursed. ²¹They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit. ²²They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat; for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be, and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands. ²³They shall not labor in vain, or bear children for calamity; for they shall be offspring blessed by the LORD-and their descendants as well. ²⁴Before they call I will answer, while they are yet speaking I will hear. ²⁵The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox; but the serpent-its food shall be dust! They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, says the LORD.

Sermon:  “The New from the Old”

Confession time: pastor-types are among the most sacrilegious people you’ll ever come across.  It’s why sometimes we try to explain the Trinity with a chocolate chip cookie (dough: Father, chocolate chips: Jesus, nuts: Spirit).  It’s why we love a good religious joke, such as:

How many Presbyterians does it take to change a lightbulb?

“Change?  What do you mean change?  Why would anything need to change??

Our favorite topic of satire is other Christians, just as each of us has the most fun ridiculing our family, and honestly, there’s a wealth of material there.  In seminary, we most enjoyed poking fun at the Left Behind Series, a collection of Christian fiction novels that depict the end times, which has now been immortalized in film starring Kirk Cameron.

According to those books, at some point, people who accept Jesus will literally be raptured up into heaven, beam-me-up-Scotty-style.  If they happen to be flying a plane or driving a car at the time, well that’s just tough.  Those who didn’t pray a prayer in the right way are, you know, “left behind.” 

Then a slick suit-wearing Antichrist will arise and manipulate his way into driving the world into suffering and darkness.  And someday, at the end of all that horror, God will decide enough’s enough, and set things right with a new heaven and new earth, destroying the old in the process.

All of this is somewhat based on scripture, but a very literalist take on what was mean to be poetry in the book of Revelation.  What Dawn read for us this morning was never meant to be understood as a blueprint for the step-by-step progression of the end times, as the Left Behind series indicates.  It was actually acted out, not read, in the early church and like any good play, it used over-the-top drama to get people to ask hard questions about what life and sin and heaven were all about. 

We change-loving Presbyterians have a way of reading scripture, and it’s relatively simple.  Scripture interprets scripture.  Things can’t be picked out and raised above others, we take it all as a whole.  And as John Calvin said, we read that word through the rule of faith and life, that is, through our relationship with God through Jesus Christ and through real life with all of its joys and struggles. 

So this “Left Behind” business just doesn’t cut it, because it doesn’t engage scripture with itself or with the real world, but instead seeks to escape it all.  Holding all of scripture together, we read Revelation by first hearing its parent text: our Isaiah reading from today.

There we hear the bold promises of God who will restore a broken people, wiping away the past forever.  Crying and young death will be no more, and life will not be a radical escape but a radical relishing of the gifts of creation, of food and drink, of home and work.  Before people even call out to God, God will hear them. 

But this promise, unlike that limited Left Behind one, is not just for people.  It’s for animals, too!  The lamb will eat with the wolf (and not be eaten by it).  It would seem vegetarianism is in God’s great plan for the world, because the lion eats straw.  The serpent, that crafty creature, will eat dust.  Perhaps we would we call that...dirtatarian?

Then comes that greatest of promises:  “They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain,” says the Lord. 

Who is ‘they?’  I asked a friend much more versed in Hebrew than I am, and it’s not what I expected.  These words were first spoken by Isaiah to a people crushed by an invading army.  I assumed, as we often do, that “they” meant their enemies.  But God’s vision of a new heaven and new earth does not include such a distinction.  “They” in the Hebrew here includes everyone, the entire re-created order: people, animals, everyone in this new Jerusalem.  It is not just “they” who hurt and destroy in this life.  It is unfortunately also “we.”  And so God’s ultimate hopeful promise is that we will become our best selves, and no longer hurt one another and destroy God’s good creation.  Sorry Left Behind fellas, but I prefer this vision of things to come.

God does not bring a new heaven and a new earth in order to destroy creation.  This is the same God who crafted every speck of this planet and us and called it very good.  This is the same God who did, once upon a time, flood the earth in its wickedness and start over, but who also promised to never, ever do that again. 

Do we trust God’s promises?  Do we reject a lesser (but somehow more marketable and profitable) god of anger and violence against whoever we understand “them” to be, in order to embrace the God who entered into this world willingly to transform “us” and “them” for all time?

I hope we do.  Because if we do, there is so much good news.  And this is not the fluffy, feel-good, stuff of Hallmark cards and Christmas Coca Cola commercials.  This is the earth-shattered with the grace of heaven, world re-creating good news of the One who is creating newness, even now.

This new heaven and new earth is not a get-out-of-pain-free card for those faithful enough to cash it in, as some might have us believe.  The God we follow chose to enter this world in a transformative and troubled way, and so we do not get to check out of this life.  We live it, just as Christ did, with all of its darkness and light, heaviness and hope.  This new heaven and new earth is not escape. 

It is transformation.  This stuff – the stuff of pain and sorrow, the stuff of a wolf-eat-sheep world and lions threatening the weak, the stuff of weeping children and old grudges, this is the stuff out of which God’s newness is made. 

We do not know why this life can be so terribly hard at times, and we do not know why God allows it to be this way.  But we do know God, at least in part.  And the God we know in scripture, the God we know in our faith in Jesus Christ, the God we see in our real life, that God can be trusted.  And that God who called everything ‘good’, still sees goodness in this messy world, and still works to help us see it, too.  This God is, at the very heart of things, a Creator, and not a Destroyer. 

So, have hope.  We do not get to escape this life’s trouble, but we get something even better: we get the promise that there is new life on the other side of it.  Isn’t that what this good news is all about?  Isn’t that why we pray for each other and this world, trusting that promise? 

Change is coming, whether we Presbyterians like it or not.  But it is not a change we need to fear.  It is the change of sorrow for joy and weeping for delight, of hunger for feasting and violence for everlasting peace.  The God who created us all – animals included – isn’t done yet.  Not even close.  And that is good news!  Amen.