Chris Blumhofer—Year C Easter 5

Anthony: Let’s transition to our next pericope of the month. It’s Revelation chapter 21:1–6. It is a Revised Common Lectionary passage for the fifth Sunday in Easter, which is May the 18.

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them and be their God; he will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away. And the one who was seated on the throne said, “See, I am making all things new.” Also, he said, “Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.” Then he said to me, “It is done! I’m the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life.

 It may go without saying, Chris, that this particular text is a favorite for obvious reasons, as believers look forward to the new heaven and new earth. Again, I invite you, if you’re preaching this text to tell us, how would you communicate the weightiness of what is being spoken here?

Chris: It’s a great question. It’s the sort of text that preaches itself. I was reading one preacher from a long time ago, recently, but he opened his sermon saying, “This passage is so vivid and powerful that I should just read it in front of you three more times and call that my sermon.”

Anthony: Yes.

Chris: And I’m sort of tempted to do that with things like this, rather than explaining it to death. People have some kind of long exposure to it that captures what it’s really trying to communicate.

So, the imagery is really rich here, but the first thing I’d want to do, and this comes from the text, I t comes from verse three: “See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them. They will be his people. God himself will be with them and be their God.” I would take that declaration, try to open that up.

We — all God’s people, and all of this earth, is meant to have its home in God. God is the One in whom we dwell, the One in whom we flourish, and that was the beginning of our creation and God has committed to it being our end as well. We want to linger on the importance of seeking a home in God.

There are many great Christian writers who have thought about this. The most famous example of it is Saint Augustine. And it is a well-known line that, “our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” To linger on the longing for a home, I think, is one way of putting ourselves in the spiritual, emotional, existential condition that this text addresses.

It’s not really fair sometimes at eight-thirty in the morning, when my church starts to ask people to get to a place of longing for this, because we’re still waking up. But help our hearts be awake to the hope that God is speaking here. I think that’s the first task of a sermon that takes on a text that is just marvelous in its imagery and vision for who we are here.

After that I would want to unpack some of the imagery, and there’s lots of the imagery to dive into. Almost every phrase between the commas in this passage is worthy of its own exposition. It’s just soaked in the Old Testament — this image of a new heaven and the new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth have passed away.

These promises come to us from Isaiah 65. The exile is over. That’s another kind of home imagery. Also, the exile is over, and the hardship of that life has been redeemed. The sea being no more — in the Bible, the sea often represents this kind of chaos that’s in revolt against God. And so, the elimination of the sea is this kind of revolt replaced by the peace of God’s presence.

Also, just a few chapters before this in Revelation, the sea — that was the path by which Rome, Babylon, got wealthy and exploited the whole earth. And so, for the sea to no longer exist, it also suggests that the exploitation that once took place on the sea is a thing of the past as well. The imagery of the city coming down as a bride adorned for her husband — these are pictures of union, reunion, blessing, joy. And I, even in hearing myself say that, the specific thing it’s describing is almost always connected with an emotion, a celebration, a peace, something like that. And holding onto that connection is important, I think. So, this comes from Isaiah 25, a passage of comfort, of a passage of encouragement in which God through the prophet, encourages his people to remain faithful even through great hardship, and then speaks to their hope.

And this is what Isaiah 25:6–9 says.

On this mountain the Lord of Hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear. And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the covering that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death forever. Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces. And the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken. It’ll be said on that day, “See, this is our God; we have waited for him, so that he might save us. This is the Lord for whom we have waited; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.

John is standing in the tradition of this text and saying, we are here now. The home of God is among mortals. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more. This speaks most loudly to people who have fresh awareness of the sting of death, the pain of deprivation, scarcity, injustice.

But John is out to just baptize our imaginations in the fact that this is the end for us. We’re moving in this direction. We can let this orient ourselves today and certainly look forward to it being our life in the world to come.

Anthony: That was a delicious word, and I am going to hold onto the way you phrased it, baptizing our imaginations. After speaking with a pastor last night, whose wife recently died, and knowing the pain and the loneliness that this friend of mine is feeling, we long for this. There is a sense of what we have truly longed for comes to pass. And it does come to pass, and the One who is seated on the throne says this, “I’m making all things new.”

And sometimes, Chris, I wonder if we pass over that. We don’t think of the implications, because the One sitting seated on the throne doesn’t say, “I’m making all new things,” as if, you know what, Father, we’ve got to go to plan B. This is a mess. We’ve just got to start over. But instead, he’s making what is new, renewing, recreating, baptizing what was into what will be. Hallelujah. Praise God. So, can you talk to that, this recreation that the One on the throne is speaking of?

Chris: That’s a great word. Great attention to detail. All things being new. Reminds me of that other text that also speaks of all things worked together for good in Romans eight. And that is God’s reclaiming of everything so that nothing is lost, and nothing is left behind in the work of redemption.

This promise and expectation speaks to me of new creation. So, the word, the verb there is the word for, “to make.” It’s a creation word, and it’s a new creation word. So, in the same way that God raised Jesus from the dead, new creation happens in the body of Jesus. I think I see this promise in Revelation lining up with that, “making all things new,” the new life of God suffusing everything, reclaiming everything. So, we may think about the resurrection scenes and the gospels. This is read in the season of Easter and we’re kind of living in that moment of being reminded of Jesus, being among his people in a way that is continuous with who they knew him to be in his earthly life. But it’s also animated by something new. As Paul says in first Corinthians 15, it was sown corruptible, it was raised incorruptible.

I think you know, Anthony, we’re working within the limits of our capacities and imaginations here. But what we see with clarity is that God is committed to creation, committed to this world he has made and the people he is made in it. And to recreation — he doesn’t just wipe the slate clean, but he redeems. And John is comforted by that, calling us to see that and let ourselves view our world in that way as well.

Anthony: Yeah. It’s interesting how it works itself out. And this may seem like a trite example, but I remember the first time my wife and I went house shopping. And I wanted something fairly new, so there wouldn’t be much maintenance, because I’m not exactly a handyman. But she loves to take older homes and restore them, to renew them, to find the beauty where there was ashes, where there was brokenness. And in thinking about that, pondering the way that she sees a home, it teaches me something. It tutors me in the way of God, that he takes what was broken, battered, in the depths of despair and renews it, recreates it into the “Imago Dei,” the way things are, and the way things were meant to be. And it’s so beautiful, and it speaks to — it’s a pertinent word for here and now, because I can see brokenness all around me. I love what you said. God is committed to his creation, and he’s really good at what he does. Certainly, in terms of recreation.