"New Earth" A sermon based upon Isaiah 65:17-25 preached at York Pines United Church November 15, 2019
Isaiah 65: For I
am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. But
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. I 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. No 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. They shall build houses
and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit. They
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. They shall not labor in vain, or bear children for
calamity; for they shall be offspring blessed by the Lord - and their descendants as well. Before they call I
will answer, while they are yet speaking I will hear. The 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.
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In the movie “Back to the Future”, Marty McFly is
accidentally sent back to 1955, where he meets his future mother and father as
teens. If he cannot ensure that they get married and have children, his own
future will not exist. Not only do we get some insight into life back in 1955
for a young person, we get a kind of theological movie about how things happen.
That unless some certain things *do* happen, other things *won’t* happen.
In 2010 I packed up and moved to Corner Brook in Newfoundland, to take a call at Humber United Church. I had no doubts whatsoever that it was meant to happen. If I had said no, the future would have been significantly different. What was interesting was the reactions of friends. My ministry friends, most of them, said “Way to go, Fran!” Some said “when other people are trying NOT to get settled in Newfoundland, you decide to go there.” Of my close friends, only one said “You’re doing this the right way. At a time when most of us are slowing down, you’re picking up speed and doing something different.” The others said “Why is Fran doing this??”
Today we hear two pieces of scripture. I like to call them “book ends” to God’s future. Isaiah has a vision of a new creation. God says “See, I am about to do a new thing!”. The vision describes what the new creation will be like. There will be no illness, no sadness; small children will grow up to be old and wise, instead of dying young.
Revelation 20 is the vision of John where the future has happened - the new creation, the realm of God has come. John takes his readers back to the future in God’s world. The realm of God, right in the mucky and horrendous world of the here and now, happens.
What is interesting is that neither scripture says HOW it will happen. One says it ‘is about to happen’ and the other says ‘it has happened’. In between, there are centuries of God’s people getting lost, getting things wrong, and yet somehow finding their way, getting things right. And there are approximately three years of Jesus and Gospel stories, where the disciples tend to bumble around and not see – and then more generations and centuries of people getting lost, getting things wrong, and somehow out of it advancing and finding their way. Not everyone and not all at the same time – but every so often there are glimpses of that ‘new thing’, the vision of a new world – in which true peace lives. The HOW of its happening is through us. Throughout the Bible, it becomes clear that God doesn’t just make everything right – if that were the case it would have happened from the beginning. Throughout our stories, it is *us* who are called to make things right. Together.
Rev. Thomas Hall is one of my favourite crafters of sermons. He talks about how we get stuck in the here and now - “preoccupied by grotesque shapes of terrorism, the runaway costs of living, unchecked crime in our neighborhoods, or pollution on a global scale.” and he says that we often see only the mud of life, and tend to get stuck in it. But, he says, the vocabulary of faith opens our vision to see purpose beyond chaos, joy beyond sorrow, life beyond death, and God beyond all the muck.
Rev. Fred Ulrich, minister at the Buddhist Church in Winnipeg, is both an ordained certified Methodist preacher, and an ordained Buddhist priest; because of his dual training, he has the ability to take stories out of either tradition, and make them relevant to the other. At a General Council meeting in 1998, he told the story of the lotus plant. The lotus is one of the most beautiful flowers, rising from under the water, pushing the flower head above the surface, and opening into something completely spectacular. What we don’t see, he said, is the muck down at the bottom of the pond. Lotus seeds cannot grow without the muck and the mud. Without a reasonably deep filthy and mucky bottom layer, the lotus would not grow or flower at all.
Human beings, and creation, are like the lotus. Without the muck around us in the everyday, would we look harder at the future? Without those things, perhaps faith would not exist at all. When we experience death, particularly when we experience it close to ourselves, we reflect on what life is; when we see others with serious illness, we reflect on what health is - either physical or spiritual; when we experience war, we begin to think about the true meaning of peace. When we look at all of those things, we think about the future which God describes to Isaiah and to John, and we begin to work to get to that future.
In 2010 I packed up and moved to Corner Brook in Newfoundland, to take a call at Humber United Church. I had no doubts whatsoever that it was meant to happen. If I had said no, the future would have been significantly different. What was interesting was the reactions of friends. My ministry friends, most of them, said “Way to go, Fran!” Some said “when other people are trying NOT to get settled in Newfoundland, you decide to go there.” Of my close friends, only one said “You’re doing this the right way. At a time when most of us are slowing down, you’re picking up speed and doing something different.” The others said “Why is Fran doing this??”
Today we hear two pieces of scripture. I like to call them “book ends” to God’s future. Isaiah has a vision of a new creation. God says “See, I am about to do a new thing!”. The vision describes what the new creation will be like. There will be no illness, no sadness; small children will grow up to be old and wise, instead of dying young.
Revelation 20 is the vision of John where the future has happened - the new creation, the realm of God has come. John takes his readers back to the future in God’s world. The realm of God, right in the mucky and horrendous world of the here and now, happens.
What is interesting is that neither scripture says HOW it will happen. One says it ‘is about to happen’ and the other says ‘it has happened’. In between, there are centuries of God’s people getting lost, getting things wrong, and yet somehow finding their way, getting things right. And there are approximately three years of Jesus and Gospel stories, where the disciples tend to bumble around and not see – and then more generations and centuries of people getting lost, getting things wrong, and somehow out of it advancing and finding their way. Not everyone and not all at the same time – but every so often there are glimpses of that ‘new thing’, the vision of a new world – in which true peace lives. The HOW of its happening is through us. Throughout the Bible, it becomes clear that God doesn’t just make everything right – if that were the case it would have happened from the beginning. Throughout our stories, it is *us* who are called to make things right. Together.
Rev. Thomas Hall is one of my favourite crafters of sermons. He talks about how we get stuck in the here and now - “preoccupied by grotesque shapes of terrorism, the runaway costs of living, unchecked crime in our neighborhoods, or pollution on a global scale.” and he says that we often see only the mud of life, and tend to get stuck in it. But, he says, the vocabulary of faith opens our vision to see purpose beyond chaos, joy beyond sorrow, life beyond death, and God beyond all the muck.
Rev. Fred Ulrich, minister at the Buddhist Church in Winnipeg, is both an ordained certified Methodist preacher, and an ordained Buddhist priest; because of his dual training, he has the ability to take stories out of either tradition, and make them relevant to the other. At a General Council meeting in 1998, he told the story of the lotus plant. The lotus is one of the most beautiful flowers, rising from under the water, pushing the flower head above the surface, and opening into something completely spectacular. What we don’t see, he said, is the muck down at the bottom of the pond. Lotus seeds cannot grow without the muck and the mud. Without a reasonably deep filthy and mucky bottom layer, the lotus would not grow or flower at all.
Human beings, and creation, are like the lotus. Without the muck around us in the everyday, would we look harder at the future? Without those things, perhaps faith would not exist at all. When we experience death, particularly when we experience it close to ourselves, we reflect on what life is; when we see others with serious illness, we reflect on what health is - either physical or spiritual; when we experience war, we begin to think about the true meaning of peace. When we look at all of those things, we think about the future which God describes to Isaiah and to John, and we begin to work to get to that future.
What is the vision of the future? Look
again at the words of Isaiah – young people,
children – will live to grow up instead of being born into calamity; old people
will live full lives; people will be able to build their own homes, grow their
own food – instead of growing it for someone else to consume; no more sound of
weeping or distress. It is a vision of true shalom – a Hebrew word translated as
meaning ‘peace’ - but with so much more
to it – no more disease, war, hunger or greed – true full lives.
Faith allows us to claim, with Isaiah, that God through us, is at work creating new heavens and a new earth. Our vision sees grace flying up and up from the muck.
God’s vision continues to build a new heaven and earth, not just through Jesus. That’s too easy to say it’s all happening through Jesus. God is also creating this new heaven and earth through each of us, if we are attentive. Jesus set the example, but we who claim to be disciples have to make the decision to follow, even if that means taking a risk and trying out something totally new.
God’s vision does not suggest that we unplug ourselves and walk away from the mud. Rather the opposite—we work in our world and in the relationships of our daily lives as if the Realm of God is at hand, and is already shaping that new heaven and earth. Our hands, our words, our efforts and energy, our financial investments to further God’s purpose for the world become in God’s creative hands, the tools God uses to create new things in the world.
Our sustaining vision frees our faith to look beyond the Now and beyond those things that run opposite to God’s great vision of health, healing, wholeness, peace, love, and restoration in this world. So we look back to Isaiah, and back to Revelation, in order to create that future which God lays out. What we as Christians are trying to do in our faith journey together is going back to the future of God’s vision for all of creation.
And in that quest, we take risk. We set out on a journey to a new place. We don’t know what will happen on the road. We don’t know what will happen at any of the stops on the way. But we enter into the journey together, to work together in the creation of that future. This is our upward call- to shape the future, to shape a beautiful flower, from the very mud in which our feet are planted. May it be so.
Sources:
1. “Grace Flying Up”, a sermon based on Isaiah 65:1-7 by Rev. Thomas Hall
2. General Council lecture, Camrose, Alberta 1998, Rev. Fred Ulrich.
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