November 13, 2016
True North | Eternity
- Revelation 21:1-26
- Rev. Dr. Jerry Deck
Before I begin I want to say something about the subject of hell. I was going to include this in the main sermon but it didn’t flow and I didn’t want to force it, but I also didn’t want to omit it so let me just say something briefly about it now and if you want to talk about it more I’m certainly happy to do that. One of the things I’ve discovered about hell is that oftentimes folks go to one of the extremes. I’ve heard quite a few preachers and other Christians in my lifetime who almost seem to relish the idea of hell and who are more than happy to assign folks there. It’s hard for me to think that’s the best approach. On the other side I’ve seen folks for whom hell is unspeakable and they can’t imagine a loving God ever allowing that. While I certainly empathize with that view, when you think about the evil that we’ve seen in our world-horrible atrocities like the Holocaust or terrorism or genocide you begin to realize that a lack of judgment or justice is not love, but chaos.
A brief definition of hell is that it is the opposite of heaven. If heaven, as we’ll discuss soon, is the beautiful presence of God then hell is the absence of God. My belief, as I’ve stated before, is that God loves his creation and the men and women he has created and he will come after them again and again and again to let them know of his love for them. He is relentless. However, he is not going to force people to love him because, quite frankly, that is not love. And for those who simply refuse to embrace God’s relentless love, who decide that it is better to put themselves at the center of the world rather than God, those who cannot worship God, but choose to worship themselves and their own desires no matter what it cost others, as C.S. Lewis puts is, God will eventually have to say them, “Thy will be done.”
People oftentimes wonder, well when is it that God will say thy will be done. Well that is definitely, as they say, over my pay grade. My response is one I heard from Lesslie Newbigin who was a missionary in India for 40 years and it goes well with what we talked about when it comes to how we in the church are called to be witnesses. Newbigin says this: “I do not claim to know in advance [a person’s] ultimate destiny. I meet the person simply as a witness, as one who has been laid hold of by [Christ] and placed in a position where I can only point to Jesus as the one who can make sense of the whole human situation that [we share] as human beings. A witness is not the judge.”
Ultimately we are witnesses to the grace of Jesus and we are called to speak the truth in love and to trust that God’s will, God’s grace and God’s justice will be done. And with that, let us continue our look at eternity by reading Revelation 21.
Today we are ending our first part of the True North series (which we will begin again in January) by looking at the subject of eternity. We’ve talked about this a little bit in the past and as I’ve said at those times I always speak about eternity with a certain amount of trepidation. Growing up in the strand of Christianity that I did, where the topic of eternity was brought up with some regularity and focused on a fair amount of fear, I have some scars quite honestly that, well, may never really heal. And so, in many ways I would prefer to just ignore most talk of the eternal.
The other reason why I have some trepidation is because of the fact that people seem to have some pretty strong opinions about eternity, and especially about the book of Revelation, which is strange because in my opinion at least, the book of Revelation almost by design is incredibly cryptic. It’s a book that is always symbolizing much more than what it is saying and so my own opinion is that if you find someone who says they have Revelation all figured out, you may have found someone who missed the point. That certainly doesn’t mean that the book of Revelation is unimportant or that we can’t have opinions or interpretations of it, but it does mean that we read it and preach and teach upon it with a great amount of humility.
It is, in fact, pretty critical for us not to avoid the subject of eternity and what the New Testament has to say about it. Truth be told, avoiding thinking about eternity ends up warping in many ways how we live in the present. As I thought about that I was reminded of something I have noticed with my children which, I have a feeling, is similar to what happens to most children. Which is how charged their emotions are. I am oftentimes (as in 20-30 times a day) shocked by what causes them to cry or scream in great sadness or anger. If one of them gets looked at the wrong way or is told that no, they can’t have 50 pieces of candy today, their reaction would suggest that a nuclear bomb was just about to set off in our backyard. Of course, the opposite is also true which is that if you tell them you recorded a new Sophia the First they scream and jump up and down in such a way that you would think you’d told them that poverty and hunger have been eliminated in the world. Now there are, of course, many reasons why children react in such ways, but I think that one of those is simply a lack of perspective because, quite frankly, their lives are so short and their experiences so limited. Their time and their world are so small that their reactions to things end up appearing, for their parents at least, to be completely out of proportion.
And I have a sneaking suspicion that that when we fail to see things with an eternal perspective that we end up allowing our own emotions to look much like our children’s, at least in the eyes of God. That our emotions and reaction to what is happening around us reveals all too frequently that we are not actually seeing things from an eternal perspective, but instead have shortened our perspective so much that our highs are much too high and our lows much too low. Francis Chan provides a helpful image that I know our middle schoolers are using as well today which is that of a rope. He says that if the rope signifies eternity (and obviously even the rope can only go so far) that this little black tape right here signifies our lives on earth. And all too often, even as Christians, we end up focusing on this time right here as if it is all there is. So, as Chan says, perhaps we work hard so that we can have a great retirement and yet that’s really, for the Christian, just this little part of the rope and yet it feels like so much more. Perhaps we make decisions or buy things in which it’s clear we are living as if our time here on earth is all there is.
Or even in thinking about what happened this week with the elections I couldn’t help but wonder whether or not our emotional connection to it, whether joyful or filled with hopelessness or despair, didn’t reveal in some way a lack of eternal perspective. Now please hear me, that doesn’t mean it is wrong to have an emotional reaction to what is going on around us (by no means), but I do think it would be good in the midst of these things, to breathe and to see things in the longer view of eternity. In fact the book of Revelation, as one commentator puts it, tells us that when we have an eternal perspective we are reminded that even in the midst of anxiety, fear and hopelessness, that in the end good will overcome evil, that love will overcome hate, that hope will overcome despair and the life will overcome death. An eternal perspective does not mean that we are escapists who just sit around and dream about chubby angels dancing on fluffy clouds, but instead gives us courage and peace to not lose hope and to keep our focus clear because we see things in a much larger timeframe than most of those who surround us.
So, what does this eternity look like and how does that help us to understand the present more deeply? I think that Revelation 21 gives us a fascinating view of what happens at Jesus’ return. What’s important to keep in mind in this description is that John is trying to paint a picture of something that we can’t completely grasp because it is too remarkable to be able to write or fully understand. It’s easy to get caught up in things like, wow what would a wall that is 1,500 miles tall look like, and I think that’s to miss the point. As Gordon Fee puts it, the new heaven and new earth will be infinitely better, greater and grander than present imagination is capable of grasping. But here are some of the foundational characteristics of what eternity looks like.
The first thing to see is that God’s presence will clearly be everywhere. As John says there will be no reason for the sun, because the light of Jesus will be shining everywhere. That Jesus’ return ushers in with it the transformation of the earth into a new earth, and as the new heaven comes down, as Tim Keller puts, our world is purified of its brokenness and imperfection. The world will become what is was created to be from the beginning.
Which means, of course that there will be no evil. This is what John is saying, I believe, when he says there will be no more seas. That might sound strange to us because the sea is not seen by us typically as being a bad thing, but throughout Revelation the sea is seen as being the place from which evil comes and so what John is getting at is that evil will be destroyed. As he says in verses 3 and 4, the God who dwells with his people is the very one who will “wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more.” It’s this remarkable image of God himself wiping away every tear that you have ever shed and with that the pain and brokenness that caused that grief.
When it comes to the image of there being no more seas it’s also interesting to keep in mind the location from which John was writing this Revelation letter. He was on the island of Patmos which means he was surrounded by…the sea. The sea was what isolated him, imprisoned him, kept him far from his relationships and community. And so, from his perspective, the absence of the sea means that at long last communities are able to be brought together as one. John also paints us a picture in the 22nd chapter of tree leaves that help to heal the nations as yet one more testimony of communities across the globe coming together in peace.
John goes on to say that in the new heaven and new earth there will be no temple. The distinction between the sacred and the profane is no more. In other words, every place is holy ground. This gets at what we talk about with some regularity about the fact that God is not confined to one place like this, but instead (as we said earlier) will be clearly seen in all places. It will be something that we don’t just talk about, but something we experience in a beautiful way.
So John is painting a remarkable picture of beauty and welcome (as seen in their being no guards at the gates) and light and community and the presence of God flooding every highway and byway. And the reason why I think that image is so crucial is not because it’s something that we just sit back and daydream about in hopes that someday we can leave this rotten world and get there. I picture it more like a baby puma shoe. What I mean by that is that when Megan and I walked into the labor and delivery room before she gave birth to our firstborn, Shaughnessy, one of the first things she did was to get out this little baby Puma shoe that would eventually go on the foot of our wee one and put it in a place where she could be sure to see when she was in the throes of labor. The image was a helpful reminder to her throughout of why she was doing what she was doing, of what was coming down the pike and allowed her to keep going no matter the pain at times, no matter the cost. It’s important for us to keep in mind this beautiful image that John depicts because it keeps our minds focused in the right direction.
And honestly, it reminds us of our calling. One of the most unique parts of the description of the new heaven and new earth is the 14th verse that says that the wall of the city has twelve foundations, and on them are the twelve names of the twelve apostles. It’s fascinating to think that these 12 apostles, many of whose flaws are told in the gospels, have an impact on what eternity looks like. Now, we have to be careful of course, because obviously none of this is possible without God, but it does point out that what we are doing here is not useless or without eternal implications, but will somehow accomplish something in God’s new world. As 1st Corinthians 15:58 puts it, “you know that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.”
N.T. Wright puts it like this. “Every act of love, gratitude and kindness; every work of art or music inspired by the love of God and delight in the beauty of his creation; every minute spent teaching a severely handicapped child to read or to walk, every act of care and nurture, of comfort and support, for one’s fellow human beings and for that matter one’s fellow nonhuman creatures; and of course every prayer, all Spirit-led teaching, every deed that spreads the gospel, builds up the church, embraces and embodies holiness rather than corruption, and makes the name of Jesus honored in the world-all of this will find its way, through the resurrecting power of God, into the new creation that God will one day make.”
In other words, these heavenly acts that build community, that root out evil, that wipe away tears, that reveal where God is at work in every corner of the world all of these things are pointing to eternity, are reminding people that in the end God will be victorious, that his love and grace will win out, that there is hope, that all is not lost. And we are called to be the ones who point to that heavenly image.
I’ll be honest in saying that I have been thinking about eternity quite a bit over the last three months. It began when our covenant child Hadley was in the last days of her life. Most of you know about Hadley and her battle against Leukemia as most of you prayed for her and for her family in the year leading up to her death. At her remarkably difficult funeral I shared how I had talked to her mother, Heather, a few days before Hadley’s death and she told me how significant eternity had become to her over the last few months of Hadley’s life. Death, of course, has a remarkable way of waking us up to the fact that this is not all there is, that there is more to life than what we can see.
After Hadley passed away I got together with Jim and Heather who told me this fascinating story that I shared at her funeral. Hadley’s little sister, Phoebe, had recently been playing a game where she pointed at people and they pointed back at her. It’s the type of game, I imagine, that children could play for hours. On the day that Hadley died, Jim, Heather and Phoebe were in the room with Hadley and Jim and Heather kept pointing to Hadley and saying, “Say hi to Hadley she’s right here, say hi to her.” And Phoebe kept pointing, but not to Hadley, instead to something above Hadley.
And though her parents kept saying, “No, Hadley’s right here,” Phoebe wouldn’t stop pointing to something above Hadley, something that no one else in the room, at least no adult seemed to be able to see. We each, of course, can wonder what it was that Phoebe was looking at, but for me this week it’s been this reminder of the fact that our call is always to be pointing to something that is beyond what others can see. That in the ways we live our lives, in the ways that we are a people of grace and love, in the ways in which we are building community and not tearing it down, the ways in which we are seeking to bring peace to this world, in the ways in which we are trying to wipe away the tears of those who are mourning, that in each of those ways we are pointing to the eternal.
Sisters and brothers in Christ, may we be a people who live our lives in such a way that they are always pointing to the reality that what we see here is only a glimpse of eternity. May that reality not cause us to simply sit back and wait, but instead may it give us the energy and hope to live into that new reality until Jesus returns and this world transformed into a community of grace and love that as we live in the light of the one who has made all things new. May it be so. Amen.