Creating a New Heaven and
a New Earth
(based on Isaiah 65:17-25,
Luke 21:5-19)
Last week I was in a meeting with the
Administrative Commission for Transformation, before we began the meeting we
spent a half hour in a time of devotions.
This passage from our Old Testament Reading this morning was used with
the practice of Lectio Divina. We’ve
tried this practice a couple of years ago.
Lectio Divina is a monastic practice of reading scripture, meditation,
and prayer. It often requires a multiple
reading of the text to help us more fully engage with the passage in order to
allow the words of the passage to dwell in us.
It is not so much a practice of pulling the words apart in an exegetic
rending of the original meaning of the words in the Greek or Hebrew, following
by a theological contextual breakdown of the time and place of the writing,
concluding with an understanding of what the passage might mean for us
today. Rather, it is allowing the
scripture to more fully dwell in our hearts, minds, spirits and souls as if
Scripture were truly the Living Word that allows us to have an increased
knowledge of the Holy Spirit’s work in our lives, now.
So, this morning I’d like for us to try this
practice with this passage from Isaiah.
We’ve already read it once during our regular reading of the Old
Testament. You may have listened and
been paying attention, although most often on a first reading of something our
minds wander a bit and sometimes it’s helpful to read it again to help
concentrate. So, let’s read it a second
time. This time take note of words,
groups of words or concepts that catch your attention or jump out at you. We’ll then have a moment of silence while you
contemplate on those words or phrases.
Then I’ll read it for the third and last time. During this third reading, think about what
those words or phrases that you had earlier identified are revealing to you.
We will openly share those words or phrases and
I’ll offer a meditation on what stood out for me.
Read passage
Silence
Read passage again.
Brief Silence
Ask for communal sharing of
words/phrases.
When this passage was first read, I
remembered this passage as a prophetic reminder of what heaven will be
like. I’d always seen this as God
preparing us for a new heaven and a new earth that will one day be when God’s
time has been fulfilled for us to leave this earth, whether in spirit or in
body to enter into the joy of God’s presence and go to heaven. Sort of like an earlier version of John’s
Revelation we read in the New Testament.
But upon reading and listening to this
passage a second time, new words and phrases caught my attention. Verse 20 in particular, “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.”
Wait a minute. If this passage is about God bringing into
existence a new heaven and a new earth that are to represent eternity when we
are with God and in God’s presence, what’s this business about birth and
death. My understanding of our time in
eternity is supposed to be devoid of these kinds of things. How can there be death in heaven? This passage had me rethinking the whole of
this section in Isaiah.
Hearing it read a third time, got me
to concentrate on the whole of the passage in a different light. It begins with “I am about to create new
heavens and a new earth.” If this isn’t
about eternity, then it must be about the here and now. God is going to do this creation of a new
heaven and a new earth sometime BEFORE eternity arrives. But the whole passage sounds so much like
what we envision heaven to be like when we are finally in God’s presence, at
heaven’s gate, worshipping in front of the throne, inhabiting the homes that
Jesus’ has prepared for us, doesn’t it?
If this is not about heaven and what
eternity will be like and it’s about the here and now BEFORE eternity arrives,
what does that mean?
Again, this passage starts with “I am about to
create new heavens and a new earth.” Part
of our trouble is we suffer from a shrunken timeline. We bet God won’t do the new heavens and earth
thing this afternoon or next week, but we have a very difficult time thinking that
God might do it a generation from now or a century from now, either. However, Israel knew about waiting — not a
week, month or year but decades, gosh, even centuries. And yet the expectation kept them alive,
fresh, eager, hopeful that “even centuries” might dawn soon. God has begun the new thing already, even if
unseen. What’s even more exciting about
that is that we have always been co-creators with God. God doesn’t do these things alone. God works in the lives of humans to make
things happen.
If we don’t like how something is being done,
we have the ability to change it. We are
co-creators with God. God might be
bringing about this new heaven and new earth, but God will only be doing it
through the work and thoughtfulness of faithful people. That is the process by which God has always
worked in the world.
So, if God is about to create new heavens and a
new earth, God will be doing it through people like you and me. The injustices of the world will be corrected
by people like you and me. Hunger will
be satisfied by people like you and me.
Racial inequality will be corrected by people like you and me. When we see good happening in the world, it
should be amplified and copied. When we
see tragedy in the world, we should embrace the mourners and work together to
fix the problem. This is how God creates
new heavens and a new earth and whereby Jerusalem becomes a joy.
Isaiah 65 is a gargantuan vision of what God is
on the verge of doing. But this passage
is one of the now. God is already at
work doing this. God is already working
in the lives of us human beings to make the new heavens and a new earth the
reality Isaiah speaks about. But we have
to want it and become a part of it, too.
How dumbfounding must it have been for Iron Age
people to hear that all infants will live into old age? Walter Brueggemann rightly points out that
infant mortality is “an index of the quality of community life.” Where in our country or in the world is infant
mortality on the rise or simply too high? Is that where we go to see what God might do
while we are witnesses and co-laborers there? Another index is housing. Isaiah dreams of a day that the people will
build houses and live in them — which sounds obvious, but Abraham Lincoln
denounced what went on in slavery and still goes on in our tiered society: Some
build, others enjoy; some plant and harvest, while others reap the benefit. This is not what God had in mind for the new
heavens and new earth. It is not what
this passage in Isaiah speaks about. God
dreams of an egalitarian kind of community.
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