'See, I am making all things new!'
We heard earlier, in our reading from the book of Revelation, the wonderful vision of the new heavens and the new earth, and the promise that God with be with his people forever. 'He will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more: mourning and crying, and pain will be no more.'
These words have resonated deeply with me this last week, as I have spent time with Adorée as she drew near to her death. Sitting with her and her daughter Nicole, I read Psalm 23, one of the readings we had in church last Sunday. God, our Good Shepherd, cares for us in all situations: even 'though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, you are with me.'
The 'shadow of death' indeed hangs over all of us. Sometimes we hardly think of it because we are so caught up in the joys and demands of daily life. At other times we are acutely aware of its reality – as I indeed was, sitting by Adorée's bedside, and as many of us may be when we or family and friends are confronted by increasing frailty or terminal illness. But even in the 'valley of the shadow of death' God is with us; Nicole and I certainly knew God was with us as we prayed with Adorée, and we sensed that she knew his presence too. Here was our comfort and our strength.
Adorée's death was a dignified death, a good death. But we know that this is not always the case. There is so much terrible suffering and death in our world caused by man's inhumanity to man; many people die abandoned and alone, victims of violence and injustice. We think of the situation in Ukraine, in Sri Lanka, in Yemen, Afghanistan and many parts of the world. There is so much senseless cruelty; there is so much that frustrates and destroys life and flourishing that we might be tempted to despair.
Yet, in the face of the brokenness of our world, we still hold on, as Christians, to our hope for the future of God's creation. For the One who is with us through the valley of the shadow of death, is the Creator of all things, the One who was, and is, and will be, the One who will bring us to fullness of life in the renewal of all things.
The vision John describes for us at the end of the book of Revelation is a big vision, a cosmic vision; everything is made new. It's not just about us as individuals but about the renewing of the whole of creation, of all that God has made. This present creation will not be scrapped as worthless junk, but will be renewed and perfected. The new creation involves the removal of, and liberation from, all that damages and frustrates God's purposes. All the consequences of sin and disobedience, cruelty, selfishness, greed and pride will be destroyed.
John communicates this by saying that in this new heaven and new earth 'the sea was no more.' This may be a big disappointment to those of us, like me, who love the sea, but the sea here is used in a symbolic way; the sea represented for the Israelites all that was uncontrollable and chaotic, all that destroyed life. It represented darkness, chaos and death. So the disappearance of the sea is the proof of the decisive transformation John is describing.
The new creation involves the flourishing of all that is fruitful and life giving and the end of all that brings death and destruction. John echoes words of the prophet Isaiah when he says that 'God will wipe away every tear from our eyes and death itself will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more.' Isn't this what we long for?
But this is not all. At the very centre of the new creation, is God himself. Of course, God is with us now; God has come among us in Jesus, but we know his presence now in a partial, hidden way. In the new creation we will know God fully, even as we are fully known, and we will see him face to face.
The holy city, the new Jerusalem, is pictured as a bride adorned for her husband; in that city, we will be drawn together as a community into an intimate relationship with our God. 'The home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God, they will be his peoples.' As we see God face to face, as we are drawn into intimacy with him, we will be drawn together with peoples of all nations and cultures; a 'great multitude...from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb' as we hear earlier in the book of Revelation (7:9). We have a small foretaste of this multicultural community drawn together in God's presence here at St Ursula's and this is something to celebrate. We are God's people, his multicultural people, because he is our God.
Last Sunday Mary Hawes, our visiting preacher, was speaking about God as the Good Shepherd and she asked the children: what do sheep look like? (Answer: black and white, neat and straggly, old and young.) She also asked: how would we would know if there were sheep present in church this morning? Young Frederik answered that we would know there were sheep if there was a shepherd. Often there is a lot we can learn from our children and I have been pondering Frederik's words all week. Of course sheep in a literal sense are still sheep when there is no shepherd present, BUT it is certainly true that we are only God's sheep, God's flock, because he is our shepherd. We are only who we are because of who he is.
We know there are sheep here because there is a shepherd. God is our shepherd. In fact, as we read in Revelation 7: 'the Lamb at the centre of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of the water of life...' It is Jesus, the Lamb, the one who was crucified and rose again, who is our shepherd. The One who is the shepherd has also been one of the sheep; the slaughtered lamb, who has been through the valley of the shadow of death for us.
He is the one who will wipe every tear from our eyes, and give to us from the spring of the water of life. Life and healing and hope all stream from God's presence. In our present lives there are many struggles, griefs and tears, but in the fullness of his presence these will disappear. Julian of Norwich, a remarkable woman who led a life of solitary prayer in the14th century, puts it like this: 'We shall never cease from sighs, complaints of tears – or longing – till we see clearly his blessed face. In that precious, blessed sight, no grief can live, no blessing fail.' (Revelations of Divine Love)
The end of our stories as individuals, the end of our story as a Christian community, the end of the story of our world, is God himself. As one writer puts it: 'the end is not an event but a person.' It is in God that all things find their fulfilment. 'See I am making all things new....I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.' God is our beginning and God is our end. Of course for now, we are in the middle of the story, we are pilgrims along the way, often stumbling and grumbling, seeing dimly as through a mirror rather than face to face. But let us keep the vision of the new heavens and the new earth before us, so that the end to which we move affects the way we live here and now. We are to live in anticipation of our future, to live now as citizens of that heavenly city; to learn the ways of God's life, love and flourishing now in this life.
There isn't time right now to go further into what it might mean practically for us to do that - to live in this life as citizens of that heavenly city – and how that might impact our relationships with one another and the way we serve our needy world. But maybe we can discuss that very important question over coffee in the session after this service. For now, however, let's remember that ultimately the focus is not on ourselves and our responsibility, but on God. He is the heart of the story. God is our beginning and God is our end; yet this end is in fact an end without an end, it is a new beginning.
Some of you may remember that on Easter Day I referred to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was executed by the Nazis in April 1945. The day before he was executed he led a service for his fellow prisoners and preached a sermon about the resurrection. When the guards came to take him away, he told one of the other prisoners: 'This is the end... but for me the beginning of life.' He knew that in God there was a whole new beginning.
'See, I am making all things new. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.'
I want to leave you with some words of C.S Lewis, at the end The Last Battle, the final of the Narnia stories which many of you may know. The Narnia stories tell of the adventures of several children in another world, the land of Narnia. At the very heart of these stories, at the heart of the land of Narnia, is the Lion, who is a figure of Christ. At the end of the final story, the children have passed through death and enter into the new creation. These words that so thrilled me as a child continue to communicate the joy of that new world in which we will discover together our true end and our true beginning in God:
And as He spoke He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.
Amen
Helen Marshall