New heavens and a new earth
From Wellington Cathedral of St Paul
New heavens and a new earth 29 May 2011
The Revd Jenny Wilkens
- Zechariah 8:1-13
- Revelation 21:22-22:5
http://wellingtoncathedral.org.nz/index.php/Sermons
At Eastertide I like to dip into a book of Bishop Tom Wright's, till recently the Bishop of Durham. It’s called Surprised by Hope - you may think he’s pinched the title from C.S. Lewis, but it's Hope not Joy this time! It also has a longer subtitle – 'Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection and the Mission of the Church. Maybe that’s why it’s quite a fat book!
With our New Testament reading tonight again from the book of Revelation, I thought I would talk about some of the issues Tom raises about heaven. He takes head on ideas about death and heaven which are current in society and in the church and which he comes across at funerals! And he asks: what are these things saying about our Christian beliefs about death, resurrection, and life after death?
What about the practice increasingly seen when people die, of not just displaying things which speak to us of that person around their coffin, but also in it – putting objects in the coffin along with the person, that they might need or appreciate in their life to come – photos, drawings from grandchildren, jewellery, beer, cigarettes, teddy bears, a packet of biscuits, spare glasses or false teeth… Now I’m not actually against this idea as I think it can be helpful to the deceased’s family, but I would warn against the practice of one widow who put in her husband’s coffin two cans of the spray adhesive that he used to glue on his toupée, causing an explosion at the crematorium that bent the furnace door!!
What about the readings at funerals? For example a poem you often see in death notices or hear at funerals is this: Do not stand at my grave and weep; I am not there. I do not sleep. I am a thousand winds that blow. I am the diamond glints on snow. I am the sunlight on ripened grain. I am the gentle autumn rain… Do not stand at my grave and cry; I am not there. I did not die. What is this saying? That at death we are absorbed into the wider world of nature, a sort of “green”, popular combination of new-age and Buddhist thinking?
Another reading we hear at many funerals is an extract from Henry Scott Holland (Canon of St Paul's London)’s sermon at the time of the death of King Edward VIIth,in 1910. Death is nothing at all, I have only slipped away into the next room. I am I and you are you. Whatever we were to each other, that we are still…Life means all that it ever meant. It is the same as it ever was. There is absolute unbroken continuity. What is death but a negligible accident?...All is well. Nothing is past; nothing is lost. One brief moment and all will be as it was before. How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again!
It’s often thought he wrote this for his wife, but actually it is only an extract from the full sermon which is called “The King of Terrors”. He also talks in that sermon of death as “so inexplicable, so ruthless, so blundering, the cruel ambush into which we are snared, it makes its horrible breach in our gladness with careless and inhuman disregard of us, beyond the darkness hides its impenetrable secret, dumb as the night, that terrifying silence!”
We don’t read that bit today, do we?! But maybe that gives a fuller picture, that rather than death being nothing at all, almost a denial that death is a problem, Canon Scott Holland’s full version gives a more Biblical picture of death as an enemy to be defeated, and indeed which has been defeated in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Perhaps we get a better picture from John Donne, 17th century Dean of St Paul’s, in his sonnet: Death, be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadfull, for thou art not so, For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow, Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me… Why swell'st thou then? One short sleep past, we wake eternally, And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.
Let’s have a look at some hymns – they may well be some of your favourites – it’s often said we gain most of our Christian theology from what we sing!!!
'All creatures of our God and King' (CP250), attributed originally to St Francis – talks of death like this: "and thou, most kind and gentle death, waiting to hush our latest breath"– death there is a welcome friend, it could almost become the theme song of the voluntary euthanasia movement! That is very far from Dylan Thomas’ angry outburst at the death of his father: "Do not go gently into that good night, …rage, rage against the dying of the light".
'Abide with me'(CP 10): “Shine through the gloom and point me to the skies, Heaven’s morning breaks, and earth's vain shadows flee”. This gets pretty close to a Platonic or Gnostic idea that we leave the evil gloomy shadowy world and our evil bodies behind, and as an immortal soul fly off into the pure skies 'up there'.
'How great thou art' (CP262) – beloved of the late Sir Howard Morrison "When Christ shall come, with shout of acclamation, And take me home, what joy shall fill my heart." We get the strong image of Jesus coming to take his people away from earth and home to heaven, but it’s interesting in the original Swedish, different images are used, faith being changed into sight, and the bells of eternity summoning us to our sabbath rest – much stronger Biblical images.
Well, are there any hymns with good Christian theology about the afterlife?! Yes, there are! Last week we sang 'Jerusalem the golden, with milk and honey blest', (CP482) which picks up the imagery from the Book of Revelation we heard tonight. I noticed our hymn book leaves out the line: "That worms should seek for dwellings beyond the starry sky"! It also leaves out these lines which are more biblical: "And though my body may not, my spirit seeks thee fain (gladly), Till flesh and earth return me / to earth and flesh again".
God is working his purpose out (CP 444) has those recurring last lines: "nearer and nearer draws the time, the time that shall surely be,when the earth shall be filled with the glory of God as the waters cover the sea." This is saying something profound about God answering the cry of the Lord’s Prayer – may your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.
Which is the hymn which scores 10/10 for its theology as far as Tom Wright is concerned? I wonder if you can guess..
For all the saints (CP 232), the great hymn for All Saintstide. It captures the New Testament emphasis, and in the right sequence! It talks about the life of the saints, and our communion with them, and then our joining the saints in their present abode: The golden evening brightens in the west; Soon, soon to faithful warriors comes their rest; Sweet is the calm of paradise the blessed. Alleluia!
What is the saints’ present abode? It is not their final resting place, but rather the intermediate place of rest, joy and refreshment for which one name is 'paradise'.
But that is not the end of the story. After that comes the final resurrection: But lo! there breaks a yet more glorious day; The saints triumphant rise in bright array; The King of glory passes on his way. Alleluia!
And that leads into the triumphant final verse arriving at last in the new Jerusalem: From earth’s wide bounds, from ocean’s farthest coast, Through gates of pearl streams in the countless host, singing to Father, Son and Holy Ghost: Alleluia!
This is the progression that Tom Wright feels we have lost in our vague woolly beliefs these days. We bury or cremate our bodies, but have this vague idea that our souls fly off up into the sky to be with God in heaven. That is an idea which owes much more to Greek Platonic thought, than to Biblical concepts coming to us from late Judaism on that, whatever we will be, we will be resurrected bodies. Christian belief grew from Christ’s resurrection, that we too will one day know the joy of resurrection with a resurrection body like Christ’s, animated by God’s Spirit.
I guess it’s the stage in-between we are a bit vague about, the stage between death, and the final resurrection when we get our new resurrection bodies. We hear St Paul saying ‘my desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better’ (Phil. 1:23) - there he seems to see himself as with Jesus immediately after death. We hear Jesus saying to the thief on the cross, today you will be with me in Paradise (Lk 23:43). John 14 has that well-known passage we hear at most funerals: In my father’s house are many dwelling places (or in the old KJV many mansions, which some prefer!). But the Greek word for dwelling place here is monē which means a temporary lodging. This is not our final destination - no rather, our final destination is a new bodily existence with a resurrection body in a newly remade world, where heaven and earth are united.
I think it was C S Lewis who described it in a way I’ve always found helpful – death is a bit like falling asleep on a train, we wake up with a start when we arrive at the station, and our first conscious experience is meeting our relatives at the station, and we don’t remember how far we have travelled between falling asleep and waking up, or how much time has passed. So death is a bit like that, after death we rest or sleep in Christ, until our first conscious experience is waking up in Jesus’ presence, we are with Christ. All this gets a bit tied up with our difficulty in thinking beyond the space/time world which we inhabit. We find it hard to envisage what it means to say that God is beyond concepts of space and time. So some would see Christ’s coming to raise us to new resurrection life as each one's first conscious experience after death as we move outside of time, rather than seeing it happening to all believers at one point in time in the future.
But where I want to leave us today is with that picture from Revelation 21 of the new heaven and earth coming down out of heaven from God. This picture (and it is a picture, in symbolic form, in apocalyptic genre) is very different from the wishy-washy pseudo-Christian idea of us going off up to heaven as a soul, winging off into the skies on a cloud. It is not we who leave earth to go to heaven, rather it is the church itself, the new Jerusalem, that comes down to earth, to unite heaven and earth. This is the ultimate rejection of all Gnostic and Platonic ideas that see God’s children whisked off this wicked earth, to move up onto some higher spiritual plane. Rather it is the final answer to the Lord’s prayer, that God’s kingdom would come and his will be done on earth as it is in heaven. It is God fulfilling his promise to rescue all creation from its bondage to decay, and to abolish sin and death forever in a transformed new creation.
So heaven and earth are not separated forever. Finally heaven and earth will come together in a transformed new creation, and it will be like the wedding of heaven and earth, promising new creation and fruitfulness, a new Eden, a new Genesis. A sign that God wants his world to go on, that love and hope and life do have the last word in God’s universe. And in the new creation, God is with his people forever.
Our reading reminded us that in this new Jerusalem, this new city of God, there is no temple. Rather, God himself is there with his people, filling the city with his life and love. And what will God’s people be doing there? Not sitting round on clouds playing harps, it is not as we sing at Christmas (in ‘Once in royal David’s city’(CP66): “We shall see him but in Heaven, set at God’s right hand on high;Where like stars his children crowned, all in white shall wait around." We will not just be waiting around, like bored teenagers!
We can’t push Revelation’s pictures too far, but it is a rather intriguing thought to find that the river of the water of life flows out of the city, and that growing on its banks are the tree of life, whose leaves are for the healing of the nations. God will be pouring out grace and healing in the river of life that flows out of the city to the nations. What does that mean for us, and for our role in this?
Maybe it’s a reminder that our western individualistic focus tends to be, what will happen to me after death? Is there life after death for me? But the Bible speaks of bigger purposes, of God’s purpose of recreation for the whole world. And our destiny as individual human beings must be seen within that context. In an amazing way, God wants us to be fellow workers with God in the new creation. So the question is not what will happen to me after death? which human beings is God going to take to heaven, and how? Heaven is important – but it’s not the end of the world!
Rather how will God’s new creation be born? And how can we human beings contribute to that renewal of creation, both now and in the future? How can we work towards God’s new world, where heaven and earth are united? I love Hans Küng's image: 'the kingdom of God is creation healed'. How can we work with God towards that healed creation, as human beings, healed and raised in Christ? That is the mission of the church – that is our mission. It’s an exciting task to share in, and it starts now, this Eastertide, to God’s glory among us. Amen.
[Tom Wright, Surprised by Hope, London: SPCK, 2007.]
