Sermon: “Making All Things New”

Text: Revelation 21:1-6a

All Saints’ Day (B)

November 1, 2009

Scripture introduction.  Our second reading this morning comes from the last book of the Bible, the book of Revelation, also known as the Apocalypse.  Our passage comes from the next-to-the-last chapter—after the author, John of Patmos, has described his visions of the heavenly council, the seven scrolls, the seven trumpets, the woman, the child, the dragon, the two beasts, the bowls of divine wrath, the fall of symbolic Babylon, the defeat of Satan, and the final judgment.  It is as if the entire book of Revelation—and maybe the whole Christian Bible—has been pointing to this chapter, in which the author describes his vision of the New Jerusalem.  In a moment we will read how John saw a “new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away . . . .”  Then the voice of God will be heard describing how God has come to dwell with humans, putting an end to mourning, crying, pain, and even death itself.  God says, “See, I am making all things new.”

The book of Revelation points toward that great future moment—the end of time.  Yet, as G.B. Caird has written, “this is a future which interpenetrates and informs the present.”[1]  In other words, in a sense that future is already here—or at least is already coming about.  God will dwell with humans, but God already has dwelled with humans—with the faithful community of Israel and now most clearly in the person of Jesus Christ and, by his spirit, with us.  Death one day will be abolished, but in Jesus Christ we have the sign that death already is beaten.  When the voice from the throne announces that God is making all things new, that process does not wait until the end of time.  It’s happening now and will be completed in that great day, when God announces, “It is done.”

Sermon.  The vision, the uncovering, the revelation of John of Patmos contains many powerful but often confusing word pictures.  Yet fantastic as they are, these images come from a human mind.  They relate to human existence.  Indeed, many of them are so evocative that they continue to inspire visual artists, poets, and musicians.  We may not immediately appreciate the symbolic meaning attached to John’s images, but we at least know what he is writing about.  We know what a scroll is, a bowl, a lamp stand, and a beast.  As we know from common sense, when we set out to describe God and the things of God, we will never get it completely right because we are limited to human words.  Human words are the products of human minds, and God cannot be contained in the human mind.  But words and images are all we have.  If John can do it, then maybe God will forgive us if we, too, use an analogy. 

This week around the church has been an object lesson in the first stages of “making [old] things new.”  As our contractor prepares the building for its newness, some of the old must be done away with—demolished.  Yet even as we have stripped away layers of earlier remodelings, the “new” has not yet begun.  Indeed, we now are at a much older level.  We can see the bead-board paneling on the walls, and some of the walls are painted a shade of “What were they thinking?” pink.  Now we can see the original hardwood floors, still covered by the black mastic that once cemented the floor tiles.  As the ceiling was removed, we saw evidence that there had once been windows in areas that now are solid walls.  We can see ways in which the building has been expanded and added to, sometimes surprising even the architects.  The history of the structure lies literally before our eyes. 

One of the messages of Revelation is that we humans have made some additions and changes to God’s world that were not in keeping with the beautiful plan that God intended at the beginning.  We have filled in some of the windows that used to allow God’s light and truth to flow easily into the recesses of the human soul.  Let’s not blame Adam and Eve for this, although the story of their initial mistake is instructive.  Each of us, and all of our ancestors, has had a hand in subverting God’s original Creation.  Sometimes we have been willful and perverse, knowing full well the damage we were doing as we did it.  Other times we have meant to do well, but our idea of what was beautiful turned out to be questionable in comparison to God’s original design.  Full of good intentions, we have slathered on the pink paint.  But the Revelation of John assures us that God is working—even now—to make things right.  God intends beauty and grace and usefulness—and that is the way the world one day will be.  Our authority for such a belief is the divinely inspired vision of John in Revelation.  And so the vision operates not only in the future, but also in the present, calling us not to resist, but to participate, in God’s renovation project.

On this day when we remember all the saints of God—past, present, and future—we realize that we are not alone in our spiritual journey.  Have you noticed that as we attempt to “make all things new,” as we strip away the layers of earlier remodelings, there’s even an “old” smell in the downstairs now—the dust of more than a century.  What is this smell?  Some of it surely is the dust from coal-fired furnaces.  Yet the human sense of smell is very acute.  There are other layers of smell, aren’t there?  Can you smell the corn pudding and the baked ham from countless pitch-in dinners held in the Fellowship Hall?  Probably mixed in would be the distinct odor of finger paint from Vacation Bible School.  No telling what smells were left by the Boy Scout troop!  And maybe, at the minutest level, at least some of the molecules we breathe are themselves the exhaled breath of the saints who have given life and grace and purpose to this old building.  We can smell their songs—“Rock of Ages,” “Onward Christian Soldiers,” and “In the Garden.”  We can smell their laughter.  We can smell their tears.  As we go back to the old, in preparation for the new, we realize afresh how much we owe to those faithful souls who built and taught, who cooked and sewed, who planned and prayed and gave, in order that there might be a church of Jesus Christ in this place.  For many of you who have been in this congregation a long time, these saints are not anonymous.  You know them by name, and you can call to remembrance their faces, their voices, and their personalities.  I dare say they continue to shape who we are right now.  I hope each of us today will pray a prayer of thanksgiving to God for the lives of those saints who have gone before us and who continue to inspire us.

And now we seek to make the old things new again.  The decision was not easy, but you resolved to restore an old structure, rather than to dispose of it and start over in a different place.  There was work to be done here, and so it was important that we stay here.  My hope is that, as we are making our building new, as we by necessity are required to curtail or change some of our normal activities, we will use this pause as an opportunity to discern and imagine the special work that God has called us to in this place.  We all knew that we needed to do something about the building.  Soon, we will be able to say that we have made major progress in that direction.  Our next big decisions will be about mission and ministry.  We sense intuitively that we have a purpose here in downtown Terre Haute.  We will need to identify that purpose more specifically and then develop our ministries in that direction.  It will not be just one ministry, but my hope is that the Holy Spirit will challenge us develop a theme—an identity—that will resonate and give us energy as Christians.  The world needs us.  It needs something that only we can give.  When we give it, we will experience abundant life in Christ.

Our building, our ministries, ourselves—we do not start over from scratch.  What and who we are is a function of the building we have inherited, the saints who have gone before us, and the lives we have lived to this point.  That, too, is consistent with John’s vision of Revelation.  Despite the understandings of popular culture, Revelation’s message is not primarily that of the destruction of the current world.  Rather, John promises the repair, the renovation, the restoration, and the culmination of the world that we now have.  As Eugene Boring has written, “By calling the city New Jerusalem, John does not abolish the old, but fulfills it.  God the . . . Renewer does not ‘make all new things,’ but ‘makes all things new.’  All that was worthwhile and salvageable in the old city of human striving is taken up into eternity and redeemed.”[2]

As we come to the Table this morning, as we are fed the bread of heaven and drink the cup of salvation, may time stand still and may all time become one.  May we know assuredly that we are part of God’s mighty renovation—a project that cannot finally be frustrated.  We join hands with all the saints that have gone before, and with those we know will follow after, as we wait for the promised end of all things.  And when it comes it will not be an event or even a series of events.  Rather all things will end in the Trinitarian God—the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.  Amen and Amen.