Day 140 - All Things New

A sermon presented at First Presbyterian Church, Soddy-Daisy, TN. April 28, 2013.John 13:1, 31-35;  Rev. 21:1-8

If you read your New Testament then you may remember Paul writing about persecution and recognition of our personal weaknesses in Romans 8:35-38. I paraphrase, “in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that nothing in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Paul is telling us we are more than conquerors and here John in Revelation is telling us Jesus Christ expects us to be conquerors? What is going on?

Both Paul and John of Patmos are affirming and uplifting Christians. Paul focus is on faith, “If God is on our side, who can mount any effective threat to us?” Paul is assuring us that our opponents cannot defeat our faith through physical conquest nor can our faith physically conquer anyone. The Gospel of John  and Revelation have the same assurance but their focus is more concerned with Christ’s expectations of our behavior as spiritual conquerors.

It is much easier to understand Revelation if we keep in mind the letter was written as both affirmation and reprimand to seven predominately Jewish Christian congregations of believers (Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, Laodicea) who faced current or impending persecution as a challenge to their faith. The connection to Jewish Biblical heritage in Revelation is impressive and it underlays the whole letter.

These eight verses are impressive. They recall the entire Genesis creation story, the nature of sin, the despair and loss of hope in captivity, the desire for salvation and the duty and fate of the church. I remind you also this is a letter to congregations that we are first and foremost a fellowship of individual believers, not only a building.

Let’s explore the eight verses to explain being conquerors.  John stakes a dramatic claim upon Christ’s return in the first two verses. “¹Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.” God is not a creating of all new things, God is renewing, re-creating the glory of God’s first creation of humanity.

In these two verses John assures us there will be a New Jerusalem. Remember to the Jewish mind Jerusalem, which means the city of peace, has a special significance. It is where the temple stood. David and Solomon intended the temple to be the place where the Holy of Holies where God resided when he is among them. In Judah the only temple was in Jerusalem until Babylon and Rome destroyed it.  That is why I used the psalm of lament for our responsive reading. 

Jerusalem is on a hill and the tradition of Jews coming from the countryside to worship was to pray the Psalms 120-134, called the Psalms of Ascent, as they climbed the road and stairs to the temple.  In a stunning reversal this New Jerusalem is comes to us, we do not ascend to it.

There most powerful part of John’s image of New Jerusalem is not just that New Jerusalem our home… it is where God shall live. God has come to us to live with us.  Do you remember your Old Testament, Deuteronomy 34:10 – only Moses knew the Lord face to face, and even Moses never looked directly upon the Lord’s face.  Again in another reversal, God has comes to dwell not only with the Hebrews but with people of all nations.

“The sea is no more (v1).” For the Hebrews The sea is the ultimate chaos of evil. It is the formless void from which God created the universe. It is the place where Leviathan, the deadly sea monster in Job dwells, the great fish that swallowed Jonah. Not only has God cast evil from the heavens, God will expunge evil from all creation.

John proclaims for all nations the end of grief. There will be no more tears, no more suffering. Mourning and pain cease. It is the end of spiritual thirst because God proclaims the end of death and will live with us forever. John uses the power and intimacy of bridal imagery to describe God and New Jerusalem as the loving parents of God’s children. We all shall be children of God in the city of God.

The upshot of all this when you read it carefully, is there is no Church in New Jerusalem because there is no longer evil on earth and no one thirsts. God is with us in the one great city of God, the city of peace, New Jerusalem.  In this city there is only spiritual joy and worship by innocent children.  The victory over evil is completed.

It is such a beautiful passage it deserves to be re-read. When I read it the Beatitudes come to mind:

¹Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. ²And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. ³And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; ⁴he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.” ⁵And the one who was seated on the throne said, “See, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.” ⁶Then he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life. ⁷Those who conquer will inherit these things, and I will be their God and they will be my children….those who conquer will inherit these things, and I will be their God and they will be my children (!)

Finally we get to “conquer.” What does John mean by “those who conquer will inherit these blessings?” Back in Chapter 5 we find John uses “conquer” in a context to mean, “hold true to belief and testify to the Lordship of Jesus Christ.” Like the Promised Land of long ago described in Exodus, God has given us a future blessing of all things being made new again, but God has left a sharp edge to it. It seems for every blessing God always recalls a vice and a curse, he must know something about us.  Verse  8: ⁸But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the polluted, the murderers, the fornicators, the sorcerers, the idolaters, and all liars, their place will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.”

This vice list defines being a conqueror by telling us what it is not - a vanquished person who is a cowardly liar, faithless, vile and criminal(murderer), and indulges in false Roman and Greek religion by fornication, sorcery, worshipping idols. The bookends of these vices are cowards and liars. John writes in a time where Christians faced persecution. In the dace of persecution and death, it is natural to be fearful and be tempted to refuse to testify to belief or to lie about one’s faith. John had the lowest regard for Christians that dishonor the Lordship of Jesus Christ.  He says have no fear of the second death. It has been defeated and has no sting. He explains the duty of a spiritual conqueror is in his words to the seven congregations in Chapter 2 and 3. He uplifts, warns and assures the faithful (my edited version of NRSV):

To Ephesus: “I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance…I know you cannot tolerate evildoers for the sake of my name …but I know you have abandoned the love you had a first and the works that came from it. To everyone who conquers (that loss), …will give permission to eat from the tree of life.”

To Smyrna: “I know your affliction and your poverty… Do not fear what you are about to suffer. Beware! The devil is about to throw some of you into prison so that you may be tested... Be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life. Whoever conquers (that fear) will not be harmed by the second death.

To Pergamum: “I know … you are living where Satan’s throne is. Yet you are holding fast to my name, and you did not deny your faith in me but some of you are worshipping idols. To everyone who conquers (idolatry) I will give some of the hidden manna,”

To Thyatira: I know your works—your love, faith, service, and patient endurance. I know that your last works are greater than the first but you tolerate those who practice fornication as worship and eat food of the idols… To the one who conquers (idolatrous worship)I will also give the morning star,

To Sardis: You are dead, wake up and Remember then what you received and heard; obey it, and repent. If you do not wake up, I will come like a thief at night… there are a few among you who are clothed in white, if you conquer (your sinfulness), you will be clothed in white

To Philadelphia: I know your works, you have but little power, and yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name. I will make the sinners learn that I have loved you because you have kept my word of patient endurance. Hold fast to what you have.  If you conquer (by continuing to live your faith), I will make you a pillar in the temple of my God;

In our relatively well-to-do lives we need a reality test. It is hard to appreciate what John is asking his congregations to do, to die for faith. We live in a country where there is no serious physical threat for professing Christian faith. We do face the challenge of the some of the vices on the list. Sometimes we may hesitate to live by according to our faith and lie about our faith in Christ in embarrassment. All of us in one way or another want to embrace the worship of the world’s gods, things like consumerism, greed, anger, envy, jealousy, the go-along-with-the-crowd attitude and forget about all that beautiful promise of the New Jerusalem and facing God every day.

Faced with all the evil in the world, what are we, the church, the congregations of believers to do? How can we conquer using the good grace of Christ? Can we do it by condemning of our fellow travelers? No. By forcing them to be “good Christians”? No.  By violence? No. By warfare? …Well, yes, by spiritual warfare that responds to Christ’s call that I read to you from the gospel of John 13:34-35. Jesus said:  ³⁴I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. ³⁵By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

We aren’t to the Promised Land, New Jerusalem yet. We must appreciate that John did not condemn those seven congregations for their sins, he praised their faith where it was strong and warned them to repent of their errors so they may conquer through their testimony as living Christians. John talks of the end of time, the Alpha and Omega when the battle is over and we are made anew as more than conquerors. We only have our congregation of believers to strengthen us to be spiritual conquerors. We are now Easter People as I told the children. Although we often stumble, the way we live should be our testimony against evil. Wet conquer sin by being a light to the God’s people.

We are God’s children now and will be then. For now, we have the obligation to be conquerors walking in Jesus’ footsteps. We owe it to our own and all God’s children to live in a way that reflects a continuing worthy worship of our Lord as we await the New Jerusalem.  Amen.