"All Things New"

Dr. George Sinclair

Acts 11:1-18; Ps. 148; Rev. 21:1-6; John 13:31-35

May 2, 2010

Like the milk carton in the back of your refrigerator, life comes stamped with an expiration date. All things end.  All things expire. They “pass away.”  Death is the sign under which all things live. But there is another sign under which we live. Another sign is promised to the thirsty, to those who live with faithfulness and courage: “Behold, I make all things new.”  All things.

             “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.”

John’s vision is often recited at funerals and rightly so.  It’s a beautiful vision and a fitting witness to the resurrection.  But what exactly did John mean when he said the first heaven and the first earth had passed away? Did he mean no more sunrise or sunset; no more “mountains bending rivers,” no camels or hornets, mosquitoes and fleas?  What about the “first heaven and the first earth?” What did John mean when he said “the first heaven and the first earth passed away and the sea was no more?”  What did he mean?

On my way to writing this sermon, I hopped down a homiletical bunny trail or maybe it wasn’t a bunny trail—you be the judge.  For whatever reason, I started thinking about ice. Not the kind we put in sweet tea, but the kind that formed the Great Lakes and America’s bread basket—big ice, ice as in glacial ice, the last ice age.

When the glaciers began their retreat 20,000 years ago, thirty percent of the Earth’s land surface was under ice compared to ten percent today. In some places, the ice covering Europe and North America was nearly 2 miles thick. Its leading edge, which moved 130 yards a year, was 2,600 feet high.  Imagine an ice wall three and a half times higher than the RSA tower.  That’s what the leading edge of the Wisconsin ice shelf would have looked like had you happened upon it. The last ice age wasn’t the first.  There were at least sixteen before it spanning 2.5 million years, which roughly corresponds to the emergence of homo erectus in Africa.

Altogether, it took about 8,000 years for the Earth to thaw and, when it did, the human population exploded. Within about 1,000 years, we got all happy and smart and started raising our food rather than hunting and gathering it. Consequently our numbers grew like crazy and with all that extra food we created cities. When the ice thawed, and we figured out farming and herding, there were maybe a million people on the planet. By the time of the Romans there would be 55 million, which is a drop in the bucket compared to our nearly 7 billion today.  The planet has become very crowded in a very short time. 

Here’s the thing, 11,000 years, which roughly corresponds to the beginning of civilization, seems like a mighty long time and it is when compared to our three score and ten. But 11,000 years is nothing in geological time—just a flash.  True enough, the flash created favorable conditions for human flourishing. And flourished we have. In 11,000 years, we’ve gone from nuts and berries to men on the moon. But the last ice age was not the last. Scientists predict another fifty. The next ice age may be a very long time from now, but the ice will return.  Planet Earth’s climate is not static.  While it enjoys stable periods favorable to certain life forms, it is not static.

For whatever reasons, and there are many, some understood, some not at all, a cosmic switch is thrown and Earth’s thermometer is reset. In the last Ice Age, the Gulf of Mexico was about 75 miles south of Dauphin Island.  Of course, just the opposite happens when Earth’s thermometer is set like your grandmother’s living room.  Let’s just say the people in Saraland will enjoy an ocean view.

With a broken oil well spewing in the Gulf, we are painfully aware of how things can go wrong when humans interact with their home.   Scientists are not of one mind.  Some say we’re speeding up climate change, moving the dial toward your grandmother’s living room. Others argue that carbon emissions might actually trigger another ice age.  No matter what, and no matter which happens, the Earth’s climate is not static. It changes.  And, unless science is mightily mistaken, there will be another ice age. It might be 150,000 years from now, but it will happen, not just one more time, but perhaps as many as fifty more times.

All of that makes my head hurt.  Thoughts like these push the envelope of my imagination.  Can you imagine a two mile thick ice sheet covering Canada and extending south to the Missouri and Ohio Rivers and east to New York City?  That was the last Ice Age.  Can you imagine that today?  Makes your head hurt, doesn’t it?

“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.”

My grandson has some new teeth—these bottom two—they’re usually the first to pop through. Anyway, Patrick has some new teeth.  He just had his six-month well baby check.  The other night he tried out his new choppers. His grandmother made potatoes and stewed carrots.  Patrick made some awful faces, not to say that Paula’s stew was not absolutely delicious. It was!

 It’s funny how babies will put anything and everything in their mouths—you know, TV clickers and such—and they’re happy as clams.  But give them potatoes and carrots and they go all gourmet.

Everything’s new to a baby, which is not to say some things aren’t familiar, like the smell of mother’s hair or the feel of father’s hands. But, to babies, most things are new.  I’ve noticed my grandsons notice everything.   They see everything.  Everything is new. We’re having to child proof our house. We worry when children aren’t curious.  And, I suppose, when you’re old and stop being curious we worry about that too.  We are hard-wired for novelty, not that we don’t like things familiar, routine, ritualistic even, which gives us pause to experience or to think about experience.

Augustine once said ‘we are restless until we rest in God.’  Augustine was speaking about spiritual restlessness but he could have been speaking about human curiosity, inquisitiveness, or whatever makes us open our grandmother’s kitchen cabinets or fly to the moon.  We like “the new.”  Explorers, inventors, artists, musicians, novelists, scientists—the guy next door angling for a new fishing hole—we’re all wired for novelty, for the new, which is a good characteristic to have in a world where things don’t stay put. 

“I am making all things new.”  Funny, isn’t it? The One in whose image we are made “makes all things new.” Notice the text does not say, ‘God makes all new things,’ but “God makes all things new.”

God, like your grandmother, doesn’t throw anything away—nothing goes to waste—everything, all things are made new.  Your grandmother may have had different reasons for “saving things,” God saves what he creates. God saves what God loves. And God loves his creation. “God so loved the world . . .” God loves heaven and earth and wants nothing he has created to be lost.  “See, I am making all things new.”

Now I know some read John and believe God burns up the earth or at least “the first earth” or the damned who live on the “first earth.” And it is true John’s vision has a lake of fire, which he creatively calls “the second death.” But John’s burning lake sounds strikingly similar to annihilation rather than eternal punishment, which would be a good end for things like despair, cancer, Hitler, the Klan, and just about every other nastiness known to humankind. 

Maybe some things are beyond being made new.  I don’t know. Maybe some things can only be burned as fuel for the fire—“the boots of tramping warriors, garments rolled in blood”—and all of those other terrible deeds humans are capable of. But even those things, might they not be included in John’s all things?  Are there exceptions to all things?  What might God not be able to make new?

I ran into someone this week and somehow our conversation drifted to the high school freshman who took her life here recently.  My friend asked if I thought people went to hell when they commit suicide.  I said they were already in hell to do a thing like that and I didn’t think God would add insult to injury.  We believe God makes all things new, not all new things, but all things new—even a sixteen year old who takes her life.  Who finally is beyond God’s repair?  Is any-thing, anybody, ever beyond God’s redemption?

“Behold, I am making all things new.”

What would you exclude? Is there anything you’d leave out—anything God can’t redeem, anyone God can’t save?  We say all things are possible through him who loved us.  We say all things are possible for the One who “gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.”  So what is impossible for God?  What can’t God make new?

When I first read the Psalm for this week I thought it was kind of funny—funny as in hah, hah not funny as in strange.  I thought it was funny that the psalmist had “creeping things and flying birds” praising God.  The sun and the moon and the stars I could see; the mountains, yes; and of course “angels” and “heavenly hosts.” What else do heavenly hosts and angels have to do? Praise comes naturally to them—but “creeping things and flying birds?” That’s a bit much; maybe the bird for the worm, but “sea monsters and all deeps?” How do they praise God? But what got me was “fire and hail, snow and frost.”  How does snow praise God? And then I thought, The Ice Ages!  If God can bring life out of that frozen world, God can do anything.  All things praise God, even “fire and hail, snow and frost.”

So, I began to hear Psalm 148 not simply as Funny hah, hah but funny as in strange, strange as in a Creator who gives up on nothing, strange as in a Redeemer who makes “all things new,” strange as in “fire and hail, snow and frost” praising their Lord and Maker.

Okay, that sounds all fine and good, but what about judgment?  When God makes all things new won’t some things be destroyed? It sounds like the first heaven and first earth were gone, as in they no longer existed. And that’s just how the Greek reads.  When John says the first heaven and the first earth “passed away” he means they “were gone.”  So, where did they go?  Were they destroyed?  Annihilated? Burned up?  Frozen?  Maybe those people are right who say that God’s going to destroy stuff and bad people like a spoiled child who crumbles his math homework or a mad artist who slashes the painting she’s worked on for six months because it’s “just not right.”  Doesn’t John say the “cowardly, the faithless, and the polluted, murderers, fornicators, sorcerers, idolaters and all liars will be placed in the “lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death?”  What about them?  Are they made new? Are they eventually included, eventually redeemed by the One strangely praised even by “fire and hail, snow and frost,” the God who makes all things new?

To tell you the truth, we must modestly leave that answer to God. Only God knows.  What we do know, what we can stake our lives on, is that God gives water to “the thirsty.” God gives life to “those who conquer.” They will inherit God’s blessing, which leads me to rest with the thought that heaven has a whole lot more to do with what God does than with what I do. So, I’m putting my money on the One who wipes away tears. I’m betting on the One who makes his home with mortals when “the first things have passed away.”   I trust the One who makes all things new, not all new things but all things new, the One strangely and wonderfully praised by “fire and hail, snow and frost!”  Amen.