“And I saw Heaven and Earth made new; for, the first Heaven and first Earth have gone away. There is no longer any sea” (Revelation 21.1).
This past Christmas Day it was a record seventy-seven degrees where we live. A couple of weeks before then, Leanne, the cats, and I were sitting in our bathroom waiting out the wail of tornado sirens just after midnight. Parts of Canada were hotter than we were here in the South over the summer. You can probably name four or five other events and indications that our planet is wounded. Definitely, redemption would mean a new Earth.
But why does John tell us that the Heavens Above will also be made new? While we might well one day carry our abuse of Creation into the universe, for now, it remains untouched by us. Or does it?
By Adam, Paul writes in one of his letters, death came into the world. Any of us who has experienced the loss of a loved one knows the sense of not only pain but wrongness. It’s the deep, heart-felt knowledge that this is not how it was meant to be. Death wasn’t supposed to be part of what God made.
Yet death and decay are a part of the laws that govern our universe. The second law of thermodynamics proofs out again and again that everything eventually runs down and stops. Nothing goes on forever—not us, not planets, not stars, and not even the universe itself.
That’s right, the vast gulf around us is continuing to expand outward and outward. Distances will continue to grow and grow until, many billions upon trillions of years from now, everything will simply grow cold and dark.
And, if we take literally this hope John envisioned—that death will be destroyed—it certainly sounds like we’ll need a whole new, transfigured universe. A new Heavens, I suppose.
How that works is beyond my understanding. For that matter, so is how this world with its receding ice caps and stronger storms can begin to heal itself over the coming centuries. It seems impossible. It seems beyond imagination.
It is a good thing, then, that God seems far more imaginative and able than we are.
Traditionally, this last Sunday of the Epiphany season we read again the story of Jesus’ transformation upon the mountain. In a moment that seems to step out of time, Moses and Elijah appear. And Jesus? Jesus is transformed before his disciples’ eyes so that they see him as they never had before.
It’s no wonder that Peter had nothing to say in this moment. While what has come down to us is this vision of Jesus’ clothes made dazzling white, it was likely so much more than that. It was a glimpse of what could be, of what probably seemed impossible.
That’s what the Gospel is, again and again, about—the impossible becoming possible, the unimagined becoming real. Without prelude, something unexpected happens before our eyes. We find that we’ve barely grasped what can be. We realize that God’s imagination is bigger than ours.
Big enough, in fact, for a whole universe.
Alpha and Omega, by dying you overcame death and all the destructive powers we humans wield. Nothing is beyond your ability or your imagination. Grace us, as we look upon your Creation, moments like those your disciples saw—where all that is possible is made visible. Because in seeing we understand, and in that understanding find hope to participate in your work of making all things new.