“Then 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. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God.” There is, I think, no better text for Earth Day then this morning’s reading from Revelation. The entire book of Revelation can really be read as a rallying cry for environmental theology, but the hope is best summed up in these six verses from the end of the book. “Then 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. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God.”
Before we get into the meat of this passage, what it is and why I think it’s such a great passage for Earth Day, let’s talk a little bit about the background of the book of Revelation. Because Revelation is a pretty loaded book, it’s dense and graphic and really really hard to understand. And what’s often left out of the discussion is that Revelation is dense and coded for a reason, it is thinly veiled political criticism at a time when speaking out again the political structure was a death sentence. The writing of Revelation is generally placed around the reign of the emperor Domitian, though emperor Nero is alluded to throughout. Both Nero and Domitian were megalomaniacal rulers obsessed with their own power and control. And any dissenting opinions, such as this small group who refused to worship the imperial power, claiming instead allegiance only and entirely to the One True God, was met with harsh persecution.
It is this atmosphere of control and fear that the writer of Revelation is addressing. Revelation is written to assure this community that yes, even though the all-mighty Roman Empire, this terrifying beast with seven heads, seems to have unspeakable power, the Lamb of God is stronger, is already in control, and in fact has already conquered. This time of fear, uncertainty, and pain that marks your current experience is only the uncomfortable already and not yet of the human experience. Already Christ has triumphed but not yet has that triumph been revealed, and while this in-between time, this liminal space, is uncomfortable and frightening, even within it we can rejoice, because we know that the end of the story is the glorious reign of God.
Two-thousand years later, almighty Rome no longer rules over us in fear, but still I think these beautiful and powerful words of Revelation bring us hope in the midst of an uncertain future. Because the science is really no longer in question. From the waters of creation God formed this planet which God called good, and set us as caretakers over it. And instead we have fouled the water, polluted the air, and set forth a chain of events that have literally shook the world from its axis. I read an article in the Enquirer a few months ago about how the melting polar ice caps have actually shifted the geographic location of the north and south poles several centimeters since 2005. If you follow the Doomsday Clock, the symbolic clock face used by atomic scientists following the creation of the atomic bomb to represent the possibility of global catastrophe, you know that in 2015, the clock moved two minutes forward to 11:57, the closest it’s been to midnight since 1984, in response to the instability caused by the threat of global climate change. With a problem so big, and us so small, where do we find hope in the midst of this increasingly terrifying reality? Here’s where Revelation comes in.
“Then 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. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God.” This vision from Revelation tells of the new Jerusalem coming down to dwell among us. This new heaven and new earth that Revelation talks about is not some far-off vision beyond the galaxies, it is a new creation born in the midst of the old. It is resurrection walking out of a sealed off tomb, it is new life born in the very midst of death.
We read this in the Easter season because this is the Easter story. The first heaven and the first earth passed away on a dark Good Friday, when Jesus breathed his last and the world boomed from the sound of a stone rolling against the door of a garden tomb. And then, inexplicably, three days later the women came to the tomb of death and found that that same stone had been rolled away, and the emptiness that remained was the promise of new life.
Resurrection, the empty tomb, this New Jerusalem coming down to us, we see this played out in many and varied ways right in front of our eyes. The redemption of creation through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is the central revelation of the way God works in the world, as one who brings life out of death. Built into the very fibers of creation is this incredible capacity for healing. Even in the midst of death, signs of God’s redemption are visible in our world. Maybe you remember the 1980s discovery of a hole in the ozone layer twice the size of the United States. Since the discovery, the world launched an effort to halt the growth of this hole, including banning chlorofluorocarbons, the chemical that causes ozone depletion, from being released into the air. Last year, NASA released a report saying that the effort was working. The ozone has begun to repair itself, and by the end of the century should in fact be completely healed. On an even more local scale, think of the healing of the Kalamazoo river following the oil spill in 2010. Is it perfect, no, but huge strides have been made in healing the river and restoring it to new life. The ozone layer and the Kalamazoo river are physical examples of the truth we claim everyday as followers of the resurrected Jesus, that the worst thing that can happen is never the last thing that will happen, but God is always at work restoring God’s creation, bringing new life in the midst of death, and bringing the promised new heaven and new earth among us, a new Jerusalem come down to us where God dwells in and among God’s people. This isn’t a promise for some far-off someday, this is God among us now, here, in the flesh. Even as the world is broken, even as we wait for the promised not yet of God’s kingdom come, the signs of this new life among us are already present in our world today. Through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we know that God is already here, and even as we live in a not yet redeemed world, we rejoice in the promise of God’s already presence.
And because we know that through Jesus Christ the redemption of the world has already happened, our salvation is already at hand, we can be about the work of redeeming God’s creation, because we know that resurrection is already here. Our Gospel reading for this morning is from the Last Supper, Jesus’ last words to his disciples before he went to the cross. After Judas left to betray Jesus, Jesus told the remaining disciples, “now the Son of Man has been glorified and God has been glorified in him.” Judas’ leaving to betray him marked the glorification of God, because the glorification of God is revealed on the cross, in a God who died so that death itself might be defeated. That work is done already, it is not ours to do. Jesus told the disciples, “Where I am going, you cannot come,” because the work of redemption was completed on the cross. The work for us now is this new commandment of what it means to be about the work of Jesus in the time after the completion of redemption, to love one another, this expansive, all consuming one another that encompasses the whole of creation, just as we were, are, loved by Jesus.
The work is done, redemption is complete, resurrection is among us, but Jesus does not leave us with nothing to do. Jesus knows us well enough to know that we are restless people, we want to be about the work of God, we want to get our hands dirty in the world of resurrection. God gave us the job of caring for God’s world at the very birth of creation, and though we get it wrong so often, our hearts yearn for the opportunity to try again, to start again, to once again be about the work of living in the path God has set for us. And so, in the verses that follow our Gospel reading for this morning, Jesus will nuance for the disciples the task ahead. Simon Peter challenged Jesus, what do you mean where you are going we cannot come, “Lord, where are you going?” To which Jesus replied, “where I am going, you cannot follow me now, but you will follow afterward.”
The vision laid out in Revelation, a new heaven and a new earth, the new Jerusalem coming down from above, that vision can fill us with hope of the promise of God’s new creation just as it filled those early Christians with hope. God is already in the midst of us, bringing in the midst of our world the promise of a new creation. And what’s more, we get to be about the work of redeeming God’s creation. What God has already done in Jesus Christ, we get to be about unveiling that great promise. The task of creation care is huge, but because redemption is already completed in Jesus, we know that resurrection is not just possible, but in fact is at hand.
And so, dear people of God. Let us be about the work that Jesus had called us to. Let us be about following after him, let us be about loving one another. Let us be about recycling and writing our leaders to advocate for our planet and gardening and living lower on the food chain. Let us be about clean water and clean air, food enough for all, and wondering in the plants and animals over which God appointed us as caretakers. All of these things and more are ways in which we can see signs of the new Jerusalem which God is unveiling in our midst. Dear people of God, we are resurrection people, we are new life people. We are people who know that the way God works in the world is to bring about new life and hope and light and forgiveness from the darkest and most unexpected of places. Resurrection is at hand, the new Jerusalem is among us. Dear people of God, the new heaven and new earth are here, let us rejoice in the work to which we have been called, showing forth God’s redeeming powers to all creation. Amen.
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