Isaiah 25: 6-9
NPMC
Revelation 21: 1- 6a I
In Memoriam Sunday
Anita Retzlaff
November 22, 2009
A New Heaven and a New Earth
Grace and peace to you from God the Father of our Lord and Saviour Jesus the
Christ. We gather this morning to remember those whom we love who have died in
this past year. We do so with the knowledge that death has a significant impact
on our day to day lives and that death and loss will eventually come close and
affect each one of us. As we remember those who have died in the last 12 months
we are flooded with other memories of mothers, fathers, partners, children and
friends who have gone from us over the many years. It is good and right that we
remember in this way, as a community of faith, together, graced with the promise
that we do not go alone amidst the twists and turns of our life journeys.
Sometimes death is the traumatic wrenching disorientation of the loss of a life
that has come about much too soon. Other times death is more of a companion or
friend; we bid a calm yet painful farewell to one who has lived a long and
satisfying life. When we lose someone dear our world may shatter. The wisdom of
our scriptural heritage orients us to the truth about death and the poignant
reminders that life is short. So when we hear the words of John in The
Revelation, “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth…” something in us stirs.
What lies just beyond our understanding?
In the final scenes of the book of Revelation the city of Jerusalem lies in
ruins. The people of God have experienced terrible loss; the community has been
devastated and overrun by the Roman occupation. A way of life has been wiped
out; the second temple, the reconstructed home of God in worship, gone forever.
The collapse of what once was is seared into the consciousness of a people who
sit among the charred and smoldering ruins. In the midst of this devastating
turn of events the writer The Seer, John, has a vision. It is the END – but, not
all is finished. John sees something new. For the end of this terrible struggle
will not be swallowed up into pre-creation chaos and come to nothing rather the
end gives way to a beginning. So, for the people of God in the first century,
even though their temple be eradicated, a way of life obliterated and for us
today at the death of a dearly beloved; what we will all meet in that END is not
destruction or void. When our world comes to a shuddering halt we meet the face
of God and the cataclysmic end begins to give way, engulfed by the promise of
divine re-creation. A new earth! A new heaven! Physical and spiritual fortunes
are being restored. For in Isaiah we hear of God removing the pall that is cast
over people in trouble, that God wipes away the tears of present distress and
offers a feast for all people. God is present among mortals; God is here among
us now, in our grief and our distress.
Death transforms our way of seeing and being in this world. We can neither stop
death in its tracks nor can we spare ourselves the pain of loving and losing.
These are not ours to control. What we are given however, is the opportunity to
be open to the lessons of loss. Here Alan Reese stole my thunder last Sunday in
the adult education class. We have been talking about the tasks of the second
half of life. Alan was brave enough to broach the topic of preparing well for
death and for using pain to teach us important lessons. He gently offered the
possibility that we can die well and “let go” in various ways along the path
toward the end of life. Not a topic that most of us like to discuss! It is
indeed a conversation that breaks the rules of our culture that would have us
believe that only young flesh and robust schedules constitute the best that life
can offer. Our texts for today remind us that the ultimate experience in life is
the sturdiness of God’s presence absorbing our headlong run into the
uncertainties of fear-filled endings.
And so I understand the “new heaven and the new earth” to be a new depth of our
knowledge of God, a revelation if you will! For we learn that whenever we hit
the end and God’s face materializes, even if ever so faintly at first, that end
rolls into a new beginning. At first we might not be prepared to see a new
beginning, so focused are we, on what we have lost. However, when even the
tiniest shred of hope emerges out of a difficult end we begin to experience what
eternal life is all about. For life with God can be none other than a profound
shift of consciousness of our need of God; an awareness that changes and changes
and changes yet again as we plow through the unexpected and unwelcome challenges
that are ever before us. We begin to expect the consolation of God to break into
our misery transforming fragmentation and disorientation into an overwhelming
feeling of gratitude and completion.
Behold the picture that this scene in Revelation paints for us. From within the
throes of devastation a new heaven and a new earth take the place of the first
heaven and the first earth. The city of God, the consciousness that God dwells
at the centre of everything, shifts the moment of loss, nudging our sorrow onto
a new trajectory: the slow and deliberate journey toward gain, toward wholeness,
toward peace. The kingdom of God is here NOW even when our hearts are breaking,
even when we thought there was nothing left, even when we can’t imagine that
life can be wonderful again. God gathers up all that is fragmented and empty and
shows us that we are complete in the Spirit of God’s love.
It as if we “hear” for the first time and “see” for the first time that God
truly dwells with us. The joy of this discovery is that the longer we live the
more frequently we expect God’s in-breaking by means of these moments of
illumination or clarity. The promise of a new heaven and a new earth, new life
NOW, becomes our way of life. We live in expectation that God will continue to
restore, resurrect our hopes and commitments. And so along with the writer of
Isaiah we proclaim as advent approaches, “Lo, this is our God; we have waited
for him, so that he might save us. This is the LORD for whom we have waited; let
us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.”