SCRIPTURE: Revelation 21:1-6a
TEXT: 21:1Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven an THEME: Living in a new way with God and others. INTRODUCTION Have you ever moved to a new place to live? What do you bring with you? What do you leave behind? What is no longer relevant? What new things do you need to get? Over the course of the last few weeks my garage has been demolished and rebuilt and now it is empty, and uncluttered, But I don’t want to put anything in it. Not even the cars. This is what this passage in Revelation is all about. New digs for God that has an impact on our living arrangements. SCRIPTURE Heaven is the place where God lives and Earth is the place where we live. But in verse 1, three things are demolished: heaven, earth and the sea. The Israelites don’t get along with the sea. The ‘sea’ represents their fear of the great unknown. Winds and waves can act up for no reason, as well as giant leviathans who swim in the deep and could swallow you up whole like Jonah. The meaning of revelation is up for grabs. There were some people who may have said they figured it out but unless you were the first readers of this letter, the symbolism and references are lost and one guess is just as good as another. For this reading of Revelation, the sea is the fear of death that is passes away with belief in the resurrection. That being said, where do we live? The New Heaven and the New Earth are made up the same components but in a different configuration. This is the vision God, is giving John the author of Revelation, of our living arrangements, that the dwelling place of God and our dwelling place would be one and the same. When couples were engaged in those days, the groom was supposed to build their home. After he built a home, they got married. In this image, God provides a city as a sign to end our engagement and for our marriage covenant with God to unite. The home of God is among mortals.3b Wrapping our minds around this, we have God, the Creator of all things who breathes life into us, dwelling among us. Death will be no more; Mourning will be no more. And crying and pain will be no more. This is full circle from the Garden of Eden to the New Heaven and New Earth where God and ourselves dwell together. APPLICATION God has had this vision of our dwelling together since forming us out of the dust of the ground in Eden. We on their other hand, don’t care for God being so close to us. We like to keep God at a distance in Heaven. At bay so we can indulge in our own folly without feeling guilty about it. But what if we begin to see the dwelling in the New Heaven and New Earth more as a marriage than a standard of righteousness, where our lives cohabitate with God. Where what we think we are giving up is pale in comparison to the richness we gain in our relationship with God. Our relationship with God is engaging, affirming, helping us to be our best selves while expanding our horizons as we participate with God, doing things that we have never done before. We lack imagination to think what living with God would look like. As many people who has ever lived are the ways to live with God. Our human tendency is to regulate and conform our experiences so they can be judged and scrutinized. But humans are unique, each personality is unique, and each have their own particular ways of dwelling with God. Then what of the community of God, the church, how does God dwelling among us change who and what we are? We dwell with God now, not waiting for death. The church dwells with God. We live not trying to escape judgment, but in loving acceptance and grace. The church is not angry, scolding people, or up against some evil. With God dwelling with us, we have the capacity to love, accept, be patient, do kindness and care for others. We have not always been understood and have been persecuted and oppressed because we play by a different set of values. We value and respect people over money or power and advocate loving treatment of all and respect. This is how we show that God is dwelling inside of us. We support each other because we still grieve. It is easy to get tempted, and lost. And we continue to learn more about God because just when we think we’ve got it, God is able to reveal another facet of Glory that we’ve never considered. Our Theology is ever evolving, tested, refined and informed. This is why, as many churches are worrying about the decline of membership, which also impact their sustainability, we pray about our Affordable housing project. And if this could be a model that other churches could copy. We are dreaming about what kind of impact it may have for our neighbors, born and raised on Maui being given a chance to raise their families on Maui. We are talking with our neighbor churches about what kind of things we can do together so we don’t need to duplicate services but share our resources. All of these ideas come with our thinking about ourselves, the church, God’s call and our resources in different ways. All part of God’s dwelling among us. Last observation about God dwelling among us, this makes God is discoverable. In nature, in the lives of Christians, through the activities of the Church and us just being who we are dwelling with God, makes the invisible God visible, dwelling among mortals. CONCLUSION I am going through the things I took out of my garage and deciding if I am going to put it back in there or not. How am I going to keep it in place? New shelves, new containers, new tools? New digs mean new way of living. New organization. Less cluttered lives, aligned with Church purpose. Now I have a place to put those boxes in the house that we walk around. As pristine as the Garage may look, its value to me is in being utilized. Through Christ and the Holy Spirit, the space between God and ourselves is nonexistent. Its purpose is for God to be a part of our lives and for us to be part of God’s. We can find creative ways to do this, dwelling together, God did is once with Jesus, and continues to do it today, “See, the home of God is among mortals”. New Digs.
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