Revelation 21:1-6 Commentary

When I was in seminary, we studied the appropriate “ologies,” including the theology of the last things. We discussed theories of the when’s and how’s of Christ’s return, as well as the Last Judgment. Yet my professors, fellow students and I spent almost no time talking about the new earth and heaven.

Such neglect is, however, hardly uncommon. Even respected theologians seem to talk little about the new creation. For example, Louis Berkhof’s classic Systematic Theology devotes only one of its 768 pages to it. What’s more, during the course of my parish ministry I only preached a handful of times on the new creation’s most relevant biblical texts.

Yet I sometimes wonder if the church’s silence about the new creation helps explain some of Christians’ confusion about it. My aging father-in-law’s first question for me after his son and wife died was, “Where is heaven?” He also wanted to know if his dead son and wife recognized each other there as well as if they knew what was going on here on earth. Even as I tried to answer my deeply Christian father-in-law’s questions, I had to admit that I have far more questions than answers about the new creation.

While John fills the book of Revelation with chilling images of persecution, violence and suffering, near its end, the apostle insists that God, not misery gets creation’s last word. Yet Jesus’ followers believe God also gets our last word. So we remember that the book of Revelation describes not just the future creation, but also the shape that God longs to give the creation right now. God’s dearly beloved people gratefully receive Revelation’s glimpses of the coming new creation’s glory as a guide to living in ways that imitate life in it. We let it shape our care for creation, as well as our love for those who suffer and even sin in it.

As we do that, we note how much absence dominates Revelation 21:1-6’s description of the new earth and heaven. After all, in verse 1 John says that in it, “The first [protos*] heaven [ouranos] and earth [ge] had passed away [apelthan]” and “there was no longer [eti] any sea [thalassa].” In verse 4 he adds, God “will wipe [exaleipsei] every tear [dakyron] from their eyes. There will be no more death [thanatos] or mourning [penthos] or crying [krauges] or pain [ponos], for the old order of things [prota] has passed away [apelthan].”

Yet John also goes on to claim that what and whomever cause such misery will also be banished from the new earth and heaven. His language is, of course, highly symbolic. Verse 1’s thalassa (“the sea”) seems to represent all that threatens God’s people. Tears, death, mourning, crying, pain and the old order of things symbolize all the effects of those threats on God’s creation and creatures.

Those who preach this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson can admit that it’s harder, frankly, to know what the passing away of protos ouranos (“the first heaven) and protos ge (“first earth”) symbolizes.  At least some Christians, in the light of other Scriptures, think it symbolizes not God’s destruction but renewal of the whole creation. I have a dear friend who suggests that all that sin scarred in the creation in which we now live will be healed in the new earth and heaven.

John says God will fill the dark void left by evil’s exile from the new creation with God and the New Jerusalem. At the end of measured time God won’t transport us to some place up in the sky. No, God will come from the heavenly realm to make God’s home in God’s new earth and heaven. And where God is, everything is changed. In the new creation God graciously makes all things, even God’s adopted children, new.

Led and prompted by the Spirit, preachers want to decide how to proceed with a proclamation of Revelation 21:1-6. We might at least consider making substantial use of C.S. Lewis’ new creation imagery. He especially beautifully reimagines the new earth and heaven in his final Chronicles of Narnia book, The Last Battle.

One of its children, Lucy, says about its transformed Narnia, “’Those hills, the nice woody ones and the blue ones behind — aren’t they very like the southern border of Narnia? “’Like!?” cried Edmund after a moment’s silence. ‘Why they’re exactly like …’ ’And yet …” said Lucy. ‘They’re different. They have more colors on them … and they’re more …’  ’More like the real thing,” said the Lord Digory softly.

“Suddenly Farsight the Eagle spread his wings, soared thirty or forty feet up into the air, circled round and then alighted on the ground.  ’Kings and Queens,’ he cried, ‘We are only beginning to see where we are … Narnia is not dead. This is Narnia.’ ’The Eagle is right,’ said the Lord Digory. ‘The Narnia you’re thinking of … was only a shadow or a copy of the real Narnia.’

“’All of the old Narnia that mattered, all the dear creatures, have been drawn into the real Narnia through the Door. And of course it is different; as different as a real thing is from a shadow or as waking life is from a dream … “ Lewis adds, “The new [Narnia] was a deeper country: every rock and flower and blade of grass looked as if it meant more. I can’t describe it any better than that: if you ever get there, you will know what I mean.”

Both the Scriptures and C.S. Lewis suggest the new earth and heaven, as well as those who fill it will be somehow similar to this creation and its creatures. Yet while they will still be God’s creation, creatures and people, they’ll also be somehow different. Lewis refers to them as “deeper” and meaning “more,” perhaps meaning that in the new creation things will finally be what God created us to be.

Yet Lewis admits he struggles to compare the current creation to the new creation. He writes, “Perhaps you will get some idea of it, if you think like this. You may have been in a room in which there was a window that looked out on a lovely bay of the sea or a green valley that would be away among the mountains.

“And in the wall of that room opposite to the window there may have been a looking glass … The sea in the mirror, or the valley in the mirror, were in one sense just the same as the real ones; yet at the same time they were somehow different – deeper, more wonderful, more like places in a story … you have never heard but very much want to know …” But maybe it’s The Last Battle’s Jewel the Unicorn who best describes Narnia’s new creation: ‘I have come home at last! I belong here! … Come further up, come further in.”

Revelation 7 reminds Jesus’ friends that God promises not just to make God’s home, but also to graciously make our home in the new earth and heaven. A home for which, whether we realize it or not, Lewis suggests we’ve been looking and longing all of our lives.  A home that may look at least a bit like the creation in which God currently makes a home for us.  A home where we’ll know we finally belong.

Near The Last Battle’s end, Aslan tells Narnia’s children that their parents and they have actually died. He then adds that for them, “The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning.”

Yet the new creation’s “holidays” have not yet begun for God’s dearly beloved 21^st century people; it’s not quite yet “morning.” In fact, Christian hope for the new earth and heaven may feel hidden by various nights’ darkness. Preachers want to invite our hearers to receive John and Lewis’ glimpses of the new creation as a gift of hope. Crying, and mourning and pain is real. But someday very soon God is going to make it all better.

We catch glimpses of that not just in John and C.S. Lewis’ writings, but also at the Lord’s Table. There, after all, God doesn’t just remind God’s dearly beloved people of what Jesus did 2,000 years ago and continues to do. At the Table, the Holy Spirit also reminds us of what Jesus will do “soon.” After all, the Apostle Paul calls Jesus’ friends to celebrate the Lord’s Supper for how long?  Until “[Jesus] comes [again].”

*I have here and elsewhere added in brackets the Greek words for the English words the NIV translation uses.

Illustration

C.S. Lewis ends The Last Battle with a poignant description of life in the New Narnia. It sounds a bit like what we might imagine Jesus’ adopted siblings’ life will be in the new earth and heaven after our Big Brother comes again: “The things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them.  And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after.

“But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read; which goes on forever; in which every chapter is better than the one before.”