Making Things New

“Behold, I make all things new.”   - Revelation 21:5

This is one of the last things God, in the Bible, says. God’s ultimate promise is that all things will be made new. The Revelation sums up what this is all about in the idea of a “new heaven and a new earth.” St. John understands what God is saying in a dramatic, comprehensive way. The last chapter and a half of Revelation plays this out as a new Jerusalem, new robes, new life is played out for John. It’s sort of delightful when he gets a golden measuring stick to measure the gates and walls of the new city [Rev 21:15-21]. Maybe we’ve read the story too many times, so we think we know it. I can hear you, “yeah, yeah, yeah, it all sounds lovely.” But that’s not the point. The point is that it is NEW!! No one’s ever seen anything like this “new Jerusalem” before!
 
When you stop assuming that you know what’s in the Bible and actually start reading it, it’s rather startling what’s in there. This is as true for pastors and religious professionals as it is for you, my good friends. When you read this little story at the very end of the Bible and go back to the beginning, you start to see that God has been making things new the whole way from Genesis to the Revelation. From Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, Elijah and the prophets [to name a few] to Mary, John the Baptist, Jesus and St. Paul the consistent story is that God has been making a new world. And the equally consistent story is that humans have been resisting. How’s all that “new” been working out? It's not a stretch to see that God is making new things and humans keep saying, “well, maybe not so new…”.
 
Admittedly, I like the idea [maybe] of you being new. Me? I just need a little buffing up. I’ve come to see that most of us, if not all of us, only want to be improved and improved is a way sight different from new. I understand. Improved means improved – we don’t change the essence of something, just make it somehow better. New? Well, new is… new. Unless, of course, you’re a slave or abused or downtrodden [to use a sort of Biblical word] or forgotten or starving or broken [I suspect you get the idea]. But that sort of new can be pretty scary to those of us who only want the world improved. What frightens you about God’s new? Go ahead and say it out loud, at least to yourself. What part of yourself don’t you want changed? In “church-speak,” we like to say that we “hold part of ourselves back from God.” We work to keep God from touching the parts of ourselves we don’t want changed, we don’t want to lose control over. New sounds good in the Bible, until we slowly start to understand that all this time God has been talking to us.
 
“Behold, I make all things new.”