"The Hope of Reconciliation"

  

"For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross."

 

            Last Tuesday I went to see the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit in Milwaukee. I think the exhibit is very well done. The first scrolls were discovered in a cave near the Dead Sea in 1947, and that led to the excavation of the ancient site of Qumran, where a community had gathered to collect and make copies of the books of the Old Testament, some biblical commentaries and other documents. They have found over 15,000 fragments of these writings, many of which are as small as the size of a quarter; the largest is a 24-foot-long scroll of Isaiah.

            I was deeply impressed by how ancient our Scripture is. We know that, but the Bible is so available to us with so many translations and illustrations and every kind of cover and wrapper put on it to appeal to every group of people, that to actually see these old fragments and scrolls gives you a whole new sense of just how old our Bible is. I was also very impressed with the labor of the scribes in copying the texts. Each stroke of the pen was done carefully. The letters are very small and yet perfectly made, in exact line. Their work was astonishingly accurate. So I wondered what they thought about their tedious, exacting labors. They must have been motivated by hope. Surely the careful preservation of Scripture speaks to the future. In hope for the coming generations they carried out what was a labor of love and faith. Hope is the giving of careful attention to the living of our days, to our valuable work, for the sake of the future, for the sake of God's future.

            Just what is God's future that motivates us to such careful and faithful living? Each stroke we leave behind is a testimony to the purposeful handing of the faith that has been entrusted to us, and to our expectation of the fulfillment of God's plan and goal for the creation.

            What is the Christian hope? For the next weeks we will examine that question in detail. Today we begin with an overview, looking at hope from 30,000 feet. The key word for today is "reconciliation." God will one day reconcile the world to himself. N.T. Wright puts it this way: "The early Christians did not believe in progress. They knew God had to do something fresh to put it to rights. But neither did they believe that the world was getting worse and worse and that their task was to escape it altogether. They believed God was going to do for the cosmos what he had done for Jesus at Easter." So, through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ we see the hope of reconciliation born. God will one day put an end to decay and death and bring about a new creation.

            Paul writes in Colossians that through Christ, God will reconcile to himself all things on earth and heaven, making peace through the blood of Jesus, shed on the cross. Through Christ, the good creation will be brought back into harmony with the Creator. Wright says that the world is created good, but incomplete. So our hope is that when sin and evil and death have been finally defeated, the creation will respond freely to the love of the Creator, and then God will fill the creation with himself.

            Ephesians 1:9,10: "And he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment – to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ." This is done in Christ, through whom God created the universe, and who is the firstborn from among the dead, and who is the one in whom all things hold together. David Garland explains that Paul sees Christ as a kind of spiritual gravity that holds the creation together. Christ continues to sustain the whole universe. The resurrection power of Christ is unleashed upon the world while there is still time for the world to be saved. In the end, God will reconcile all things through Christ.

            This is very exalted language in Colossians, almost beyond comprehension. We wonder just what this final end will be like; what will be the characteristics of the new creation that begins in the resurrection of Jesus?

            Revelation chapter 22 gives us some clear biblical pictures of the new creation, the New Jerusalem that comes down from heaven. First is the river of the water of life, clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God. I remember in seminary one assignment was to visit a Christian preschool to see how ministry to young children is done. One of the boys in the class tipped over his carton of milk and it went all over the table and floor. I thought he would begin to cry, but instead he calmly looked up at me and announced, "People spill." That is our story throughout history. We spill. We spoil things. Whatever we touch seems to bring an erosion of the good creation.

            So the first picture of the New Jerusalem in Revelation 22 is one of clean water. A day will come in God's purpose and plan when we will not spill and spoil and pollute and foul everything we touch. In the new creation there will be clean water, as clear as crystal. This is a biblical image from Ezekiel 47. There a river flows from the temple and it is fresh, clean water, and it flows to the Dead Sea and brings that sea to life with fish of every kind, and along its banks there are fruit trees and abundant food. It is a picture of creation restored, so that there is enough food for all.

            Joel 3:18: "In that day the mountains will drip with new wine and the hills will flow with milk; all the ravines of Judah will run with water."

            The next image in Revelation 22 is that of the tree of life on the bank of the river. The tree produces a crop every month! Here there is abundance that is not wasted and it is not used to enrich the greedy few. Rather, everyone is fed.

            "And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations." The Christian hope is one in which nations are healed. Imagine Haiti healed: not just rebuilt, but healed, filled with justice and wise government and people who have valued work to do. Imagine Congo without civil strife, without foreign interests stealing its resources, but healed. Think of Mexico freed from violence caused by drug cartels. Think of true peace in the Middle East, or the healing of Iraq and Afghanistan. Think of Sudan with plenty of food and free of civil war and persecution. Think of our country healed of its insatiable appetite for drugs, with no need for its guns and violence. The leaves of the tree of life are for the healing of nations. Here is a new creation where the nations live without violence or slavery or poverty or oppression.

            In the new creation there is no curse, for the curse of sin has been taken away in the blood of Christ. In this creation there is no night. In the ancient world, cities were very poorly lit and so they were dangerous at night. But in the new creation we will live in the presence of God, and the Lord God will be our light.

            So here is what the New Testament tells us about the Christian hope. The creation came through Christ and it is a good creation, but incomplete. Because of sin, it is a fallen creation where people are not at peace with God, and hostility rages between and among people. Reconciliation comes through the death and resurrection of Christ and through Christ comes victory over death, evil and sin. This leads to a new creation. We do not comprehend it, but Revelation gives us some pictures, some snapshots:

• Clean water – we no longer spoil everything we touch.

• Abundant food – there is no want, no hunger.

• The healing of nations – there will come a time when people will live in peace.

            This new creation does not come by human effort. It comes in Christ. Because the New Creation comes in Christ, all who are in Christ, all who follow him, will work carefully in their lives for reconciliation and for a restored creation. We do not replace Christ with our efforts, but to live in hope is to cooperate with Christ in his great work of redemption and reconciliation. On that day we do not want to be found opposing Christ. Rather, in big and small ways, in large and small places, we live in hope; we live following our Risen Lord.

            We bear witness to Christ in many ways. We proclaim salvation through faith in Christ. We show the love of God to people. We work for clean water and justice in harvest, and we work to make sure everyone is fed and we care about the healing of the nations. We are like the scribes of Qumran. We live faithfully so that we might pass on the hope we have been given until Christ returns. For "he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus."

            Amen.