Psalm 104. 22-33; Isaiah 65. 17-end; Revelation 21. 1-8
‘When thou lettest thy breath go forth they shall be made : and thou shalt renew the face of the earth.’
Words from Psalm 104, a majestic hymn in praise of God’s work of creation. In the passage we heard sung this morning, the psalmist declares that the manifold wisdom of God is displayed in the variety of the riches bestowed upon the earth. And the work of creation is not seen as a distant event, something which God does and then stands back to see how things will unfold. Rather, the breath and spirit of God is actively involved in sustaining and renewing all things: ‘When thou lettest thy breath go forth they shall be made : and thou shalt renew the face of the earth.’
There is an echo here of the grand opening of the creation story in the Book of Genesis: ‘And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.’ The Holy Spirit of God rests upon all that has been made, constantly bringing life and renewing all things.
This renewal of creation is Isaiah’s theme in his proclamation that God will create new heavens and a new earth. To those who have recently returned to Jerusalem from exile in Babylon, he holds out a vision of the restored holy city, with the people living in prosperity, and the whole of creation being at harmony. For Isaiah, God’s work of new creation will be a work of redemption and restoration.
And, of course, Isaiah’s vision of redemption is taken up into the Book of Revelation and the second lesson this morning, part of which we have just heard sung by the Choir. Here, the age to come is pictured as a great marriage scene where the new heavens and the new earth are joined together as God makes his home and tabernacle among us. In this glorious future age, all that is contrary to God’s harmonious ways of love will be put to an end, and death will be no more.
As the psalmist puts it: ‘The earth shall tremble at the look of him : if he do but touch the hills, they shall smoke.’
This time in the Church’s liturgical calendar, the time between our celebration of Our Lord’s Ascension into heaven and his sending of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, is a reminder of our dependence upon the Holy Spirit in the work of creation and new creation.
On the one hand, through the birth, death, resurrection, and glorification of the man Jesus Christ, God has shown his face upon the earth; he has touched our humanity with his divinity and thereby brought about a new creation in his Son. The hills of sinful humanity have been touched, and smoke has arisen in the divinisation and glorification of our human nature. In Christ, we see a picture of the fulfilment of God’s plan in creation for human beings, for he is the one who lives in perfect obedience to the Father, and so he is set upon the throne of creation to gently reign over all things.
On the other hand, we live in a time of eager anticipation of what God is yet to do. We await the return of the saviour, and the fulfilment of the promise that what God has done in Christ, he will do for the whole of creation. Jesus is the alpha and the omega, the first and the last. Or as St Paul puts it, the first-born of creation. Christ is the source of all things, the principle or logos of all creation, and he is the goal, the image of their renewal and fulfilment.
And so, what this means is that we are now living in an in-between time, at the threshold of the ages. On the one hand, we have seen the vision of all things renewed in the God-man Jesus Christ, and, on the other hand, we wait for the realisation of this renewal in the world that he came to save.
And what is it that bridges this gap? Nothing other than the gift of the Spirit. We are to live in hope, for as that beautiful passage of the King James Bible puts it, ‘the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.’ This is the pledge or downpayment of our inheritance, the promise that we who have received the Spirit of God will one day be transformed into the likeness of the Son of God at the renewal of all things.
And so, our task in the present is to live by the Spirit; to offer our lives as the dust of the earth in which God may fashion the fruit of his Holy Spirit: the fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Not because we can build the New Jerusalem ourselves. Not because the new heavens and the new earth will be constructed by our efforts, but because we are called to live as signs in the present of God’s glorious future.
All we can bring is our poverty, our hunger, and our thirst. And as we do so we can trust in the one who says: ‘To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life.’