Second Saturday after Pentecost
I had five emails from you folks in my inbox this morning. One of you tried but had difficulty getting his comment on the blog. I'll get it on there Friday after next.
Just a reminder: Marianne and I will be on vacation in the OBX next week, along with our son, daughter-in-law and two grandchildren (John, Jessica, Madeline, Jack). Although we see them at least once a week, we have socially distanced until now. Next week the six of us will be forming a "pod." It will be six of us (and a dog) in a two-bedroom condo. The blog will return probably on Monday, June 29, although it could be as late as July 1. So, please don't go away. It will be back.
Saturday is Bible Study day. I was recently in a Zoom study group on Adam Hamilton's new book, Unafraid. At one point in the study I was reading aloud to the group Revelation 21:1-4:
"Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying:
'See the home of God is among mortals.
He will dwell with them;
They will be his peoples,
And God himself will be with them.
He will wipe away every tear from their eyes..
Death will be no more.
For the first things have passed way."
--Revelation 21:1-4
I have always loved this passage. One has to go through a lot of bad stuff in much of Revelation, but the last two chapters are magnificent.
The group leader asked for responses. One person said, "I don't like this passage. It's not realistic. Pain and suffering are a part of life. We learn from pain and suffering. We learn from death and bereavement too" (not an exact quotation but pretty close). Another person in the group agreed with her.
I was completely non-plussed. I thought she was totally missing the point. It's not supposed to be realistic. The new heaven and new earth are idealistic, ideals that will come true. Her response to the text was so unexpected that I found my floundering as I tried to explain it. I did a terrible job. Everything I said seemed to make her more determined in her opposition.
I've wondered since that time whether we are so mired in our secularized thinking that we can't envision anything beyond our own present reality. Has our mainline Protestant emphasis on this world deprived us of any understanding of anything else? Has heaven become nothing more than a metaphor? Has the hereafter become something of an embarrassment to our intellect?
Not to me.
We will talk about it more on the next two Wednesday blogs that will finish up our examination of the Apostles' Creed.
Faithfully,
Christian
2 comments:
To me, there certainly is more focus on applying Biblical teaching to the "hear and now" than to achieving the "hereafter," at least as compared to the church teaching of my youth and the church teaching during my visits at some of the more fundamentalist churches of my loved ones. Overall, I think that is a good thing. For it teaches me to live and love from the abundance of God's love that is given to me rather than to save myself. Perhaps some steer away from embracing more concrete references to afterlife locations from intellectual embarrassment, but it might also be because they don't have a comfortable frame of reference or understanding. While my understanding involves a gathering in and a rejoining to God (yeah, I don't have Biblical references to this and I don't ever intend to defend it), when I am around family, I can use the lingo of streets of gold and mansions and when I am around others who get squirmy with that terminology, I can use references to bliss and peace. Does that make me wishy-washy? No, I'm just trying to meet people where they are and also not mislead them. So to the comment that someone finds that scripture unrealistic, my answer is yes, it is unrealistic and isn't that wonderful? There is a time when the realism of today will be replaced with something even more beautiful for us.
Thanks to Christian and Jerry for their explanation of this scripture. Their words and explanation resonate with me. I think we humans place the limitations of our understanding on the mysteries of the scriptures like the afterlife. To me that is understandable. God gave us human skills and abilities. He expects us to use them. But we must remember those human skills and abilities have limitation and that is where faith enters. I look forward to the next blog.
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