"I am about to create new heavens
and a new earth;
the former things shall not be remembered
or come to mind.
But be glad and rejoice forever
in what I am creating...
Before they call I will answer,
while they are yet speaking I will hear.
The wolf and the lamb shall feed together,
the lion shall eat straw like the ox;
but the serpent—its food shall be dust!
They shall not hurt or destroy
on all my holy mountain,"
says the LORD. (Isaiah 65:17-18a, 24-25)
This is where the world is headed, if we dare to believe it: not the obliteration of everything in a fit of divine wrath, but the renewal and reclamation of all things in a stroke of divine creativity. The resurrection of Jesus is a foretaste of that new heavens and new earth.
This passage is part of a larger reading from the end of the book of Isaiah and many would have heard it in worship this past Sunday (it is one of the alternate options in our Revised Common Lectionary used by many traditions), and I hope it's clear why this would be heard alongside the story of the empty tomb and Paul's insistence that "in Christ all will be made alive." This is one more angle--a poetic one--on the same truth revealed in the Easter story and in Paul's theologizing; namely, that the resurrection of Jesus is not a one-off, but the beginning of God's long-promised "new thing." God has begun, through the resurrection of Jesus, to renew everything in the entire universe--every last quark and gluon, every slime mold and blade of grass, every colossal squid and blue whale, and the whole of humanity as well. Anything smaller than that kind of scope is settling for too little.
And, what's more, to hear the poet of Isaiah 65 tell it, is that God is not merely interested in rebooting the same old destructive and death-dealing relationships and enmity we had been trapped in. God is in the process of rewiring reality in such a way that wolves and lambs will no longer be cast as predator and prey; oxen will no longer need to fear lions, and we will not need to live in hostility with one another anymore. That will require a reinvention of everything, quite honestly, and yet somehow we will be ourselves--in truth, we will be even more fully ourselves than we ever have been in this world full of meanness and spite.
Now, in response to a vision like that, there are bound to be some reservations, or at least serious questions. One goes like this: "All this business of wolves and sheep lying down together, or lions eating straw, it sounds downright unnatural! And if nature is good, then unnatural is wicked, evil, depraved... maybe even abominable!" That's an important point to resolve. While we Christians would affirm that God has indeed made the universe, and that all of creation is good--and maybe even further, that we cannot imagine what a world that did not depend on death (one being eating another being for survival) would look like. Again, a fair point: I can't really imagine how the universe would work if it weren't kept running by the power of death and disintegration (the Second Law of Thermodynamics and all, right?). But just because I cannot imagine something does not mean it is impossible--it may just mean that my imagination is shriveled and stunted, and the very thing I need in order to be able to envision God's future is to hear these daring words of the prophet. Maybe exactly what we need is to listen to these words and to say, humbly, "I don't know how God is going to remake the world such that we don't kill, threaten, or eat each other, but then again, I don't know how God accomplishes a resurrection, and my hope is built on that impossibility, too." Maybe the poet in Isaiah 65 isn't here to draw us a diagram but to give us a dream. Maybe his job is to get us questioning every voice that says "It's a dog-eat-dog world out there, and that's just the natural order of things. No way to change it--you can only play the game." Maybe the prophet is here to get us to realize the world doesn't have to be this way--that is, we do not have to continue to live by violence, war, and domination. We do not have to accept that "this is the way it is," and we do not have to give in to that way of ordering the world. God certainly hasn't. That's what the resurrection is all about.
Here's another response I often hear in reaction to Isaiah 65's bold vision of a new heaven and a new earth: "Well, if God is just going to make everything new all over again, why bother taking care of this planet right now?" Again, I get where the question is coming from, but that seems a little like saying I'm going to wreck the Christmas present in front of me now because I can see that there is another present still waiting for me under the tree. This world is a gift, entrusted for our care, stewardship, and yes, savoring. And if our hope is grounded in resurrection and transformation, then it's not a matter of God switching out an old broken earth with a new and different shiny one--it is a matter of God renewing creation in its entirety. After Jesus dies, God doesn't make his body evaporate and then present us with a replacement messiah, like some well-meaning parent getting a new identical goldfish for his kid to replace the one that went fins up in the fishbowl. God resurrects the previously dead Jesus, wounds and all, and transforms him so that he is somehow the same Jesus and also now glorified. If that's what renewal and resurrection look like for Jesus, that's our hope for all creation as well. At no point should we look for God give us a thumbs up to trash the Earth because we can just fly to Mars instead--rather, we should listen to what God has already called us to do to take care of the world of which we are a part, while also hoping for God's renewal of all that we have done to harm the world. Christian hope is never meant to be escapist; it is meant to be both a daring commitment to love the world as it is enough to repair and mend it as we are able, as well as a confidence in God's power to transform everything until, as the apostle says, "Christ will be all in all."
That's the hope. Nothing less, for certain.
Where we have been settling for too small or too narrow a vision, let the prophet's words here drive a wedge into the closing door to widen our faithful imagination. Let us not settle for anything less than a world in which wolves and lambs are reconciled and no one is afraid anymore, in which bombs do not rain down from the sky on children, in which petty tyrants no longer try to conquer more land or annex more territories into their empires. And then let us step today in action to anticipate that world ahead of time, like the resurrection of Jesus is a sign of where all the world is headed.
Lord Jesus, make all things new. Begin with us.
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