Time for a Make-over

Revelation 21:1-7; Acts 11:1-11

When I titled this sermon, I was going to choose an HGTV show to use as my sermon illustration – I was thinking “Love It or List It.” If you don’t know the premise of the show, the owner is presented with their house and its shortcomings and one designer takes the challenge of improving their house while another takes the challenge of finding a house that better fits their needs. At the end of the show, their new improved house is either loved or listed for sale. Revelation 21 has a bit of that feel to it – Those who are victorious will inherit all this, and I will be their God and they will be my children. But the others—they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. The Greek for victorious is nikao – the same root as Nike – it means to conquer, to overcome, to prevail.

But then late Thursday night we got a text from Chris’s mom that HGTV had a change in schedule. Chris’s grandmother passed away a year and a half ago, and her house has been sold…and redone by HGTV’s Home Town, and the episode will air tonight. We’ve seen pictures of what they did. The kitchen is unrecognizable – it took a minute to figure out what direction the picture was taken and what used to be where compared to where it is now – all the appliances moved, the doors moved…the footprint is the same, but the space is completely new. I’m eager to see the rest…they did both bathrooms…and they will still be bathrooms, but who knows what they will look like.

And it occurred to me – that’s what John is saying in Revelation. He can’t describe what he saw in the vision that he had of God’s new heaven and new earth. The footprint was the same, but everything else was almost unrecognizable. John says “the first heaven and the first earth had passed away,” it’s a “full gut” – all of the interior finishes stripped away down to just the structure. And, says John, “there was no longer any sea.” The sea in ancient times represented chaos. In Genesis, the ruah of God, the Hebrew word that means breath/wind/Spirit moved over the waters, the earth was a formless void, empty and darkness was over the surface of the deep/abyss/sea. What started in Genesis, as God’s Spirit moves over the earth in a state of chaos is complete in Revelation when there is no longer any sea, any chaos, and the one seated on the throne declares, “I am making everything new. It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End.”

We are living in the middle – in the midst of the mess of remodeling. And we have a choice – will we participate in the make-over, or not. The late Rev. Dr. Eugene Boring, who taught New Testament at TCU, wrote about this passage, “John’s language throughout this vision is indicative: ‘This is how it will be.’ And yet as always the indicatives of biblical theology contain an implicit imperative, the gift becomes an assignment. If this is where the world, under the sovereign grace of God, is finally going, then every thought, move, deed in some other direction is out of step with reality and is finally wasted. The picture does not attempt to answer speculative questions about the future; it is offered as an orientation for life in the present.”

When John receives this vision and is writes down the revelation, he is imprisoned on the island of Patmos. John is surrounded by the sea, it isolates him, separates him. Theologian Justo Gonzalez writes, “…to say that the sea no longer will exist is to announce a new creation without separations, without isolations, without exiles. If what we await is a new creation in which the seas of separation and alienation will no longer exist, shouldn’t we give testimony of that faith by putting aside whatever separates or alienates us from one another?”

Talk about orientation for life in the present! This passage is the culmination of the whole book of Revelation. When people say there are scared of the Book of Revelation, this is what the whole vision builds to:
God’s dwelling place is now among the people. They will belong to God, and God will be with them and be their God.
God will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.

I have been told by so many people over my years of ministry, “I don’t read the book of Revelation. It scares me. I don’t understand it.” Revelation is not about a great beast or a monster or wrath…those things are in there, for sure, and you can choose them. Revelation’s message, though, is about hope and joy. Overcoming the pain and suffering of this world, the separation and losses.
The new heaven and new earth have had a make-over and are hardly recognizable for those who knew only the old heaven and the old earth. So, how do we start ripping down the wallpaper and taking a crowbar to the cabinets. What needs to be moved and stripped down?
Throughout the New Testament we receive the design plan. One of the first pictures of it we get to see is the result of Peter and Cornelius’s visions that Pat read this morning.

Cornelius is a Gentile, more than that, he is a Roman centurion, which means that he was at least 30 years old, could read and write, was experienced and one of the most proficient with the weaponry of battle, and was able to lead and inspire his century, his unit of 80-100 soldiers.

This Peter is the disciple that Jesus renamed. He is Simon Peter. He was a fisherman, with his brother Andrew, and they were partners of another set of brothers, James and John. Jesus called all 4 of them to be disciples. This Peter is the one who walked on water, he is the one who blurted out, “You are the Messiah, the Son of God” when Jesus asked “Who do you say that I am?” He is also the one who denied Jesus 3 times on the night of his arrest, and the one that Jesus told three times “Feed my sheep” when he fed them breakfast near the pier on the Sea of Galilee after he was resurrected. When they received God’s Holy Spirit on Pentecost, it was this Peter who preached and about 3000 Jewish faithful were baptized that day.

But now, Peter has extended the message beyond the boundaries, and there are questions…well, more than questions. What Peter did was near blasphemous…he preached and shared table fellowship with unclean people. He told them, and I quote, “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who shows reverence to him and commits to justice is welcomed by God.” When Peter gets back to Jerusalem, the other apostles and Jewish who believed Jesus is Messiah want to know “Why?!?! Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?”

And Peter recounts how he and Cornelius came to meet through his vision and Cornelius’s vision. Peter saw a sheet coming down by its corners, filled with unclean animals and birds, and he heard a voice say ‘Kill and eat.’ And when he protested, the voice declared, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” This same sequence repeated 3 times. Then, he heard the arrival of men from Caesarea, sent to bring him back with them, and the Spirit told him to go with them and not to make a distinction between them and us.

What the men who came from Caesarea shared was that they were sent by Cornelius, a Roman centurion, a just man, who had reverence for God, who was directed during his afternoon prayer to send for Peter and listen to what Peter had to say. When Peter arrives in Caesarea, Cornelius and other Gentiles are eager to hear what he has to say and while he is speaking, the Holy Spirit falls upon them and they are baptized.

When Peter finishes telling them what happened, he asks the other apostles and Jewish believers, “If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?”

And God began a make-over, tearing down the walls, making new ways. No longer would the followers of The Way, what the followers of Jesus were first called, only be a Jewish sect. And God is still renovating, even your heart.
Who is “other” to you? Who do you disagree with? Who is unclean to you? Who do you hope not to stand next to? What if you are together before the throne of God?

Justo Gonzalez asks a poignant question, at least to me, in his study of Revelation. He asks, “Will you run the risk, by insisting on your position, or on your feelings, of being one of those who practice the abomination of hatred and who therefore are not allowed to enter the holy city?”

I am looking forward to watching Home Town tonight and seeing how Grandma Kitty’s house has been renovated. Chris’s mom a little less so…it was her mom’s house. It’s hard to let go. We are a lot the same about our own…we have become comfortable with our “lived in” spaces.
Take some time this week and consider: if God were to send you a vision of a sheet coming down, who might be in it? Write them down. Then, pray each day for them by name: Lord, make-over my heart. For God, it is done. There is no longer any sea. The Kingdom is accomplished. Will you love it, or list it?