Some of you may have heard of NT Wright the theologian. He was once the Bishop of Durham. He talks in his writings and lectures about heaven and earth coming together in Christ. The New Heaven and the New Earth has been started by Jesus.
I was reading some of a paper on a similar theme. It struck me how the Gospel of John starts with creation and finishes with new creation through resurrection. Jesus set in motion what we as his people now lean into and look forward too.
As Dave Bookless of A Rocha Christians in Conservation likes to say ‘”the gospel is good news for all of creation'”.
We live in a real world, with real people and real nature. This world is full-on and full of life. We as now and not yet kingdom people who follow Jesus have access to the Father through Jesus and like him we represent him here on earth.
We individually and corporately as believers are temples of the living God. We image God having been made in the image and likeness of God. Even through our brokenness Jesus is being poured out onto the world, this dirty, earthy, gritty world.
We stand between heaven and earth as a kingdom of priests:
‘To the one who loves us and released us from our sins by his blood and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father—to him be the glory and the power ⌊forever and ever⌋. Amen’.
Revelation 1:5–6 (LEB)
This theology you could sum up in a phrase a former minister I had, used to say: ‘It’s not just pie in the sky when you die but cake on the plate while you wait!’ For us as believers it’s not about us waiting around to go to heaven when we die it’s about us fulfilling the kingdom; being part of the kingdom expressing it through our ordinary lives here and now not just individually but also as a church. This is done through messiness and brokenness, allowing the Holy Spirit to work through us.
When the world was made Yahweh did not just sit back and say “That’s it let them just work it out themselves now. Let them alone”. He was involved then and is now. He was bringing order out of chaos.
When we do something like creation care, gardening and other ordinary every-day things, we’re bringing order out of chaos. Partnering with him and doing what he called us to do in the first place – being caretakers of creation, doing kingdom stuff with Jesus’ words ringing in our ears!
Jesus did something to the fabric of creation when he died and rose again. We can walk with God again like Adam did in the cool of the garden. (Gen 2.) We have relationship with God again as part of his family.
There is so much more going on here than we can fully comprehend. The relationship between Jesus’ body, the church, us as individuals in that, the reality of us being temples and new creation is incredible. Little by little we can and do make a difference.
Ezekiel was shown something of the new creation in the coming age (Ez 47.1-12):
The river of God flowing from the temple. ‘Since the river now comes from the temple and not the garden, the temple is the new center of creation (Ps 46:4)’.
(Christian Standard Bible Study Notes).
See also John 2.19; Col 1, Acts 7.48-50; Rev 21.22