"And the one sitting on the throne said, 'Behold, I make all things new.'" (Rev. 21:5)
With everything that we have experienced this past year, it's a bit difficult to make the shift to thinking about what is before us. Pandemic, economic collapse, social upheaval, an attempt to overthrow the government. With all of this has come disruption, unwanted change, suffering and sorrow, isolation, gaps and separations among us, a new poverty, hunger, homelessness. Hope is hard to come by. Our songs sound notes of lament more often than joy.
"And the one sitting on the throne said, 'Behold, I make all things new.'" (Rev. 21:5)
In Christ...and we are always "in Christ,"...in Christ we always live in newness. Our brokenness as individuals and communities is always being transformed into wholeness in the forgiveness we have "in Christ." In Christ there is a light of hope that penetrates into the chaos that has brought us the present darkness. In Christ we see that death has its limits and cannot swallow us in absolute despair. Our future is secure and full of hope because it is "in Christ."
"And the one sitting on the throne said, 'Behold, I make all things new.'" (Rev. 21:5)
We are beginning to see the dawn of that newness along the horizons of our lives as family at Zion. Several of our family have stepped forward to take on new responsibilities in our worship. This is part of the newness in Zion, but it is also part of the newness that is coming to the Body of Christ as a whole. We are leaving the age of the formal, institutional clergy where it is the pastors who are the ministers, and entering the age of the ministry of the entire body of believers, the age of the leadership of the laity who will lead worship, proclaim the Gospel and administer the sacraments.
We are moving forward into a newness in which faithful living is more important than having the right answers, and that faithfulness is measured by a new metric of what happens in daily life and not just on Sundays. The new things include something beyond "membership" in the church. It's not something created by meeting the requirements but by the experience of the Spirit moving among us. "Knowing" will move beyond intellectual facts to the deep experiences of God's love at work in our lives.
"And the one sitting on the throne said, 'Behold, I make all things new.'" (Rev. 21:5)
In Advent we prayed "O, come Immanuel..." The One who sits on the throne has kept faith with the people. He has come. He has brought us safely through the past, and now He is making all things new.
Peace to the People of the Lord.
Pastor Carl
