Isaiah 65:17-25 Good News Translation
The New Creation
17 The Lord says, “I am making a new earth and new heavens. The events of the past will be completely forgotten.
18 Be glad and rejoice forever in what I create. The new Jerusalem
I make will be full of joy, and her people will be happy.
19 I myself will be filled with joy because of Jerusalem and her people. There will be no weeping there, no calling for help.
20 Babies will no longer die in infancy, and all people will live out their life span. Those who live to be a hundred will be considered young. To die before that would be a sign that I had punished them.
21-22 People will build houses and get to live in them—they will not be used by someone else. They will plant vineyards and enjoy the wine—it will not be drunk by others. Like trees, my people will live long lives. They will fully enjoy the things that they have worked for.
23 The work they do will be successful, and their children will not meet with disaster. I will bless them and their descendants for all time to come.
24 Even before they finish praying to me, I will answer their prayers. 25 Wolves and lambs will eat together; lions will eat straw, as cattle do, and snakes will no longer be dangerous. On Zion, my sacred hill, there will be nothing harmful or evil.”
2 Corinthians 5:16-20 The Message
No longer do we evaluate people by what they have or how they look. We looked at the Messiah that way once and got it all wrong, as you know. We certainly don’t look at him that way anymore.
Now we look inside, and what we see is that anyone united with the Messiah gets a fresh start, is created new. The old life is gone; a new life emerges! Look at it!
All this comes from the God who settled the relationship between us and him, and then called us to settle our relationships with each other, to become friends, neighbours, sisters and brothers.
God put the world right with himself through the Messiah, giving the world a fresh start by offering forgiveness of sins. God has given us the task of telling everyone what he is doing.
We are Christ’s representatives. God uses us to persuade men and women to drop their differences and enter into God’s work of making things right between them.
We’re speaking for Christ himself now: Become friends with God; he’s already a friend with you.
The New Creation
17 The Lord says, “I am making a new earth and new heavens. The events of the past will be completely forgotten.
18 Be glad and rejoice forever in what I create. The new Jerusalem
I make will be full of joy, and her people will be happy.
19 I myself will be filled with joy because of Jerusalem and her people. There will be no weeping there, no calling for help.
20 Babies will no longer die in infancy, and all people will live out their life span. Those who live to be a hundred will be considered young. To die before that would be a sign that I had punished them.
21-22 People will build houses and get to live in them—they will not be used by someone else. They will plant vineyards and enjoy the wine—it will not be drunk by others. Like trees, my people will live long lives. They will fully enjoy the things that they have worked for.
23 The work they do will be successful, and their children will not meet with disaster. I will bless them and their descendants for all time to come.
24 Even before they finish praying to me, I will answer their prayers. 25 Wolves and lambs will eat together; lions will eat straw, as cattle do, and snakes will no longer be dangerous. On Zion, my sacred hill, there will be nothing harmful or evil.”
2 Corinthians 5:16-20 The Message
No longer do we evaluate people by what they have or how they look. We looked at the Messiah that way once and got it all wrong, as you know. We certainly don’t look at him that way anymore.
Now we look inside, and what we see is that anyone united with the Messiah gets a fresh start, is created new. The old life is gone; a new life emerges! Look at it!
All this comes from the God who settled the relationship between us and him, and then called us to settle our relationships with each other, to become friends, neighbours, sisters and brothers.
God put the world right with himself through the Messiah, giving the world a fresh start by offering forgiveness of sins. God has given us the task of telling everyone what he is doing.
We are Christ’s representatives. God uses us to persuade men and women to drop their differences and enter into God’s work of making things right between them.
We’re speaking for Christ himself now: Become friends with God; he’s already a friend with you.
Reflection
We spend a lot of time trying to understand our world – and by “we’ I mean “me”- I mean maybe you are like me_ I pick at things – ideas, issues, things that happen, things that don’t, big things, like racism and history, and geo-politics and social issues like homelessness and addiction, climate change and climate action, and I have questions, opinions, and I ideas that I hope are open to influence and change. So I read books and articles and watch the news and ask more questions and sometimes I just let things settle and see what happens next. I want to understand not just jump on the bandwagon because it is the issue du jour or because it is politically or socially correct.
And I want to understand because I have a vision, I want to understand because my vision is the one promised in Isaiah- a new heaven and a new earth, where the lamb and the lion co-exist in the peaceable kingdom. Rome and Israel co-exist, China, North Korea, the USA, Russia, Iran – the world co-exists for the benefit of all.
OK , I’m not convinced about the lion and the lamb although like Isaiah I think it is a great image. I just don’t believe we are going to or should change the lion’s behaviour when we are talking about animals – the lamb will get eaten when the lion is hungry but then I don’t believe humans are lions. We might instinctively want to devour, dominate, and win but we are capable of moderating, and changing our behaviour and our thinking. We can choose not to eat the lamb. That’s Isaiah’s opinion as well.
Isaiah is writing at a time when the exiled Jews have return to Jerusalem from Babylon. They are rebuilding the temple under the about the 6th century BCE, while they remain under the thumb of outside forces- in this case Cyrus the King of Persia, the Jews have been allowed the freedom to return and worship. They are in the process of rebuilding the temple – a process that will continue all the way to the first century and Herod.
The temple meant everything to those early Jews, like many peoples they believed that when Yahweh took up residence in a temple, blessings radiated out from that temple creating an ideal world. Our scripture passage this morning is filled with such images children thrive, people live to old age, crops are bountiful, the people are prosperous, wolves stop eating lambs. It is a time of joy and rejoicing.
And Isaiah points to the reality behind this picture of a beautiful world that reality is that this is God at work. God creates a new reality; and is creating a new world everyday. God’s creative work turns our world into a holy space, God’s territory. Divine blessings radiate as God recreates this cosmos: a world of harmony, prosperity and joy.
For Isaiah the miracle has already happened, the Jews are back in Jerusalem, the Temple has been rebuilt, God is back, the people can worship, the relationship between God and his people has been restored.
And this is what life should look like: there are no tears, no distress, no infant death and no disease, people have no need to steal or abuse. Everything, that has prevented creation from being what God intended it to be, is gone.
Imagine, the disasters we see in the world are not what determine the future of God’s creation. Terrorist activity and military power don’t have a place in God’s order of things. Political deception, abuse within the family or workplace, selfish exploitation and neglect of nature are not the way things have to be. And the suffering that these things bring, as well as that which seems to come by chance in illness or accident, will pass away. All that is evil will be seen for what it is, and all that is hurtful will be banished. That is the vision. Imagine!
And Isaiah’s vision is not just to the making new of the physical world, it is the renewing of the relationships and interconnections within the world. In fact Isaiah’s vision depends on a remaking, a recreating of relationship.
Paul’s writings to the Corinthians emphasizes this dependency on relationship: relationship with God, relationship with Jesus the Christ and relationship with one another. Isaiah thought OK we have the Temple back and all will be well but then along comes Jesus 500 years later and he looks around and the Temple is there and that is good, but nothing else has changed and some of the problems are with and within the Temple.
Throughout Jesus’ ministry we see this growing awareness that relationship is key: Jesus and the disciples, Jesus and Mary of Magdalena, Jesus and tax collectors, Jesus and Pharisees, Jesus and Mary, Martha and Lazarus, Jesus and women and men and children. Jesus and the thief on the cross. Jesus and Abba. Relationship is the key to a changed heart, a changed community and a changed world.
That is the Christian hope, not just some vision of heaven in heaven in some after life but a Kin-dom of God here and now. A vision of the future which shapes our living in this world in the present. We are called as Christians to live as people of hope. As we prepare to enter into the season of Advent and Christmas we are called into the vision of a new heaven and a new earth, A vision where one little baby makes a world of difference. A vision of harmony defined in the broadest of terms, with blessing poured out over everyone.
Our vision invites us to hope, our vision invites to dream, our vision invites us to walk in a new way, open our hearts, and see with new eyes the world God is re-creating new every day.
May it be so Amen
We spend a lot of time trying to understand our world – and by “we’ I mean “me”- I mean maybe you are like me_ I pick at things – ideas, issues, things that happen, things that don’t, big things, like racism and history, and geo-politics and social issues like homelessness and addiction, climate change and climate action, and I have questions, opinions, and I ideas that I hope are open to influence and change. So I read books and articles and watch the news and ask more questions and sometimes I just let things settle and see what happens next. I want to understand not just jump on the bandwagon because it is the issue du jour or because it is politically or socially correct.
And I want to understand because I have a vision, I want to understand because my vision is the one promised in Isaiah- a new heaven and a new earth, where the lamb and the lion co-exist in the peaceable kingdom. Rome and Israel co-exist, China, North Korea, the USA, Russia, Iran – the world co-exists for the benefit of all.
OK , I’m not convinced about the lion and the lamb although like Isaiah I think it is a great image. I just don’t believe we are going to or should change the lion’s behaviour when we are talking about animals – the lamb will get eaten when the lion is hungry but then I don’t believe humans are lions. We might instinctively want to devour, dominate, and win but we are capable of moderating, and changing our behaviour and our thinking. We can choose not to eat the lamb. That’s Isaiah’s opinion as well.
Isaiah is writing at a time when the exiled Jews have return to Jerusalem from Babylon. They are rebuilding the temple under the about the 6th century BCE, while they remain under the thumb of outside forces- in this case Cyrus the King of Persia, the Jews have been allowed the freedom to return and worship. They are in the process of rebuilding the temple – a process that will continue all the way to the first century and Herod.
The temple meant everything to those early Jews, like many peoples they believed that when Yahweh took up residence in a temple, blessings radiated out from that temple creating an ideal world. Our scripture passage this morning is filled with such images children thrive, people live to old age, crops are bountiful, the people are prosperous, wolves stop eating lambs. It is a time of joy and rejoicing.
And Isaiah points to the reality behind this picture of a beautiful world that reality is that this is God at work. God creates a new reality; and is creating a new world everyday. God’s creative work turns our world into a holy space, God’s territory. Divine blessings radiate as God recreates this cosmos: a world of harmony, prosperity and joy.
For Isaiah the miracle has already happened, the Jews are back in Jerusalem, the Temple has been rebuilt, God is back, the people can worship, the relationship between God and his people has been restored.
And this is what life should look like: there are no tears, no distress, no infant death and no disease, people have no need to steal or abuse. Everything, that has prevented creation from being what God intended it to be, is gone.
Imagine, the disasters we see in the world are not what determine the future of God’s creation. Terrorist activity and military power don’t have a place in God’s order of things. Political deception, abuse within the family or workplace, selfish exploitation and neglect of nature are not the way things have to be. And the suffering that these things bring, as well as that which seems to come by chance in illness or accident, will pass away. All that is evil will be seen for what it is, and all that is hurtful will be banished. That is the vision. Imagine!
And Isaiah’s vision is not just to the making new of the physical world, it is the renewing of the relationships and interconnections within the world. In fact Isaiah’s vision depends on a remaking, a recreating of relationship.
Paul’s writings to the Corinthians emphasizes this dependency on relationship: relationship with God, relationship with Jesus the Christ and relationship with one another. Isaiah thought OK we have the Temple back and all will be well but then along comes Jesus 500 years later and he looks around and the Temple is there and that is good, but nothing else has changed and some of the problems are with and within the Temple.
Throughout Jesus’ ministry we see this growing awareness that relationship is key: Jesus and the disciples, Jesus and Mary of Magdalena, Jesus and tax collectors, Jesus and Pharisees, Jesus and Mary, Martha and Lazarus, Jesus and women and men and children. Jesus and the thief on the cross. Jesus and Abba. Relationship is the key to a changed heart, a changed community and a changed world.
That is the Christian hope, not just some vision of heaven in heaven in some after life but a Kin-dom of God here and now. A vision of the future which shapes our living in this world in the present. We are called as Christians to live as people of hope. As we prepare to enter into the season of Advent and Christmas we are called into the vision of a new heaven and a new earth, A vision where one little baby makes a world of difference. A vision of harmony defined in the broadest of terms, with blessing poured out over everyone.
Our vision invites us to hope, our vision invites to dream, our vision invites us to walk in a new way, open our hearts, and see with new eyes the world God is re-creating new every day.
May it be so Amen
