I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had vanished, and there was no longer any sea. (Revelation 21:1 REB)

As I have been sharing from the theme of Shalom and the Spirituality of New Creation over the last couple of weeks, I want to turn our attention to heaven, and particularly to some misconceptions we have taken for granted regarding it. I want to do this in a couple ways. This week, I want to explore with us the greater vision of God’s story—what it is that God is doing and where this is all leading to according to the Scriptures. Next week, I will offer how our misconception of heaven has wrongly affected our understanding of our relationship with Christ and the purpose of our faith, particularly as this relates to our destiny.

Some years ago, I came across this quote from the New Testament scholar N.T. Wright: “Heaven is important but it’s not the end of the world.” There is some humor that is attached to this statement, and I hope we may see it as such. Yet what Wright is suggesting here is quite important in how many Christians today understand the meaning of the Christian faith. Basically, it is something along the following line: “God sent Jesus to die for my sins, so that by believing in him I can go to heaven when I die.” Now it is not my purpose to discourage any from placing their faith in Jesus Christ. Rather, it is my hope that all who do so receive hope and assurance for this life and for the life to come. Rather, I am convinced the story of Scripture points to so much more for us to live with presently as we anticipate the coming new creation which we have heard about over the last couple of weeks in this blog.

In these recent weeks I have shared with us of God’s “palingenesia” (again genesis) and the “apokatastaseos” (universal restoration). These are ways of understanding what it is that God is doing, where God’s story is going, and where God is taking us as we join him in his story, through our faith in Jesus Christ. I marvel at the scene John relates beginning in Revelation 21 as he describes the “new heaven and the new earth.” He goes on to write about this as “God making his home among people, being with them, wiping every tear from their eyes, with the end of death, mourning, crying and pain” (Revelation 21:4). This follows the resurrection of the dead John describes in Revelation 20.  (Paul also writes of this in 1 Corinthians 15.) This is about new life, in new bodies in God’s “new heaven and earth.”  All of this points, as we have seen previously, to God’s restoring and healing of his good creation from the stain of sin, brokenness, and death. For us, it means experiencing in the presence of God, new life in bodies impervious to decay and desolation.

So, what does this mean for loved ones who have died? Where are they now? In a word, they are with the Lord and in his care presently, and they, like us, await God’s, “more to come.” This is at the heart of what Jesus was saying to his disciples in the upper room in John 14:3:

                       “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will
                       take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.”

The “place” that Jesus speaks of “preparing” here, is perhaps best understood not as a place of permanence, but like that of an inn, or temporary residence, according to scholars such as N.T. Wright, of whom I referred to earlier.

In the hours following, when our Lord hung on the cross, Luke records the request of the criminal who hung beside him asking Jesus to “remember” him when Jesus would "come into his kingdom.” Jesus responded in Luke 23:43:

                          “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.”

The word, “paradise” here, according to scholars, refers to a garden, or we may think of it as a place of refreshment. In my own mind, the image of an oasis comes to mind as a respite for travelers during a desert crossing where they can rest and be refreshed and renewed.

Oh, there is so much more. But in all of this, my hope is that we can begin to perceive God’s great, and vast, and wonderful vision and purpose for us, and all things. May we anticipate “the new heaven and the new earth” which is coming and which, as we have already alluded to in the previous blogs, has begun and is now taking place because of Jesus’ resurrection. God’s “new heaven and new earth”—may this be the vision we live with, and the hope we live for.

Stay tuned, there’s more coming. In the meantime, peace be with you.