Isaiah 65,17-19.23-25. Eternity Sunday

✠ One Message: Christ crucified and risen for you ✠

The Word of the Lord Endures Forever 

se cwide þæs béaggiefan ábireþ ferhþ

Isaiah 65,17-19.23-25     5618 

Ewigkeitssonntag; 27. Trinitatis 073

Katharina, Virgin, Martyr 306 

Isaac Watts, Father of English Hymnody. ✠ 1748 

25. November 2018 

1. O gracious Christ, we beseech You, You kill and make alive, You bring down to hell and raise up again, hear the cries of Your Church, so that Your heart is moved and You have mercy upon us as we await in tribulation Your second advent when You will restore creation to its purity.  Amen. (Starck 183) 

2. »„For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former things will not be remembered or come into mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in that which I create; for behold, I create Jerusalem to be a joy, and her people to be a gladness. I will rejoice in Jerusalem and be glad in My people; no more will be heard in it the sound of weeping and the cry of distress. They will not labor in vain or bear children for calamity, for they will be the offspring of the blessed of Yahweh, and their descendants with them. Before they call I will answer; while they are yet speaking I will hear. The wolf and the lamb will graze together; the lion will eat straw like the ox, and dust will be the serpent’s food. They will not hurt or destroy in all My holy mountain,“ says Yahweh.«  

3. The Prophet Isaiah describes, quite simply, an utopia. He says God will create eternal joy and gladness, the wolf and lamb will eat together and pain and destruction will be absent in heaven. Sir Thomas More coined the Greek word utopia for his 1516 novel Utopia which describes a fictional island society in the Atlantic Ocean. In Book I, More lays out the problems of 16. century Europe and in Book II More describes how the inhabitants of Utopia have solved those problems. In a way this is the outline of the Bible. We begin in Genesis 1 and 2 with men and women living in blissful Paradise. Genesis 3 describes how Paradise was lost and from Genesis 3 to Revelation, the Holy Scriptures describe how this Paradise will be restored by Yahweh. 

4. The polar opposite of utopia is dystopia, in which a community is characterized by dehumanization, totalitarian governments, environmental disaster or other characteristics associated with a cataclysmic decline in society. Since Adam’s fall into sin, we have been living in a dystopian world in some form or fashion. In the movie The Lord of the Rings, Galadriel narrates just such dystopia: „The world is changed. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air. Much that once was is lost, for none now live who remember it.“ The worst dystopian communities either self-destruct or are destroyed by the Lord. 

5. Popular literary dystopias are found in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and Susanne Collins’ The Hunger Games trilogy. The Bible also describes a number of extremely wicked dystopian communities on an already chaotic Earth: the world of Noah before the Great Flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, Nineveh and even Jerusalem. 

6. Such dystopian literature has been popular throughout all human history. The Old Testament talks about the great serpent Leviathan who dwells in the sea. The Norse have a similar Midgard Serpent, Jörmungandr, who threatens all that is good and holy. India has the story of Indra slaying the serpent Vrtra. To bring about an utopia, the dystopia must be defeated and destroyed; the dragon must be defeated by the noble hero. Thus Yahweh crushes the head of Leviathan (Psalm 74,14), and will slay the twisting Serpent that is in the sea (Isaiah 27,1). 

7. The Early Church used the image of Jesus as the bait to catch the Devil. „For the object of that mystery of the incarnation which we expounded just now was that the Divine nature of the Son of God, as though it were a hook concealed beneath the form and fashion of human flesh ... might lure on it the prince of this world to a conflict, to whom offering His flesh as a bait, His Divinity underneath might catch him and hold him fast with its hook, through the shedding of His immaculate blood“ (Rufinus Commentary on the Apostles’ Creed 15). „ … [I]t was not in the nature of the opposing power to come in contact with the undiluted presence of God, and to undergo His unclouded manifestation, therefore, in order to secure that the ransom in our behalf might be easily accepted by him who required it, the Deity was hidden under the veil of our nature, that so, as with ravenous fish, the hook of the Deity might be gulped down along with the bait of flesh, and thus, life being introduced into the house of death, and light shining in darkness, that which is diametrically opposed to light and life might vanish; for it is not in the nature of darkness to remain when light is present, or of death to exist when life is active“ (Gregory of Nyssa Great Catechism 24)

8. By catching and defeating the great Leviathan, the Devil, Jesus has removed the adversary of mankind and His creation. The next step in His Heilsgeschichte (salvation history) is to »create new heavens and a new earth where wolf and lamb will graze together.« This new heaven and earth will truly be an utopia. Isaiah describes it in terms familiar to human beings. Children will not suffer hunger, pain or other calamities. The hunter will mingle with its prey. Wolves and sheep will eat together peacefully. Lions will eat plants like the oxen. Isaiah describes a complete upheaval of this present world, an upheaval that will result in a re-created world that truly is the Paradise of Genesis 1 and 2. This eschatology finds its fulfillment in Christ Jesus’ death and resurrection. Heilseschatologie (salvation eschatology) is the future age of bliss when Paradise is restored, and this future age has been ushered in by Jesus. On the cross, Jesus told the insurrectionist crucified at His side: »Today you will be Me in Paradise« (Luke 23,43). The wise bridesmaids in today’s Gospel Reading had this promise of Paradise by faith, and each one of us also has that same promise of Paradise by faith solo Christo (through Christ alone).  Amen. 

9. Let us pray. O Christ,You make known the path of life; send us Your Spirit so that we may be in Your presence with the fullness of joy and receive from Your right hand both earthly and heavenly pleasures.  Amen. 

To God alone be the Glory 

Gode ealdore sy se cyneþrymm

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All Scriptural quotations are translations done by The Rev. Peter A. Bauernfeind using the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, 4. Edition © 1990 by the Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart, and the Novum Testamentum Graece, Nestle-Aland 28. Revised Edition © 2012 by Deutsch Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart. 

ELKB. Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche in Bayern. www.bayern-evangelisch.de/www/index.php. Copyright © 2013 Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche in Bayern. 

VELKD. Vereinigte Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche Deutschlands. www.velkd.de. Copyright © 2013 Vereinigte Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche Deutschlands. 

Starck, Johann Friedrich. Starck’s Prayer Book. Copyright © 2009 Concordia Publishing House.