Dr. Jon Burnham preached this sermon from Revelation 21:1-6 at Batesville Presbyterian Church on May 6, 2007
David Buttrick tells the story about the Black woman deep in the bayous of Louisiana who had raised over a dozen children, most of them adopted and foster children. When a newspaper reporter asked her why she had done this, she replied, "I saw a new world a'comin." She saw a new world a'comin' and she is not the only one. The author of our scripture reading today from Revelation writes, "Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth." We, too, have witnessed a new heaven being built in the past couple of decades. This new heaven, called cyberspace, has demonstrated the law of accelerating returns.
Five years ago, no one had heard of Google. Today, the Google company is worth $100 billion. Today corporations have to be quick and nimble. Sony launches a new product once every twenty minutes and Disney launches a new product once every three minutes. When we examine the accelerating rate of change and imagine where it may lead us we find that Revelation's vision of God creating a new heaven and a new earth does not look as improbable as it did even a few years ago.
In his book, The Singularity is Near, inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil claims we are heading toward an event called a singularity some time around the year 2040. At that time the pace of technological change will be advancing so rapidly that ordinary humans will be unable to keep up with it. Kurzweil notes how the pace of change is accelerating exponentially. We've had 18% growth in constant dollars in information technology for the past 50 years. Take this 18% growth in constant dollars in information technology forward and things start to get really interesting. For instance, Kurzweil predicts that three years from now, by 2010, computers will disappear. They will be so small they will be embedded in our clothing and in our environment. Images will be written directly to our retina, providing full immersion virtual reality. We will be interacting with virtual personalities. The pace of technological change is speeding up as we move toward Kurzweil calls the singularity.
In the past several years we have experienced some exponential growth in our church as well. Batesville Presbyterian Church is not the same congregation we were seven years ago. Several years ago we didn't have many young families with children. Today, our church is predominantly young families with children. We are a young church with a bright future. We have been revitalized and we are now ready to move forward.
A couple of weeks ago the Long Range Planning Committee met with an architect to look at the layout of our church facilities. Over the course of our conversation I became convinced that we need to acknowledge how our church has grown younger by rearranging our current facilities to better reflect the church that we are today rather than the church we were several years ago. Our vision includes putting all the children on the Church Street side of our facilities and adding an elevator to make the upstairs accessible for youth and adult education. The Long Range Planning Committee hopes to display these plans and seek your input in the next few months.
I had always heard that God would create a new earth when I read Revelation chapter 21. What I hadn't noticed as much was that God will also create a new earth. In many ways, the book of Revelation, the last book in the Bible, compliments the book of Genesis, the first book in the Bible. In Genesis, God created the heavens and the earth. In Revelation, God creates a new heaven and a new earth. In due time, God will revitalize heaven and earth. We are ready for that to happen. In fact, more and more people are beginning to work toward revitalizing the earth with green technologies and practices that conserve, reduce and reuse. This is an old practice with new terminology. Our ancestors on the farms of this county and others practiced a kind of frugality that we have forgotten. We need to reclaim our past in our to prepare for our future. By taking responsibility for our actions and changing them as needed, we can reverse the current tide of consumption and leave our children a healthier planet.
As we look to the future, let's not forget the present moment. Someone once said, "The future is now," and I think that is how Jesus viewed the new heaven and new earth. Eternity begins in the present moment. Jesus said, "The kingdom of heaven is within you." In a mystical sense, Revelation 21 is about the inner transformation that occurs when God begins to disrupt our emotional programs for happiness. We are not amused when we learn the way of the cross means dying to our false self programs for happiness. We are not happy to know that God is not interested in our project for personal glorification. But as we work with the Spirit and deny our flesh, our sarx, our false self systems for emotional gratification, then the Spirit carves out more and more new space in which to operate. Little by little the Spirit cleanses us of the emotional wounds of a lifetime. It is as if our inner lives were a cramped and close attic in our house. As we clear out useless old stuff from the attic, we create more space to be filled with useful items. As we clear out the false self's system for happiness we find we have more room inside ourselves for God's light and love to flow.
"Revitalized and ready" is a term that applies on macro and the micro levels. On the macro level, God is already at work creating a new heaven and a new earth and God seeks our cooperation and assistance in this mighty project. We have a role to play in the greening of this planet and the more we learn and practice how to conserve energy then the more we can help God in creating a new earth. On a smaller macro level God has revitalized our congregation and we are ready to consolidate our gains by remodeling our facilities to better enhance our ministries. On the micro level, God's Spirit is ever working in our hearts, wills, and unconscious minds to bring about revitalization and make us ready for greater service.
God is ever busy creating a new heaven a new earth. God calls us to participate in this great project. The vision in Revelation says it well, "And the one who was seated on the throne said, 'See, I am making all things new.'" God is in the business of making things new. God is revitalizing the heavens and the earth, this congregation, and each of us as individuals. Let us participate in God's great project of revitalization. We are revitalized and ready to move forward. Let us open ourselves to God in the present moment and go forth with God into the future.
