Introduction: Stories
Right now, we are having our School of Theology.
Instead of a particular passage of scripture,
we look at what the whole Bible says about a theological theme.
It is about building up our Christian worldview – the big picture framework.
Currently, the theme is creation.
So, we are sweeping right through the biblical story,
from the first creation in Genesis to the new creation in Revelation
it’s God’s super story – the context for our individual sub-stories,
God’s long-term plan that gives purpose and direction to the little plots of our lives.
now, many stories fall into a three-part structure.
For example, your typical romance:
boy meets girl, fall happily in love – part one
then, tragic separation – part two:
maybe boy goes off to war, or their families separate them.
But, at long last, the couple are reunited, marry, live happily ever after etc-part three.
An average chick flick, I suppose?
For the guys, take a Hollywood action movie.
People are going to work or chilling out, their normal lives – part one
then, suddenly, the sky turns dark, it’s an alien battleship, we’re under attack!
Or, at the beach, a surfer screams, he’s dragged under
it’s a shark – Jaws!
Chaos and turmoil. The struggle begins. Will humanity survive? – part two
But at last, the bugs are blown up, the shark is slain,
Peace and order are restored – part three.
In short: good-bad-good; or harmony-conflict-resolution.
In many ways, this sort of three part plot is the story of the Bible.
A three act play of Creation, fall, redemption
which, as we’ll see, can be read as a divine romance or a cosmic battle.
John asked me to plan this series, and I remembered from Sunday school the gospel story in colours:
green, black, red, gold
yes – four acts, not three like Hollywood.
That’s significant and we will come to it, but first
let’s recap the shades of the story so far:
Act One: Creation 100% Pure – Clean and Green
“in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”
the first two chapters of Genesis
I think the central take home message is this:
creation is good, but it is not God.
That might sound obvious, but actually it’s not
it rules out major rival stories.
Ever since the ancient Greeks like Plato, many people have believed that creation itself is the fall.
Our souls are trapped in sinful physical bodies like a prison.
We gotta break out and float back up to the light.
The story is still floating around today.
Some eastern religions, new age thinkers, and even in the church.
By contrast, in Genesis chapter 1,
the chorus on every day of creation resounds “God saw that it was good.”.
As for human beings, we are made in the image of God (Genesis 1:26-27).
God put us in the garden to look after it as his representatives.
Humans are to be “priests of creation”.
Like kings and queens, wisely ruling the earth to the glory of God.
in the garden of Eden, humanity lived in a rich network of relationships:
close to God, each other, and the good fruitful earth.
It was the original Golden Age,[1] that ever since we’ve been homesick for.
Act Two: Creation and Fall – Blackout
creation is good but not God,
humans are in the image of God but are not gods themselves.
So there are two ways we can go wrong.
We can treat creation as if it were God – idolatry.
Or we can write it off as worthless – what an insult to its maker.
I can act as if I am God; I am the author of my story.
Or I can despair: forget my infinite value as an image of God.[2]
As we know, in Genesis chapter 3, Adam and Eve were tempted,
they ate from the forbidden tree.
They tried to become like God
And that rich matrix of relationships shattered like a broken mirror.
humans are the crown of creation, so when we fell, creation fell with us.
No longer 100% pure.
Even the ground was cursed with thorns and thistles.
The clean and green creation was darkened.
The lights went out like a wartime blackout.
Now, there was death.
One of the neat things about the Bible is that,
the more you read it, the more you discover images and themes that reappear, combine, contrast,
deepen the meaning in new ways
Creation and Fall: Take Two
So here’s a different take on Creation:
Genesis 1 began with God’s Spirit blowing over the dark waters.
In many ancient near eastern cultures, this primaeval ocean was a symbol of chaos and evil
the creator god fought the sea and killed its monsters.
In the biblical creation, God sets boundaries of the sea, so it can come no further (proverbs 7:29)
and we even meet monsters like Leviathan and Rahab.
Imagine a sort of spiritual, super-sized Jaws.
You Lord rule over the surging sea;
when its waves mount up, you still them.
You crushed Rahab like a carcass;
with your strong arm you scattered your enemies.
The heavens are yours, and yours also the earth;
you founded the world and all that is in it.
Psalm 89:9-11[3]
Creation as a marine battle
defeating the waters of chaos and nothingness
This picture is applied to the Exodus, when God rescued his people Israel out of slavery in Egypt.
God defeated Pharaoh, the dragon in the seas (eg Ezekiel 32:2)
he blew back the Red Sea, to make dry land – just like Genesis – so his people could pass through.
a new creation – the birth of Israel
Was it not you who cut Rahab to pieces,
who pierced that monster, the Dragon ?
Was it not you who dried up the sea,
who made a road in the depths of the deep
so that the redeemed might cross over?
Isaiah 51:9-11
40 years later, they were in the Promised Land,
it was a sort of new Eden:
Again, the presence of God
People lived in harmony
The fertile land flowed with milk and honey.
It was the Golden Age of Israel.[4]
Sadly, however, it didn’t last
the rest of Old Testament history is like a slow motion replay of Genesis 3 stretched over centuries
What happened with Adam and Eve,
happens all over again with the people of Israel.
Many of them forgot that creation is not God.
They worshipped idols.
Again, things fell apart.
By the end,
Jerusalem was in ruins, the land infertile.[5]
and like Adam and Eve, the people were driven out into exile.
Adam and Eve, then the people of Israel, and it’s really the same for us
the same old story
God blesses us, but we rebel and turn away.
Our relationships suffer.
And, like never before, today we can see the literal physical impact of human sin on creation.
the fall isn’t just an ancient myth: it’s our story today.
Looking Forward: Two Future Stories
so here we are.
Paradise lost
Creation and fall.
Green and black.
For chick flick fans, the romance has turned sour – get out your hankies
the old testament portrays God as a heartbroken husband, betrayed and abandoned by his beloved people.
For blokes, the aliens have landed
like evil monsters, sin and death slithered up from the seas and invaded God’s good world.
Where does the story go from here?
Which side will win?
How will it all end?
Will our hero win back his bride?
when we look to the future, for what can we hope?
Who here is an optimist? Here’s a story for you
Story One: Onwards and Upwards
Every day, in every way, we’re getting better and better
look at the stunning progress of human knowledge, science, technology, exploration over the last centuries.
We don’t need God now, we’ve escaped the bad old days, the dark ages,
We can defeat disease, solve our problems, cure the curse
we ourselves can bring in the new golden age.[6]
That sounds pretty cheerful, but let’s not forget the cynics and pessimists – here’s a tale for you.
Story Two: Doom and Gloom
Every day, in every way, the world is getting worse and worse.
It’s all downhill from here.
The marriage – it’s over.
The monsters have won.
There’s a (Conservative) Christian version:
God’s not interested in the material world
It’s fallen, so he’s going to trash it on judgement day.
The only thing worth doing is saving souls for heaven before the whole shebang goes down.
lifeboat theology.
remember those two basic ways we can go wrong?
act like we ourselves are God, we are the author of the story.
Or deny that creation is good.
Here they are again.
Do you think we sometimes slip into one of these mindsets?
On one hand, we can think everything depends on our Christian programs, our church growth strategies, our human efforts
on the other, we can get spiritual tunnel vision and forget that all of creation, all of life, matters to God.
By contrast to these two accounts, the people of Israel told a third story about the future,
unlike the second sad story, it gave them hope for this world.
Unlike the first story, it’s a hope that is not based on us
Let’s play spot the plot in these verses from the prophet Isaiah
Israel’s Third Story: God’s New Creation
Isaiah 51:3 The LORD will comfort Zion
and will look with compassion on all her ruins;
he will make her deserts like Eden,
her wastelands like the garden of the LORD.[7]
Isaiah 55:12
the mountains and hills
will burst into song,
and all the trees of the field
will clap their hands.
Isaiah 11:6-9
The wolf will live with the lamb,
The infant will play near the cobra…
the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD
as the waters cover the sea.[8]
Isaiah 25:6-8
On this mountain the LORD Almighty will prepare
a feast of rich food for all peoples,
On this mountain he will destroy
the shroud that enfolds all peoples,
the sheet that covers all nations;
he will swallow up death forever.
what a vision!
What a hope!
It’s not about Israel manufacturing a new golden age – that first story.
It’s more than individual souls getting to heaven – that second story.
The biblical hope is for
Restoration of the whole person – body and spirit together (the Bible rarely makes a distinction between them),
as part of the whole community of God’s people – the great feast,
within the whole good creation.
God saves wholes, not just souls.
Your dead will live;
their bodies will rise.
You who dwell in the dust,
wake up and shout for joy!
Isaiah 26:19
But as the Old Testament draws to a close,
this hope had not yet been fulfilled.
which brings us to act three of our drama.
Act Three: Creation and Christ – Redemption
sometimes we think God the Father first made the world.
But that didn’t work out, so God switched to plan B:
Jesus Christ came to save humanity.
Creation and salvation are split apart.
But last time, we read Colossians 1:15-20
by Christ all things in heaven and on earth were created… Through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven…
All things are what Christ made – and what did he come to save?
– all things![9]
Maybe creation and redemption are part of the same package and plan.
Reinforcing this idea
Paul called Christ the second Adam – the first new man.[10]
he is the true image of God, what we were meant to be.
the first Adam failed to look after the garden,
but Christ puts creation right, freeing it from sin and death.
in the Gospels, the blind see, the deaf hear, the lame walk, the dead rise
again the raging waters threaten human life
– the disciples bobbing in their fishing boat, as the storm sweeps in.
Jesus walks all over them, he rebukes the wind and stills the waves.
Like God did at creation and Exodus.
But it wasn’t an easy victory.
to free creation from the curse, Christ suffered its worst effects – that is, death.
Act three is blood red for the cross.
And we hear more echos of Eden.
What was the sign of the earth’s curse?
– thorns: how appropriate that Christ was crowned, bloodied, with thorns
He was buried in a garden.
When he rose, Mary thought he was the gardener – and really, she was right!
Picking up the job the first Adam walked away from
Weeding out sin and tending the green shoots of God’s new creation.
Yes, creation and redemption go together.
a mediaeval legend even said Adam was buried at Calvary,
and the wood of the cross, that brought us new life,
came from the tree of life in Eden.[11]
In God’s story, green and red are intertwined.
Now we approach a twist in our tale.
Christians believe that “if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17)
others may well ask, “where is this new creation?” (2 Peter 3:3ff)
Look around you: the vision of prophets like Isaiah has not arrived.
It’s a problem
it’s the tension that split apart Judaism and Christianity.
Early Jews and Christians both believed that at the end of this age
God would raise all the righteous from the dead.
So Martha says to Jesus after her brother Lazarus has died,
“I know he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” (John 11:24)
but here’s the Christian difference:
Jesus rose from the dead
in the middle of the old age, one person had been raised in advance.[12]
The resurrection, the last days, had begun.
Christians realized the expected final act of the three part drama had split into two stages.
Stage one: the resurrection of Christ.
– Paul called Christ, “The beginning and the firstborn from the dead.” (Colossians 1:18)[13]
stage two, still to come, what Martha was waiting for: when we rise from the dead to join him.[14]
that’s why our Christian drama is four acts.
remember the Hollywood three: good-bad-good
Hollywood part three has begun before part two is over.
Right now, we are living in act three of God’s story.
our present has been invaded by God’s future
Christ’s resurrection is like fresh green grass growing through a crack in blackened old concrete.
the last day has dawned
Like a golden glow on the highest mountain peaks, we can see the sun is rising,
even though down here in the valley things are still pretty dark.
Parts two and three of the story, sin and salvation, currently overlap
Christ is already risen, but we are not yet
It’s like an agonising dissonance, a musical chord that cries out for harmonious resolution
we’re waiting for act four – pure gold.
Act Four: Creation and New Creation – The Golden Age
we asked the question, what is our future hope?
Here’s the Christian answer in one sentence:
“One day, God will do for the whole cosmos what he did for Jesus at Easter.”
That is from New Testament scholar Tom Wright.
if you want to know more about the biblical hope, I recommend his book.
“Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church” (2008)
less substantial, maybe a little easier to read, “Heaven” by Randy Alcorn (2004)
both authors have articles, interviews, etc online
“One day, God will do for the whole cosmos what he did for Jesus at Easter.”
I love that line, but what does it mean?
much more than disembodied souls
God raised Christ with a physical body – both similar and different to what we have now.
Jesus barbecued fish on the beach, he ate it,
he said to his disciples, “Touch me – see, I’m not a ghost!” (Luke 24:39)
And yet, his body was different.
Glorious, powerful, imperishable as gold (1 Corinthians 15)
maybe a bit like figure skaters in the Winter Olympics a few weeks ago
what strength and grace and beauty!
when he returns, Jesus will transform our lowly bodies to be like his glorious body. (Philippians 3:20-21)
That’s why the Apostles Creed says, I believe in “the resurrection of the body.”
What’s more, Christians can say we believe in “the resurrection of all creation.”
In Romans 8, Paul says all of nature is groaning as in labour pains,
longing for the day when
“the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay
and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.” (Romans 8:19-23)
It’s the exodus of the universe.
all things reconciled, the entire creation set free,
That’s the grand scope of salvation in Christ![15]
One day, what happened in and with Jesus on an individual scale will occur on a cosmic scale.
God will do for the whole creation what he did for Jesus at Easter.
The Significance of Stories
The stories we tell matter.
Especially the super stories, the big picture frameworks,
that give purpose and coherence to our lives.
They really matter.
Like the punch line of a joke, the end of the tale shapes its whole meaning.
You can only understand history from its endpoint
The story we tell about the future effects our lives in the present.
A 2005 CBS News poll found 78% of Americans believe in life after death.
A 1997 survey in Time magazine (March 31), showed that two thirds of these Americans claiming to believe in life after death reject a bodily resurrection.
They’ve lost the plot of God’s big creation drama,
Forgotten God said creation was good, effectively chopped off his first act so the story really starts with black.
No wonder there’s nothing good to resurrect for them.
They’ve written off all those Old Testament prophecies – and we just saw a fraction –
about the whole earth rejoicing together at the goodness of God’s salvation.
shrunk our golden hope down to disembodied souls singing in heaven.
If that’s your story, it has some implications:
big business pumping out pollution?
We are wiping species off the planet?
So what?
God’s gonna wipe out the whole earth![16]
Fighting injustice or poverty or corruption?
Waste of time.
Salvation’s not about this world
we are going up to heaven when we die
evangelism is all that matters – just save souls.
Watered down, emaciated lifeboat theology.
Maybe it’s this story that Karl Marx meant when he said religion is the opium of the people.
– it stops them fighting for a better world.[17],[18]
But if we get a grip on God’s great saga.
– the multicoloured polychromatic chronicle of the cosmos.
We’ll see the mission of God is far bigger.
we are saved as wholes, not just souls,
so it is not just so-called “spiritual” work that is valuable to God.
It’s not just pastors, evangelists, missionaries, professional Christians, who are building for the kingdom.
Think of a mediaeval cathedral.
A stonemason chips away at a statue, an artisan carves wood, another works on stained glass.
A cook feeds the workers, a tailor clothes them, a priest encourages them, an accountant pays them.
An architect dreams of soaring spires
an engineer calculates the strength to carry them.
A whole community with all their different abilities, building together over generations for the glory of God,
That sounds like Paul’s body of Christ to me (1 Corinthians 12)
imagine the joy workers would feel if resurrected centuries later, when the cathedral was complete,
and they could see the part their work had played.
Hey, look up there on the façade – there’s that little statue I carved.
Look at the sun shining through that stained-glass window – isn’t that glorious?
That was made by a guy who was so down he was going to give up, but I encouraged him.
Paul said that if Christ was not raised, our faith is futile and his preaching was in vain.
We might as well eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die (1 Corinthians 15:14,17, 32)
But because Christ has been raised,
“you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.” (1 Corinthians 15:58)
one day we will see the fruit of our work. Nothing will be wasted.
everything we have done to honour God and bless others
will be taken up, perfected and resurrected with us in the new Jerusalem.
“Therefore, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord,
because you know that in the Lord your labour is not in vain.”[19]
Conclusion: the Golden Ending
The Bible’s big picture is framed by Genesis 1-2 and Revelation 21-22
like matching bookends, the prologue and epilogue of our saga.
“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1)
In the end, the prophet wrote,
“I saw a new heaven and a new earth,
for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea.”
Revelation 21:1.
If you’ve bought into lifeboat theology,
aha, you might think – this proves it: creation will pass away.
But remember the death and resurrection of Jesus.
His old body passed away, yeah,
but it wasn’t destroyed – it was transformed into the new.
As for the first fruits, so for the whole harvest.
Revelation 21:1 also says, “no longer any sea”
That’s bad news for literalistic surfers.
But very good news for poetic theologians.
As we’ve seen, the raging ocean is a biblical symbol of evil,
Out of it even comes, in Revelation, the anti-Christ beast.
now the monsters of the sea that try to dissolve and destroy God’s creation,
like that ancient serpent the devil, have all been slain. (Revelation 20:2)
It’s the “extinction of extinction”
Death has been swallowed up in victory (1 Corinthians 15:54)
green, black, red
Now at last, the Golden Age is here.
The Golden Age:
It’s the last part of that threefold Hollywood story, or the final act four of God’s drama:
The evil aliens are smouldering corpses.
shark meat is sizzling on the barbecue
For the less macho version, here’s Revelation 21:2
I saw the Holy City, the New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God,
prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.
it’s the reverse of the rapture:
Not souls snatched up to heaven,
But the New Jerusalem coming down to earth.[20]
The lovers are reunited at last
the long awaited wedding of Christ and his church, God and his people, has come.
It’s happily ever after in the city of gold.
Two weeks today is Easter Sunday.
We’ll look back and remember our redemption and Christ’s resurrection
act three of God’s great story.
And we can look forward to act four, and work towards it now.
the golden age.
When God will resurrect the whole created cosmos, just like he raised Christ at Easter.
Wake up O sleeper!
Rise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you.
Ephesians 5:14
[1] we even have the first mention of gold in the Bible: like everything else, “the gold of that land is good.” (Genesis 2:12)
[2] Note that the image of God in us is damaged and deformed by sin, but not destroyed. Genesis 9:6 repeats "in his image God made humankind" – after the fall!
[3] Also Psalm 74:12-17. Jeremiah 4:23-26 depicts the exile of Israel as a sort of undoing of creation, with the earth becoming formless and empty again and The light of the heavens vanishing.
[4] Indeed, King Solomon made gold as plentiful as stones in Jerusalem. (2 Chronicles 1:15)
[5] symbols of the anti-creation forces in Genesis: thorns and the sea, come back. the old testament compares the surrounding nations to thorns in Israel’s side and to the raging sea, trying to sweep Israel away
[6] especially in the 19th century, many Liberal Christians bought in to this belief: the true meaning of the gospel is the infinite potential of humanity. evil monsters? sin and Satan? Come on, we don’t believe that stuff any more.
[7] Cf Ezekiel 36:33-36 "This land that was laid waste has become like the garden of Eden."
[8] God planned to flood universe with himself. In part, the world is so beautiful, because it is designed as a receptacle for God’s love, "designed to be filled, flooded, drenched in God, as a chalice is beautiful, not least because of what he know it was designed to contain or as a violin is beautiful, not least because we know the music of which it is capable" (NT Wright)
[9] again, in Ephesians 1:10, God’s plan is "to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ."
[10] Romans 5:12-21, 1 Corinthians 15:21-22. To highlight this connection between Adam and Christ, mystery plays in the middle ages deliberately used the same actor for both.
[11] So mystery plays often deliberately used the same actor for Adam and Christ.
[12] Jesus replies to Martha, who expects a resurrection in the distant future, "I am the resurrection and the life"-already in the present!
[13] “within a large family” Romans 8:29, the first fruits from the dead (1 Corinthians 15:20)
[14] the resurrection of Christ was not a one-off but a first off, abnormal, but the new norm, an exception to the rule, but the new rule (Morton, 2004). Orthodox Easter icons show the risen Christ pulling Adam and Eve up out of the grave.
[15] Peter in Acts preaches about the "universal restoration of all things" that God promised long ago through the prophets (Act 3:21). The noun apokatastasis was often used of repairs and restoration of temples. The verb is used of Christ restoring a man’s withered right-hand (Matthew 12:13, Mark 3:5) or a blind man’s sight (Mark 8:25) – putting creation right on a small scale as he will on a large when he returns. Also the disciples hope of God restoring the kingdom to Israel (acts 1:6), and the hope that Elijah will come and restore all things (Matthew 7:11). In Matthew, Jesus spoke of the "renewal of all things" (Matthew 19:28). The word is palin-genesia, which can mean rebirth, restoration, regeneration, literally, re-Genesis, another Genesis, a new, or renewed, creation.
[16] 2 Peter 3:5-10 appears the classic argument for this position. " The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will" – often "burned up"- destroyed – in older translations, but the better manuscripts probably read "disclosed" or "laid bare". Perhaps an image like that of Paul in 1 Corinthians 3:13: the fire on the last day that tests the quality of everyone’s work, burning up the straw and revealing the gold to be of lasting value. Furthermore, Peter’s model was the flood in Noah’s time, which purified rather than destroyed the planet. Remember God’s promise of the rainbow after the flood to never again destroy all living things (Genesis 8:21)
[17] by contrast, Jurgen Moltman, whose theology centres on hope, writes "the goad of the promised future stabs inexorably into the flesh of every unfulfilled present". So eschatology is "the doctrine of Christian hope … forward-looking and forward moving, and also revolutionising and transforming the present", as we are moved by "faith and love that spring from the hope that is stored up for you in heaven." (Colossians 1:4-5) Marxism is perhaps a good example of the dangerous implications that may flow from the myth of human driven progress, in this case the workers’ revolution that would bring the golden age of the Communist paradise. When we forget that is first and foremost God’s business to bring the new golden age-we are just privileged co-workers; when we think, everything depends on us, then reforming zeal often tends to violently override those who appear to hinder its vision. By contrast, we should not "rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead." (2 Corinthians 1:9). Someone once asked missionary theologian Leslie Newbigin whether he was an optimist or a pessimist about the future. He replied, I am neither: Christ is risen from the dead!
[18] NT Wright: “Never at any point do the Gospels or Paul say Jesus has been raised, therefore we are we are all going to heaven. They all say, Jesus is raised, therefore the new creation has begun, and we have a job to do…. What the New Testament really says is God wants you to be a renewed human being helping him to renew his creation, and his resurrection was the opening bell. And when he returns to fulfil the plan, you won’t be going up there to him, he’ll be coming down here.”
Brian McLaren: "Jesus’ message is not actually about escaping this troubled world for heaven’s blissful shores, as is popularly assumed, but instead is about God’s will being done on this troubled earth as it is in heaven."
[19] the church is called to be an "enclave of the future", a colony of heaven on earth (Philippians 3:21). Christian ethics is about celebrating and embodying the new creation of the resurrection. It’s practicing in the present the tunes we’ll sing in God’s new world. (NT Wright) It’s not "oiling the wheels of a machine about to roll over a clifftop. It’s not restoring a great painting shortly going to be thrown on the fire. It’s not planting roses in the garden that’s about to be dug up for a building site." (NT Wright).
[20] the classic rapture text is Thessalonians 4:17-"caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air." This is the parousia, presence or coming of Christ. The word had two meanings of interest (BAGD): a cult expression for the coming of a hidden divinity, who makes his presence felt, revealing his power, often by healing. The visit of a high-ranking person to a province, especially a king or governor. In 1 Thessalonians 4:17, to meet is apantao. The word refers to the procession of citizens going out to meet this honourable visitor and accompany them back into the city. The same word occurs in Matthew 25:6 (10 virgins meeting the bridegroom), and Acts 28:15-16 (Roman Christians coming out to meet Paul as he enters their city).
