When Jesus is asked how we should pray, the first line he offers is, “Our Father, who is in Heaven, hallowed be your name. Your Kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.” In this simple beginning to the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus sums up well the earth-focused trajectory of the Kingdom of God and of the Gospel itself. God’s mission for the entirety of the Biblical story is to take a heaven and earth that have been unnaturally separated by our sin and bring them back together as a single, unified heaven and earth reality. In the Biblical story, we witness the initial union of heaven and earth in Eden before the fall, where Adam and God walk together daily in the Garden. Soon after in Genesis 3, however, we witness humanity’s failure and the separation that breaks into the world as Adam and Eve are cast out of the Garden. Yet this is not the end of the story. All the way at the other end of the Bible, in Revelation 21, we are given a vision of a future reunion of heaven and earth – a “new heavens” and “new earth” that have been made one right here on our planet, and in which God and human beings live together intimately and without separation. How do we get from the Genesis 3 separation to the Revelation 21 reunion? This is the story of the Bible – and of our life into the present time.
After the Fall, God does not give up on his Creation, but begins a long and immensely patient healing work in our world. He begins by painstakingly raising up a people to live among and work through – this is the people of Israel, and it is the human community through which he starts to rebuild connection between heaven and earth. Through them, He introduces his laws and values, speaks directly through his prophets, and speaks through all of them as a community into the broader world around them. Ultimately, with Israel He sets the stage for his own entrance into our material existence.
When God takes on flesh in the person of Jesus, he reconciles heaven and earth in his own body. Jesus is fully God and fully human – and through his life and teaching, he becomes a living, breathing, place where heaven and earth exist as one reality. However, despite the planting of this beautiful seed of reconciliation in our world, the sin of humanity still leads to his unjust crucifixion, and ultimately his death and burial. The reconciliation of Heaven and Earth in the Person of the incarnated God is destroyed by our sin. And yet, through what CS Lewis calls a “deeper magic,” Jesus overcomes death itself and three days later rises from the grave. Jesus’ resurrection, which we celebrate every spring, confirms that God’s reconciling work has been successful – heaven and earth have in reality been brought together in the person of Jesus and planted in our present material world. Furthermore, his resurrected body births a new reality into our present suffering world. Jesus is the first fruit of what the Bible calls God’s “New Creation” – the reunited heaven and earth reality we see the culmination of in Revelation 21.
In light of all of this, the role of the church is now to participate in bringing the future Revelation 21 reunion of Heaven and Earth found in the resurrected Jesus to bear in the present suffering world around us. We do this by participating in the ongoing life and mission of Christ by faith and through the power of the Holy Spirit. Our goal is, most emphatically, not to escape a material world destined for destruction to live an immaterial life in a place called heaven – this is an ancient Greek philosophical idea taught by Plato. Rather, as Jesus has taught us to pray, we are to participate day by day in the breaking in of God’s New Creation – the bringing together of heaven and earth found in His risen Body and Revelation 21. This restoration, working its way through our material world as yeast works through dough, is what we call the Kingdom of God.
And so – the Good News is that God has never given up on our world – he has bled for it, died for it, and become part of it at great cost to Himself. And we, who are the reason for that separation and for all the suffering in our world, have now been invited through God’s immeasurable love for us to participate with Him in the healing and restoration of all things. This means that restoring the suffering creation around us is not just a Genesis 1 and 2 foundational vocation – it is at the very heart of the calling of the church and the trajectory of the Kingdom of God. We are called to participate, in every aspect of life there is, in the reconciling of Heaven and Earth as we walk together towards our Revelation 21 future. This is an immensely hopeful – and earth-focused – calling that God has given us. It is also the path of the cross – but that is another conversation …
RESOURCES FOR FURTHER STUDY:
“Surprised by Hope” by NT Wright - https://www.harpercollins.com/products/surprised-by-hope-n-t-wright?variant=32207610806306
3-part Biblical deep dive on the Christian calling to climate action – bit.ly/biblicalclimateaction
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