Isaiah 65:16-18
Revelation 21:1-6

All Things New
On this first Sunday of the New Year, I’m reading outside the lectionary because this phrase from Revelation is on my mind. “See, I am making all things new” or as the King James has it, “Behold, I make all things new.”
“Behold, I make all things new.”
The book of Revelation was written by John on the island of Patmos around the year 95. The name John appears several times in the Bible, so to be clear, this is not John the author of the fourth Gospel, rather, this is John who lived on Patmos during a time when Christians were beginning to be harassed by the Roman government. We don’t know very much about John of Patmos. He was probably originally from Palestine but was exiled to Patmos because of his preaching. The text was written in Greek, and we can think of John of Patmos as an early Christian prophet.
And by the way, Patmos would not be such a bad place to be exiled, at least, not for me. I looked it up. It’s an island in the Aegean Sea, between Greece and Turkey, and it’s stunningly beautiful. John lived in a cave on Patmos, halfway up a mountainside, overlooking the sea, and that is where he wrote the Book of Revelation. You can visit the place today. It’s a famous Christian pilgrimage site. I found a travel video showing John’s Cave and the monastery there, and I’ve included a link to it in the written text of this sermon, so if you’re so inclined, you can take a virtual walk to see where John lived and wrote.

Cave of Apocalypse walk in Patmos island, Greece

John had a mystical experience in the cave at Patmos. As the story goes, inside the cave, there are three cracks in the rock famously called the “triple crack” and this was where John heard the voice of God speaking to him through the crack in the rock. This is where John heard the voice of Jesus saying, “Behold, I create all things new.”
As I was writing this little message and thinking about “all things new,” I opened the window curtain in my little upstairs office where I work at home, to look outside, and there in the apple tree branches outside the window was sitting a red cardinal. Immediately, the sight of this bird took my breath away. It was so new, and so vivid, perched in the branches, bright in the morning sunshine, and I thought: “There it is! There is my sermon for tomorrow.” The bright red bird in the apple tree. Just this. “Behold, I create all things new.”
Each moment is new. Each moment is a new heaven and a new earth. This is the Christian message. Through Christ’s birth, death, and resurrection, we can be reborn to a new life. If we look for it, we will see that we are right now the children of God and we are made wholly and completely new, reborn to new life in Christ. “Behold, I create all things new.” This was John’s mystical vision. It’s an experience. And it’s something we can each experience for ourselves.
You know, we have all been wounded. We each carry wounds. We each carry the battle scars of our past injuries, the things we have suffered, our core wounds: from our parents, from our enemies, from our broken relationships… And yet, we are more than our wounds. We are more than our brokenness. More than our scars. In fact, we are ok, just as we are, right now. We are enough.
It can be quite shocking, actually, to finally realize that one is enough. To realize that I am ok. To realize that there is nothing left to prove. Just as I am, right now, I am enough. I’m ok. And in this realization, there is new life. This is the bright red bird in the apple tree. “Behold, I create all things new,” says the Christ.
To be reborn is the Christian message. To be reborn into a new life, a new heaven and a new earth. You know, at New Years, we have this saying: “Out with the old and in with the new.” But it’s more complicated than that, isn’t it? It’s more complicated than simply saying, “Out with the old.”
There is a pattern in life we begin to recognize as a pattern of death and rebirth. This is the Christ pattern. The mystery of our faith is summarized in the statement, “Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.” And here we see that for there to be rebirth, there first must be death. You cannot be reborn unless you first die.
In the same way, I cannot fully enter the New Year and the new life the new year brings without first dying to the old, and allowing the old year to die, completely.
The problem is that we carry vestiges of the past with us. We carry the shadows, the residual impressions of the past. In other words, we carry our ghosts, and we cannot let them go. We cannot allow our ghosts to completely die. And so, they haunt us. But what are these ghosts, really? Are they not simply our thoughts? How do we let them go? How do we allow the painful ghosts of the past to completely die so that we may be reborn into new life?
Love them. Love the ghosts. Accept them. Thank them for what they taught you. All the injustices, all the hurtful things that happened, all the unfair losses. Love them. Wish them well. Wish them to be happy. Wish them to be peaceful. Wish them all good things. And then, allow the ghosts to disappear, to evaporate, to be gone. Then, and only then, you will be free and ready to open the window curtains and see the bright red bird in the apple tree. “Behold, I create all things new.”
The Christ is still speaking to us when we are ready to listen: “Behold,” he says, “I create all things new.”
May you have a Happy and Blessed New Year.
Amen? Amen.