We Are A New Creation

Things were "very good" in Eden.  Can we go back to that original joy?  Yes!  Deacon Michael talks about how Jesus reverses everything about the Fall, and shows us that we can go home again.

But first Deacon Michael talks about the fact that Christians have been the target of political purges since the Jews and Romans first tried to purge the Christians in Jerusalem. And this is true even today as we struggle with evil in the world.

written by Laura Weston

IF YOU LIKE, READ ALONG AS YOU LISTEN:

These are nice long readings, so I don’t have to talk very much.  But I want to bring two points, one of which will be recurring, I hope, depending on what the readings are.

The first is: one of the questions that is fascinating about the early Christians is, we know the Jews wanted to persecute them.  We understand why the Jews wanted to persecute them.  They were a disruptive influence.  But why, when they went into the gentile world, did people want to persecute them, particularly the Romans?

There is a fascinating book that I read, I can't remember the name of it exactly, it was "How the Romans saw the First Christians."  And this provided an answer.  I haven't done any more research than that, but it is very interesting.

It is that the Romans, who would go into areas, conquer then, and basically co-opt their religions that they deemed to be religions.  They would persecute the ones that they believed to be superstitions.  And Christianity was a superstition because they could accept the fact, they, the Romans, could accept the fact that their gods could come in and take the material world, no matter how formless it might be, and change it into something.  They couldn't accept the fact that God was the origin of everything, including all matter.  That before God there was nothing.  And anybody who believed that, by definition, was superstitious.

The other thing, the motif, that we see in these readings today, is very important, and it recurs, if you read the gospel, you will see it recurring time and time and time again, is that we have the creation of the world, the universe, and God says, "This is very good."  And we then know that we see Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, and then we find Original Sin and the “very good” of creation, God's creation, is disrupted.

So what we hear in the New Testament is, we talk about the new covenant, the new Adam, the new Eve, the new creation.

The gospel, and Jesus, is a new creation and one way that you see in the gospel, and you also see it in many people who are on theological discussions, is there is a very strong reversal and replacement motif that goes on.  That the creation of God was perverted by man, and we see this right now with the cleansing and everything else in the tradition and not taking care of your parents, because you are following traditions, not the teaching of God, and that Jesus is a reversal of that.  A reversal that will remove the impediments keeping us away from God.  And that through Him there will be such a reversal that, on an individual basis, though our lives, the opportunity to go to heaven.  And on a universal basis there is a reversal that is occurring that will ultimately end up with the Garden of Eden again, and Heaven.

And if you read the book of Revelation, that is a very strong motif.  You will see, basically, in parts of the motif, you will almost see the creation story out of Genesis, the one that we were just listening to, repeated in the form of Revelation and ending up in Heaven.  And the reversal of all the consequences of Original Sin.

So when you read the gospel, many times, if you want to look at some things that are occurring, look for the reversal motif of the replacement of what existed that was perverted by Man, through Our Lord Jesus Christ.  And see Him as the new creation replacing the old creation, giving us, again, the promise of eternal life on an individual basis, but also the culmination of the rule of God through Christ where we are all one.  We see this repeated constantly, which is a reversal of what occurred in the Garden of Eden with Original Sin.

So depending on how the readings go, I will be talking more and more about this motif because I think it is a fascinating motif.

February 7, 2019 2