Peter Lockhart
I've just been watching a video of a lecture by Jeremy Jackson found on Byron Smith's blog, here. After preaching on the destruction on the oceans last year this was how I finished my sermon.
As we wait and we witness our own folly as God’s stewards we are reassured by God’s gracious word to us from Paul’s letter to the Romans, “We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
It is the peace with God that can inspire us to consider again our place as witnesses to the future we hope in by the way we live as citizens of the coming kingdom now.
Maybe this is what John Calvin was on about when he wrote: “The custody of the garden was given in charge to Adam, to show that we possess the things which God has committed to our hands, on the condition, that being content with frugal and moderate use of them, we should take care of what shall remain... Moreover, that this economy and this diligence, with respect to those good things which God has given us to enjoy, may flourish among us; let everyone regard himself as the steward of God in all things which he possesses. Then he will neither conduct himself dissolutely, nor corrupt by abuse those things which God requires to be preserved.”
(John Calvin: Commentary on Genesis 2:15)
Despite our inability to respond to the wonder of creation appropriately, despite our destructive interpretation of 'dominion', despite our hurt of nature and each other the empty tomb reminds us that God chooses to love us and forgive us and invites us to a future yet to be fully understood or seen: a future in which God promises not simply to save human beings but renew the whole creation.
God’s grace comes and echoes in our lives like the distant crashing of waves against the shore, a comforting sound as the Spirit moves within us and draws into God’s life and God’s future. When we taste of the bread and wine our hope is that one day the renewal of the whole creation will occur and we will be blessed as we see the reflection of God’s glory and live as God’s people.
Reading this again in the light of the first half of your sermon, I am struck by how helpful it is for Christians to have an eschatology that includes the theme of creation renewal, which gives us both hope amidst despair and simultaneously commission amidst destruction. Thanks again for posting it.
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