For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating; for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight. I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and delight in my people; no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it, or the cry of distress. No more shall there be in it an infant that lives but a few days, or an old person who does not live out a lifetime; for one who dies at a hundred years will be considered a youth, and one who falls short of a hundred will be considered accursed. They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit. They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat; for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be, and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands. They shall not labor in vain, or bear children for calamity; for they shall be offspring blessed by the Lord - and their descendants as well. Before they call I will answer, while they are yet speaking I will hear. The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox; but the serpent - its food shall be dust! They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, says the Lord.
(Isaiah 65:17-25)
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“Eden.” The word, I hope, brings to your mind a certain image. A garden. Beautiful and lush and peaceful, where there is neither violence nor hatred, and where all God’s creation exists in a perfectly balanced harmony. A place where everything – including humanity - is exactly as God intended it – and us – to be. I hope that the word “Eden” brings that kind of image into your mind because, you see, I tend to think of the story of creation in the Book of Genesis as an icon. I don’t take it literally. It doesn’t matter to me if there was a literal Adam and Eve, or how humanity came to be, or if everything was created in 6 days. I think that the creation story (and really much of the first 11 chapters of the Bible) is in the nature of a parable – similar to the ones Jesus told. Stories that are intended to be taken seriously but not literally; stories that reveal to us not exactly how things came to be but that rather teach us the nature of what came to be; that tell us something about ourselves and the world and the universe we inhabit, and that – perhaps most importantly – teach us something about God: God’s nature, God’s purpose, maybe even God’s dreams. The creation story is an icon. It helps us to focus our attention on God but it wasn’t, in my opinion at least, ever intended to provoke us to get bogged down in minutiae over the Big Bang Theory or the theory of evolution, or whatever is the latest in the ridiculous battle between science and faith. What does the story of creation reveal to us? What does “Eden” tell us? That’s what’s important?
It seemed to me that this iconic image of Eden – this image that reminds us that God’s desire and God’s plan is for a peaceful world – is especially relevant to us on Remembrance Sunday. I think of the act of remembrance that we all just participated in as we honoured those who have died in the various military engagements our nation has fought in – the Boer War, World War I, World War II, Korea, various peacekeeping missions, Afghanistan. And I think of the words of John McCrae’s famous poem: “… if ye break faith with us who die ...” He wrote that poem in 1915, after the Second Battle of Ypres. Although we usually think of the Battle of Vimy Ridge as the event that sealed Canada’s sense of nationhood if you will, the Second Battle of Ypres was also important. It was fought for the Allies largely by the 1st Canadian Division, and it was an Allied victory – and it represented the very first time that soldiers of a former colonial possession had defeated a European army on European soil. But it was also another of the almost unending succession of increasingly meaningless but bloody battles that characterized the First World War. In the midst of the chaos and blood that enveloped those European battlefields of 100 years ago was the great hope – that this war, finally, was “the war to end all wars.” Soldiers fought and died, believing that even if the individual battles at times seemed meaningless, and even if their lives came to an end, the cause for which they fought – to finally end all war – was a noble and worthy one. And when I think about those words of McCrae more than a century later - “… if ye break faith with us who die ...” - I’m forced to the realization that succeeding generations did, in fact, break faith with those who died. Because World War I was not, as we know, the war to end all wars. Wars continue to this present day, and they show no sign of disappearing. The human capacity for greed and hatred seem to make it almost second nature that, among nations at least, if one country has what another country wants, there will be a war over it. Have we broken faith with those who died in the Second Battle of Ypres, and in all the battles that were supposed to be a part of that “war to end all wars?” It’s pretty hard to argue that we haven’t.
But it isn’t only those soldiers with whom we’ve broken faith. I’d suggest that we’ve also broken faith with God, who created a peaceful world in perfect balance, only to see humanity break both that peace and that balance to lead us to the present day, where, quite frankly, we face either annihilation by the weapons we’ve created or annihilation by the climate we’ve created. So, let me ask - have we broken faith with God? It’s pretty hard to argue that the answer to that question is anything but “yes.” As noble as the goals of many people over the centuries may have been, the reality is that we have not done away with war, soldiers and civilians still die, weapons are still produced and headlines still scream out warnings from one country to another, threatening war and destruction that would (if it ever happened) impact the entire world in a way that no war has ever done before. Human nature seems unable to restrain itself. So, is there hope? Might we some day be able to look out upon a world at peace? An Eden restored? Creation brought back to its original nature – which God declared in Genesis to be “very good.” Here is where we turn to the words of the prophet Isaiah.
Isaiah offers us hope. Isaiah lived in a troubled time in which – just like our own – not all was as God wanted it to be. But Isaiah understood the concept of hope. He understood the need for people to be able to look at the mess around them and still be able to see a glimmer of light at the end of a very dark tunnel. And he managed to describe this wonderful vision in words that help us to get a sense of what real life – and real eternity! - are like. It’s a place of perfect peace and of perfect intimacy with God. Like the description of Eden in the beginning in Genesis 1 it’s the place where God is with us, almost as if God is walking alongside us and like the description of the new heaven and the new earth in Revelation 22 it’s the place where there is no darkness – not the darkness caused by the lack of light, nor the darkness caused by the clouds of war - and where there’s no need for any such thing as a temple to point us to God, because God is right there with us - “Before they call I will answer, while they are yet speaking I will hear.” Isaiah offers us a portrait of a reality in which we will enjoy a never-ending life of great abundance, and where there will be perfect peace with all around – even “the wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox; but the serpent - its food shall be dust! They shall not hurt or destroy on all [God’s] holy mountain ...” This is what God points us to. This is a promise; this is a hope. In fact, this is what hope truly is – the belief in what is going to be, rather than just wishing for what might be or yearning for what was.
Our great hope is in a restored Eden. Our great hope is that the God who created the universe in a state of perfection will also be able to return it to that state of perfection. Let us understand, though – we may wait for God, but we are not let off the hook for our responsibility to work for a better and more just and peaceful world. In fact, it’s that very knowledge of what God is going to do that motivates us to do as much as we can for now to live with love and in peace with all those around us. We can share Isaiah’s words and vision and speak of God’s love, but we also need to act. As Eleanor Roosevelt said after the Second World War while she was serving as a US delegate to the United Nations and as the Cold War was beginning to set in, “It isn't enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn't enough to believe in it. One must work at it.” In a way, we await the restoration of Eden. Humanity may have broken faith with those whose lives were lost in the great “war to end all wars,” but God never breaks faith with any of us. But we don’t just wait. We do what we can. We are called to be like Isaiah – to paint a portrait of what the restored Eden is going to be like, and to issue a challenge to both ourselves and to others to create something as close to it as possible in the here and now. May we not break faith with those who died. May we remember their sacrifice and their cause. May we work to make war and violence a thing of the past. May we work for a restored Eden.
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