On Mission: Walk in Hope (1 Corinthians 3:12-18)

   The fourth in a series that unpacks our church's mission statement: Helping people walk with Jesus in faith, hope, and love to the glory of God.

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“To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive.” - Robert Louis Stevenson 

We are hoping for a future. 

The book of Revelation, the last in the New Testament, was written by a man named John. It’s the record of his amazing vision of the beyond. Of what it is that we are waiting for, what is over the next hill—the new heaven and the new earth.  

John shared with us his vision: 

I saw heaven and earth, new-created. I heard a voice thunder from the throne, “God has moved into the neighbourhood. God is making His home with men and women, and He'll wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death is gone for good. Tears, gone. Crying, gone. Pain, gone... In the city there was no sign of a temple for the Lord God himself, the Sovereign-Strong, and Jesus the Lamb—they are the temple. The city doesn't need a sun or a moon for light, because God's glory is its light... An angel showed me the Water-of-Life river that flowed from the throne, right down the middle of the street. And the Tree of Life was planted on each side of the river and the leaves of that tree are for the healing of the nations. No more curse. His servants will offer God service. Worshipping, they will look on his face, their foreheads mirroring God. They will rule with him age after age after age. - excerpted from The Message  

That is our destination. That is what's over the next hill. It's a city-temple-garden. It's earth and eternity joined together in a place where we will live and work and celebrate the reality of God's love and greatness. In faith, we perceive the truth of that future. In faith we receive the truth of Jesus’ words: 

I'm going there to prepare a place for you, and I will come back and I will welcome you into my presence. So that where I am you may be there too. (John 14:2-3) 

That is the future that we hope for. That is the future that we await. That is the future that we see, but have not yet touched. That is the future towards which we are journeying. 

Problem is, we're still here. Last time I looked out the window, Cobourg did not look like a city-temple-garden.  

So the next question is... How do we walk in hope now? How do we hope for today? 

We have to come back to the idea of faith, of seeing beyond this reality, of seeing and mirroring that eternal reality into this time-bound one.  

We see through faith that reality of a perfected, healed world. And we mirror that into this world as we walk through this life. The hope of a Christian—of a believer in Jesus—begins at the end, knowing that we are going to arrive. But we also have to go back to the beginning.  

John, in Revelation, writes that there was no temple in the city. For his time, that would have been really strange. Every city had its temples, its places of god-worship, of sacrifice. Jerusalem, the city that would have been closest to John's heart, had the amazing temple of Yahweh God. But John writes, “There was no temple.” Why did that matter? 

What was the temple in the New Testament world?

Primarily, a place where earth and heaven intersect and overlap. Where heaven could be accessed from earth. As well, a temple contained the image of a god. Every temple contained a statue, an idol, or a carving that represented the god to whom that temple was dedicated. It's been long recognized by very smart and godly people that the first ever temple was the garden in Eden.  It was perfect earth, but it was also the place where God walked. The garden in Eden also contained an image of the God who created it, and that image was... us. We were the image of God in that first temple.  

Through that temple garden, just like in John's city, there flowed a river: through the garden and out into the world. It was a river of life—a river of living water—running and dancing and greening its world.  

Alongside that river, in the middle of the garden, was planted the Tree of Life. 

So what does it mean for us? Today we are the temple. We are the temple of the Holy Spirit. In us resides God's own image stamp of His own self. We are the image of God in the world, carrying within us the living river of the Holy Spirit. 

So for Christians, for people who are walking with Jesus, walking in hope means: 

• Seeing this world through the eyes of faith, through the eyes of the eternal, looking beyond the concrete and the material to that re-created and perfected earth that lies just beyond our senses.  
• It means traveling through this time-bound world carrying in us that eternal river of life, running and dancing and greening our world,  
• It means mirroring into this temporal reality the eternal reality of the temple-garden-city that John saw, where there is no pain, no fear, no tears, no hunger, no thirst.  

In our scripture focus (1 Corinthians 3:12-18), we read that wonderful language about having “unveiled faces.” Moses kept his face veiled because the glory of God reflected there was too much for the people to take. But we, having turned to Christ, reflect that same glory; we unveil our faces in boldness and in joy. 

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Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By His great mercy He has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, reserved in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power for the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. (1 Peter 1:3-4) 

What is Peter saying there? 

“Blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy...” - He had pity on us, he had compassion for us 

“...He has given us new birth into a living hope...” - A hope that flows like the river through the garden and through the city, bringing life, watering the roots of the tree that makes possible the healing of hearts, and the healing of nations.  

“...through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead...” -  The day that N. T. Wright calls, “the day the revolution began.” Jesus’ resurrection was “the amen, the yes to everything that Jesus had done every day of his life to that point.” Feeding the poor, giving them hope. Bringing healing to the sick, giving them hope. Raising people from the dead, giving them hope. Giving value to the unvalued, giving them hope. Freeing the enslaved, giving them hope. Jesus’ resurrection inaugurated and launched the fulfillment of the promise of the temple of the garden of eden where earth and heaven meet. 

“...and into the inheritance that is undecayable, unpollutable, unfading and reserved in heaven for you, who through faith...” - Through the real-seeing belief in Jesus.  

“...are shielded by God's power for the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.” - The time that John experienced and wrote about: “I saw heaven and earth new-created.” 

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But... 

Meanwhile, we are still living on the old earth. I don't know about you, but I do not have “unwearying feet.” I get tired sometimes.  

Sometimes the journey seems like one more hill after one more hill after one more hill. We can become discouraged. We can lose sight of our hope. We can lose sight of the One who calls us forward on that journey. We can lose sight of Jesus.  

We can very often easily relate to the words of the disciples on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-35).  

They hadn’t seen yet that Jesus was raised from the dead. They just knew that He had died. That morning they were walking away from all that they had thought was best and most beautiful. From what they thought was the fulfillment of generations of promises. From what their hope had been. Toward... they didn't even know what. They said to Jesus and to each other those words, “We had hoped...” They'd given up. They had lost their hope.  

But what they did next was the absolute right thing to do. Even in the midst of having lost their hope, of having been let down one more time... they kept walking with Jesus. A little bit further. A little bit further. And when their eyes of faith were awakened and they saw Jesus, sitting at their dining room table—they knew they were right in the first place to hope in Him.

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The cool thing about Robert Louis Stevenson's quote, “To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive,” is that for the believer in Christ, we get to do both. We get to travel hopefully. We get to arrive. 

And in seeing through the eyes of faith the reality of the world made new, in carrying within us the living river of the Spirit... some days we get to do both at the same time. 

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