“Creatio ex Vetere”

          We continue our tour of favorite hymns this Sunday, July 29th, as we reflect upon the Hymn of Promise, written by Natalie Sleeth, and a scripture passage from the Book of Revelation 21: 1-7. 

            Hymn of Promise is a relatively new hymn.  It was originally written and performed in 1985 as a choral anthem for a festival concert, celebrating Sleeth’s music.  Natalie Sleeth was a native of Evanston, Illinois.  She began studying piano at age four.  She continued studying music as she grew into adulthood.  Ultimately, she graduated from Wellesley College in Massachusetts with a Bachelor’s degree in music theory, piano and organ performance.  Sleeth composed both texts and music.  Over the course of her career, she wrote over 200 choral works for all ages; much of her anthems were composed especially for children.  Sleeth received honorary doctorates from West Virginia Wesleyan (1989) and Nebraska Wesleyan (1990).[1]

            As Natalie Sleeth records, she wrote Hymn of Promise at a time when she was “pondering the ideas of life, death, spring and winter, Good Friday and Easter, and the whole reawaking of the world that happens every spring.”  She was inspired by an idea from T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets: “in my end is my beginning.”  This idea forms the beginning of the third stanza.  Shortly after the hymn was composed, Natalie Sleeth’s husband was diagnosed with terminal cancer.  He requested that the hymn be sung at his funeral, and it was.[2]

            The hymn begins with several metaphors which Christians frequently use to describe and understand the Resurrection of Christ and the promise of eternal life:

In the bulb there is a flower;

in the seed, an apple tree;

in cocoons, a hidden promise:

butterflies will soon be free!

In the cold and snow of winter

there's a spring that waits to be,

unrevealed until its season,

something God alone can see.[3]

            The Resurrection of Christ and the promise of eternal life lie at the heart of Christian faith.  As the Apostle Paul writes, “If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, [then,] we are of all people most to be pitied” (1 Corinthians 15:19)  Although I do not have space to explore all of them in this blog post, there are several different, authentic Christian understandings of human resurrection and eternal life. 

However, for the service this Sunday, I have decided that the best perspective for Hymn of Promise is a scriptural view of resurrection and eternal life as physical and bodily.  It is a view that conceives of eternal life as part of God’s promise to redeem all of Creation at the end-of-time.  So, this Sunday, I will pair reflections on Hymn of Promise with a scriptural reading from the Revelation of John 21: 1-7:

“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,

‘See, the home of God is among mortals.
He will dwell with them;
they will be his peoples,
and God himself will be with them;
he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away.’

 And the one who was seated on the throne said, ‘See, I am making all things new.’ Also he said, ‘Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.’ Then he said to me, ‘It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life. Those who conquer will inherit these things, and I will be their God and they will be my children.” (NRSV)

            In this text from Revelation, the promise of resurrection and eternal life is fulfilled at the end of time, when God redeems humans and all of Creation.  The Book of Revelation envisions a physical resurrection, as our bodies are transformed with all of Creation into a New Creation.  The passage begins with an eschatological (end-time) vision, “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth…coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride for her husband.” 

            The vision continues.  It is not just a new heaven and a new earth which emerge.  Also, a new Jerusalem—the holy city of God—comes “down out of heaven from God.”  But, there’s even more.  God comes from the heavens down to the earth, to make God’s home “among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples and God himself will be with them.”

            Just pause and think about that for a moment.  God will come and dwell with us and all of Creation on earth.

            God will no longer be distant…aloof…transcendent.  No.  God will be with us in a more intimate, immanent manner than we have ever experienced before.  God loves us so much that God chooses to live with us in the New Earth. 

            From this point, the vision moves to a description of eternal life:  “God will wipe every tear from their eyes.  Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away,” and a new Creation—a new universal Order—has taken their place.

            What are we to make of such an extraordinary vision of the end-time?

            I really appreciate the interpretation provided by John Polkinghorne, a British physicist and theologian.  Polkinghorne begins with the most basic aspect which we know about God; that is, God’s love.  In reflecting on the first person of the Trinity—God as Creator—Polkinghorne suggests that God’s creative activity is always informed by a kenotic love.  The word, “kenotic” comes from Greek, meaning an emptying or freely self-limiting.  So, Polkinghorne’s claim is not just that God loves human persons and all of Creation.  Rather, Polkinghorne writes that God’s love is freely and voluntarily self-limiting so that humans and all of Creation have greater freedom.  Polkinghorne writes:

“I am proposing…that God interacts with the world but is not in total control of all its process(es).  This act of creation involves divine acceptance of the risk of the existence of the other, and there is a consequent kenosis. …It arises from the logic of love, which requires the freedom of the beloved.”[4]

To elaborate on Polkinghorne’s insight, God’s love for human persons and all of Creation is so great that God voluntarily limits God’s Self so that Creation—especially human persons—have full freedom.

            Yet, God continues to be active.  In our understanding of God as Creator, Christians understand that, in some fundamental manner, God was actively creating at the beginning of time.  We speak of God’s creative activity as creatio ex nihilo – which is Latin for “creating out of nothing.”  Within Christian tradition, there has also been an understanding that God’s work of creation does not end with initial creation.  Instead, Christian belief holds that God continues to be active in the world, continuing to create; in Latin, God creatio continua—God continues to create.  Polkinghorne suggests a third way in which God the Creator works.  Using Latin terms, Polkinghorne suggests that God creatio ex vetere—that is, that God creates from the old.  He writes:

[T]he old creation is God’s bringing into being a universe which is free to exist ‘on its own,’ in the …space made available to it by the divine kenotic [self-limiting] act of allowing the existence of something wholly other; the new creation is divine redemption of the old.”[5]

Polkinghorne proposes that God’s work as Creator continues to this third type of creation, creation ex vetere.  God creates from the old.  In other words, God redeems human persons and all of Creation.  This is what the prophecy means in Revelation:  When God creates a new heaven and a new earth, God is redeeming the old humans and, indeed, the old Creation.  Through God’s redemptive love, we become transformed into new creatures.  We are resurrected to eternal life as new creatures through the power of God’s abiding love for us—and, all of Creation.

In the third stanza of Hymn of Promise, Natalie Sleeth expresses our Christian conviction in these words:

“In our end is our beginning;

  in our time, infinity;

  in our doubt there is believing;

  in our life, eternity.

  In our death, a resurrection;

  at the last, a victory,

  unrevealed until its season,

  something God alone can see.”

            God is freely self-limiting in this world, so that humans may experience full freedom.  This sets

the task for God to work towards redeeming the world.  Thus, God’s Reign—that is, God’s Kingdom—

is not fully established until the emergence of God’s New Creation at the end-time.   At first blush, 

it may appear that all Christian disciples need do is to wait around, passively, until God’s redemption is

completed, and God’s Reign is fully established at the end-time.  

            However, as the Biblical scholar Christopher C. Rowland cautions, Christ does not intend for 

the faithful to sit around as spectators, waiting on the God’s Reign to be established.  No.  Christ invites

us to join with him as junior colleagues in the work of building God’s Reign.  Reflecting on Revelation 21, 

Rowland writes:

“The [new]city may be from heaven, but humans can be the means of channeling God’s grace

 into it.  So we have here some support for the notion of ‘building the kingdom [of God].’  It is

 not all left to some eschatological [end-time] miracle.  Human agents infused with the Spirit in

 the new creation may contribute to that future reign of God here and now in the midst of the

 debris of the old world.”[6]

If you live in the Lincoln, Nebraska area and do not have a place of worship, then I invite you to come and join us at Christ United Methodist Church this Sunday, July 29th, as we reflect on Natalie Sleeth’s Hymn of Promise and God’s kenotic love, which is active in our lives and in the world.  Christ UMC is located at 4530 “A” Street in Lincoln, Nebraska.  Our two traditional Worship Services are at 8:30 and 11:00 on Sunday morning. 

Come, join us.  Everyone is welcome and accepted because God loves us all.

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[1] The biographical background material for Natalie Sleeth is drawn from “History of Hymns:  ‘In the Bulb There Is a Flower,’” by C. Michael Hawn, provided by Discipleship Ministries of The United Methodist Church, accessed from their webpage, https://www.umcdiscipleship.org/resources/history-of-hymns-in-the-bulb-there-is-a-flower, 27 July 2018.

[2] Ibid.

[3] The United Methodist Hymnal (Nashville:  The United Methodist Publishing House, 1989), No. 707.

[4] John Polkinghorne, The Faith of a Physicist, Reflections of a Bottom-Up Thinker (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1996), 81.

[5] Polkinghorne, 67. Polkinghorne footnotes Jürgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom of God (Norwich, UK: SCM Press, 1981), 105–14, and also Moltmann, God in Creation (Norwich, UK: SCM Press, 1985), chapter 4.

[6] Christopher C. Rowland, Commentary on the Revelation of John in the New Interpreter’s Bible, vol 12, (Nashville, Abingdon Press, 2002), CD-ROM Edition.