Hope for the earth

4. Resurrection and the New Creation

Peter Carruthers

On the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb (John 20:1).

After His death on the cross, Jesus was laid by His friends in a tomb in a garden close to the place where He was crucified. Three days later, He rose from the dead and appeared first to Mary Magdalene, then to Peter and the other disciples and then to five-hundred brethren at once (1 Corinthians 15:3-6).

Images of resurrection

Nature provides many glimpses of resurrection, in the breaking of the dawn, and in the new life of spring  (which, at least in the northern hemisphere, coincides with the celebration of Jesus’ resurrection).

The Victorian country diarist, Francis Kilvert, describes going out early on a sunny Easter morning: “It was very sweet and lovely, the bright silent sunny morning, and the lark rising in singing alone in the blue sky, then suddenly the morning air all alive with music of sweet bells ringing for the joy of the resurrection. ‘The Lord is risen’, smiled the sun’; ‘the Lord is risen’, sang the lark. And the church bells in their joyous pealing answered from tower to tower, ‘He is risen indeed’.

Spring has captivated many poets, including Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) and William Cowper (1731 - 1800).

For Hopkins, spring looks back to the first spring in the Garden of Eden¹:

What is all this juice and all this joy?  
A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning  
In Eden garden. – Have, get, before it cloy,          
Before it cloud, Christ, Lord, and sour with sinning… 

For Cowper (1731 - 1800), spring is a foretaste of the age to come².

..…….  The fruitful field
Laughs with abundance, and the land once lean,
Or fertile only in its own disgrace,
Exults to see its thistly curse repealed.
The various seasons woven into one,
And that one season an eternal spring …..

These are two sides of the same coin. The “restoration of all things” (Acts 3:21) is both a restoration of what was at the beginning in Eden and a “new thing” (Isaiah 43:19); spring, as a sign and symbol of resurrection and new life, points to both. 

Redeeming time

John opens his account of Jesus’ resurrection by telling us that it was the “first day of the week” (John 20:1). All four gospels describe how Jesus was buried on the day before the sabbath, so was in the tomb on the sabbath day. This is not just interesting information. The chronology is significant.

God created not only the material universe, but also time. The Bible opens with an account of the days of creation. The law given to Israel includes a calendar of times and seasons, and sanctifies certain days for special observance. In the creation account, the seventh day is both a day of rest and a day of consummation and completion of creation (Genesis 2:1-3). This is reflected in the sabbath day, the sabbath year and the Jubilee (Leviticus 23:3; 25:1-17), observed by refraining from work and trade. However, they also mark the completion of one time period, in the anticipation of the next.

Significantly, Jesus was buried on the sixth day and remained in the tomb on the seventh. His followers “rested.. according to the commandment” (Luke 23:56). The Bible is not explicit about what Jesus did. But the early church, drawing on several indirect references³, developed the understanding that He ‘descended into hell’ or ‘to the dead’ (as reflected in the Apostles’ Creed) and preached to the “spirits in prison” and to “those that are dead” (1 Peter 3:19, 4:6), thus completing His work. 

The first Easter Day, therefore, marked the beginning of the new creation, and every Sunday is both a celebration of Jesus’ resurrection and an anticipation of our own resurrection and of the Messianic age to come. 

To honour both days, theologian Jurgen Moltmann proposes that Christians allow Saturday evenings “to flow into a sabbath stillness”. “Sunday will again become the authentic Christian feast of the resurrection if we succeed in celebrating a Christian sabbath the evening before”, he asserts.⁴

Resurrection appearances

The gospels report eight appearances of Jesus to His followers after His resurrection. The three most detailed accounts have much to teach us about the implications of Jesus’ resurrection for the earth, countryside and creation.⁵ 

Jesus’ appearance to Mary Magdalene in a garden and her mistaking Him for the gardener speak of the recovery and restoration of what was lost in Eden. 

On the road to Emmaus, like Mary Magdalene, the two disciples do not, at first, recognise Him; recognition only came at the meal table when Jesus “took the bread, blessed and broke it and gave it them” (Luke 24:30). Jesus was the same, yet different, continuous, but transformed. Paul makes it clear that those who “belong to Christ” (1 Corinthians 15:23) will also be raised as He was raised, with a transformed body “like His glorious body” (Philippians 3:21). This continuity and transformation extends to the earth itself.

The third appearance (John 21:1-14) takes the disciples back to the Sea of Galilee, where for most them their life with Jesus started. It is the second miraculous draft of fish recorded in the gospels. Like the feeding of the four and five thousand, the catch of 153 big fish promises and “foreshadows the flowering of God’s creatures in God’s kingdom”,⁶ “when the ploughman shall overtake the reaper and the treader of grapes him who sows the seed; the mountains shall drip sweet wine, and all the hills shall flow with it” (Amos 9:13). 

The destiny of creation 

The Resurrection inaugurated a process that culminates in the liberation and transformation of the whole of creation (Romans 8:21), “new heavens and a new earth” (2 Peter 3:13). Creation is eagerly expecting this. Paul writes, “creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God” (Romans 8: 19-21).

The future of creation is tied up with the children of God, those who believe in Jesus, who through repentance and faith have entered into a restored relationship with God. They are part of God’s rescue plan for the earth. They are a sign of hope. 

Return

How and when does this all happen? The missing link in the story so far is the promised return of Jesus to the earth, not as a baby in a manger, but as a victorious king. 

The Christian message of salvation is known as the Gospel, which translates the Greek word evangelion. Both literally mean ‘good news’. For the individual, the good news is that all who repent and believe in Jesus shall have eternal life. For creation, it is the promise of liberation and transformation, as I have attempted to set out here.

However, in NT times, evangelion was used in a specific way, to refer to an announcement by a messenger of the coming of a victorious potentate, like the Emperor. The messenger says who he is, what he has achieved, what he expects of the people, and what by implication befalls those who do not welcome and accept him. 

So the Gospel is not primarily an offer, but a proclamation: Jesus is coming; get ready; this is how you need to get ready, and this what happens if you are not ready. Hence,  eschatology is not an add-on to the Gospel message, but its essence.⁷

And, as Jesus warns us, before He returns, there will be great turbulence and upheavals in the natural world and in human society. We should not, therefore, be too surprised at what is happening just now. 

Jesus comes to restore the earth as Isaiah predicts (49:8), but also to judge the nations and “destroy those who destroy the earth” (Revelation 11:17-18).

Emergency

My series here started with asking, ‘do contemporary environmentalism and the climate change agenda, with its ‘emergency’ discourse, offer hope for the future of the earth? Because they depend on human effort alone my answer is ‘no’. 

But in Christ, we are not doomed and neither is the earth; certainly, we shall need to give account of our stewardship of God’s earth and there is every need to take responsibility (and I would argue for Christians to take greater responsibility), but there is no need to panic. And, as Jesus said, when we see “these things begin to happen”, including turbulence in nature, we are to “look up”, for our redemption and the redemption of the earth itself draws near (Luke 21:28).

First published in Village Link, Summer 2022

1. From G M Hopkins, 'Spring'

2. From W Cowper, ‘The Task, Book 6’.

3. Matthew 12;40, John 20:17, Acts 2:26-32, 1 Peter 3:19 & 4:6.

4. Moltmann, J. 1985. God in Creation, 296. SCM Press.

5. For a more detailed account, see my article in Village Link, Easter 2021

6. Echlin, E P ( 2004), The Cosmic Circle, p 98. Dublin: The Columba Press.

7. See Damick, A S. 2021. Arise, O God. Ancient Faith Publishing, Chesterton, Indiana