My apology to Martin Luther

I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendour into it. Revelation 21:22-24

I preached recently on the return of Jesus in glory, and the need for us to be ready for his return. The Bible passage was Matthew 25:1-13, the story of the wise and foolish bridesmaids. It makes the point pretty clearly.

The big question, of course, is: What does it actually mean to be “ready”? To which the simple answer is: To get on day by day doing what you have to do, and doing it well, for the glory of God. A quote came to mind which I think goes back to Martin Luther (please correct me here if you know better): “If I knew Jesus was coming back tomorrow I would plant an apple-tree today”.

I understood that as meaning what I have just said: Just get on and do something useful and productive. But I did also dare to question the logic of it: planting an apple-tree is of course a good thing to do, but if it’s never going to grow…? I noticed people in the congregation, their brows furrowed, nodding in agreement. Oh well, we all have our off-days, don’t we, so why shouldn’t that include history-changing religious leaders?

But in the following days I found myself wondering if I had done Luther an injustice. Let me try and explain.

When we think about “the end of the world”, about heaven and hell, about “life after death”, we tend to think in terms of discontinuity: one state is abruptly ended and a new one takes over. It’s like that too with “heaven and “earth” – earth is “down here”, heaven is “up there”, and they are completely separate.

All very simple and clear. But is that in fact what the Bible teaches?

In the book of Revelation John describes a remarkable vision of, among other things, “what will take place later” (Revelation 1:19). Near the end, in chapter 21, he saw “a new heaven and a new earth” - that’s pretty much a direct quote from Isaiah 65:17. It’s interesting that both the Old Testament prophet and the New Testament seer speak about “a new earth”, not just about “heaven”.

This suggests that our final destiny after death and resurrection is not just a matter of “going to heaven”, but also has what we might think now is quite an “earthly” dimension as well. In some sense, admittedly very hard to imagine, heaven and earth become one: there is continuity as well as discontinuity.

What John sees is a “city” – “the holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband” (verse 22). This new Jerusalem is roughly 1400 hundred miles high and wide and long – in other words, it’s a massive cube!

This baffles our imaginations, of course; it is symbolic rather than literal language, so we need to ask what it signifies. Then we remember that the “holy of holies” in the earthly tabernacle and temple, the most sacred place in the Jewish faith, was – a cube. The “new Jerusalem” is the dwelling place of God in a complete and perfect way, as the earthly temple could never be.

There’s one very striking detail that John gives us about this heaven-and-earth-combined city. In verse 24 he tells us that “the nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendour into it”. Even more, in verse 26 he tells us that “the glory and honour of the nations will be brought into it”.

How can this be! The “kings of the earth” and “the nations” are portrayed in Revelation as rebels against God! Certainly, John goes on to make clear that “nothing impure will ever enter” the new Jerusalem (verse 27). And yet, in some manner that defies our understanding, it seems that the kings and the nations will contribute to the glory of God’s dwelling place.

What has all this got to do with Martin Luther’s apple-tree? Well, I can only speculate. But if earthly kings will “bring their splendour” into the new Jerusalem, may not lesser mortals like the rest of us do likewise? Could it be that Luther determined to plant an apple-tree because he believed that while it would never grow on “earth”, it might just be one of those many fruit-trees that John saw growing in “heaven”?

One commentator, Michael Wilcock, says this: “all that is truly good and beautiful in this world will reappear there, purified and enhanced in the perfect setting its Maker intended for it; nothing of real value is lost”.

If that is so, is it wrong to think that even some of our deeds and actions, duly perfected of course, will make their contribution? Could it be that Luther was onto something that I, for one, had never seriously thought about before?

Perhaps we need to rethink our ideas of “heaven”, and what it’s going to be like. Not static, not like a tableau, however awesome, but pulsating with life, truly life in all its glorious variety and vitality. It almost makes you want to be there right now, doesn’t it?

Lord, please help me to live every day of this earthly life in such a way that I, even I, have some little contribution to offer in the heavenly Jerusalem. Amen.