Being revealed to creation as the children of God has been my preaching theme for the past few Sundays. The key thought comes from Romans 8:19 where Paul says that creation is waiting with eager anticipation for the sons of God to be revealed – and it must surely be right to include daughters of God in there as well. I think it’s akin to the act of celebrating communion being itself a proclamation of the good news about Jesus (1 Cor 11:26). That is, just by being the adopted children of God we are a sign, a proclamation, a revelation to creation of what God is about to do with a damaged cosmos.

The question I addressed in yesterday’s sermon was when we will be revealed. From the text it would be easy to conclude that this is something that will happen once the end comes, once Jesus returns and therefore when we are perfected by him. But that takes for granted that our understanding of the timing of the end is placed firmly at some unknown future point when Jesus will return and sort out the mess we as humanity have made of his world. One major implication of this, however, is that it causes us to release ourselves of any responsibility in the here and now.

How different – or maybe I should say how broader – is the emphasis of Jesus in the Gospels. He didn’t push the establishing of the kingdom to an unknown future point in time. It is true that he emphasised that one day he would return but he also said that the kingdom was already among his disciples. Maybe in view of this we need to broaden our understanding of eschatology too? This can be based on three critical things: first, the birth Jesus, i.e. the incarnation of God where the kingdom and the glory of God broke into the world in a way never seen before; second, the resurrection of Jesus, where the process and power of renewal that will be completed on Jesus’s return has already begun in that unique event (1 Cor 15:20ff); and third, in all he did and was in between those two points – a life lived full of the Holy Spirit, where in micro he did what he will do in macro upon his return.

So the kingdom has been established and the power needed to bring about wholeness to creation has already been released and while I would expect a future event where Jesus comes to tie it all up, the emphasis, I believe, should be less ‘the end is nigh’, more ‘the end is now’. This brings the responsibility back from an unknown future point where Jesus does it all on his own to the here and now where Jesus is doing it in and through us. And it also means that the revealing of the children of God to creation is happening right now – albeit only in various forms of imperfection.

This is the link to the page where the sermons are located. It’s hardly a well thought out series with one sermon building on the next but my developing thoughts are all there to hear.  The series is titled 'being' and currently there are four parts.


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