What Does the Resurrection Mean for Dishwashing?

Photo by Scott Umstattd on Unsplash

What does the Resurrection of Christ mean for washing dishes? I don't ask that question to be funny. I ask that question because if the resurrection of Christ has nothing to say to washing the dishes, then it has nothing to say to the majority of your life. Our lives are stuffed with mundane, everyday tasks that we struggle to connect to the Bible's story, particularly its ending. We can do this in specific areas of our lives when national stories hit the headlines. For example, recently you've all thought a bit more about the bridges you drive over in your daily commutes, haven't you? That is connecting your mundane task to a larger story. The Maryland bridge impacts how you think about your otherwise everyday commute. But that story, large as it is, doesn't impact the way you raise your children. It has nothing to say to the way you act at work. It is silent at your kitchen sink. 

The resurrection of Christ, however, is the biggest story. And it has much to say to you today, even in your dishwashing. 

The resurrection of Christ isn't just one event of a man rising from the dead (category shattering as that alone is). It is a preview for the end goal for all creation, and the starting point for that goal. And we are all a part of that story. 

When I was a child, I had a little book called "Bible Answers for Kids," or something to that effect, and the question that I still remember was "When did Bible times end?" That's a pretty good question. The picture had a character standing outside a clothing store where people were coming in with togas and head wrappings and leaving the store in modern suits and dresses, as if there was a specific day in which we entered modern times. The answer rightly said that we are still in the Bible times, as there are aspects of God's work that haven't been fully completed yet. We are still in the story. Our passage today holds up the destination for followers of Christ. And it is a glorious place in heaven! 

So if this is our place, our for sure ending to the story, why do we forget about it so easily? Perhaps we forget because we have grown so used to how the world currently works. Technology has made living in a cursed world far easier than it used to be. I'm not even talking about air conditioning or endless entertainment whenever we want it. I'm talking about how the constant access to information of the brokenness of the world numbs us to that very brokenness. We scroll through horrors of war, disease, famine, and political strife on a worldwide scale, and the personalized internet allows us to see the same things even within our own friends lives. Abby and I are struck by how many of our friends are going through great suffering. It's become a pattern that you can almost predict. The first dozen or so times it truly hurts. The second dozen times, you come to expect it. The third dozen times, you are surprised when it doesn't happen. 

This is the effect of omnipresent bad news. We have conditioned ourselves to think that the book ending of "happily ever after" is to help children to go to sleep rather than the echo of sure hope that God has given to us at the end of His book. 

Today, I'd like to break through some clouds. I encourage you to lift up your face from your rectangles of doom for a moment to behold the world as it will be, a world made possible ONLY because Jesus arose from the grave. And when we are done, when you set your face back down into the everyday of life, you will remember this vision of what it is all going. 

Let's jump into Revelation 22. Revelation is a mysterious book, mostly because we are less familiar with its references to the Old Testament. I've heard various estimates that Revelation while never directly quoting the OT, alludes to the Old Testament from once every three verses to two times for each verse. However that breaks down, God is a great Author, and He has callbacks to His previous chapters. This book is dripping with them. 

To set our scene, the Apostle John is laying out for us what the world will be like in the end. After a whirlwind tour of the future, we settle here, the final "then." We see creation made new, a creation of life and light where the servants of God will live and reign forever(vs 3-5).  

Our Old Testament references begin from our first verse where we see the water of life flowing from the Throne of God and of the Lamb (note the Lamb reference, that will be important later). This is a callback to the prophet Ezekiel who saw a similar river in chapter 47. For our purposes however, I want us to look at what is next to the river, the Tree of Life. This reference should be familiar to anyone who has even a passing knowledge of the first book of the Bible, Genesis. In the Garden that God makes at the beginning of time, He places Adam and Eve in the Garden where the Tree of Life is. If they are obedient to the command of God, they will be able to eat of the Tree of Life and live forever. 

Of course, they don't obey and bring sin into the world such that the world they inhabit and depend on had to be cursed (for God cannot sweep sin under the rug, yet also shows mercy). But rather than live in a cursed place forever, God removes them from eating of the Tree of Life and banishes them from the Garden. He does all of this with the Promise that He will send a Chosen One to set everything right. 

Here in Revelation 22, we see that come to culmination in this beautiful place. One scholar asks the obvious but profoundly answered question, What kind of place is this? (Christopher Watkin, *Biblical Critical Theory*, 560-563). Is it a city? Well, sort of. It clearly isn't a city like what we have come to expect, what with all the rivers and trees and such. Is it a return to the Garden of Eden? Well, sort of! It clearly alludes to that. But there is more. God neither dispenses with nor returns to the past. Instead, He combines the best of both. One scholar said, "There is nothing quite so traditional as God making all things new in unimaginably lavish superabundance" (Watkins, 563).

Would you like an example? In verse 2, we see the Tree of Life from Genesis 2 again! But how is it on both sides of the river? Is it in the middle with the river splitting around it? I think that once again, we depend on the Old Testament. From Ez. 47:7, the prophet, in seeing how all things will be made new: "As I went back, I saw on the bank of the river very many trees on the one side and on the other." It's not just THE Tree of Life here, but a Grove of Trees of Life! Jesus takes the Old and Remakes it New! 

What do those trees do? They are not enjoyed by just two people. The Nations of the World will come, wearied from the journey on Earth, and find healing in its branches! Further, it won't just provide leaves like the Fig tree outside of the Temple (although these are pretty special leaves!). But it will have fruit, not just every year, but every month! 

So what will we do in a place that is both City and Garden? Well, the answer comes from the architecture of the city. Go one chapter back to Revelation 21:16 "the city lies foursquare" or a cube! Now that didn't mean anything to me, until one scholar pointed out that there is only one other cube in the Bible. It is the innermost part of the Old Testament Temple, the Holy of Holies, the room where the very presence of God lived. 

Here in Revelation 22, God and the Lamb are enthroned in the city dwelling with the servants of God who will see His face! This isn't just a Garden-City; this is a Temple-Garden-City (Watkins, 562). 

Now, why should that blow your mind? Well, the Holy of Holies was the most exclusive room in all the world. Only one person could enter it, the High Priest, and even he, only once a year. And he couldn't just walk in there. He had to sacrifice and animal for his own sins. Something had to bleed and die to pay the penalty for his sins so that He could enter the presence of God. As part of that worship, he entered into this room concealed by a curtain and thick smoke of incense inside with a rope tied around his ankle. If he brought sin into the presence of God, he would die instantly and would need to be pulled out. No one else could go in even to retrieve the dead. That's how holy, how separate God is from us. 

And yet, and YET, this chapter is telling us that all believers in Christ will not only be in God's presence as priests in the Temple-Garden-City, we will see His face! That is  something even Moses was denied while he was taking dictation of the Ten Commandments (Leon Morris, Revelation, Tyndale)! All of this is possible because nothing accursed exists in this place anymore (22:3). It is all gone. 

How? Because Jesus rose from the dead. 

What does Jesus' rising from the dead have to do with all of that? Well, as you may remember from your Sunday school days, you may have learned Romans 6:23, the wages (or payment) of sin is death. In other words, sin is always going to bring the penalty of death. What is sin? Anything that is against God's commands either doing something you shouldn't or not doing something that you should've. That sin, no matter how small *we* think it is, is rebellion against the King of the Universe! High Treason. An infinite crime demands an infinite penalty, hell fire forever. That's the penalty that Jesus took on the cross. He was God and man together. A man to take the penalty, and God to make the payment infinite. 

Now when Jesus died, we saw the penalty of sin put on Him. But if He stayed dead, then the penalty wouldn't have been fully paid. If I get sent to jail for a crime, how do you know that I haven't finished my sentence? I'm still in jail! Check the cell! If I'm in there, the penalty isn't satisfied. Well for the world's sin, the tomb is the punishment. So how do you know that the sentence has been fully served? Check the tomb! You'll find He isn't there! Instead, He is gloriously raised and as you'll see at the end of Matthew, "All authority has been given to Him." You can't be dead and have authority! Only the living! So He ascends into heaven. 

What He commands you to do now is respond to that news. Turn away from your sins, stop trusting in yourself, and turn to Jesus Christ. Putting your faith in Him is an act of trust and surrender. And Revelation 22 is the future to which you are heading. Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 15 that if Christ isn't raised, then we are a people to be most pitied, because none of what we have been describing would be true. But since Christ is raised, as Paul says in Romans 8, we are more than conquerors since that is our future. 

So what do we do in the meantime? What does this have to do with the dishes? This is the kind of hope that can survive anything. How does it do that? This is a hope that is beyond time and death. Like, this is hope at a cosmic level that you can access in any part of life! This isn't just a hope that only comes in handy when someone dies. Remember what the Bible says here when you are overwhelmed with the dishes. When your world is shattered or just a little frustrated, remember where you are going, and who's story you're telling. The God who can pull off Revelation 22 can work through and with your unexpected car repair. When you are exhausted after a long day of work, plus kids, plus house stuff, remember where you are going and that everything you are going through is directly moving you towards this moment. When the pain just won't go away, you can say to it that it won't have the last word. Pain and disease are temporary. They won't last because Jesus didn't stay dead. 

No matter what bad news you scroll through, you can say with confidence, "Not for long."

The “What ifs” are all taken care of. 

And when you get in the habit of doing that, you'll get to experience a taste of heaven here in worship. Heaven is a time of worship, but you don't have to wait until you get there to start. Just think about all that Jesus has done for you here, spend some deep time repeating to yourself that everything said here is true and try NOT to worship.