“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.” (Revelation 21:1)
This is the beginning of the final bit of the final book in the Bible, and it’s a vision of final things – of the end of world history as we know it and the beginning of a new age. This is the climax of the Biblical narrative!
Of course, the Bible is made up of a lot of books, and each of those has its own narrative. Even so, when read together they can be seen as a single story, and it’s the story of humanity’s journey from the garden to the city, We start in the Garden of Eden and we end up in the New Jerusalem where ‘the sea will be no more’!
Now, forgive me if I focus today on what may seem like an odd line – that ‘the sea will be no more’ – but this is a vision of Heaven, and if you’re like my partner, Joy, you might be asking, ‘How can it be Heaven if there is no ocean?”
Joy loves the ocean and the beach, and swimming in the waves, and I love to watch her enjoying herself there, but from a distance as I’m actually a little scared of water.
I know that doesn’t sound like me. I perform fearlessly in the boxing ring, and I’ve kept my claim in multiple warzones. Even so, I am a little aquaphobic and have been ever since my eldest daughter had a boating accident when she was very little. I managed to get her out from under the sinking ship (thanks be to God) but then almost drowned myself, and it left me with a dread of the sea, and with a deep awareness of how a fun day on the river can suddenly turn toxic.
There are hidden dangers in the sea. Mysterious things lurk under the water. It may look calm on the surface but there’s violence going on under the waves. Scaly and scary creatures are hunting and killing each other down there, and we never know when Leviathan or Behemoth might emerge from the depths!
If you’re not familiar with those two, Leviathan and Behemoth are sea monsters, mentioned in the book of Job (chapter 40 and 41) and in two of the Psalms (74:14 and 104:26), and they symbolise all that is chaotic and opposed to God’s good order.
The ancient Israelites were never a sea people. It was the Philistines and other unfriendly neighbours who lived on the coast. So often when you see Biblical figures get into a boat things don’t go well. Think of Jonah trying to catch a ship to Tarshish (Jonah 1:3) or of the three times Saint Paul was shipwrecked (Corinthians 11:25).
Of course, many of Jesus’ disciples were men of the sea. They caught fish for a living. Even so, in so many of the Gospel stories where we see the disciples in their boats, they’re about to drown (Matthew 8:23-27, Mark 4:35-41, and Luke 8:22-25)! Jesus could calm storms (Matthew 8:23-27) and walk on water (Matthew 14:22-33) but the rest of the crew seemed to be a bit at sea when on the water (pun intended).
Biblically speaking, the sea symbolises all that is chaotic. If we go back to the start of the Biblical narrative, we’re told that in the beginning “The earth was formless and empty, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.” (Genesis 1:2).
It’s the Hebrew phrase ‘tohu wa-bohu’ that’s translated here as ‘formless and empty’. In other versions of the Bible, it’s rendered as “chaos and desolation”. Either way, it’s all water, and the Spirit of God is hovering over it with a view to pushing the water back to create land and life (Genesis 1:9), after which the waters then stay in their place, at least until the time of Noah when they all come flooding back (Genesis 6-9).
Forgive the rambling, which you may see largely as me trying to justify my water phobia. Even so, what I want to leave you with today is not a fear of water but rather an appreciation the great Biblical vision that one day ‘the sea will be no more’. There will be no more chaos, no more monsters lurking in dark places, no more violent men hiding in the shadows, no more death, no more pain.
My mind goes to a short video I saw this week of a father in Gaza, holding his baby daughter who was sobbing as they listened to the sound of warplanes overhead.
“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.” (Revelation 21:4)
Hear the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
As broadcast on The Sunday Eucharist – May 18th, 2025
