Week 1: Expecting (…still).

We end our study series on N. T. Wright’s book, Surprised by Hope, with his reflections on resurrection and Easter, just in time to start all over again on the liturgical calendar, with Advent. Maybe you feel like you need a little time to catch your breath, but I like the way the end of the story bumps into the beginning of the story as we begin the re-telling of it to ourselves once again.

Even more, I like the way Wright’s challenge to take up the ongoing work of God in the world, to continue the work of creating God’s kingdom in the here and now, leads straight into the anxious question of Advent. Where is the kingdom of God in the here-and-now? When will it finally get here? Sure, we’re supposed to be working hard to make it happen, and thanks for the reminder, Reverend Doctor Wright; but what sort of visible effect does all this hard work have? While we’re working at it, we’re waiting, and hoping, expecting to see something of this kingdom break into the human reality that is often still too sad, too broken, too painful. As one critic put it to Wright, “as there is clearly no trace of a new kingdom after 2000 years, perhaps it is kinder to Jesus to leave this out.” (244) Now there’s the crux of the problem, right. What signs of this inaugurated kingdom of God do we see in this world? Or do we only have evidence of brokenness?  This has to be faced head-on.

Wright’s answer is to suggest some visible traces of the kingdom of God; and I pray that you too can find those traces in your own lives and in the lives of others. Quite frankly, the people gathered here in this room today constitute the strongest visible sign of God’s presence in the world for me. But—I have to say—you people are exceptional. Most people I find to be depressing, or simply maddening, to be around. And so this trace of the kingdom that I see is exceptional—a light shining in the darkness, and while we can, and should, celebrate that light, we should also be asking, why is the rest of this place so damn dark? Could someone turn the lights on, please? Didn’t you do that once just by saying “let there be light”? C’mon…because we’re waiting, down here in the dark.

This is what it means to live in the kingdom of God which is both “already” and “not yet.” Already, because we, and so many many others, are the torchbearers, the lights in the darkness that remind us that darkness is not all that there is and not all that there should be. Not yet, because we long to stand in the full floodlights of a completely fulfilled and present kingdom of God, in which the darkness has receded. We wait for it. We hope for it. We expect it.

And so, for the next few weeks of this Advent season, we’re going to meditate on this theme of expectation. And because I’m a woman who loves to talk about bodies and pregnancy and babies and birth, and because there was no one to stop me, our theme will be “what to expect when you’re expecting.”

[you can find the whole text of this sermon here.]

[Hello all. I'm really sorry to have missed church Sunday, especially since it meant an emergency panicked email at 2:45 a.m. to Bryan saying "help, we're all sick and I can't possibly make it." Here's what we would have talked about, if the germs hadn't decided to try their best to take us all out.]

Wright’s Surprised by Hope Study Series, Part 6

The Resurrection: So What?

Wright says, “the resurrection completes the inauguration of God’s kingdom on earth” (234). The point is not that “if you behave yourselves you’ll be able to join me in heaven someday”–rather, “he commands the disciples to go and make it [the kingdom] happen” (235). In other words, resurrection does not signal a guarantee of our eventual escape from the world, it means mission to the world—to bring the kingdom Jesus proclaimed into actuality here and now.

This is the “so-what” of resurrection, and why it matters that Christian belief is in a material, bodily resurrection and not just a “spiritual event” (docetism) or “new sense of faith and hope in our minds/hearts” (Bultmannian demythologizing). These interpretations of resurrection lead only to private, individual spirituality unconcerned with the here and now, with material reality, with the bodily welfare of ourselves and others,–in other words, a lack of concern for all matters of social justice. Or, in Johnny Cash’s words, a bunch of Christians “so heavenly minded, you’re no earthly good.”

Instead, our baptisms–the way in which we share in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus–signal our initiation into the ongoing work of God in the world. Wright’s summary: the revolutionary new world, which began in the resurrection of Jesus—the world where Jesus reigns as Lord, having won the victory over sin and death—has its frontline outposts in those who in baptism have shared his death and resurrection (249). My version (without the hierarchical, martial metaphors, because I dislike hierarchy and war): the transformation of reality from brokenness and sin into the healing of God’s intent for creation has begun—in you, those who have been initiated into this healing reality through baptism which is the sharing of Jesus’ death and resurrection.

Descriptions of baptism as sharing Jesus’ death/resurrection can be found in Romans 6, and Colossians 2-3. Wright concludes: “if you through baptism and faith are a resurrection person, living in the new world begun at Easter, energized by the power that raised Jesus from the dead—then you have a responsibility to share in the present risen life of Jesus.” Here, the metaphor of baptism as new life, new birth, actually makes sense—new birth is a way of articulating what it means to be on the other side of resurrection from the dead. And, of course, this undoes the spiritual/material dichotomy of heaven/earth—it means that Christian living is about recognizing that our current physical reality is shot through with the life of heaven (251). Further, the points at which “heaven” and “earth” overlap are…us. And we must recover from our self-induced schizophrenia between the missions of “saving souls” and “doing good”(265). (This is one the things I admire most about the work of Mission Lazarus in Honduras–the doing of good for people’s embodied lives is mission, and my sis and bro-in-law get that right.)

Wright ends with some specific comments about churches so earthly-minded they’re all about heavenly good:

If space, time, and matter are renewed by God and not abandoned, then:

1) the church that takes sacred space seriously will go straight from worship in the sanctuary to debating in the council chamber—discussing matters of twon planning, harmonizing and humanizing beauty in architecture, green spaces, road traffic schemes, environmental work, sustainable farming, proper use of resources.(266)

2) the church that takes sacred time seriously will not split life into worship and work, but seek to bring wisdom and humanizing order to the rhythms of work in offices and shops. (Wright is less specific here but my interpretation of this is not that we should “Christianize” the rhythms of our public life but that we should order our collective cultural timekeeping in ways that honor the sacredness of time, which, I would suggest, includes ideas of Sabbath rest, family responsbilities, as well as, from the other end, a sense of time in which one’s work, one’s vocation, is an expression of worship in that it is part of one’s way of bringing God’s kingdom into existence.)

3) churches that take sacred matter seriously will not just apply this liturgically to “sacraments” but by paying attention to the material needs that must be met in the lives of people: housing, safety, poverty, illness, education.(267)