(a study series on Hope, Heaven, and Resurrection, based on N. T. Wright’s Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2008.)

Part I: Setting the Scene

what is “hope”? (chapters 1 and 2)

early Christian hope in its historical setting (chapter 3)

the resurrection (chapter 4)

Part II: God’s Future Plan

cosmic future: progress or despair? (chapter 5)

“what the whole world’s waiting for”: resurrection and redemption (chapter 6)

what is “the second coming” of Christ all about? (chapters 7-9)

the redemption of bodies (chapter 10)

heaven, hell, limbo, purgatory, and other scenarios of the afterlife (chapter 11)

Part III: Hope in Practice (the “so-what”)

defining “salvation” and “kingdom of God” (chapters 12 and 13)

redefining “mission” (chapter 14 and 15)

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hi everyone!

If you were with us Sunday, then you will recognize the outline above as the handout we passed around–it’s just a general outline of the shape of this series, which–including the essential Brunch Breaks and an occasional “On Vocation” talk–will take us all the way to Advent. (When, of course, we will switch from talking about resurrection and ascension and start anticipating Jesus’ arrival instead of his departure. Full circle!)

I’m a little late in posting my bloggy follow-up, so my apologies.

One of the things I would have liked to talk more about are the images of resurrection Wright highlights in the book: seedtime and harvest, new birth, and marriage. The Corinthians passage Steven posted a couple weeks ago contains Paul’s metaphor of the seed:

But someone will ask, ‘How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?’ Fool! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And as for what you sow, you do not sow the body that is to be, but a bare seed, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body. (1 Cor 15: 35-38)

Wright cites Romans 8, for the image of new birth, and comments:

Paul then uses the image of birth pangs…Once again this highlights both continuity and discontinuity. This is no smooth evolutionary transition, in which creation simply moves up another gear into a higher mode of life. This is traumatic, involving convulsions and contractions and the radical discontinuity in which mother and child are parted and become not one being but two…[But] the metaphor Paul chooses shows that what he has in mind is not the unmaking of the creation but the drastic and dramatic birth of new creation from the womb of the old. (103-104)

Wright calls the image of marriage “perhaps the greatest image of new creation, of cosmic renewal, in the whole Bible,” interpreting the images of the New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven as a bride adorned for her husband, in Revelation, as “it is not we who go to heaven, it is heaven that comes to earth” (104).

Here are some questions I’d be interested in hearing your responses to:

1. which of these images speaks most eloquently to you? why?
2. why is it so important to Wright’s thesis that images of resurrection demonstrate both continuity and discontinuity?
3. what does this mean in terms of our valuing of physical existence, our own bodies, and the material world of God’s creation?