What Could Resurrection Mean?

A quote from N.T. Wright's Surprised by Hope:

"...This [working for the kingdom of God in this present life] brings us back to I Corinthians 15:58 once more; what you do in the Lord is not in vain. You are not oiling the wheels of a machine that's about to roll over a cliff. You are not restoring a great painting that's shortly going to be thrown on the fire. You are not planting roses in a garden that's about to be dug up for a building site. You are—strange though it may seem, almost as hard to believe as the resurrection itself—accomplishing something that will become in due course part of God's new world. Every act of love, gratitude, and kindness; every work of art or music inspired by the love of God and delight in the beauty of his creation; every minute spent teaching a severely handicapped child to read or to walk; every act of care and nurture, of comfort and support, for one's fellow human beings and for that matter one's fellow nonhuman creatures; and of course every prayer, all Spirit-led teaching, every deed that spreads the gospel, builds up the church, embraces and embodies holiness rather than corruption, and makes the name of Jesus honored in the world—all of this will find its way, through the resurrecting power of God, into the new creation that God will one day make. That is the logic of the mission of God. God's recreation of this wonderful world, which began with the resurrection of Jesus and continues mysteriously as God's people live in the risen Christ and in the power of his Spirit, means that what we do in Christ and by the Spirit in the present is not wasted. It will last all the way into God's new world. In fact, it will be enhanced there."

I think if we considered that our actions matter for longer than this lifetime, we'd be more serious and intentional with the way we lived, and yet, at the same time, more joyful and free, believing that nothing we do in the name of love, for Jesus' sake and honor, will be wasted. It really is starting to be a quite radical concept for me, the resurrection. I haven't ever spent much time considering what it could and should mean for us, but as I've been reading Surprised by Hope, I'm really starting to see why the Apostle Paul said, "If Jesus did not rise from the dead, we should be pitied." The height of foolishness, something so ... un-natural. Supernatural. Death, for us, is the most sure thing about life. More than anything we could speculate about what our lives with contain or look like, we know they will end with death. Bodily resurrection flies in the face of the surest thing we know about the human experience.

And yet, if Jesus rose from the dead, that means something. That shatters something we thought to be true, to be final. Maybe death isn't the end? And, better than floating off to some spiritual haze of puffy clouds, babies with angel wings and halos, we will be resurrected, too, to new life. Maybe we aren't going to sit in a boring church service, singing hymns, for all eternity. Maybe we will be given new transformed physical bodies, just like the one that the Bible describes Jesus having, and maybe we will be reigning with Jesus over the new creation, God's re-creation, when He makes everything as it was meant to be. Redemption. Maybe it's true, that we will be learning, growing, exploring, naming, creating, loving, discovering and taking care of the new heaven and new earth, with physical bodies that have been glorified and transformed, never to decay or die, because sin, and disease and death have been conquered and destroyed, not simply passed through.

When I start imagining this way, I get really excited for the life after death... and for life before death.

And this idea gives me great hope, courage and motivation to love people even when it doesn't seem like it'll do anything. What can one vote do? What can a $25 donation to a charity do to help the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti? What good does a 5 minute conversation with someone who looks a bit lonely do? God sees our hearts and knows our intentions and, by the grace of God and the redeeming power of the resurrection, these seemingly insignificant actions will somehow affect the life to come; they won't be wasted. So let's love each other in the name of Jesus Christ and for the sake of the coming Kingdom, especially those around us who are hungry, lonely, scared, homeless, unwanted, awkward, insecure, broken and unloved... even if it doesn't seem to have any immediate affect that we can see—the hope of the resurrection is that these actions will matter and somehow be realized fully when God re-creates and makes this good, but broken and hurting, world whole and beautiful again.

The Story of Our Lives

Do you believe our lives are stories?

This idea, that our individual lives are dramatic, important stories, each within a larger Story that means something, is somewhat foreign to me. I feel like I live day-to-day, without the perspective that believes all the moments, experiences and situations are all part of a story worth listening to and retelling. The idea that I have an important part to play in the grand Story of history, what I do believe is God's story, is shocking, almost too good to believe. It adds so much dignity and worth, to every moment, to believe that you and I are the characters in the midst of a drama, where choices we make start us down the path towards becoming a hero or becoming a villain. Don Miller's new book talks about this idea of being a part of a story. John Eldridge talks about it in the daily email newsletter he and the Ransomed Heart team send out. It keeps cropping up in conversations.

We connect so deeply when a movie has a good plot. A good story to it. And yet, we're slow to make any kind of connection that maybe we get that perception and appreciation for a good story from the Great Story-teller. That analogy probably breaks down in places, as all do, but it's a sobering, exciting and empowering thought:

God is telling a grand Story and you have a part to play in it that matters.

You are part of a Story in which you play a critical role. God is doing something amazing and redemptive in all of creation, and what we do with our experiences matters. Our character is being shaped and molded, just like in our favorite books, by the things we experience. Will we choose evil and revenge and be consumed? Will we display inner strength and suffer for the sake of goodness? Will we pursue a life that is worth retelling? Will we weigh the worth of a day, in all its ups and downs, and choose to make the most of each one?

I realize some could run with this and/or criticize this idea, claiming it's much too self-esteem oriented, too self-focused. While that may indeed be a danger for some, but for most of us, I think we're too used to believing that our lives aren't that important.

May we choose to rise above the urgent to-do items and consider what kind of life we're living and make it a story worth retelling.

Sin and Hell

I can't quote the whole chapter, incomplete as it is to give an exhaustive exploration of the subject of hell, but in Surprised by Hope, by N. T. Wright, there's a statement he makes in relation to hell, that stood out to me for other reasons. Wright was discussing the inconsistencies in various traditional and current views on hell and judgment, and as he was addressing aspects of the liberal annihilationist view, that says "non-believers" are annihilated at death, since they claim a good, loving God could not eternally torment an image-bearing human for a short lifetime of sin. Relaying to you Wright's conclusion on that would take too long, and, though interesting and thought-provoking, it wasn't what really grabbed my attention.

This is what stuck out to me:

Sin, we note, is not the breaking of arbitrary rules; rather, the rules are the thumbnail sketches of different types of dehumanizing behavior.

In a culture that is so politically correct and afraid of offending people, this quote does a great job of articulating the essence of sin, in relation to human interaction. We'd be remiss to neglect sin in relation to God—worshiping any created thing or idea over the Creator. We all know that there is right and wrong, justice and injustice. We tend to bend the rules for ourselves most times, conveniently reserving swift judgment for Hitlers, child rapists and those who commit genocide rather than pointing the finger at our own pride, impatience, vanity, laziness and consumerism. We sin. We have to face up to that. Yes, we absolutely need to acknowledge that we've sinned against God. But as a starting place to accepting that sin is a real concept, deserving our acknowledgment and a place in our vocabulary, we can admit that we sin against each other. We hold grudges. We steal from each other. We make fun of each other's weaknesses. We commit adultery with other people's spouses. We drive selfishly. We belittle and devalue those in our society that don't have the same standing as we do. We treat each other with impatience and rudeness.

So, all this to say is I think that it's good to own up to the fact we sin against each other and feel free to use the word "sin" in our normal conversations about things that matter. I think Wright's description of sin gives us the gracious and logical space to do that.