N.T. Wright's "Surprised by Hope": The Pirate Review, Day 12
Chapter 14
Reshaping the Church for Mission (1):
Biblical Roots
With all due respect to Scot McKnight, and with utter appreciation to his dedicated and insightful review series on the book over at Jesus Creed, I find myself forced to vigorously disagree with the premise of his introduction to his last post on the series, where he chooses to summarize these last chapters of the book with the barest of details "because we have already come to terms with the central ideas." Well, yes and no. Wright has, up till now, brought us to terms with the central foundational ideas, but it is in these last few chapters, I believe, where the whole purpose for those ideas is found. Without taking seriously the natural consequences of the solidified vision of the historical Christian faith, and the hope generated by it, wouldn't this all be an exercise in futility? If we are at least intrigued by the picture Wright has painted so far, wouldn't we naturally want to see where this is all going? Specifically, having seen how and why we must all individually seek to implement Jesus' achievement and resurrection and thereby anticipate the renewal of all things, are we not at least curious to see Wright's vision of what that will look like for the church as one body? Like I said, I humbly disagree with Scot in answering "yes" to these questions. So here's a detailed account of Chapter 14, the first of a 2-chapter conclusion to this remarkable work, where Wright discusses what he believes to be the entire NT's unified voice on the subject. In other words, how do the gospels, Acts, and Paul lay the foundation for what should be the hope-shaped mission of the church?
Starting with the gospels and Acts, Wright points out how, in Mark's truncated account, the whole point of the conclusion is not that "Jesus is raised, and therefore there is life after death;" it's "Jesus is raised, and you'd better go see Him in Galilee." In Matthew, when the disciples do go and meet Him, and they worship Him, and He then tells them that they have a job to do:
"What remains implicit in Mark, at least as we have it, is made explicit in Matthew: resurrection doesn't mean escaping from the world, but mission to the world based on Jesus' lordship over the world."
Later, Wright points to a similar theme in John 21, through the story of the disciples catching no fish, Jesus helping them to an enormous catch, and then commissioning Peter to be a shepherd rather than a fisherman. In other words, our mission in the world will be dangerous, difficult, and often times not what we would have expected.
Wright then turns to the Emmaus Road story of Luke 24. The central point of the story is that resurrection changes the way the story is told, the story of Jesus, the story of God and the world, and the story of us within that world: the resurrection turns those stories from tragedies to gospel, euangelion, "good news."
After a brief aside where Wright discusses the continuity of the Old and New Testaments, we get to the place in the Bible where the whole issue of the church's mission in the world is most explicit. The Book of Acts.
After a brief aside where Wright discusses the continuity of the Old and New Testaments, we get to the place in the Bible where the whole issue of the church's mission in the world is most explicit. The Book of Acts.
Acts starts with the story of the Ascension, which follows immediately after the risen Christ's cryptic answer to the disciples' question, "Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?" Wright suggests that Jesus' answer was not so much a "No, you've still got it all wrong," but a "Yes, but not like you imagined." As for the ascension itself, every Roman knew that the one who ascends into heaven is enthroned as the divine Emperor, and it is the job of that Emperor's emissaries here on earth to go out and proclaim the good news of that accession within all the territories of which he is already enthroned as Lord. This is precisely, Wright says, what Jesus' disciples went out to proclaim: that Jesus is the world's true Lord, and that He demands your believing obedience.
Wright emphasizes the political nature of the message throughout Acts, starting with the first half, when Herod Agrippa, who has stood as the primary opponent to the message, dies precisely at the point where he declares himself divine, and through to the second half, where Paul is traveling throughout the empire, and finally right under Caesar's nose, declaring that there is another Lord, namely Jesus. This message is based entirely on the resurrection, and culminates with the speech at the Areopagus in Athens where, six centuries earlier (according to Aeschylus' play), Apollo had stood and declared that "When a man dies, and his blood is shed on the ground, there is no resurrection."
Wright then discusses the most popular modern argument against all this, that 2,000 years have gone by and there is no hint of a new kingdom on earth, that we've had, rather, are the Crusades and the Inquisitions, etc. Wright reminds us that, yes, the messengers of the kingdom have gotten it wrong, seriously wrong, many times, but, just from recent history, we've also seen the role of the fearless witness of a Polish pope in toppling Eastern European Communism, and the role of a prayerful black Bishop, declaring that there is another way, in bringing about a peaceful resolution of the South African apartheid issue, an issue that every commentator fully expected to end in bloodbath.
Paul, too, was aware of the apparent paradox of the claim that the resurrection means that the new world has begun and that Jesus is already reigning over it as Lord. After all, some of his most direct statements of that theology are written from prison. Nevertheless, Paul is our most direct biblical witness to themes that have been discussed in the book so far. And the clearest vision of Paul's theology of Lordship based on the resurrection is found in 1 Cor. 15, which Wright explores and summarizes as stating:
"The main meaning of the resurrection ... is that God's new world has been brought into being through this event, this long-promised new world in which the covenant will be renewed, sins will be forgiven and death itself will be done away with. The resurrection is neither an isolated and out-of-character divine 'miracle,' nor simply the promise of eternal life beyond the grave. It is, rather, the decisive start of the world-wide rule of the Jewish Messiah, in which sins are already forgiven and the promise of the eventual new world of justice and incorruptible life are assured."
How then, according to Paul, will this play out. Wright reminds us again that the rhetoric of the opponents of the kingdom is not the only voice out there. The Tutus and the Wilberforces and that Kings and the Bonhoeffers are real, "and they matter; and so are a million others, less well known but equally signs of the strange lordship of Jesus over the world. We are called to live within the world where these things are possible, and to be agents of such things so far as they lie in our calling and sphere."
And the people who will do so are precisely those marked out in this world by baptism and holiness. As for baptism, according to Paul, "it is no use simply saying, 'I've been baptized, therefore God is happy with me the way I am.' Paul's logic is: 'You have been baptized; therefore God is challenging you to die to sin and live the resurrection life."
This culminates with Paul's command in Ephesians 5:14, which Wright ties in to our call to holiness: "Awake, sleeper, rise from the dead, and the Messiah will give you light!" Lying, stealing, etc., are forms of death, both for the perpetrator and for all whose lives are touched by these actions. It's time, Paul is saying, to wake up to the new world where Jesus is Lord:
"Christian holiness consists not of trying as hard as we can to be good, but of learning to live in the new world created by Easter, the new world which we publicly entered in our baptism. There are many parts of the world that we can't do anything about except pray. But there is one part of the world, one part of physical reality, which we can do something about, and that is the creature we call 'myself.' Personal holiness and global holiness belong together. Those who wake up to the one may well find themselves called to wake up to the other."
Which is what Wright will be discussing in the final chapter. In detail.
Grace and Peace,
Raffi
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