Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, The Resurrection, And The Mission Of The Church

Wright outlines a “hope-shaped mission” for the church. It is important to underline that “God builds God’s kingdom” (207), not us; nevertheless, God wants to work through the medium of human beings, the creatures made in his image. This means that while we cannot build the kingdom, we can “build for the kingdom” (208), and that everything we do in the present life will count in God’s future kingdom—perhaps in ways that we cannot imagine now.

Although idolatry remains a temptation that we should guard against, Wright says, idolatry remains a perversion of something fundamentally good. Given that God intends to “redeem” rather than “reject” the “created world of space, time, and matter” (212), we should ask ourselves what a future mission of “implementing Jesus’s resurrection and thereby anticipating the final new creation” might look like (212). Wright discusses three areas: justice, beauty, and evangelism.

Justice here refers to God’s intention to set the world right, supremely expressed in Jesus’ resurrection. We participate in this sense of justice when we “live consciously between the resurrection of Jesus in the past and the making of God’s new world in the future” (213). Wright identifies two extremes into which Christians tend to slide when pursuing justice. At one end, there is the “social gospel,” which concentrates on building “the kingdom here on earth through social, political, and cultural revolution” (215). At the other end is an attitude that despairs of fixing anything in this world and is content with simply waiting until the Lord returns. However, neither of these views is consistent with the New Testament message, the first because it assumes that we can build the kingdom through our efforts without God’s help and the second because of its defeatism.

Corresponding to these two extremes are two theological camps of Christians: 1) theological liberals who deny the resurrection and thus “cut off the branch from which true Christian work for justice must grow” and 2) theological conservatives who affirm the resurrection but use it to reinforce an “anti-this-worldly” theology that tacitly denies the bodily nature of the resurrection (220). According to Wright, both groups are wrong. An affirmation of the resurrection in its bodily aspect should push us to fight for justice in this world because the bodily resurrection, which symbolizes the defeat of evil and death, is a summons to us to contribute to the fight against evil. Wright stakes a major claim: The major issue for justice in our time is “the massive economic imbalance of the world,” as shown in “Third World debt” (216).

Regarding beauty, taking creation and the resurrection seriously should also lead to a renewed “aesthetic awareness” and artistic creativity. Because we are made in God’s image, we share in God’s creative activity, as seen in procreating children and in creating art. However, art must also deal with the problem of evil, as manifested in sin and idolatry. Wright identifies two extremes in the way art deals with evil: on the one hand, overly idyllic art, ignoring evil and ending up as trivial “kitsch”; on the other hand, a hyper-realistic brutalism that “responds to ugliness with more ugliness” (223). Wright stakes a claim that this split creates a space for Christians who have a more “integrated worldview”: They can find a way forward in creating art that reflects the beauty of creation in light of what creation is to become in the future. Such art should reflect the world “not just as it should be, not just as it is, but as—by God’s grace alone!—one day it will be” (224). Christians can, inspired by core truths of Christianity, lead the way for the art of the future.

Wright acknowledges that many people are scared off by the term “evangelism” because some Christians do it so badly. Evangelism means proclaiming the “good news” that “God is God, that Jesus is Lord, that the powers of evil have been defeated, that God’s new world has begun” (227). It should be an invitation to share in the new life started by Jesus. Wright identifies three benefits of this approach to evangelism, which avoids three corresponding problems. First, It emphasizes that to become a Christian is not to “say no to the good world, which God has made” (228). Christianity is positive, not negative, even if we must reject habits that separate us from God. Second, it avoids the trap of seeing Christianity as merely a private relationship between God and us and instead emphasizes Christianity as a communal project to which we all contribute. Finally, it emphasizes that Christianity is not about following rules but is about following Jesus, which leads to human flourishing both in this life and in the future one.

Lastly, Wright—drawing from his own experience working in a depressed area of Britain—reiterates that when the church engages in the areas outlined above, it points the way to a “surprising hope.” Such is the “hope-shaped mission” to which the “mission-shaped church” must commit itself.

In the final two chapters, Wright enters into more specifics about the “mission-shaped church.” In this chapter, he emphasizes the biblical foundations of the mission. Such foundations are necessary, Wright argues, so that church life does not devolve into mere “pragmatism.”

Wright divides his analysis of scripture into the gospels and Paul. The gospel writers make it clear that resurrection means not “escaping from the world” but “mission to the world based on Jesus’ lordship over the world” (235). Because the resurrection actually happened in space and time, it has implications for other events in space and time. The resurrection requires a new kind of knowing based on love. Episodes like the journey to Emmaus, the resurrection on Sunday, and the appearance of the risen Jesus on the shore all drive home the point that there are “new tasks within the new creation” that the disciples are being commissioned to carry out (241).

Wright gives two examples from history of the church carrying out resurrection faith in the world. In the midst of communist oppression in Eastern Europe, the Polish pope John Paul II provided hope and witness that helped topple the regime. In South Africa, Archbishop Desmond Tutu helped bring healing to a country divided by apartheid. Wright himself has witnessed “hundreds and thousands of things” being done on a smaller scale to witness to the “name and power of the risen Jesus” (245).

Paul, in his letters, insisted that if we share in Jesus’ resurrection through baptism, then we “have a responsibility to share in the present risen life of Jesus” by living a holy life (250). The resurrection event should change our whole way of living, allowing us to “wake up” from the spiritual slumber of sin and live a life of virtue. When we live this resurrection life, we cooperate with God’s plan to join heaven and earth together.

Wright first discusses the church’s mission concerning liturgical celebrations—rituals that celebrate the renewal of creation. He advocates emphasizing the importance of Easter through lavish celebrations and music. In particular, we should give the same attention to the joyful Easter season as we currently do to the penitential season of Lent. The emphasis should be on celebrating the positive energy and goodness of creation by taking up new tasks and ventures and cultivating growth in our lives.

The reclaiming of creation in the spirit of Easter should include the three dimensions of space, time, and matter. The reclaiming of space should include building new places for worship and prayer and using the church as a center for inspiring liturgies. Regarding time, in addition to the obvious fact that our calendar and system of dating years reflect the birth of Christ, we reclaim time by honoring church history and keeping Sunday as the holy day. In the celebration of the sacraments, matter is elevated for a sacred purpose.

Wright expands the discussion from the church’s internal activity to how Christians interact with the world. Here again, all three dimensions of creation are involved. Those who cultivate a rich prayer and worship life in church will use that sacred space as a “bridgehead” into the secular world, helping to improve life in politics, civic planning, environmental work, and other fields. Because time is “God’s good gift,” Christians will strive to bring “humanizing order” to public life, work, and holidays. Moreover, because Jesus transformed matter by his life and presence, Christians will seek to make a difference in the material lives of people. Christians must collaborate with “those of other faiths or none” (268)—while standing up to tyrants, political correctness, and exploitative business interests—as well as those who resist the idea of Christians working to bring positive material change to the world.

Wright concludes the chapter and the book by outlining “six central aspects of spirituality” that relate to the church’s hope-filled mission rooted in resurrection and new creation (271): new birth and baptism and the Eucharist (sacraments), prayer and scripture (ways that we communicate with God and he with us), and holiness and love (aspirational qualities). The sacrament of baptism initiates one into the church while enacting a “dying to sin and coming alive with Christ” (273). While usually happening behind the scenes, baptism should be “the foundational event for all serious Christian living” (273). On the Eucharist, Wright seeks a middle ground between seeing it as a “quasi-magic ritual” and seeing it as merely a symbol. With a historical perspective based on Jewish tradition (where the Passover meal was the model for the Eucharist), we can see it as a continuation of Christ’s sacrifice in which we share and in which Christ himself becomes present through the materials of creation. The Eucharist also anticipates the “banquet when heaven and earth are made new, the marriage supper of the Lamb” (275). It is a sign of God’s new creation “breaking into the present world” and nourishes us as spiritual food in that new life (276).

Wright explains that prayer in the ancient Jewish tradition steered a middle course between nature mysticism (expressing oneness with creation) and the kind of petitionary prayer common to ancient paganism. In Christianity, Jesus extended the intimate relationship in prayer that he enjoyed with his Father to all his followers, as expressed supremely in the Lord’s Prayer, and this same intimate union can be ours today through Christian prayer. Regarding scripture, the Bible is essentially “the story of creation and new creation” and must be understood in the context of that whole story (281). Beyond simply informing us about this narrative, it “invites [us] into it” and equips us to pursue the goal of God’s new world (283).

Wright draws on Paul in his discussion of the qualities of holiness and love. For Paul (expressed especially in the letters to the Romans and the Corinthians), holiness is a matter of “transformation, starting with the mind” (284). The resurrection provides “the ultimate rationale for Christian behavior” because it inaugurates “God’s new world” in which we will become perfected in his love (284). Christian ethics, or the life of holiness, is a “lifestyle that celebrates and embodies” God’s new creation (284). According to Paul in 1 Corinthians, love is “the most excellent way of all” because it is the very “destiny” of all human beings in God’s new world (285). Closely related to forgiveness, it is “God’s way of life, God’s way to life” (288). Although our world is presently incomplete, love shows the way into the new, renewed world, representing God’s desire to set us free from our “loveless prison” of sin and selfishness.