In this season of Eastertide, the period of fifty days from Easter Sunday to Pentecost Sunday, we not only celebrate Jesus’ victory over death in his resurrection, but we also consider seriously the implications of his resurrection for our own lives.

One of the most important implications is that Jesus’ resurrection is a foretaste of our own resurrection.  But not just in the future.  Our new birth is a direct result of Jesus’ conquest of death.  As Jesus was raised from the dead, so we too have been raised with him and are made alive with and to him (e.g., Rom. 6:1-18).

Two weeks ago, Klyne Snodgrass gave appropriate appreciation in his blog (“Going To Heaven?” [March 17, 2008]) to the most recent work of  N. T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church (HarperOne, 2008).  Not only does Wright make accessible to non-academics his earlier work on resurrection, The Resurrection of the Son of God (Fortress, 2003), but he draws direct implications of the resurrection for Christian living. 

Klyne forcefully emphasized one of Wright’s central theses:  heaven is not our permanent home.  While heaven is a blissful garden, a parkland of rest and tranquility after death for believers, it is not the final destination.  The final destination is a redeemed world lived in the presence of God.

There are indeed several points where I would differ with Wright, but this thesis is headed rightly, and is an important point to understand in God’s program of history and the establishment of the kingdom of God on earth.  We are not destined to float around in the clouds of “heaven.”

A second implication of the resurrection that Wright emphasizes has not received as much attention, but follows on the first, and has to do with the final clause of the subtitle, the Mission of the Church.  Again, I would differ with him on several significant points, but where I agree is that discipleship is meant to be lived with Jesus in the world, not just the church.

Our purpose in this world is to advance the gospel message that has redeemed and transformed us, to be salt and light in a decayed and dark world, and to live out life in the way God intended life to be lived before a watching world (cf. John 17:15-21). 

Communities of faith are necessary for purposeful gathering away where believers are strengthened and equipped.  But the growth and transformation that we experience is what enables us to live effectively with Jesus in this world.  Our transformation enables us to live as sojourners in the world, and “live such good lives among the pagans that...they may see your good deeds and glorify God” (1 Pet. 2:11-12). 

Wright takes potshots at some whose eschatological convictions he does not share, and he may have unfairly caricatured them as pawns of General Motors in their disregard for God’s creation (e.g., pp. 118-119).  But he surfaces an important point:  God’s eschatological program should never produce an escapist mentality.

Transformed disciples bear and exemplify the message of the gospel of the kingdom, offering resurrection life in our everyday realm of activities to a world that is dying without it.