Sword of Peace

A main point of this book is that the way resurrection was thought of at the time of Jesus is not how many of us imagine it today.

Biblical resurrection implied that one day God would take all people, alive and those whom had died, and almost reform them and the world into a better place. A more full, beautiful version of ourselves and the earth. His Kingdom come. Heaven on earth. I like this point because it emphasizes the value and importance of our physical bodies to our soul.  Our bodies are not things that hold us back that we will one day leave. Our bodies may be different, yes, but they will be reformed and a better version of what they are. Sexuality will still be relevant in heaven.

In this Chapter Wright lays out the common thoughts of resurrection at the time of Jesus’s death. The idea of resurrection was largely Jewish and wasn’t commonly held by “pagans” of the time. One interesting thought is that Jewish people of the time did expect resurrection. But they never imagined that the Messiah would come, die, be resurrected, and then come back in the future to resurrect the rest of the world.

Jewish people of the time imagined the Messiah coming and reconciling the world. Restoring Israel as the promise land of the world. How surprised they must have been with a man who entered Jerusalem on a donkey. Not as a powerful King they had imagined but instead as a humble servant.

“Why oil the wheels of a machine that will soon plunge over a cliff”?

Of all the questions Wright is asking and talking about in the first two chapters, I think this one is my favorite. The other questions are important. They way we see death, what happens after we die. The theology of those questions does determine the way we feel about the present. But what I like most about the above question is that it is getting at what we are actually doing right now, not just what we think about it, or how we feel about it.

Let me try to elaborate. I sometimes have a problem with theological issues that keep us so wrapped up in our own minds and thoughts and the opinions of others that it doesn’t actually ever amount to us serving Jesus better. Good theology will do just that, make a difference in the way we serve Jesus. So while it is important that we should be corrected if our theology is weak or incorrect, like Wright claims it is on modern Christian thought concerning the afterlife, it is more important to see how that theology can change the way we are really living to serve Jesus better.

I admit that I sometimes fall into the trap that Wright mentions: The world is so messed up that I don’t even want to try to own it. I look forward to heaven when we can happily leave all the problems of the world behind. Why try to fix the entire world if we are going to be redeemed and everything will be taken care of when we get to heaven? Or, “Why oil the wheels of a machine that will soon plunge over a cliff”?

Wright is setting up the argument that the machine is not plunging off the cliff. That it is going to be around much longer and have a larger impact than we anticipate. This is why what we do right now in the present world is so important. I believe Wright is arguing and will continue to argue throughout the book that our present actions are more important than we realize. That is theology that I can serve with.