Surprised by Hope (N.
T. Wright), was published in 2008. I came
across it about a year later and was so impacted by it that I immediately put
together a series of messages on the resurrection and the profound truths that
flowed from it. It wasn’t that I didn’t
have some understanding of these things prior to the book, but Wright
presented the resurrection in a comprehensive, interlocking way that united the
biblical story in ways I’d never imagined. We moved in 2010 and I shared the
same series (give or take), with the congregation I’m now with. I also learned of another minister in the area
who was doing the same thing.
This week I’m talking about the death of Jesus and yes, next
week I’ll have something to say about the resurrection. In preparation for that, I was looking over
the notes I had taken from the book—a Word document ten pages long w/1.15
spacing. That in itself is a note taking
record for me. And although that shows
how influential the book has been to me, that’s not the point. The point is that as I looked over these
notes, I was overwhelmed (again) by all the book had to say; how wide-ranging
it is in it implications and applications.
And, I also noted how much more there was for me to absorb despite the
fact I’ve plowed through it a few times.
As anyone who reads much knows, there are very few
books that continue to speak to you like this. I’ve lived long enough that a lot of books I come across now are simply
rewrites of books written twenty or thirty years ago but now out of print. The “new” book simply becomes this generation’s
version of whatever its message is. Then
there are a fair amount of books with some useful things to say, but you could
sum them up in a few sentences. Books like Wright’s don’t come along very
often. That’s why I thought I’d share
some juicy quotes with you if you haven’t yet had the pleasure of reading SBH.
;)
“If
resurrection doesn’t mean the literal body but some type of spiritual body,
then there wouldn’t be an empty tomb.”
“. . . the
resurrection of Jesus offers itself . . . not as an odd event within the world
as it is but as the utterly characteristic, prototypical, and foundation event
with the world as it has begun to be. It is not an absurd event within the old
world but the symbol and starting point of the new world.”
“Instead
of talking vaguely about heaven about and then trying to fit the language of
resurrection into that, we should talk with biblical precision about the resurrection
and reorganize our thinking about heaven around that.”
“The first
Christians did not simply believe in life after death; they virtually never
spoke of going to heaven when they died . . . heaven is important but it’s not
the end of the world . . . they seemed this heavenly life as a temporary stage
on the way to the eventual resurrection of the body.”
“The world
has already been turned upside down; that’s what Easter is all about. It isn’t a matter of waiting until God
eventually does something different at the end of time.”
“This, as
we have seen, is what the resurrection and ascension of Jesus and the gift of
the Spirit are all about. They are
designed not to take us away from this earth but rather to make us agents of
the transformation of this earth.”
That’s just a little taste of what the book has to
offer. It offers insight, encouragement,
and transforming hope all—anchored in the resurrection of Christ!
