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What if there’s life after life after death?

This world is not my home

I’m just a-passin’ through

If you grew up in the South in the late 20th century, chances are you’ve heard this old hymn.

“The angels beckon me from heaven’s open door,” the choir sang, “and I can’t feel at home in this world anymore.”

It isn’t very joyful, is it?

No wonder critics have called Christianity the opiate of the people. If you believe this world is irredeemable and that the only hope is a disembodied existence “somewhere beyond the blue” after you die, then you aren’t going to bother trying to do anything about poverty, environmental ruin or child prostitution.

But pie in the sky by and by isn’t the Christian hope. And most people — including most Christians — don’t know what the ultimate Christian hope is, according to N.T. Wright, one of the world’s most prominent Bible scholars.

Resurrection, Wright argues, is not about a spiritual life after death. It is about a holistic life after life after death — a life in which we’ll have new bodies and inhabit this world, not as it is now, but redeemed by Christ’s victory over evil and death.

Heaven is not our home.

Before you go thinking this is some kind of liberal, postmodernist babble, understand this: It is a belief as old as the scriptures — older than Christianity itself.

The traditional Christian belief about the resurrection and the coming kingdom of God is rooted in ancient Judaism. But the belief that the material world (including the human body) is bad and that we will have a spiritual existence for eternity after we die is rooted in ancient Greek philosophy. It all comes down to whether you want to believe Plato or Paul.

During Easter season in 2008, I read Wright’s book, “Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church,” and it completely changed my thinking on one of the  fundamental beliefs of the Christian faith. The book is a fascinating examination of how the resurrection is misunderstood by most believers and why it “is the element that gives shape and meaning to the rest of the story of God’s ultimate purposes.”

The Anglican bishop of Durham, England, begins his argument by exploring beliefs about life after death, including heaven and the resurrection of the body, then looks at the coming kingdom, and finally discusses what implications all this has for the mission of the church.

Let’s start with life after death. Wright does believe in heaven. But he believes it is a resting place or way station for the soul until creation is restored — not the final destination.

Jesus said that in his Father’s house, there are “many dwelling places.” But the Greek word for dwellings in the original text is monai, which means a temporary stop on a journey to someplace else. Think “inns,” not “mansions.”

In his letter to the Philippians, Paul refers to Christians as “citizens of heaven,” but in the next line, he writes about Jesus coming from heaven to restore our bodies and subject all things to his authority.

In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus tells the brigand on the cross that “today you will be with me in paradise.” But in the same passage, the condemned man asks Jesus to “remember me when you come into your kingdom” — implying that this kingdom is something that will happen in the future, not today.

According to the Bible, the New Jerusalem comes to us; we do not go to it, and there will be new heaven and a new earth, which will come together at last under Christ’s rule.

If we don’t believe this, we shouldn’t pray the Lord’s Prayer: “Thy kingdom come. ” Nor should we recite the Nicene Creed in which we profess that we believe “in the resurrection of the body,” that Christ will come from heaven to judge “the living and the dead,” and that “his kingdom will have no end.”

In his letter to the Romans, Paul describes Christ’s kingdom as one in which death is no more, that “creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay ” and that we too, wait “for the redemption of our bodies.”

Wright slams the recent dispensationalist idea of the Rapture popularized by such authors as Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins of “Left Behind” fiction.

A more orthodox view of the coming kingdom can be found in C.S. Lewis’ “The Chronicles of Narnia,” particularly at the end of “The Last Battle,” where the children witness the restoration of everything that was good about the world they knew — “the real England” where “no good thing is destroyed.”

What implications does belief in resurrection and restoration have for our lives here and now? If we believe this, Wright says, then we will be a church “that claims this world in advance as the place of God’s kingdom ” We will work for that which is good and true and beautiful. We will engage the world, not separate ourselves from it.

“If it is true,” Wright argues, “that the whole world is now God’s holy land, we must not rest as long as that land is spoiled and defaced. This is not an extra to the church’s mission. It is central.”

Throughout my life, I’ve struggled with contradictions in the church’s teachings, as many of you have. But in “Surprised by Hope,” Wright brings many of Christianity’s core beliefs together in a way that makes them coherent.

This book left me pleasantly surprised – and more hopeful than I’ve felt in years. I recommend it to anyone who wants to understand why Easter is at the heart of the story we find ourselves in.

Randall Patrick is the managing editor of the Sun. You may comment at www.winchestersun.com.

Sunday, Dec. 27 — Today was the first Sunday of Christmastide, and for congregants at my parish church, Apostles Anglican, and other traditional Christians around the world, it was a time of joyous celebration of the arrival of the newborn King.
The church was resplendent in the colors of the Christmas season — brilliant white and gold, representing purity, joy and truth, and the altar was covered in the greenery of God’s creation, adorned with brilliant white lights, reminding us of the Light of the World.
The songs were carols of celebration — “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” and “Angels We Have Heard on High,” for example. And the liturgy and sermon centered on one of the most beautiful and hope-inspiring passages of Scripture, the opening lines from the Gospel of St. John: “In the beginning was the Word (Christ), and Word was with God and the Word was God. … In him was life and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. … And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
The Eucharist service filled my heart with reverence and brought me to my knees — an experience I shared with millions around the planet.
Sadly, though, for those who treat Christmas as a secular holiday (and that includes most Christians), it was just another Sunday.
Most people think the Christmas season begins after Thanksgiving (or even before) and ends at 11:59 on Dec. 25. But for those of us who consider Christmas a holy day and the start of the 12 days of Christmas, it is just the beginning.
The four weeks before Christmas are known in the church calendar as Advent, which means “coming.” It is a time of penitence and preparation, a season of waiting for the coming of the Christ child and the second coming in glory of the King who will bring justice and make “all things new.”
In our materialistic culture, the time leading up to Christmas is a blur — a frenzy of stress and excess. It’s hard to find time for reflection or preparing one’s heart for any kind of spiritual experience.
So why not just do away with Advent? Isn’t it one of those anachronistic traditions of the church that, to use the trite word of contemporary Christians, is no longer “relevant”?
That’s what Paula Gooder, an Anglican theologian, wondered until she was pregnant with her first child. In her book about Advent that I read just before the holidays, “The Meaning is in the Waiting,” she explains that waiting is “not just about passing time,” but that it has a “deep and lasting value.”
It is a nurturing time, not a time for passivity, but for active waiting that “knits together new life.”
Without it, she concludes, “our Christian journey is impoverished.”
I think she’s right. Without Advent, Christmas isn’t really Christmas. And for those who don’t observe the Christmas season, the period after Christmas Day is one big let-down.
So, if you want the Spirit of Christmas to last into the new year, I encourage you to leave the Yule tree up for another week, greet everyone you meet with a hearty “Merry Christmas,” and visit a church that is still celebrating the season of light.
And join with others next week, when we will celebrate the Epiphany on Jan. 6, which marks the day Jesus was revealed as the Christ to the Gentiles in the persons of the Magi, or Wise Men.