In some ways, this week has been the first week of summer break. In some ways, it's felt more like the end of spring semester. I've been waiting for grades, and this week, the last of them finally came in.
I've had some grades for several weeks. My internship class was pass-fail, so once I completed the assignments, it was easy for my instructors to submit the passing grade. My paper for Systematic Theology was graded a day or two after I turned it in, and I was happy to get my grade of A. Even after 9 months of Systematic Theology class, I still wasn't completely sure that I was creating Systematic Theology. And in fact, creating a complete systematic theology, in the way that the best systematic theologians have done, would mean I'd be writing multiple volumes of books, not just a paper or two.
This week, I got my Foundations of Worship class grades. I had gotten grades throughout the term, so I was fairly sure all would be well. But it was a relief to get grades for the last assignments I turned in. I had to go back to the assignments to even remember what I wrote, so that I could fully appreciate the comments, that's how long it had been for some of them. I was happy with what I had written, and so was my professor.
I turned in my last big paper three weeks ago. It was for Environmental History of Christianity (EHC) class, and in some ways, I was covering some of the same territory as I did for my Systematic Theology class. I wanted to talk about the ways that Substitutionary Atonement Theology has failed us. For the EHC class, I talked about how our ideas of salvation leave us willing to let the planet die, since we're just waiting to go to Heaven. I got an A on that paper.
But more important to me, I restored my hope. In my paper, I talked about our failure of vision, but I reminded the reader (and myself) that we worship a God who takes the worst kind of brokenness and transforms it into beauty. I found myself asking myself if I really believed in the possibility of resurrection--not the specific resurrection of Jesus, but resurrection in general.
The answer: yes, yes I do. Here's how I concluded my paper:
We may feel like we’re too late. N. T. Wright assures us otherwise. In Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, N. T. Wright says, "What you do in the present--by painting, preaching, singing, sewing, praying, teaching, building hospitals, digging wells, campaigning for justice, writing poems, caring for the needy, loving your neighbor as yourself--will last into God's future. These activities are not simply ways of making the present life a little less beastly, a little more bearable, until the day when we leave it behind altogether . . . . They are part of what we may call building for God's kingdom" (page 193, emphasis in the original). Wright goes on to reassure those of us who are prone to apocalyptic thinking: " . . . what you do in the Lord is not in vain. You are not oiling the wheels of a machine that's about to roll over a cliff" (p. 208). Jesus, too, issues this promise in John 8: 31-32, 35-36: “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free. The slave does not have a permanent place in the household; the son has a place there forever. So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed” (NRSVUE). We are resurrection people, free indeed. Let us move forward in faith, developing a new theology for this time, trusting in God’s promise that the forces of death and destruction do not get to have the final word.
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