The Church – an Appetizer for a New World

19 March 2024 0 Sandrine Laporte

What hope is there for 2024? This winter we asked ourselves this question with some fifty young people as we went into the New Year. The initial result was not so good…

Wars, inflation, extremism on the rise, global warming, and who knows what else: tomorrow’s world is no dream. New words such as ecoanxiety have got into the dictionary and testify of a prevailing pessimism. On a personal note, I have found myself putting down an alarming article or stopping a video relaying future projections for our planet. The future scares me. Rather not think about it. Or? And yet…

A GROUND FOR HOPE 

“Don’t be alarmed. You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go and tell his disciples and Peter he is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you (1).”

Nevertheless, I manage to get up (almost) every morning with enthusiasm, welcoming each new day not as a burden but as a blessing. How so? Because I am a Christian and my faith is based on the simple affirmation: Christ died and rose again, as Paul reminded the Corinthians:

I passed on to you what I myself received: Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried and rose again  the third day according to the Scriptures (2).

I have heard this elementary gospel preached, written, chanted and proclaimed so often that I hardly even respond to it. But Christ died, more than that, he rose again! I’m afraid I underestimate the implications of this truth. For Christ’s resurrection is the basis of my hopes, my joys and my reason for living, because His resurrection is the first of a long series of which I shall be a part. When he came back from the dead, Christ inaugurated a new way of life, a new humanity, a New World! His ressurrection implied a promise: “One day you too will rise with me.”

A REASON FOR DYING 

Christ’s resurrection and ascension enable us to fix our attention on what comes afterwards. In a time of trouble we lift our gaze to heaven and yearn for that moment when at last we shall join our Lord for all eternity. We take courage from knowing he is alive on high. And with reason! With Paul we affirm that “to die is gain” (3) because we long for that eternal rest in the presence of the Risen One.

Does that mean we neglect this present life? I recall films where after the suspense of the climax, the hero manages to jump on a plane, take off and watch from a safe distance in the sky as the world collapses before his eyes. Is that the Gospel we believe in? Our only hope is to take off and leave the world behind? That’s not what the promise of the ressurrection means.

A REASON FOR LIVING

Christ’s resurrection implies rather that God has not done with this world yet. On the contrary He has a definite plan: “To unite everything under the authority of the Messiah, what is in heaven and also what is on earth (4).”

Christ’s resurrection inaugurated the world to come! It represents a breaking into the present of a future world. It means the end of time now. And since in a sense we have “already” died and risen with Him (5), we are also part and parcel of the world to come. As a church we are an “eschatological community” (6), a people called apart to live out today the realities of the future world.

The resurrection gives us hope for 2024 because “already” in 2024 we can live in peace with one another. Now, in 2024 we can cultivate love, joy, patience, meekness and self-control. Already in 2024 we can quash every spirit of rivalry, jealousy and resentment. Already in 2024 we can put our  ego on one side, admit we have nothing to prove, and rest in Christ. And already in 2024 we can work towards the future by combatting injustice, poverty and violence.

The resurrection entails the promise that our actions today will have resonance in the renewed world we are looking forward to. And I’m not talking about floating on cloud nine while playing our harp. I’m talking about the real world to come, “life after life after death (7)”, this resurrection life in which we will have a body, an earth, a palpable material world but entirely purified. What we do today will resonate in that world.

Because Christ rose again, we shall also rise and play our full part in it. Even if the “not yet” is intermingled with the “already”, this life enables us to taste the world to come and let other people taste it too. As Christians we are an anachronism, we belong to the coming era. So of course we may feel out of phase, thrust aside and mistreated by this world. But we are appetizers for people around us. We are the living proof that it is possible to live a new and different life. In Christ. Through the Spirit. Starting now. And for ever.

Death will be no more than a pause in life. That is what Christ’s resurrection promises. So, what hope for 2024? That of the life to come as of now, that of resurrection life.

Jonathan Conte

(1) Mark 16.6ff.
(2) 1 Corinthians 15.3f.
(3) Phil 1.21.
(4) Eph. 1.10.
(5) Col 2.12.
(6) Gordon Fee, Le Saint-Esprit et le peuple de Dieu dans les lettres de Paul, Charols, Editions Excelsis, 2023, p. 82.
(7) Nicolas T. Wright, Surpris par l’espérance, Charols, Editions Excelsis, 2019, p. 229.