Take Courage -- A Lectionary Meditation

Haggai 2:1-9


2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17

Luke 20:27-38

Take Courage

Theologian Paul Tillich believed that courage and being were inextricably related. He writes:

Courage as a human act, as a matter of valuation is an ethical concept. Courage as the universal and essential self-affirmation of one’s being is an ontological concept. The courage to be is the ethical act in which man affirms his own being in spite of those elements of his existence which conflict with his essential self-affirmation. (Tillich, Courage to Be, Yale University Press, 1952, pp. 2-3).

Tillich’s definition may sound a bit abstract, but he reminds us that courage is something that is expressed from the very center of our being in the midst of trying circumstances. We go on with life, despite the realities that press against us. As the Spiritual puts it: “Like a tree planted by the water, I shall not be moved.”

The theme of courage filters through our three texts, though the word isn’t always used directly. It is, however, stated quite clearly in the word that comes to Haggai the prophet. God sends the prophet to give a word of encouragement to the governor of Judea and the High Priest. It is the post-exilic period. The people have returned to the land and have begun rebuilding the Temple, but the times are difficult, the challenges many, and the memories of another day, a day of glory, still linger in the minds of some. This people is, by the prophet’s own estimation, no more than a remnant, a runt of what once was a people of importance. It would be easy for them to slip away and let the world pass them by. But the Lord of Hosts says to the leaders of the people: “Take courage . . .; work for I am with you, says the Lord of hosts, according to the promise that I made you when you came out of Egypt. My Spirit abides among you; do not fear” (vs. 4-5). The prophet goes on to declare that God will do great things and restore them to glory, but the very fact that he encourages them to get to work now is important, for it takes courage to continue on when all the signs seem against you. The pundits say it can’t be done, but the promise is there – God says, I am with you, so don’t be afraid!

As we move to the reading from the epistle we again encounter a people who are afraid, people who aren’t sure of the future. Could it be that the end has come and they’ve been left behind? More importantly, in the face of difficult times, be strong, don’t be alarmed – these things will happen. But, as for you, “give thanks to God.” Why, because you are the first fruits of salvation. You’ve been called by God to proclaim the good news. That’s your purpose – so “stand firm, hold fast.” To what are they to hold fast? It is to the tradition passed on to them by the founders of the church in Thessalonica. It is in this word that they shall find comfort and hope and strength. Take courage, because God will strengthen your hearts with every good work and word. Yes, stand firm – “like a tree planted by the water.”

And why should we take courage? Why should we stand firm in the face of adversity and opposition? According to Luke, we are a resurrection people. The passage from Luke tells of Jesus’ encounter with the Sadducees, a rather conservative, traditional party that one could say is “religious without being spiritual.” They are tied to the institution, for there really is nothing else. They find the idea of resurrection folly and seek to deride Jesus (and the others in the community, including the Pharisees, who take hope in the resurrection). Jesus goes into some detail refuting their charges, taking them into the Torah, those first five books of the Hebrew Bible that the Sadducees embraced, and showed them clearly that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, is the God of the living and not the dead.”

And what word can we take from Luke’s summation of this encounter? It is, I believe, in the reminder that we can take courage, we can stand firm, because God is the God of the Living and not the Dead. It is the power of the resurrection that stands as a witness to us that we’re not alone in this world. Therefore, we need not fear, no matter what waves crash against us, “I shall not be moved.”

Reposted from [D]mergent

Sun of Righteousness, Arise! -- Review

SUN OF RIGHTEOUSNESS, ARISE! God’s Future for Humanity and The Earth.  By Jürgen Moltmann.  Minneapolis.  Fortress, 2010.  254 pp.

Too often we’re presented with theological “choices” that are either so narrow that they exclude a vast number of those who call themselves Christian, or so broad that there is little substance left. Jürgen Moltmann walks down a middle path, not too light or too heavy, not to narrow and not so broad as to leave the faith empty. For many modern Christians, Moltmann has been and continues to be a faithful theological companion, opening new vistas, offering new ways of seeing God and God’s relationship with humanity and the world. His is a theology that is both evangelical in the truest sense of the word and ecumenical. It recognizes the suffering present in the world, but it also foresees a time when God will be all in all, so that suffering will be no more. When a new book emerges from his pen, many gravitate toward it, hoping to find something that will help sustain one’s faith journey.

In The Sun of Righteousness, Arise! Moltmann takes up many of the issues that have been close to his heart over the years – the future of the world, the resurrection of Christ and humanity, justice, the Trinity and creation. The chapters in this book, seventeen in all, are not original creations; rather this book is a gathering together of lectures, meditations, sermons, and essays that were either presented at the meetings of the Gesellschaft für Evangelische Theologie or published in the journal Evangelische Theologie over the past the past ten years. They may have previous incarnations, but they are available for the first time in English translation (ably provided by Margaret Kohl).

In presenting these essays to the world, Moltmann has a specific goal in mind. He wants to present that which is “specific, strange and special about the Christian faith” (3). He wants to engage the broader world, including the various religious traditions, from an open but confessional standpoint, sharing both what Christians believe and don’t believe. And at the heart of his confession is, for him, “the confession of Christ and belief in the resurrection” (3).

Moltmann lays out his book in four parts: “The Future of Christianity;” “The God of Resurrection”; “God is Righteousness and Justice” (under which he places much of his discussion of the Trinity); and “God in Nature.” There is something here for everyone, whether one’s questions center on the resurrection, justice or evolution.

Moltmann begins by offering a vision for the future of the church as it emerges from Christendom and the optimism of the nineteenth century, an age in which the European “Christian” nations took on a messianic identity and sought to impose a new “Christian” world order, what came to be known in Germany as Culture Protestantism. That world came crashing down in 1914, but the post World War I era has offered the potential for a rebirth of the church. As with other writers, such as Phyllis Tickle and  Harvey Cox, Moltmann envisions historically-rooted paradigms of the church, beginning with the hierarchical, which he rightly dates back to as early as Ignatius of Antioch and not to the Fourth Century, wherein the priest is the symbol of Christ’s presence. The Reformation offered a Christocentric Paradigm, where the church as a whole becomes the sign of Christ’s presence in the world. In this new age hierarchical understandings begin to give way to a may egalitarian one, where the division between priest and laity disappears. As with Cox, Moltmann sees the beginnings of an age of the Spirit, which he calls The Charismatic Paradigm. In this new age, the focus is on releasing the gifts present in the community. It is a “trinitarian argument for unity in diversity and diversity in unity” (24). The difference between Moltmann’s vision and other contemporary critiques of the history of the church is that he doesn’t take a condemnatory position. Rooted in a social Trinity view, he is able to bring these paradigms together, recognizing that they may not always appear together, but all have aspects to them that are valuable, for ultimately the Triune God is the church’s dwelling place, while the church is “God’s living space on earth” (26). What is powerful about this perspective is that it both challenges and encourages. It’s not a restorationist perspective, but one that sees the Trinitarian God reaching out to creation, and drawing Creation into the future.

Moltmann offers a vision of a substantive Christianity that embraces the Resurrection and the Trinity without become narrow in his perspective. He believes that without the resurrection we know nothing about Jesus, and that the resurrection is an essential part of the Christian faith, something that will prove challenging to many Progressives who find it difficult to embrace resurrection. But, Moltmann shall not be deterred. Writing of the liberal quest for the historical Jesus, he opines:

It pushed out the raising of Jesus from the dead, and came to terms with death as the natural end of human beings. The historical Jesus became “historical” through his death in the way that all human beings are subjected to transience through their deaths, and with their deaths become people who are past and gone. All that is left of him is a passing remembrance” (40).

This is not sufficient for him. For him, the resurrection is key to the future, to the Trinity, and to God’s justice. Through the Resurrection, Jesus becomes the “leader of the new humanity.” (41). In light of this commitment, Moltmann lays out his vision of the nature of resurrection in several essays, insisting that in Christ’s death and resurrection, death has ended and hell has been destroyed. Why is resurrection important? It is central because the heart of the Christian message is the pursuit of a life worth living. It beckons us to commit ourselves to a common world struggle “for life , for loved and loving life, for life that communicates itself and is shared, life that is human and natural – in short, life that is worth living in the fruitful living space of this earth (77).

Rooted in this commitment to resurrection life, Moltmann moves on to righteousness and justice. Interestingly, it is in this section that he places his discussion of the Trinity. In the course of this discussion, Moltmann makes it clear that Trinitarianism isn’t like any other form of monotheism. The Christian embrace of the Trinity transforms one’s understanding of monotheism, and if pursued in the direction he believes one should, it can move away from patriarchy, which is rooted in the Roman vision of God. Returning to Israel’s understanding of God, he envisions a view of God that seeks to liberate the people and, who through God’s Shekinah, is an indwelling God. Because God is a community of persons, the church is invited to participate in this community, even as God as Trinity indwells both church and people through the Spirit. The fellowship that is shared within the Trinity isn’t a closed circle, but one that opens up to include the world within the circle. In light of this confession, Moltmann envisions true Christianity as a “movement of hope in this world, which is often so arrogant and yet so despairing. As a movement of hope, it is also a movement of healing and liberation.

Because of Moltmann’s commitment to life and to justice, he views of evolution and even nature from a theological perspective. He doesn’t dispute the science behind evolution, but he’s insistent that the science isn’t ultimate. This is especially true of some interpretations of human evolution, that have given rise to unfettered capitalism and the abuse of others, for if we are mere brutes, with the fittest alone deserving to survive, then we have fallen far short of the Christian vision of humanity and nature itself.

As is true of any compilation of texts, this one has its peaks and valleys. There is a sense of a whole here, but it is more Moltmann’s theological vision rather than a specific outline. Readers will gravitate to the texts that interest them the most. For this reviewer, it was the chapters on resurrection and Trinity that proved to be the most compelling sections, others might find others equally compelling or more so. If you are like this reviewer, and see Moltmann as one of the great Doctors of the Church, ranking with Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, and Barth, then you will find this to be a most welcome gift. We need theologians whose perspectives are broad, and yet are deeply rooted in the Christian faith. Herein one will find much of substance, that which is “specific, strange and special about the Christian faith” (3).

Reposted with permission from the Englewood Review of Books

The Suffering Christ and the Future Hope

Jurgen Moltmann is known both for his work on the Theology of Hope and for his work on the The Crucified God . He understands that it is in the suffering Christ that God experiences our suffering.  As he  writes in his latest book, The Sun of Righteousness Arise!:   

 He writes further:

If God goes wherever Chrit goes, then Christ brings God's fellowship to people who are humiliated, persecuted, assailed and murdered just as he was himself.  His cross stands between the unnumbered crosses which line the paths of the perpetrators of violence on this earth, in the Roman Empire from Spartacus to Jerusalem, from the death camps of the German Third Reich to the "disappeared" under the military dictatorships in Latin America.

But God in Christ not only walks with us in our sufferings, as a companion on the way, participating in our suffering, through his own suffering, but there is hope for the future. 

The fellowship of Christ is experienced not only as the fellowship of the humiliated Christ with us, but also as our fellowship with Christ who was raised from the dead and exalted into the future glory.  The Son of Man who finds us when we are lost takes us with him on his way to God's future.  We experience the other side of Christ when we feel the energies of life and are born again to a living hope.  Then we sense how the "fountain of life" opens (Ps. 36:9) and fills us with new love for life, in spite of all the negations.  Our powers are re-energized, and in the midst of the world of death we enter upon the "path of life."  Then we live in the divine Spirit's field of force, and experience his vitalizing efficacies.  Then we see this deathly world in the light of Christ's resurrection, and in the vital powers of the Spirit receive "the powers of the world to come" (Heb. 6:5).  The night of God's remoteness passes away, and the dayspring colours of God's new day are visible (Rom. 13:12).  We exist in the radiance it throws ahead of itself, and act in anticipation of God's future.  (Moltmann, Sun of Righteousness, p. 115) 

I think that the reason why I keep coming back to the centrality of the resurrection is that without it there is only death, there is no future.  I remember watching Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ, and after all the brutality that filled the movie, the moment of resurrection was passed over so quickly that it didn't seem to matter.  I sat their wallowing in suffering, with no hope for the future.  Moltmann, who acknowledges the reality that God in Christ has experienced our suffering and has walked with us in our suffering, does not let suffering have the last word.  There is hope for the future, a hope that sees the fragmentation of this world healed and made whole.  It is that hope of the future wholeness that should empower and inspire us to engage in the work of reconciliation and healing now, as the Spirit of God is present in our midst and in our lives. 

The Resurrection of Life

We have been having a conversation off and on here about the resurrection of the body.  As I've noted before I'm uncomfortable jettisoning a bodily resurrection.  I realize that there are scientific questions that are problematic, but I don't think that its the science that's the problem.  I think its the physicality that is the issue.  Christian theology has from the beginning placed an emphasis on embodiedness.  That's why the Eucharist became so central to the Christian faith -- it was a witness against the Gnostic desire to free the soul from the body.   I think that there is an incipient gnosticism that underlies the popularity of metaphorical interpretations of the resurrection of Jesus.  If Jesus' appearances were nothing more than visions or dreams, then we don't have to deal with an embodied state.

In earlier posts I've talked about N.T. Wright's views, but Wright is probably more conservative than am I.  Bruce Epperly gave a progressive theological argument for an embodied resurrection -- but Bruce is probably to my left.  Standing in between these two positions, both of which embrace embodied resurrection, is Jurgen Moltmann.

I am in the midst of reading Moltmann's latest book, Sun of Righteousness, Arise! (I will be publishing an online review of the book with Englewood Review of Books), and Moltmann explores the resurrection in several chapters.  Regarding the resurrection, he notes his preference for the phrase "resurrection of life," rather than "resurrection of the dead, the body, or the flesh."  These are the typical terms used, but he finds them less helpful than "resurrection of life."  What does he mean by this?  Let me offer this quotation for you to consider and respond to.  

By the living, lived body we do not mean the desouled body as an object, as a set of scientifically objectified organs and the medical treatment of them; we mean the experienced and lived body with which I am subjectively identical:  I am body -- this body is I myself, this is my body gestalt or configuration, and my life history.  Life in this sense means the life that is lived, not unlived, the life that is affirmed, not denied, the life that is loved and accepted.  Real life is the bodiliness which I am:  unlived life is alienated bodiliness which I have.  (pp. 60-61).

He goes on to consider what it would mean if we were to confess the "resurrection of lived life."  If we were to make this confession, then we could accept that dying is "part of life," as well as "believe in the victory of life over death."   Yes, then "we can then affirm that eternal life will be lived in the transfigured body" (p. 61).  

So, what is it about the resurrection of the body that gets everyone so upset, and does Moltmann offer us a way forward?   

Eucharistic Presence -- Bringing the Future into the Present

Many Protestants, including my own tradition, tend to understand the Lord's Supper or Eucharist in terms of remembrance.  We take quite literally, Jesus' statement, as Paul recounts it, at the institution of the Lord's supper:  "This is my body that is for you.  Do this in remembrance of me" (1 Corinthians 11:24).  We treat it as a meal of memorial, with reverence often turning into sober solemnity, as if the one we remember is long dead and buried.  This position emerged in response to overblown doctrines of "real presence" that dominated medieval Catholicism. 

But what if we understood Eucharistic presence differently?  In wrestling with N.T. Wright's Surprised by Hope, I've made the discovery that Wright is very focused on the resurrection -- and an embodied physical resurrection at that.  Although I wouldn't follow Wright in all of his positions on the resurrection, I do think he's on to something.  And, if he is correct that we should see heaven and earth as overlapping, so that future overlaps with the present, then this might have some implications for how we experience the Lord's Supper/Eucharist.

Wright points out that if we stop with remembrance, simply emulating the gathering of the Disciples as they shared in a last with meal, then we miss out on much of the meaning of the supper.  He writes:

To make any headway in understanding the Eucharist, we must see it as the arrival of God's future in the present, not just the extension of God's past (or of Jesus's past) into our present.  We do not simply remember a long-since dead Jesus; we celebrate the presence of the living Lord.  And he lives, through the resurrection, precisely as the one who has gone on ahead into the new creation, the transformed new world, as the one who is himself its prototype.  The Jesus who gives himself to us as food and drink is himself the beginning of God's new world.  At communion we are like the children of Israel in the the wilderness, tasting fruit plucked from the promised land.  It is the future coming to meet us in the present.  (p. 274).

I find this idea of tasting the future promise in the present intriguing.  As one who embraces the idea of presence at the table, this is quite helpful.  When we gather at the table, sharing in bread and cup, we do so in the hope of the new creation.  The question then is this:  how does this happen in our celebrations.  Can we create the experience, or do we simply allow God to make this presence known to us?  Indeed, how do we know when we have tasted the fruit of the promised land of the new creation?  And finally, what should this lead to in our lives? 

Resurrection and the Nature of Salvation

We have been thinking about the resurrection of late -- both that of Jesus and more generally.  Resurrection fits in with other related issues, including judgment and salvation.  I'll leave off the discussion of judgment for the moment, except to say that in one form or another judgment does take place.  But more to the point of salvation.  

In today's study groups, we'll be looking at N.T. Wright's consideration of the "Hope of Salvation."  In that context we must ask what salvation entails?  Does it mean, being pulled off the earth to live in some "heavenly estate," most likely disembodied - a sort of Caspar the Friendly Ghost?  For our discussion, I'd like to throw out a statement from Wright's book Surprised By Hope.

As long as we see salvation in terms of going to heaven when we die, the main work of the church is bound to be seen in terms of saving souls for that future.  But when we see salvation, as the New Testament sees it, in terms of God's promised new heavens and new earth and of our promised resurrection to share in that new and gloriously embodied reality -- what I have called life after life after death -- then the main work of the church here and now demands to be rethought in consequence.  (Surprised by Hope, p. 197)

So, the question is -- how does our view of salvation impact our view of life before death?

Wright notes that the New Testament understanding of salvation starts with life here and now.  We enjoy it partially, but it is there for us to experience and live out.  As Wright ruminates about salvation, I'm reminded of the Disciples of Christ identity statement:  "A Movement of Wholeness in a Fragmented World."  What we do and say, the invitation we give, is a means to bring wholeness/healing/salvation to a world that is broken and fragmented.  We do not bring this in its fullness, but we work toward it.  

Wright offers:  

For the first Christians, the ultimate salvation was all about God's new world, and the point of what Jesus and the apostles were doing when they were healing people or being rescued from shipwreck or whatever was that this was a proper anticipation of that ultimate salvation, that healing transformation of space, time, and matter.  The future rescue that God had planned and promised was starting to come true in the present.  We are saved not as souls but as wholes.  (pp. 198-199).   

 Wholeness for a fragmented world -- salvation!

Why the Resurrection?

I have been pushing on the question of resurrection, including its physicality, in a number of recent posts, including a guest post last week by Bruce Epperly.  I realize that this is a question that troubles many in the church and outside the church.  Many progressive or liberal Christians find the resurrection a distraction, or as a commenter put on a previous post, akin to arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.  But, is it simply an outdated and distracting doctrine that we are better off leaving behind?  Is Easter, for that matter, a quaint holiday, better served by highlighting Easter Egg hunts and chocolate bunnies?  Is it simply just the sign that spring is at hand?  Or, is it, as it always has been through Christian history, the center piece of the Christian faith?  As theologian Jurgen Moltmann puts it: 

The Christian faith stands or falls with Christ's resurrection, because it was by raising him from the dead that God made Jesus the Christ and revealed himself as the "Father of Jesus Christ."  At this point belief in God and the acknowledgment of Christ coincide; and ever since, for Christian faith the two have been inseparable. (Moltmann, Jesus Christ for Today's World, p. 71). 

As I ask these questions, I want to throw into the discussion another lengthy quotation from N.T. Wright's Surprised By Hope.   Wright is likely more conservative than some of my conversation partners, and as has been stated in comments, he may seem to some stuck in the first century.  Be that as it may, I think that the Resurrection merits careful consideration, because I do believe it has important implications about the way we live in the here and now.    So consider this:

The point of the resurrection, as Paul has been arguing throughout [1 Corinthians], is that the present bodily life is not valueless just because it will die.  God will raise it to new life.  What you do with your body in the present matters because God has a great future in store for it.  And if this applies to ethics, as in 1 Corinthians 6, it certainly also applies to the various vocations to which Gods' people are called.  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 (as the hymn so mistakenly puts it, "Until that day when all the blest to endless rest are called away").  They are part of what we may call building for God's kingdom.  (Surprised by Hope, p. 193). 

If we think of God's judgment as a sorting out, a refining fire, then what will be the lasting legacy of our lives here in this world?  Is that not the question that resurrection raises?   Resurrection isn't about escaping this life for a better life, it's about engaging in the work of God here in anticipation of an embodied life after life after death.  Can progressive Christians, who willingly bring science into the conversation, embrace the idea of an embodied resurrection?  Again, I invite your thoughts. 

The New Physicality of Resurrection

Last week Bruce Epperly offered an alternate progressive understanding of Resurrection, one that allowed for it to be more than a parable or metaphor, but allows for a sense of physicality.  This post got considerable discussion going, for we struggle with what all of this means.  Part of our issue is that we must, whether we like it or not, recognize that science plays a role in the conversation.  Progressive/liberal Christians tend to have a problem with discussions of reality that rely on supernaturalism.  The assumption is that God does not contravene the laws of nature.  There are a lot of reasons for that position, which I'll not go into here.  But, it does raise questions about the physicality of Jesus' resurrection and that of any post-death experience.

Last night, if you watched it, the conclusion to the Lost series reflected upon life after death and while envisioning a rather inclusive/interfaith understanding, offered a sense of physicality -- even resurrection.  On that end, I'll leave it to expert Lost watchers like James McGrath to break down the meaning of the finale.  But, what it does suggest is that many people hope for an embodied future post death. 

With that introduction, I wanted to add in a paragraph from N.T. Wright's Surprised by Hope, that deals with Paul's understanding of post-death physicality.  As a prelude to this quote, Wright makes it clear that he has in mind a sense of this new physicality of resurrection being part of "life after life after death."  That is, what is spoken of in John 14 as the "many mansions" or Jesus in Luke speaking of paradise, infers an intermediate state prior to the new physicality that Jesus will embody in his own resurrection, and which we will share in at the time of the General Resurrection.

What Paul is asking us to imagine  is that there will be a new mode of physicality, which stands in relation to our present body does to a ghost.  It will be as much more real, more firmed up, more bodily, than our present body as our present body is more substantial, more touchable, than a disembodied spirit.  We sometimes speak of someone who's been very ill as being a shadow of their former self.  If Paul is right, a Christian in the present life is a mere shadow of his or her future self, the self that person will be when the body that God has waiting in his heavenly storeroom is brought out, already made to measure, and put on over the present one -- or over the self that will still exist after bodily death.  (p. 154). 

In this statement, which is a reflection upon Paul's discussion of the new creation in 2 Corinthians 5, he speaks of our current bodies being mere shadows of the future body, the spiritual body.  The spiritual body is not ghostlike, but even more tangible than the current one.  I would invite your response to this statement as we wrestle with what it means to embrace the idea of resurrection in the contemporary world.  What is it, after all, that the hope of the resurrection, which Paul makes so central, have to say to our lives in the hear and now? 

Jesus, Ascension and the Connection of Heaven and Earth

This Sunday we will observe the Day of Ascension (the Day of Ascension -- 40 days after Easter-- is actually observed on Thursday this year).  What is Ascension and how does it function in our theologies?  We have enough trouble with Easter and Pentecost, what do we make of this event that suggests that Jesus disappeared into the clouds?

As I contemplate this question for sermon and such, I'm also participating/leading a study of N.T. Wright's Surprised By Hope.  In this book, he suggests that heaven and earth are actually close by  each other, essentially overlapping each other, with heaven serving as the "control room of earth."  So, where does Ascension fit into the picture?  Well to answer that question we have to come to an understanding of the relationship of heaven and earth.  

Wright offers a suggestion that resonates with my mind, as I've long thought that we should think in terms of different dimensions of reality rather than trying to fit heaven and earth into the same space/time continuum.  To understand Ascension, Wright suggests, we must take a "relational view."   So consider this statement:

Basically heaven and earth in biblical cosmology are not two different locations within the same continuum of space or matter.  They are two different dimensions of God's good creation.  And the point about heaven is twofold.   First, heaven relates to earth tangentially so that the one who is in heaven can be present simultaneously anywhere and everywhere on earth:  the ascension therefore means that Jeus is available, accessible, without people having to travel to a particular spot on earth to find him.  Second, heaven is, as it were, the control room for earth; it is the CEO's office, the place from which instructions are given.  "All authority is given to me," said Jesus at the end of Matthew's gospel, "in heaven and on earth."  (Surprised by Hope, p. 111).

I find this intriguing and suggestive.  It takes us beyond the hold of literalism or simple modernist skepticism, to consider another realm of understanding.  It also invites us to consider the way in which God is present and active in our own context through Jesus.