N. T. Wright on the Church’s Mission

N. T. Wright, Bishop of Durham, preached an Easter Vigil sermon yesterday entitled “God’s Future in Person,” in which he addressed the mission of the church. Here’s an excerpt:

The question of Easter, and of baptism and confirmation, is: are we in God’s promised future now? And the answer is, No, but someone has come back to us from God’s future, and if we stick with him we’ll belong to that future as well and will learn how to be part of it. At Easter, Jesus came to us from God’s future, from the new world which God has begun to make. In baptism we become part of that same future, and in confirmation we stand up and say Yes, I’m part of God’s future world, and I pray for God’s Spirit to help me make it a reality in my life and in the world around me.

. . .

Easter on the one hand, and baptism on the other, are the launching-pads for the church’s mission. Let’s be quite clear. The church’s mission isn’t about telling more and more people that if they accept Jesus they will go to heaven. That is true, as far as it goes (though we ought to be telling them about the new heavens and new earth rather than just ‘heaven’), but it’s not the point of our mission. The point is that if God’s new creation has already begun, those of us who have been wakened up in the middle of the night are put to work to make more bits of new creation happen within the world as it still is. . . . We are given a new life, with a new purpose: to be part of God’s new creation, already here and now; to be people of the light, even though the world still seems dark; to be people who live by New Time even though Old Time is still rumbling on. . . . Part of the challenge of Easter, and part of the particular challenge of Baptism, is to pray for wisdom and vision to see where God can and will make new creation happen in our lives, in our hearts, in our homes and not least in our communities. That, quite simply, is what the mission of the church is all about, and every baptized Christian is called to be a part of it.

Read the whole sermon at the N. T. Wright Page.

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