As people of the resurrection, we find our lives animated and directed by the belief that God’s future for creation has come in the resurrection of the crucified Jesus. We are sustained by our confident expectation that what God did for Jesus in the middle of history – raising him from the dead into the new creation – God shall do for all creation at the end of history.
Emboldened by this hope, we suffer with Christ in solidarity with the “crucified” people of the world – the poor, the estranged, and the weak; and we seek to proclaim the good news of Jesus’ resurrection authentically, joyfully, and intelligibly.
We do not despise our embodied, historical existence. Instead, we embrace the guidance of the Holy Spirit as we struggle to live, speak, suffer, and die as people who have put their trust in the God who through Jesus Christ has begun already to accomplish the fulfillment of the promise to establish God’s kingdom of justice and peace in the earth.
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As people of the resurrection, we long not for “heaven” but for a (re)new(ed) earth and a (re)new(ed) cosmos in which all reality is reconciled to its Creator and thereby perfected and harmonized. We do not look for the destruction of creation, but for its vindication and redemption.
Moreover, our hope is set not on streets of gold or gates of pearl or splendid mansions, but on clear rivers, clean air, and green forests. We look for cities and towns transformed as communities of peace and justice. We look for the created order completely and finally set right. We look for the death of Death. In hope we anticipate the promised time when “the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea” 1 ; the day when “the wolf will lie down with the lamb” 2 and people will study war no more.
We know this shall come not through our own efforts, but only by Christ’s presence among us at the End. Nonetheless, as followers of the resurrected Jesus, gathered by the power of the Holy Spirit, we live under the call to proclaim in our words and actions the good news of this hope. Therefore, we commit ourselves daily to caring for the creation, and to striving for justice and peace in the lives of others. We further commit to follow the guidance of the Spirit as we endeavor to carry out God’s charge gracefully and faithfully until He breaks into history again to complete the redemptive work, setting all things right once and for all.