As I look back on the several books that I read this year, three of them were about the Resurrection. I found myself, this year more than ever, really trying to come to grips with the implications of the claim “Christ is risen.” My desire to understand was not grounded in needing historical proofs, but rather in needing an existential impulse. I’ve already blogged about two of the three books that I will mention here.

The first book that started this process of discovery for me was by Eugene Peterson, entitled, Living the Resurrection: The Risen Christ in Everyday Life.   I previously explored in an earlier post this year the “meaning-less-ness” of the Resurrection. What I like about how Peterson writes, is that he brings his pastoral wisdom and poetic writing to the reader in a way that encourages faith and empowers us to authentically embody this faith. Peterson is not hesitant to bring a critique to the Church in how it has practiced “the resurrection life” in its rush to “commercializing Easter.” In this book, Peterson unpacks the mixed emotions of fear, wonder, and amazement that is in the Gospel narratives in response to the event of the empty tomb and offers to the reader a way to have a similar response in our spiritual formation as a way out of a life emptied by mediocrity. What I like about this specific work, is that Peterson sketches out what “practicing the resurrection” would mean, not for monks or nuns, but for people that work jobs from nine to five. If you’ve ever yearned for something more substantial than “moral workaholism or pious athleticism” when it comes to relating to God, than this book will help you begin to cultivate a sense of wonder in your life that, up until now, may feel all too predictable.

The second book that I came across this year was way thicker, both in size and scope. The Bishop of Durham, N.T. Wright, wrote a beautiful book entitled, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church. I’ve also blogged about my initial impression of this book in an earlier post. For those needing a more theological and historical approach to the Resurrection, this book is a must! Wright manages to condense and re-frame his other larger revolutionary works on Jesus into the first two parts of this book. Wright shapes his argument towards how we are supposed to think about Death by trying to answer two questions: 1) What are we waiting for? and 2) What are we going to do about it in the meantime? Wright successfully displays the bankrupt ideas about the afterlife which run rampant in Christian (and non-Christian) circles and in doing so, he carves out a difference between life after death and what he calls “life after life after death.” The driving force or engine behind this book is the difference that the Resurrection makes being completely different from the immortality of the soul. In a provocative manner, Wright argues that “The ultimate destination is not ‘going to heaven when you die’ but being bodily raised into the transformed, glorious likeness of Jesus Christ” (168). At first glance, this sounds completely heretical and hopeless. But Wright goes at great length to liberate the scriptures from our preconceived (and pagan!) ideas about what most have come to call “life after death.” In his own words, “resurrection doesn’t mean escaping from the world; it means mission to the world based on Jesus’s lordship over the world” (235). The vision that Wright gives to the Christian is not a lazy and irresponsible escapism, but a faith that is active because of an empty tomb which heralds the coming of God’s righting all wrongs in this world. I highly recommend reading this book and wrestling with N.T. Wright’s approach to these issues. You may be left with a hope that surprises you!

The last book that I wanted to mention is a thinner book in its size but very, very thick in what it claims. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams gave a series of lectures that were published as Resurrection: Interpreting the Easter Gospel. Being just over 100 pages, this little gem took me about six weeks to plow through and, by far, has been the most influential book I’ve ever read. It is a beautiful example of top scholarship speaking into the Church in a pastoral way without losing either a critical nor devotional reading. It is a bridge builder book that gets flack from both liberal and conservative circles and yet Williams manages to say in one paragraph what most doctoral students spend trying to articulate for the rest of their careers. As I read this book, I caught glimpses of how Williams anticipated many of the themes that are found in contemporary theology and it made me wonder if contemporary theologians are just working from this book trying to flesh out and develop in detail what Williams is doing. His chapter, “Talking to a Stranger”simply blew me away and helped me wrestle with “the strangeness of the risen Jesus” which is described in the Gospel narratives and is the biggest argument for the Resurrection. This book will change your life and your theology. For anyone interested at all, and wants to wade through something that will blow your mind, then this book is for you.