N.T. Wright preaches at the Metropolitan Cathedral & Basilica of St Chad, Birmingham. From the Independent Catholic.
Bishop Wright emphasised: "Tonight's reading from 1 Corinthians 15 summarizes not only the significance of Paul's conversion, but also the shape of his whole theology. First, it is a faith rooted in history, in actual events of the past: 'Christ died for our sins . . . was buried, and was raised on the third day'.
"As Pope Benedict emphasized during the Synod, we do not hold a form of Gnosticism, a 'faith' which is only about our own religious feelings, but one which is grounded in things that actually happened. That historically anchored faith is then, second, the ground of our hope: not a vague, disembodied 'heaven', but the solid 'new heavens and new earth', when all God's creation is rescued from corruption and death as Jesus' own body was.
"With that faith behind us, and that hope before us, Christian love takes its particular shape and gains its particular energy. When love looks at a world out of joint, it goes to work for justice; when it looks at a world full of ugliness, it goes to work for beauty. When the church is doing these things, it can speak powerfully of Jesus as the one who rescues and restores God's whole creation, and ourselves within it.
Bishop Wright concluded: "This faith, this hope and this love are not the property of one denomination. They are common to all Christians. My prayer in this Week of Prayer for Christian Unity is that we will rediscover this vision, and be able to work together, study together and pray together, as we are doing tonight, to find - perhaps to our own surprise - the new paths towards unity which God has in store for us."
http://www.indcatholicnews.com/pjgod324.html
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