"Come, Lord Jesus": A cry for justice
When public life is eclipsed, we learn Paul's gospel: No resurrection? No work.
What's the point of public action if the dead aren't raised?
The point, I suppose, is that someone can do a lot of public good down here no matter what their views on eschatology.
But Paul might have a rejoinder: what if public life is off limits? What if the public realm is in darkness? What if a regime, such as the Roman Empire, dominates public space with its own sick notions of justice? What if the regime crucifies revolutionaries and rival kings, such as the then-recent King of the Jews?
And this: What was the point of that crucifixion—Jesus's biggest public action—if the dead aren't raised?
There'll come a night, Jesus says, "when no one can work."1 That is, when no one can work without the resurrection.
In defending the resurrection, Paul cites his own public action. Without the resurrection, what's the point of his struggle against "wild beasts in Ephesus"?2 When Paul's public words and miracles reduced the sales of Ephesian idols, the town’s moneyed interests started a riot that almost ensnared him.3
What were Paul's public words in Ephesus? He "spoke boldly about the kingdom of God."4 Why was that bold? From the Roman authorities' standpoint, "kingdom of God" meant that public life belongs to God, and through God to everyone. The authorities' understanding was correct: Paul was speaking the kind of seditious words that also nailed Jesus to the cross.5
Why would Paul free a slave from a spirit of divination that has been enriching her masters, landing himself in jail, if the dead aren’t raised?6 Why would he act as if Jesus were Messiah (king) of Israel, and of the rest of the world, too, by virtue of his crucifixion, if the dead aren’t raised?
What's the point, Paul says, of putting his own life in constant jeopardy? If the dead aren't raised, he might as well live out a meaningless private existence, eating and drinking and waiting for death.7
I’ve preached gospels of private life in a land drowning in gospels of private life. Adherents of private gospels often seem to have different approaches to public life. Some adherents may shun public life as evil. Others may embrace a political party—left, right, or center. But either approach to public life denies the power of the resurrection, which brings its own public life.
Private gospels say we that can live happy lives here, and when we leave this earth, we can live it up there. For eschatology, all we need is heaven and hell. No need for earth—or for resurrection, which happens only on earth.8
When these gospels of private life leave public life to one person or to a few people, as they always do, the public world and the creation it serves are eclipsed. In this darkness, no one can work without the resurrection.
The resurrection doesn't care how effective you are. You can overthrow kingdoms and establish justice.9 Or you can be tortured, stoned, or sawn in two.10 Either way, you demonstrate Jesus’s resurrection. You demonstrate that the world has changed. Dead or alive, now and later, you rule on earth with Jesus.11 Your action demonstrates that justice and public life are coming for all creation.
This is the resurrection's practical, political message. In deciding whether to act in public darkness, the probability of our action’s success or failure isn’t the only factor. If it were, we might not act. But the bigger factor is the hope of the resurrection.
When we work for justice in public darkness, we ignore the authorities and work with another authority. We work as "kings and priests unto God," as Revelation puts it.12 We live out Revelation's smart public life and its living, barely hidden critique of “the rulers of the darkness of this world.”13
We learn why Revelation ends—why the Bible ends—with a cry for our resurrection. "Come, Lord Jesus"14 is a cry for justice on earth.
Photo by Takeshi Kuboki. Used with permission. The footnotes below refer to the full citations in the manuscript’s and this Substack’s bibliography.
John 9:4 NNAS.
1 Corinthians 15:32 NNAS.
Acts 19:8-41.
Acts 19:8 REB.
“What Rome wouldn’t tolerate was insubordination. Jesus was crucified because he was perceived to be subverting the empire, and . . . Rome’s perception was largely accurate.” Sprinkle, Exiles, 57-58.
Acts 16:16-24.
1 Corinthians 15:30-32.
Resurrection means coming to life again on earth. As N.T. Wright puts it, “In the languages of the day, ‘resurrection’ didn’t mean ‘going to heaven’; it didn’t mean that Jesus, or perhaps his ‘soul,’ had ‘survived’ in some nonbodily sense. . . . It meant a new bodily life after a period of being bodily dead.” Wright, Day the Revolution Began, 175.
Hebrews 11:33 REB.
Hebrews 11:35-37 REB.
“You have made them into a kingdom and priests to our God, and they will reign upon the earth.” Revelation 5:10 NNAS.
Revelation 1:6 KJV.
I quote Paul (Ephesians 6:12 KJV). Revelation’s treatment of Babylon is a not-entirely hidden critique of the Roman Empire. See gen. Horsley, You Shall Not Bow, 204-9; Bretherton, Christ and the Common Life, 243.
Revelation 22:20 NNAS.