...from The Meal Jesus Gave Us by N.T.Wright

"...God is taking the world somewhere. He's got plans. Apparently he's promised to do for all of us what he did for Jesus after he died. And for the whole world too. Yes, that really blows me away. This God really does love the whole world, and wants to make it all alive in a new way, like he did with Jesus on the first day of the week....And when he does that we'll meet Jesus himself! He'll be there. He'll come back to us--or maybe I should say, we'll be there with him.....this is the point: when we take the bread and break it and eat it, when we take the wine and share it around, it isn't only that we seem to be there with him at his last supper. We are there with him in his new world. What we do seems to bring all the past--all the story of Jesus--and all the future--the time when he comes back again, when God makes the whole world new--all together into one moment." p.27 "Some people think of the Christian's 'promised land' as simply 'heaven'. Some even think that this could be rather boring. How wrong they are. In Paul's writings, the Christian's 'promised land' is the entire renewed world. If we die before the time, we will go to 'heaven', that is, into God's dimension of existence. But the long-term hope is that all those in 'heaven' and presently on earth will be transformed, re-embodied, to join in the new life when (as Revelation 21 says, echoing an old Jewish theme) God will make new heavens and a new earth. Within this transformation of reality, Jesus himself will be personally present. Every longing of our hearts will be satisfied in our meeting with him and being nourished by his presence and his love. Sometimes the New Testament talks of this event as Jesus' 'coming'; sometimes of his 'royal presence'. These are different ways of saying something for which we don't have the right language at the moment, but which will be real, solid and lovely when it happens." p. 56-57