In Norfolk they had a huge zombie night in Ghent where people came dressed as zombies and, I don't know, I guess they chased each other slowly around the city. It seems like everywhere you look these days there are movies and TV shows and events where zombies are the star of the show.
I'm sure there's some great cultural point to be made about all this. What is it about where we are as a society right now that makes zombies our favorite scary creatures? Is it because the economy is in such bad shape that we like to envision our fears as a slumping, lumbering zombie? Is it a sign of our guilt over things we have done in the past - a symbol for the debt crisis where the things we thought were long gone are coming back to haunt us because we still haven't paid for them? I don't know. Maybe some of us just like gory movies and there's plenty of gore in zombie movies.
Or maybe there's some image of us in those zombies. Maybe we feel like zombies. Maybe we're feeling a little disconnected from life. Not quite dead but not fully alive either. Maybe we're hungry for life, hungry for something we can't even name. And because we are so bad at imagining that that hunger could lead us to something beautiful and life-giving we imagine that the only future for us is ugly and disturbing. Maybe we're the zombies. Or maybe that's just me.
The first letter of John in the New Testament is a short little book. It was written to Christians near the end of the first century and it imagines a world of conflict - the children of light versus...zombies...no, actually the antichrists. Now, I need to be clear about who the antichrists were. These are not some strange, supernatural creatures. Antichrist is the term the letter-writer was using to describe the false teachers who had taken the gospel message and perverted it - teaching things that were contrary to what Christ taught - antichristian teachings. Chapter 2 verse 19 tells us that, "They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us, because if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us." (NET). And who is an antichrist? Verse 22 tells us that the antichrist is "the person who denies the Father and the Son."
The letter-writer reminds us that we should expect false teachings, especially as the second coming of Christ comes near. We should expect that there will be some who will try to present some other picture of God and Jesus. But what is the promise that we have been given that the antichrists want to deny? Verse 25 says: "Now this is the promise that he himself made to us: eternal life." (NET) It is eternal life that sets Christians apart.
And how do we hold on that promise? By remaining in Christ, remaining in the light, and by doing the things that Jesus told us to do. "The one who says he or she resides in God ought to walk just as Jesus walked" - verse 6 - loving their fellow Christians, trusting in the forgiveness of our sins, and expecting Christ's coming again.
When we talk about saints, as we do today on this All Saints Day, one of the things that marks them is the way that they are able to focus on exactly these things when it seems that all the world is coming apart around them. I think about my colleague in ministry, Kathleen Baskin-Ball, who I talk about in my new Advent book. Kathleen went into West Dallas, which was a difficult place, to begin a difficult ministry as pastor of a new church in an old, abandoned United Methodist Church. She was a single woman and she was determined to live in the neighborhood even though everybody around her told her that the toll would be too great. And it was hard but Kathleen said, “When it’s not convenient, when it costs us and we still take the time to listen to another’s heart and we love deeply, hope emerges.” So she did. And her church grew, mostly with young kids and poor folks.
Then she got a diagnosis of cancer at a very young age. Three years ago she died. But until her last week she was preaching at her new church, welcoming people at her home and asking them how they were.
People like Kathleen are remarkable because, when the world closes in on them and they are experiencing pain and discouragement, they keep their eyes focused on another place. The natural things, when we are experiencing illness or grief or loss is to let the horizon of our world shrink to the limits of our pain. We become captive to the thing that is happening to us. We define ourselves by what we can't do. But saints have a bigger vision.
The verses from 1 John that we actually read today tell us that the thing that defines Christians is not that they are better than the rest of the world. Not that they are immune from the pains of this world. The thing that defines them is that they know they are children of God. Their identity is secure. It doesn't flap around in the wind. It is secure. So as a Christian I know that whatever label others want to put on me - victim, outcast, old, weak, ugly, fat, scrawny, sick, loser, incapable, unable, unwanted - whatever label others want to put on me - none of those things define who I am. Because I am a child of God whose life is in Christ. And because of that I can love and look at the world with new eyes.
"See what sort of love the Father has given to us," 1 John chapter 3 says, "that we should be called God’s children – and indeed we are!...The world does not know us: because it did not know him. Dear friends, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet been revealed. We know that whenever it is revealed we will be like him, because we will see him just as he is." What we will be has not yet been revealed - but we know this - that we will not be zombies - we will be like Jesus. Seeing Jesus, just as he is, we will be like Jesus.
We've got a lot of things to celebrate as we remember today the names of those who have gone before us. The moments when grace pervaded the space between us and that other person. The hands we held. The prayers they prayed. The witness they gave in confronting the evil powers of this world. The tears they shed and the laughter. These things don't die because they grow out of love and, as Song of Songs tells us, "Love is stronger than death; passion fierce as the grave. Many waters cannot quench love."
But the saints don't die because they now have their eyes fixed on Jesus. Even in this life our eyes can be fixed on Jesus. It's one of the reasons Paul could call the Christians he wrote to "the saints assembled" in Rome or Ephesus or wherever they were. We are saints, not because we are holy in ourselves, but because we have our hope in the one who is holy and who can make us whole.
So what are you doing to get ready for the banquet table that God has prepared for us in heaven? Have you put your confidence in the one who shines in light? Or you lumbering and shuffling along in darkness and death? Are you focused on all that you have lost or are you trusting in the promise that what lies ahead makes all that we are going through now look like a dim shadow?
I don't put down this life. It is where we get a foretaste of what love is all about. It's where we get to live in love and fellowship with others. It's where we know the touch of our mother's lips on our forehead. It's where we know the smell of a meal at our grandmother's table. It's where we feel the strength of our fathers, the wisdom of our grandfathers, the thrill of a lover's kiss. It's where we experience the deep, warm rumble of a cat's purr, the eager, panting energy of a dog, and the soaring wonder of an eagle high above us. There is a lot that is good about this world. And the promise is better. It only gets better from here.
What shall we be? I don't know for sure, but we have a glimpse when we see what the saints see. So go out to love. Thanks be to God.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment