Jesus and the Living Dead

This is a sermon I delivered at United Disciples Christian Church in West Peoria. The text is John 11:1-45.

So I need to tell you up-front something you may have already been able to tell. I am a nerd, a geek. I play video games and read sci-fi, I enjoy tinkering with my computer, I blog, I'm into Heroes and Lost and BSG, I have more computers than tubes of lipstick, I watch fantasy and horror films. That may be why in this past week as I've been working with this text that I just can't keep the same image from lumbering into my mind.
You see, this week I've been thinking about zombies.
There are certain fears that we as a species seem to share: the dark, death, things that go bump in the night. When something combines all those things it has real sticking power in the human psyche. Zombies...the dead returned to a shell of a life numbly but relentlessly striving in unfettered consumption, provide the underpinnings of some of Hollywood's most enduring chills. Zombie tales are not new. Stories about people getting up after death go back all the way to ancient Sumer and the epic of Gilgamesh, and show up in the cultures of Africa, Mesoamerica, Asia, and Europe.
I think zombie stories have real sticking power because the best ones ask us to take time in front of the mirror and look carefully at some of the darkest parts of ourselves.
Consider George A. Romero's 1968 classic Night of the Living Dead. While telling a scary story about the dead rising from their graves and hunting the living, this film also asked some difficult questions of a country wrestling with racism. Since then zombie films have asked us hard question about human community, emotions, war, violence, greed, class, and ultimately what it means to be human.
Which actually makes zombie films a lot like Lent. Lent is a season that the Church observes each years that takes us into the darkest parts of the Christian Scriptures and asks us to examine our complicity in them. It's a time to ask hard questions of ourselves, and to force ourselves to be honest.
The readings in Lent takes through Jesus' journey to Jerusalem ahead of Palm Sunday. In this reading Jesus comes to Bethany which would have been like a suburb of Jerusalem. It's so close to Jerusalem that Thomas is convinced that they will all be killed. Jesus has been called to the home of Martha and Mary; their brother Lazarus has died. Mary and Martha's home was a place Jesus and his disciples visited, a place where Jesus felt comfortable. By the time that Jesus and crew arrive Lazarus has been dead for four days. Jewish funerary practices dictated that Lazarus would have been entombed the day he died. Mary and Martha would have been about halfway through the proscribed seven day mourning period. Hearing that Jesus has arrived Martha goes out to the road to meet him.
What follows next in the story is something that I think is particularly valuable for modern Christians. Martha makes dramatic statements of faith in Jesus' person and power, but for all of that she cannot see a solution that Jesus can offer her. Death blocks her way -- the ultimate stumbling block. Jesus then gives her an assurance that echoes down through the ages. "I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die." Jesus performs the greatest of his miracles at the tomb of Lazarus. He called Lazarus out of his tomb; calling him to new life and away from death.
We read Jesus' promise to Martha, "I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live," at funerals, but it seems to me we should read it more often than that. We need to hear Jesus' words about the power of God to bring life from death.
It makes me think of another kind of zombie, actually. Jana Childers, who teaches preaching at San Francisco Theological Seminary, says, "We are in the very real danger of being dead while we are still alive." Our very spirits can wither and die within us. If the classic zombie is "the living dead" this new kind of zombie might be called "the dead living." Our souls are daily under assault. Each day we faces various forces of death. It may be the suffering caused by financial hardships: grinding poverty or demeaning work; it may be abuse: physical, mental, sexual, emotional, even spiritual (too often carried out within churches); it may be violence or unrest within our cities and halfway around the world. Whatever the cause, the effect is spiritual death, and results in people just scrapping along serving out their time rather than really living.
One of my new favorite zombie films is Shaun of the Dead, the British romantic comedy. The film open with people commuting, working as shopping cart returners and checkout girls. After the events of Zed-Day, the film closes with shots of these same people only now they're zombies. Their life before death was indecipherable from their new situation.
People, this is not what we were created for! Turn back about a page and look in John 10; Jesus tells us that he is the Good Shepherd who came, "that they might have life and that they might have it abundantly." It is this abundant life that Jesus offers us all. He calls us into life that is lived and lived abundantly. Jesus unbinds us from all that would hold us back from all that we were created to be. We are free from every death. Amen