Reversing Death & Playing Zombies
This past Friday night, Klesis Berkeley Christian Fellowship studied Luke 7:11-17, which is the account of Jesus bringing a dead man back to life. Ander started off the night by asking us, "What do you consider to be valuable?" A lot of people mentioned things like family, friends, and memories of home. In other words, the things most precious to people tend to be relational things. But these relational things that we value will eventually be taken away from us, through death—which is the ultimate, jarring reality. Luke 7 is about a widow who just lost her son. It is about despair, hopelessness, and the outrage of death.
But it's not just about these somber things. Because Jesus entered the picture. Jesus, while passing through, witnessed the funeral procession. And he saw the widow weeping for her dead son. And he had compassion on her. He told her, "Do not weep," and got involved in the situation by touching the bier, which carried the ceremonially unclean dead body of her son. Jesus wasn't just a passerby—indeed, he didn't have to stop. But he was willing to get involved, and he met the widow in her pain.
What does Luke 7 say to us? It tells us that God is not an aloof, impersonal deity. God is not one who is unaware of our circumstances. Rather, God meets us in our pain.
After Jesus touched the bier and told the body to arise, life was restored in the son of the widow. And what began as a procession of death then changed into a procession of life, because Jesus entered the picture and reversed the situation.
Death severs relationships; sin severs our relationship with God. But Jesus didn't just walk away from this picture of death. He entered into the situation and reversed it, restoring the relationship that would have been severed by death.
Every day that we get to live life, we simultaneously get closer to the day we die. We chase after so many things—money, clothes, résumé titles—but in the end, nothing can be taken with us after death.
Christianity is about a relationship with Jesus, and about experiencing the joy of going from death to life as Jesus enters the picture of our lives. It's about experiencing the joy that comes from our salvation. Through Jesus, there is hope, redemption, and eternal life.
At the end of the day, we must ask ourselves: Am I on the procession of death, or am I on the procession of life?
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After the message, we played [a very fitting game of] "Zombies." For those who don't know what "Zombies" is, it's like a more terrifying version "Tag," if "Tag" got infected with the zombie virus and glow sticks. People split up into different groups and ran all around campus, trying to reach all the checkpoints in the game. At the end of the night, we enjoyed Otter Pops, ramen, and glow-in-the-dark volleyball! It was an "otter"-ly fun night! (Yay, more puns related to otters!)
Make sure to "Tag"-a-long for next week! :)
