So we have two choices.
To walk around being dead or to walk around being alive.
Every now and then I watch a zombie movie or television show, pop culture has an ongoing fascination with the walking dead.
The shows are silly and gross, but there is an underlying question that is sometimes subtle, sometimes glaring. Which ones are the true monsters? Which ones are really alive?
Sometimes the contrast is clear. Sometimes it is hard to see.
Walking in death.
Walking in life.
The world according to the Gospel of John is a dead and husk of what it was created to be, inhabited by the dead who don’t know they are dead.
Jesus walks into the world and the world is suddenly confronted with life, suddenly devastated by the realization that they are not alive.
As Jesus walks through the world what was dead comes alive again, fully alive, not the mockery of life that once passed for life, but fully alive with the glory of God. The blind see. The dead are raised to life. Where there was unbelief and scorn there is belief, hope and love.
Death is emptied out.
Hell is done away with.
In John’s gospel God is a Universalist, the problem is that we choose not to be, and that deep sadness and consternation is always present in John’s message.
Jesus in the Gospel according to John confronts and challenges the world with two choices: to continue walking into death or to walk into life.
“The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him and let him go.” ”
Lazarus, the dead man, walks into life, unbound, his hands and feet set free, his face uncovered.
What binds us to death?
What if we took up Jesus’ challenge to walk into life?
The power of death is infectious; it escalates and passes along quickly, like a zombie apocalypse.
A world infected with rage and snarky bitterness.
The power of death at work in the world, holding the world in a bind.
The Gospel is the break in the chain reaction of destruction.
Death cascades into the cross of Christ, and its spell is broken by the resurrection.
Death is not the last word.
The last word is life.
All Saints Day, we observe it today, All Saints’ Sunday, in the aftermath of all the silliness of the pop culture Halloween and the horror of human history we remember those who chose to walk in life and we celebrate the miracle of belief, the beauty of the communion of saints, the mighty force of the forgiveness of sins, and the holy mystery of the resurrection of the body.
How will be walk?
What will we bind?
What will we let go?
Two choices and one Lord and one Baptism.