Life to the Dead
John 5:25-29
What does it mean to live and live eternally? What does the word resurrection mean? Are they just "magic wand" words we say in church that really don't carry a lot of weight with us but we still use them because they are the jargon of our faith? What ways could we reclaim them?
Every time I see the words "eternal life" I think of the moment in the Oscar winning film, "Gladiator" where General Maximus (played by Russell Crowe), the protagonist, is on his horse speaking to his troops at the very beginning as they prepare to charge against their foes. As they prepare to fight, ready for the possibility that any one of them might die, Maximus reminds them:
"Brothers, what we do in life... echoes in eternity."
I think eternal life speaks to the reality that our words and our deeds echo outwards. Every person we help. Every donation we make to charity. Every time we get involved with a justice issue.… Echoes! Ripples!
Perhaps our church participated in eternal life when we helped change the legal reality in Lakewood around homelessness that could potentially ripple out with effects that will last longer than we will. When we build legacies of ministry, we are participating in life eternal. And as we continue legacies, perhaps we are jumping in the middle of eternal life as well.
What if eternal life is something we keep at? Advocating for policies that have a real effect on climate change participates in eternal life, as it effects the lives of those who might not even have been born yet. I know that what we do today in creating a climate that maintains a habitable planet will matter to my as yet unborn child. Eternal life.
This is what Jesus was getting at, for he was inviting his disciples into eternal life work. Building up a new understanding of faith in the jewish community that prioritized love and justice over rigid observance of tradition and strict rules about who is "in" and who is "out."
I think we participate in eternal life every time we undermine the oppressive categories and boxes that keep us from being in real community with one another.
I also think that when we do this, we see a kind of resurrection of the dead. Isolation becomes undermined and once-isolated neighborhoods can come togethere renewed. Dead movements have new life breathed into them. Dead and dying churches become revitalized.
