"Bring health to the sick. Raise the dead. Touch the untouchables. Kick out the demons. You have been treated generously, so live generously." Matthew 10:8. The Message.
Welcome back! Today's makes the second part of a multiple part series on what Jesus was talking about when he talked about "the kingdom of heaven." Some people like to call it the "kingdom of God," and I think they're interchangeable.
In the introduction, I argued that the kingdom of heaven wasn't about Christianity, but Judaism. It wasn't about the afterlife, but the here and now. It wasn't about converting people through words, but loving on people through action. And on Tuesday, I argued that healing the sick was not this hocus-pocus way of making broken bones restructure on their own or disease automatically disappear, but simply serving the weak and powerless.
And today, we're going to talk about raising the dead.
. . . Yes, I know, as soon as you read that sentence you wanted to shut down the computer and call it a day. But, lets talk about that reaction before we move on.
What inside you caused you to want to shut down the computer and move to bigger and better things than reading some dumbass's blog on raising the dead? My next question is, what are the odds that you're the only person on this blue planet that wants to shut their computer down every time they hear some blogger talking about raising the dead? (Not very good.)
Now lets take it a step further. If you were Jesus, do you think you'd say . . . I'm just kidding. But really, isn't it odd that Jesus says some things in the 1st century that really turn people off in the 21st century. You'd think that since Jesus is God, he would've supernaturally captured the focus and attention on every human being who ever opened the Bible. You'd think he'd have wooed even the most A.D.D. of us and blown us away with his outlines for living. After all, a God who turned into a man would've been the best, most flawless, most knowledgeable teacher around. He never would've had a problem with boring his students.
Yet, I can see the yawns happening right now. Oh wait, are you sleeping?? Wake up!
And if I were to take a survey on people's responses when they hear the phrase "raise the dead," I'm pretty sure 99% of the answers would be found in the metaphorical realm. Just a guess but I'll never know until I take a survey. Sounds fun.
And so, I think you know where I'm heading with this phrase based on what I've said so far, and here's my reasoning:
1. I haven't seen anyone raise from the dead.
2. Although traditional Judaism believes death is not the end of human life, it has very little to say about the subject. After all, Jesus was a Jew, so why would he be so inclined to talk so much about dead people coming to life again?
3. Matthew's Gospel was written approximately thirty four years (at least) after Jesus's death, so by that time there were many non-Jewish ideas that had already entered their way into Jesus's kind of Jewishness - one of those being raising the dead.
4. Science has evolved in so many ways sine the first century, and raising people from the dead evidently isn't one of those ways.
I had an astronomy professor once who began each class with the same phrase: "Suspend your beliefs." He knew that if each of us didn't suspend our beliefs about how the universe worked, we wouldn't learn anything. He knew that he was going to show us things that didn't fit within our philosophical frameworks. And he was right. I credit him for teaching me that simple but profound little concept. By suspending my beliefs, I was able to see something bigger, something more profound, something greater than I could've ever seen through my philosophical ways of doing things.
And that's where my journey of losing religion began. And, I'd like to add a disclaimer: I call myself a Christian who leans heavy on the agnostic side because I still believe in God, Jesus, and that infamous little bugger the Holy Casper, I mean Ghost. I haven't lost them. However, I'm intentionally losing the boxes that Christianity and every other religion places around them.
One of my favorite new found authors - John Shelby Spong - puts it this way: "In order to move into a heightened state of awareness and spirituality, we have to move beyond religion and out to the great unknown." That's from his book, Eternal Life: A New Vision.
I tend to agree.
It's not that I'm tired of seeking God or trying to implement the practices that Jesus outlined in the scriptures, or trying to deny the "spirit" inside of me. It's just that I'm tired of letting dogma and doctrine define how they all work and how I'm supposed to interact with them. I have an unquenchable thirst for God, the teachings of Jesus, and the "still, small voice" inside of me, but religious doctrine tends to force me to take on the "gallon challenge" instead of taking it one sip at a time at my own pace.
And so, on to raising the dead.
I know what it's like to be spiritually dead. I know what it's like to be stuck in this never ending loop of "God hates me today, maybe he'll love me tomorrow." And part of that loop is, calling God "he." Spiritual death for me looks like having no purpose, no meaning, and a lot of depression. It looks like having a ton of fear that's driving me to do insane things. It looks like picking up a thirty-pack of Lone Star at HEB and saying "fuck it all."
That's spiritual death for me.
And, because I live in the 21st century, I have access to a whole lot of information, and because I'm human, I tend to look at history through a lens of my own experiences. Hence, when I talk about spiritual death today, I don't see it being much different this century as it would've looked in the first century.
People have always searched for truth. People have always searched for meaning. People have always put labels on what they consider "God." The only difference between now and then is the circumstances that led to spiritual death. I believe spiritual death is the same for the agnostic as it is for the Christian. It's the same for the Jew as it is for the Muslim.
It's this sensation that life has no meaning. And there were people in Jesus's days who saw life as meaningless, just as today there are people who see life as meaningless.
And that is who I believe Jesus was aiming the instruction of "raise the dead" to.
Try to wake up the folks who see life as meaningless and purposeless.
And that's what I think is the main undertone of all of Jesus's messages. Wake up the dead. Show them there's more to life than what they're currently experiencing.
So what did it look like for me to "raise from the dead?" It looked like getting dead first. It looked like drinking myself to oblivion while hoping the God of my understanding didn't smite me. It looked like making sacrifices to this God every morning in the form of prayer and memorizing scriptures in order get this God to atone for my drinking the night before. It looked like that process eventually halting and hitting a dead end. It looked like not being able to even get up in the morning to atone for my bad deeds. It looked like entering a state of complete loneliness, hopelessness, and loss.
Dead.
And the rising part? I don't look at it as a "one moment I'm dead and the next moment I'm alive" kind of thing. I'm still rising. I'm still losing my burial clothes. I'm still shaking off those nasty, smelly rags and washing off those pungent embalming fluids that follow me wherever I go. But, that's life right?
Life for me began (I call it my A.A. birthday) when I first got the notion that I needed to discover what it was inside of me that was off. And boy were there a lot of things inside of that were off. There still are. I'm still rising. And so, with the help of other alcoholics, I was able to begin the life-long process of shaking off those smelly rags, those burial clothes. I was also able to start shaking off those life-long misguided conceptions of the God-who-doesn't-accept-me-like-I-am.
I had to find my own conception of God before I could get to the Jesus part. I had to re-define the Jesus part before I could get to the Holy Casper - Spirit - part.
And so, what I believe Jesus is talking about when he tells his disciples to "raise the dead" is to go and try to wake up every spiritually dead person you come across. Talk to them. Dialogue with them. Find a common ground with them. Help them. Invite them into your life and share everything with them. Don't condemn them, but urge them to start shaking off those old burial clothes that are keeping everybody away. Tell them they have their own faith journey and don't have to let religion define who God is for them.
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