Dead Men Walking

You may have heard the remarkable story this week of Polish railway worker, Jan Grzebski, who fell into a coma in 1988 after being hit by a train.  Mr. Grzebski was in a profound state of unconsciousness which rendered him unaware of himself and the world around him, as well as unaware of the passage of time for 19 years until he woke up this week. 

When Mr. Grzebski fell into the coma, Poland was still under communist rule behind the Iron Curtain in Eastern Europe.  He said in 1988 there was basically only tea and vinegar in the shops and everything from meat to bread to petrol was strictly rationed.

But times have changed for the people of Poland.  Mr. Grzebski woke up to a Poland that now has free elections, is a member of NATO and has a greatly improved quality of life.  He said, "Now I see… there are so many goods in the shops it makes my head spin."  He also said, “What amazes me is all these people who walk around with their (cell) phones and never stop complaining."  He didn’t say what amazed him more – the cell phones or the complaining.

I suppose it would be like one of us getting into a fictional time machine and instantly being transported 19 years into the future!  It is mind-boggling and miraculous for sure!

An event is described in our gospel this morning that is even more mind-boggling and stunningly miraculous.  Jesus bumps into a funeral procession on the way to the cemetery.  He walks up to the casket, puts his hand on it and says, “Young man, I say to you rise.”  I imagine Jesus shouting it out like a mother trying to wake up a dead-to-the-world-sleeping adolescent, “Young man, get up!”   I hear Jesus saying it with an electrifying and admonishing tone; not admonishing the young man but admonishing the death that had consumed him.  For sure, waking up from a 19 year coma is one thing, but being awakened from death is something else altogether.    

Did you ever notice that, in the gospels, Jesus never meets a corpse that doesn’t sit up right on the spot?  Remember when he walked up to the black hole of Lazarus’ tomb and shouted into the despairing darkness, “Lazarus, come out!”   John tells us Lazarus came stumbling out still half wrapped in his death clothes.  (John 11)

How about the time that one of the leaders of the synagogue threw himself at Jesus’ feet and begged him to come to his house because his 12-year-old-daughter was gravely ill?  But on his way to the official’s house someone met them on the path and told them to forget it, that the little girl had died.  But that didn’t stop Jesus, and even though they laughed at him when he said she would be ok.  He continued undeterred straight to her room.  This time I picture Jesus tenderly and gently taking her by the hand and saying, “Child, get up.”  And Luke tells us, “She got up at once!” (Luke 8)

You see, the bottom line is that what Jesus is all about is making the dead alive, and I’m not merely referring to life after death or that we will be “raised imperishable at the twinkling of an eye at the last trumpet” as the apostle Paul told the church at Corinth.

We had a funeral in this place on Friday.  A couple of hundred people packed into this place to give thanks to God for the life of Clair Glassing and to hear the mighty promises of God in the face of his tragic death.  We thanked God for Clair’s life, and we were immersed in the awesome promise that death has been swallowed up in the victory of our Lord Jesus Christ.  In the midst of deep sorrow, God’s promises sooth our grief-stricken souls and empowers us to live with hope and begin a process of healing.

But that is not where the truth and power of the resurrection ends – that’s only where it begins.  What I am talking about is that the very core, essence and power of Christian life is also and especially for dead men walking like you and me.  Jesus died on the cross and rose on the third day so that we too might be raised to new life right now, not someday after we die; so that we, right now, might be transformed from dead men walking to people who are authentically alive – living in a whole new way, by a whole new power, with a whole new perspective, with a whole new purpose. 

Jesus was not only in the business of raising the physically dead, but raising the spiritually dead.

Jesus told stories and talked about it all the time.  Remember his most famous story about the Prodigal Son, the boy who thought he was smarter than everyone, who demanded his inheritance and took off, squandering it on every earthly pleasure imaginable?  Then, when he bottomed out, he tried to cunningly scheme his way back into his father’s graces by coming up with the novel idea of returning as a hired hand.  The point is the boy was as dead as a doornail.  Oh, he had a good time for awhile I’m sure, and he thought he was really living the good life, but he was a dead man walking.  The self-indulgent choices he made for his life lead to a dead end – nowhereville – the pig pen - and his scheme to worm his way back into his father’s household was also dead on arrival.   

You see, that is you and me when we decide to chase mindlessly after our own self-indulgent schemes and dreams whatever they may be, and we invest all our trust in them as if they can really deliver life with a capital “L.”  We place no less stock and trust in our schemes as the boy did in his, deluding ourselves into thinking they can deliver real life.  Whether it be wealth, or security, some kind of artificial high, or a million other things we become dead men walking when we place our trust in their capacity to give birth to authentic life. 

But we can be equally as dead in our self-respectability and the trust we place in our selves to be morally respectable and decent people, mistaking our noble efforts to attain self-achieved righteousness for real life.  We set ourselves up over against “real sinners” and wrinkle our brows at the mention of those who are not like us, don’t behave like us, don’t believe like us or don’t measure up to our standards in some way.  I like to remind people that this is exactly the crowd (They were called Pharisees) that Jesus became the most incensed and angry with in the gospels, and he used some pretty rough and confronting language with them calling them names like “whitewashed tombs” and “children of hell.”  (Matthew 23).  I believe the biggest temptation that the evil one uses against Christians is to seduce us into becoming Pharisees.

For me, what this story about the raising of the widow’s son is all about is just this:  As long as we delude ourselves into thinking we can make ourselves alive through whatever strategy, scheme or effort we may employ, there is absolutely nothing amazing about grace – nothing!

Jesus comes along and raised the widow’s Son from death to life.  No one asked him to do so.  There is no indication the man deserved it.  However hard the man had tried to preserve and save his own life, he still died – and by grace Jesus came to him and raised him up. 

You and I are dead.  We are dead in sin.  We are dead in all of our efforts to self-preserve, self-protect and self-resuscitate ourselves into authentic life. 

For the man in the casket on his way to the cemetery and for dead men walking like you and me, there is no life outside of Jesus Christ. 

Life in Christ begins anew each and every day when we wake up and realize we are dead, and that the grace and power of God only works on the dead. 

Life in Christ begins anew each and every day when we wake up and realize we are dead in our sins and we are forgiven not because we have made ourselves forgivable or that we have been thrifty, brave, clean and reverent and lived decent lives, but because there is a divine Forgiver – Jesus died for our sins and rose that we might be justified before God.

Life in Christ begins anew each and every day when I see that even my best, most noble and most glorious efforts do not change the fact that I am a dead man walking and that only Jesus Christ can truly make me authentically alive by grace through faith and fill me with the only power that can make me truly alive; the power of his love; only Jesus Christ can wake me up to a whole new way of living; dying and then living again!  

He died and rose so that we might authentically live and be bonded together in a community where it’s his death and resurrection that hold us together – not the we are all the same – or all think the same – or all belong to the same political party, but the fact that without Christ we are all dead men walking and in Christ we are daily raised to new life with our core purpose to serve and follow him.

Amen.