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Zombies on the Road

8/29/2013

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This past Sunday we heard Luke 24:13-35. It’s a pretty famous story often called The Road to Emmaus. In it two followers of Jesus are walking back home from Jerusalem. It’s the Sunday after Jesus was executed as a criminal a cross.

The two disciples of Jesus are depressed. They know Jesus has died, but they don’t know he has risen from the dead. Sure that morning they’d heard stories but, I imagine, they figured what they’d heard just amounted to women making up fairy tales. Understandable conclusion.

Anyway, they meet a stranger on the road who is the risen Jesus, but they don’t see this, at least not at first. What these two disciples do from the first moment they meet the stranger is open the door – literally and figuratively. They open up to the stranger in conversation. They open up their minds and hearts to him as they let him teach them as all three of them walk along the road. And then, most famously, they open up the door of their home and invite the unrecognized Christ to their table, a table he quickly makes his own.

It is through this opening of “their doors” that they recognize Jesus, they feel warmth replacing coldness in their hearts, and they receive a new vigor and purpose for life. I imagine that if they wouldn’t have opened the doors – which would have been an understandable and safe decision – they would have missed out on seeing Jesus and being renewed themselves.

So it is with us – as individuals, as families, and as congregations. It is hard to become more and more open to others, especially if we have been hurt in the past. And, it is often safer and easier if we simply stay closed. But, what do we lose if we move toward becoming more and more closed off instead of becoming more and more open to others as we journey through life?

Recently there was a very good book that became an ok movie. Its name is Warm Bodies. It is a fantastically wild story that’s told from the perspective of a zombie named R. R shuffles about and grunts and eats people when he gets the chance, but inside his head he is active, alert, and alive.

The body and heart of R, and presumably those of all the other zombies he “lives” with in a broken down airport, have been closed down by some unremembered plague. And, for very understandable reasons, the remaining uninfected people left in the world have shut all the doors they could. The uninfected people have closed themselves up in a fortress city. They are, understandably, trying to stay un-eaten while they shoot as many zombies as possible and eke out an existence.

But something unexpected and unexplainable happens. R decides to open up and protect a human named Julie instead of consuming her. This one act of opening a door by caring for a stranger slowly starts a ripple effect that restarts zombie hearts and just maybe creates a new trajectory for the future of the world.

Ridiculous, I know. But true. It was true on the Emmaus road. It is true so often for us.

What is one part of your life, one relationship, one situation, one use of your words, your actions, or your money where you can open up to someone else just a little more than you were before?

You may recognize Christ in the process of opening the door. You may even feel your heart warm and beat with new life.


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Accidents in Ministry

8/21/2013

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This past Sunday we read the following story in worship from Mark 2:1-12:

2 When Jesus returned to Capernaum after some days, it was reported that he was at home. 2 So many gathered around that there was no longer room for them, not even in front of the door; and he was speaking the word to them. 

3 Then some people came, bringing to him a paralyzed man, carried by four of them. 4 And when they could not bring him to Jesus because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him; and after having dug through it, they let down the mat on which the paralytic lay. 5 When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” 

6 Now some of the scribes were sitting there, questioning in their hearts, 7 “Why does this fellow speak in this way? It is blasphemy! Who can forgive sins but God alone?” 8 At once Jesus perceived in his spirit that they were discussing these questions among themselves; and he said to them, “Why do you raise such questions in your hearts? 9 Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Stand up and take your mat and walk’? 

10 But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—he said to the paralytic— 11 “I say to you, stand up, take your mat and go to your home.” 12 And he stood up, and immediately took the mat and went out before all of them; so that they were all amazed and glorified God, saying, “We have never seen anything like this!”


A couple of little things I couldn’t work into the sermon have continued to knock around in my spirit the last few days.

The first has to do with a part of the sermon in which I mentioned that sometimes all we have to give is our vulnerability, and that this is a gift with which Jesus can do great things. You know, according to Scripture, especially places like Philippians chapter 2, Christ’s willingness to be vulnerable might have been the greatest gift Jesus himself had to give.

Anyway, there was this story along those lines that I didn’t share Sunday. A mom told me the story a while back. It went kind of like this…

You see, last school year the woman’s daughter (age range five to eight) had a little accident at school. The accident had to do with the little girl’s pants, if you know what I mean. (And, I bet we all do. It’s happened to each of us and to all of our children at one time or another.)

The woman’s daughter was mortified. That’s not surprising. It even took the girl a while to work through it. But she did.

And the next school year this same daughter found herself alone in the bathroom with a girl from the same grade. The other girl was weeping. She had had an accident in her pants.

The mom’s school age daughter, a little Christian by the way, cared for her crying classmate. She encouraged the weeping girl. She told her that it happens and that it would be all right. And, things did become better.

It was such a little event, such a tiny story to us. But it probably was a big deal to God.

Sometimes, many times in fact, the best thing we have to give is our vulnerability made beautiful by the love of the vulnerable Christ.

The other thing I need to share during this week’s Second Take has more of a wide-angle lens to it. In the sermon I asked us to identify with the four unnamed people who carry the paralyzed man to Jesus. I asked us to wonder how we could simply share what we have to give, even if all we have to give is the ability to carry a stretcher.

Now I want to take that wondering a step further, and when we do I think we uncover a helpful pattern for relating lots of Bible stories to our lives.

OK, the four guys carrying the mat – that’s where we may see ourselves. And so we wonder how we can carry our mats here and now. How we can give what we have to give.

OK, where do we see our neighbor? In this reading, we see our neighbor in the paralyzed man we are trying to care for? What does that neighbor look like in August 2013?

OK, finally, where do we see God? Well, in the story, we see God in Jesus, of course. In the story Jesus is healing the paralyzed person without demanding the person go on about his guilt and shame. Where do we see God doing that kind of thing in our world?

Do you get it? We ask ourselves as we consider a story: 1) Where do I see God? 2) Where do I see myself? 3) Where do I see my neighbor? And we just play around with it. And, hopefully, in some real, Jesus-shaped way, we act upon what we see.



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    Author

    Robert here.

    I am a Christian preacher (among other things). When you preach a sermon, as an act of mercy for those listening, you always leave stuff out.

    Here's a chance for some of those extras to find another life somewhere else -- in a second take.

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