Devotional Messages

DEVOTIONAL MESSAGE

Matthew 27:50-53 – Then Jesus cried again with a loud voice and breathed his last.  At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.  The earth shook, and the rocks were split.  The tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised.  After his resurrection they came out of the tombs and entered the holy city and appeared to many. (NRSV)

A number of years ago, the youth group and I read through the passion stories from all four of the gospels separately.  We discovered that if you do it that way, you pick up some “interesting” details that are left out of the mash-up versions of the story that we usually use on Maundy Thursday or Good Friday.  For instance – and maybe I’m reaching here, in the spirit of the upcoming holiday, but – Matthew’s gospel seems to describe a zombie jamboree the weekend of Jesus’ death and resurrection.

What is it about zombies that our culture finds so fascinating?  I wonder if it’s that, as more and more people are unchurched, we have lost touch with less sensationalized ways to think about death.  It’s out there, it happens to everyone, and the less we are exposed to it, the scarier it seems.  But when we read scripture – that is, really read it and not just skim the happy parts – we discover that people have always been fascinated by death.

It would be quite something to try to present an Easter pageant that included zombies.  Even if you tried to argue it was biblical, I doubt most people would approve.  But the more closely we get to know scripture, the more we realize that even across thousands of years of history, people are people.  Our struggles are similar, even though our contexts are light years apart.  The parts of life that don’t seem appropriate for church are sometimes the most important parts for us to cover.  Otherwise, we risk having our children learn everything they know about death from commercial Halloween celebrations and horror movies.

So hey, if it amuses you to imagine the Easter story including zombies, have at it!  Enjoy your Halloween celebrations, and join us next Sunday for our All Saints Memorial, when we remind ourselves of the rest of the story about death – that God’s love conquers it.