In this weeks Gospel Jesus is on his way, surrounded by a crowd, to an important citizen’s house. Something is wrong with the head of the synagogue’s daughter. She is reportedly dying, so I am sure they are trying to rush Jesus along the way. That’s when the lady touches him and momentarily derails the whole thing. There’s a lot to unpack in these verses and many different directions a preacher could go. So really, it’s best to go one way at a time and this week I was sent off down a very interesting road of theological thought from an unexpected and interesting place. It was a suggestion on connecting this week’s reading to modern media. Now I sort of had a direction that I was thinking about, but like this woman that interrupted where Jesus was going, my journey got interrupted. Now, I’ve changed paths before, but never for this reason. This week’s “are you kidding me” moment is brought to us by… a zombie movie. Yes, you heard me correctly. I had just finished my pastors’ sermon study group and I was browsing commentaries when I saw the suggestion. OK, I gotta check this out. By the time the beginning credits started appearing on the screen I realized that this was not the typical zombie movie. It didn’t take long to get the feeling that I was in for a very deep metaphorical parable, not an allegory like the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe or Pilgrim’s Progress but something that really spoke to what the Gospel for today had to say. Surprisingly, the main character, a zombie named R and the little girl and the woman with the hemorrhaging problem that had beset her for 12 years all had the same problem. They were all dead. The Little girl has been pronounced and the woman? She has been dead to the world for 12 years. For 12 years she has been denied contact and real social interaction. You see, according to the law in Leviticus. In Leviticus 15:31 God says, “You must keep the Israelites separate from things that make them unclean, so they will not die in their uncleanness for defiling my dwelling place, which is among them.” Leviticus also says that a woman in this part of the cycle is to be kept away and is unclean until 7 days afterward. So for 12 years she has been cast out from her community since everyone has been made aware. She has used up all of her resources and is suffering, I think more from being an outcast or being disconnected than having this medical condition. The movie opens with the main character, R, a young zombie walking through an airport. He says, “What am I doing with my life? I’m so pale. I should get out more and eat better. My posture is terrible. I should stand up straighter. People would respect me more if I stood up straighter. What’s wrong with me? I just want to connect. Why can’t I connect with people? Right because I’m dead. I shouldn’t be so hard on myself I mean we’re all dead. I wish I could introduce myself but I don’t remember my name anymore. It started with an R but that’s all I have left. I can’t remember my name or my parents or my job. How it all started doesn’t matter, but this is a typical day for me. I shuffle around occasionally bumping into people unable to apologize or say much of anything. It must have been so much better before. When everyone could express themselves and communicate their feelings and just enjoy each other’s company. With those words you see the world transformed back to the before times and witness the reality of how disengaged with one another people are walking around in our world. It’s everyone. No one more to blame than another. We see the fomenting of this disengagement and estrangement taking place and being perpetuated in the movie, in the Bible and in our lives. We have hurt others and have been hurt by others. We, like R hear a tape that plays in our minds that tells us over and over that because of the things we have done, we are not worthy of connection and it drives us more and more inward and away from others and out of community. It also doesn’t help that so often we try to mask our discomfort or numb it or try to transfer it. Sort of an ick factor creeps in. That’s when people see or feel something about others that they don’t understand or that they find distasteful to their own understanding, or attractions, or enjoyment or satisfaction, and we make it a taboo and proclaim that it is also not OK with God. That person or that group or we ourselves get cut off or disconnected or we disconnect ourselves. We walk this world snipping the ties that bind us together and we end up dead shuffling zombies. You see it and hear it in the voice of the leader of the last remaining city in the movie who does not believe that the corpses, the dead, the zombies, the disconnected can be transformed. There is no hope. “They don’t get better, they get worse. They get bit, they get infected and then I shoot them and kill them.” Isn’t that how sin and redemption is so often viewed. Think of portrayals of the church. Think of how the church has behaved in maintaining connections, re-establishing connections or cutting them loose and destroying them. Look at the poor woman in the gospel. We can hear an all to familiar sentiment of those on the outside, the unchurched, the disenfranchised, the ostracized and the outcasts echo in the words of one of the movie characters when it is suggested that they go show the city this beautiful thing, the transformation that is taking place. We can show them! Response: “No one here is ever going to buy that oh, not that we could get you close enough to tell them.” Here’s the thing. Look at what we see in Jesus’ actions. By cultural norms, the woman, by stealth, assaults Jesus and all the people in that crowd that she bumped into because she has made them all unclean. When Jesus catches her, she’s terrified for good reason, because imagine how crowds act. All she wanted was re-connection and restoration, to be restored to life and Jesus extends grace to her. In the scripture it does not use the word for cured, the word used means to be made well, a phrase that carries with it the idea of rescue from impending destruction by a superior power. “You must keep the Israelites separate from things that make them unclean, so they will not die in their uncleanness for defiling my dwelling place, which is among them.” Don’t bring us down with your deal…Don’t infect the temple. In the Old Testament, the temple was where God dwelt among the Israelites, but in the New Testament, God dwells among people in the person of Jesus Christ. Through Jesus the penalties of the Law are reversed, and the contamination of this world had no effect on Christ. The woman did not make Jesus (God’s dwelling) unclean—He made her clean! It’s not something the woman did, actually, culturally, by the rulebook, it’s done despite something she did. In the movie R is constantly rehashing the things he has done and because of them he feels a deep unworthiness for connection and considers it beyond the realm of possibility. He, like the woman and so many others, is on the road to giving up because he can’t fix it. But it is exciting to see that the zombies aren’t having to do something to change their situation. They are coming to feel the connection is possible. Life is stirring within them. This is how we are told the Spirit moves and engages us. We are not connected to Christ by something we do or have done. Martin Luther points to the scriptures in his small catechism and says, I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to Him; but the Holy Spirit has called me. He daily and richly forgives all my sins and the sins of all believers. On the Last Day He will raise me and all the dead, and give eternal life to me and all believers. As one young lady in the movie puts it “people are being exhumed”. Someone tries to correct her wording, but she sticks to it. We can see that Jesus, by his death on the cross, digs us from the grave. In the culmination of R’s journey from death to life we see him and his friend trapped by evil on top of a precipice. They fall from a great height, with R using his body as a shield to the impact with a pool of water, which I think he knew would mean his ultimate death. R is brought up out of the water fully restored to his humanity, tying R’s experience to the liturgy of baptism from death to life and reconnection within the community. As we zombie shuffle along plugged into the songs of defeat and unworthiness, Chist calls out to us “Talitha cum, Little girl, get up!” For he has dug us from the grave and made us well. So in thankfulness, let’s connect with people that desperately need it and help exhume the world, so that those who are sleeping may experience life anew.
Leave a Reply