Three scenes of crisis.
A couple huddles together, staying out sight behind a stand of trees. Time is running out on life as they’ve known it. They’re scared of what they’ve done and even more frightened of what they may be facing.
A group of friends scurries inside a room where they think they’ll be safe. They shudder as the wooden plank rasps into place, locking them inside. They’re not sure what scares them more: being locked helpless inside this room together or walking around outside with no idea of who’s friend and who’s foe.
The patient hears through morphine-laced consciousness: it’s cancer, and it’s everywhere. He retreats into the fog, hoping against hope that the scans are wrong, that the symptoms are imagined. He stumbles into the shower, dragging his IV pole with him, pulls the curtain closed, and waits for the nightmare to end.
Three scenes of crisis. Two Biblical. One personal.
And at the center of them all: Death.
Death explodes like a roadside bomb, shattering form and order and flesh and bone. And we huddle in horror behind trees and doors, substances and shower curtains. And whether death comes because of our own bad decisions or because of some sinister force at work randomly in the world, it always leaves us with less. Less confidence. Less stability. Less security. Less life.
And into our lessened lives comes the Living One, who comes like a thief in the night, intent on stealing us (steeling us?) from death’s grip. And because the Living One shows up in person--in flesh--death turns on the Living One. And the Living One is suddenly collateral damage in our own showdown with death.
In the garden, the One who had dreamed up these beings in love and tenderness and affection, seeks them out and discovers their treachery. But the Living One does not offer condemnation, but redirection. The life of these living ones will be changed forever, but not ended forever. They can still be fruitful. But the fruit will come only as a result of their own struggles and toil and sweat. Their sentence: life. Life without a garden, except of their own cultivation. Life without walls, except of their own construction. Life without God, except of their own dim recollection.
Except that the Living One who sends them out cannot help but summon them back. The Living One who sets a guard at the garden gate hums tunes in the evening hour that remind the living ones of the Life they have lost. The Living One misses them. And eventually, the Living One comes to see them--just like in the garden.
And some--the living ones with ears to hear--receive what the Living One offers. It’s like cool water when they’re really thirsty. It’s like a loaf of warm bread when their stomachs are empty. It’s like a beam of light when they’re stumbling around in the dark. And they are redirected again. Away from paths that lead nowhere, to a Way that leads back to fruitful, abundant, enjoyable life.
But the Living One refuses to ignore the living ones who still won’t listen. And the Living One raises his voice to help them hear. And they shout all the louder, convinced of their own version of things. And the contest of voices becomes a contest of wills. And the contest of wills becomes a contest of strength. And the only strength the living ones know is brutal, coercive, lethal. And the strength of the Living One is in refusing to play by their rules.
This time it is the living ones who send the Living One outside the walls, intent on reclaiming what they think is theirs. And the Living One absorbs the most ferocious, fearsome death the living ones can inflict. And the contest seems to be over. The Living One seems to have been silenced, one more casualty of the tsunami that began with the earthquake of disobedience in the garden so long ago.
Those who had listened to the Living One hide themselves, just like the original couple had done in the garden. Afraid because of what has happened, petrified of what it means for the days to come. And the Resurrected One seeks them out in their hiding place, and invites them to see the marks of his devotion. They are no longer marked for death, because the Resurrected One now bears the marks instead. Their lives are now swallowed up in his, and his life has entered into death and come out the far side.
In the hospital shower, huddled behind a curtain with tubes in each arm and a diagnosis that sounds like a death sentence, the voice of the Resurrected One bids me not to be afraid. “Peace be with you...do not doubt but believe.” And I receive what I need, as Adam and Eve and the disciples did before me, to live in the time-in-between-times. And I believe, not because of what I’ve been taught--though I surely have been taught something by now--but because the Resurrected One has sought me out, a lost soul who needs a Savior and knows it. And the hiding place I’ve chosen is the precise place the Resurrected One knows to look--in dark places where people have given up hope, in dry places that long for living water, in desperate places where lonely people yearn for Someone who knows their sorrows and cares for them deeply.
Three Crises, and a Resurrected One who redirects, reappears, reassures. Why try to hide what death is doing to threaten us? Didn’t the Living One come just so we could rely on him in moments when death seems to have the upper hand? Didn’t the Living One become the Resurrected One by excavating death itself, hollowing out even Hell, so that we may live these days--however many there are--unafraid of death’s grip, unperturbed by death’s threat?
