A Christian's Guide to Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse ~ Galatians 5:13-15

¹³ For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another. ¹⁴ For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” ¹⁵ If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another. ~ Galatians 5:13-15

“Zombies.” I know – I never thought I’d be saying that in church, particularly in a sermon. But I’ve seen them. I bet you’ve seen them too.

  I recently encountered a few on Facebook. In my feed a Christian friend from college recounted a recent visit to a doctor’s office in which an “awful mother” with “no parenting skills” despondently sat while her dirty children ran around the waiting room with no regard for anyone present. She painted a supposedly frightful scene and others were quick to chime in – devouring this woman with all manner of judgments while they lauded their own behavior. Foolishly, I waded in to the zombie horde and made the following suggestion: “Friends, I don’t think I would want one moment to judge me as a parent. I have made some foolish mistakes and would hate for any one of them to summarize who I was.” 

The responses were grindingly swift. I must also be a bad parent if I couldn’t recognize one myself. And I fled as arms hungrily reached out to devour me as well.

Paul, in Galatians 5, is making an astounding claim that agrees with my experience. There are such things as zombies, even Christian zombies, who “bite and devour one another.”

And friends, like many of you I’ve been chased and even bitten. And we all know what that means – to be bitten by a zombie is often to become one. How do you know if you’ve been infected?

How do you know if you’re a zombie Christian?: the four-fold test

      1.    If you can’t reason and won’t listen – you might be a zombie. Zombies don’t ask questions, moan a lot, and won’t compromise. They see the world in very simple terms – food & not food and they never change their mind. By the way, I’ve met liberal zombies and conservative zombies. I’ve met old zombies, young zombies, zombies with Bibles, and atheist zombies. For our purposes, we must always remember that navigating our world is too complicated for overly simple reasoning. Following God, reading the Bible, demands all of our thoughtfulness but also our humility – the ability to admit what we might not fully know. That was the failure of the Facebook horde. Christian knowledge should always be tempered by a deep humility. We’re talking about God. That’s why we must also listen in order to be faithful, even to enemies.

      2.    If you indulge the flesh – you might be zombie. Flesh (sarx) can be a tricky term - NIV “sinful nature” NRSV “self-indulgence.” It doesn’t primarily mean the physical body as opposed to a spiritual body; rather it focuses on the whole person (mind, body, spirit – an integral whole) and reflects a desire to live outside of God’s will and apart from God’s Spirit. Maybe the best interpretation is “sinful inclination.” Now, having a sinful inclination doesn’t make you a zombie but using it as an “opportunity” or “pretext” to sin without regard does. So if you are abusing your confidence in Christ – your freedom from sin and the law, as a reason to not care about how you behave – you might be a zombie. Orthodoxy (right belief) and orthopraxy (right practice) MUST go together.

      3.    If you hold no responsibility for others – you might be a zombie. This point also connects directly to the previous one. Zombies are utterly individualistic. Christian zombies often assume a stance toward “freedom” that focuses on “from” rather than “for.” They wish to enjoy a freedom from sin, from guilt, from worry, from hell – concerned about their own destiny or plight. Their spirituality only concerns their own needs and rarely others’  – this is why the NRSV notion of self-indulgence is also helpful. In Paul’s list of sins, however, in verses 19-21 he emphasizes interpersonal ones in more detail than any other category - of the fifteen sins listed, eight concern the “social sins” of the church – “hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy.” How often do denominations talk about these as current, dangerous, “issues”? Why don’t we ever hear about the horrible agenda of “hate”?

Recently, a Covenant pastor posted the following post on Facebook which illustrates this zombie tendency perfectly:

“Looking for some insight or wisdom: We have a mom with two kids that have been coming to the church for a couple years before I started with the congregation. The kids have a very long leash and the 2-year-old will run around the sanctuary, up around the alter and at times has started playing the piano before the mother intervenes. Many times I've just picked up the child and brought him back to his mom. I've had a conversation recently with the mom who is very receptive and understands, but at the same time is at her wits end being the only believing parent with little support at home and trying to actively grow in her faith. Then, there are many in the congregation who are frustrated, but put all the expectation on the mom to watch her children and have them behave.”

Friends, church members who are more interested in their own freedom to worship at the expense of this mom in need are certainly in danger of becoming zombies.

      4.    If you regularly gnaw on others – you might be a zombie. To bite and devour others is illustrated when the issue is about who is right, rather than what is right. It’s discovered when you use words like “hate” or “despise.” When the people that you see have lost their humanity – have become only food. Remember what Peter tells us – Satan walks around seeking whom he may devour. Don’t help him. By the way, you aren’t actually the one who gets to determine this reality. If you’re infected, you can’t be the one who determines whether you are a biter or not. If so, you will always claim that the flesh between your teeth is simply a “love bite.” But, if others regularly complain that they are being bitten, regularly say “Ow!” in your presence, regardless of your own intent, then you are a zombie.

The Apostle Paul’s Antidote for Zombies: 

      1.    Refocus on “our” sin

We need to remember that sin seeks to destroy healthy relationships. That it isn’t simply an individual problem but aims to create, as Paul says – enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, and envy. To be honest, however we rarely talk about that. Rather, we often revel in such attitudes believing that our rightness calls for such fracturing; that truth necessitates fighting tooth and nail and, in that spirit, anything goes. In response, we must do more to practice confession and recognize that our political and social landscape has no place for confession; no means of saying “We we’re wrong. We’re at fault.” Our current climate wishes to point to the misdeeds of others whenever we are pointed out as being in the wrong. To be a community of forgiveness demands that we are also a community of truth and the truth is this: the church is a place for sinners, of sinners, filled with sinners. Our freedom requires our confession.

You won’t be a zombie if you are continually inoculated with these words: “Most merciful God, we confess that we have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done, and by what we have left undone. We have not loved you with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We are truly sorry and we humbly repent. For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ, have mercy on us and forgive us; that we may delight in your will, and walk in your ways, to the glory of your Name. Amen.” These are OUR words.

      2.    Reconsider our diet.

How you eat is determined by what you wish to accomplish? The goal matters. Paul’s point is that scripture reading or more specifically, following the law, is summed up the statement, “love your neighbor as yourself.” What if we held as our most important reading strategy of the Bible not our own fulfillment, our own growth but love of neighbor?
Augustine, in On Christian Doctrine, set forth a vision of how to interpret the Bible. He argues that the building up of love – love of God and love of one’s neighbor is the end or purpose of the Bible. He states, “Whoever, then, thinks that he understands the Holy Scriptures, or any part of them, but puts such an interpretation upon them as does not tend to build up this twofold love of God and our neighbor, does not yet understand them as he ought.” And love is not love in the abstract but love as modeled by Jesus Christ. So we read the scriptures “for” others and in order to be a “slave” for others.

Do you read with the Bible with the goal of becoming more sacrificial, for the freedom of others, to become a willing “slave”? A slaves job is not to serve himself but to serve others primarily and often painfully.

How might love function in order to help us read Scripture better?

Shusaka Endo’s historical fiction, Silence, offers an interesting case study about how to read the Bible in order to love our neighbor. It’s about 17th-century Jesuit missionaries in Japan, who are forced to encounter a deeply problematic and painful issue: apostasy. Apostasy means the renunciation of one’s faith.

The issue, of course, is made all the more painful because Jesus himself issued the following warning: “Everyone therefore who acknowledges me before others, I also will acknowledge before my Father in heaven; but whoever denies me before others, I also will deny before my Father in heaven. ~ Matthew 10:32-33

In the book, Jesuit missionaries, after being tortured are threatened by Japanese authorities to deny Jesus, which entailed stepping on an image of Jesus (called a fumi-e, which literally means “stepping on”). Otherwise, they’re told, the Japanese Christians that they had been serving would be tortured and killed.

As an aside, this threat was utterly novel to Christians —forcing a person to apostatize to prevent others from being tortured or killed. Typically, in Christian history, it was the person himself or herself who was tortured and martyred for his or her own beliefs.

The dilemma was stark: recant their faith, seemingly disobeying Jesus’ words, and set the Japanese Christians free, or hold onto their faith and let others suffer. It is an almost impossible choice. Thus, the Jesuits are forced to “discern” in a complicated situation where there are no easy answers. They come from a world of black-and-white and are forced to make painful decisions in a world of gray.

After agonizing in prayer and wrestling with the Scriptures, they apostatize not simply because they wished to save the lives of the Japanese Christians, but because they understood that this was how Christ himself loved his neighbors – his enemies.

Why do you read Scripture? Because of this. “On the night when he was to be betrayed . . . .”

[We concluded by celebrating communion]

Kill the Narrator?: God and evil in the story of Joseph ~ Genesis 45:5, 7-8 & 50:20 (Noah's Sunday, held after our our weekly VBS)

“Do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you . . . It was not you who sent me here, but God.” ~ Genesis 45:5, 7-8

Later, Joseph again reassures his brothers, offering forgiveness and saying, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good.” ~ Genesis 50:20 

In the musical Into the Woods, the characters of the Grimm fairy tales seek to gain their wishes only to befall many terrible ordeals. At one point, the characters take notice of the narrator who has been behind the scenes moving the story along and commenting on different character’s actions. They surround him, refuse to let him stand outside the story and threaten him with violence. The narrator responds:

Narrator: “Well, that's my role! You must understand, there must always be someone on the outside!”

Steward: “Well, you're going to be on the inside now.”

Narrator: “You're making a big mistake!”

Stepmother: “Nonsense.”

Narrator: “You need an objective observer to pass the story along!”

Witch: “Some of us don't like the way you've been telling it.”

Narrator: “If you drag me into this mess, you won't know how the story ends! You'll be lost!”

    And they shove him into the arms of an angry giant where he’s squashed. Believe me, I’ve been there. Not in the arms of a giant but caught in a story that seemed so hopeless, so senseless, that all I could do was cry out, “Kill the narrator.” And that’s what many have done or tried to do. But I would like to offer you a more hopeful response today. At Noah’s, the children have been learning about the story of Joseph and what God can do with a painful story. 

This past week, bloodstains and tearstains were everywhere. Joseph’s heart was rubbed raw against the rocks of betrayal and miscarried justice: sold into slavery by his brothers who wanted him dead, falsely imprisoned for doing the right thing, and 13 years spent in slavery and prison. It was a life which ping ponged between fear and hope. Like all our stories, it’s a complicated one.

The truth of the matter is that all life stories are complicated, with twist and turns, and ups and downs, and one thing is certain: you can’t be the narrator of your own life. You can’t see all that has to happen or know the full impact of the choices you make. You can’t see what’s coming around the bend or what can happen with a turn of a page.

Yet time and time again in Joseph’s story, God redeems. The torn robe became a royal one. The pit became a palace. The broken family is reunited and saved from a terrible famine. The very acts intended to destroy God’s servant turned out to strengthen him and in the end those acts - saved them all – and not only his family but all of Egypt.

“You intended evil against me,” Joseph told his brothers, using a Hebrew verb that traces its meaning to “weave” or to “plait.” “You wove evil,” he was saying, “but God rewove it together for good.”

I can’t pretend to offer language that resolves all the problems of reconciling God’s existence with the presence of evil in the world. And the Bible itself never tries to clarify this in any systematic way. Instead, it uses stories because, as we all know, where language may fail, stories can succeed. The story of Joseph, therefore, can stand as a living treatise that you can trust. And here is the point: there is a purpose and narrator for your life. And the narrator is good. This doesn’t mean that bad really isn’t bad. I’m not claiming that evil is some illusion or that God is some great Puppet-master in the sky. No, you are free to rage against evil and call it by name. You are also free to make choices and your choices can impact others, powerfully so. Yet God is also sovereign and free and thwarts evil in surprising ways. I want you to entertain the thought that you though you can’t always see the plot you can know the end. And the end is this: God is good.

God, the Master Weaver, stretches the yarn and intertwines the colors, the ragged twine with the beautiful yarn, the pains with the pleasures. Nothing escapes His reach. And the good news is that no event or person, not even yourself, gets to write the conclusion. God is the one who narrates, as Paul Harvey used to say, the “rest of the story.”

And the rest of the story is this. The God who created you and gave you breath, who knows you, loves you, and who has allowed for you to make real choices is always at work, always weaving, always plaiting, always narrating, to make something beautiful in the end. And some of us get glimpses of that now even while some of us still wait. But like any good story there’s one more plot twist. The characters from Into the Woods complain that the narrator is always outside and therefore doesn’t understand their pain. The ancient story of the church, however, answers their heartfelt cry with good news. The narrator did enter our story – the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph, came into our broken and evil world, in Jesus Christ. He spoke truth, raged against evil, loved deeply, experienced loss and grief, and just like the characters from Into the Woods, we killed him. But what we intended for evil God intended for good and cracked upon death and the grave and made for us a way. Because of this Jesus we can know the God who doesn’t stand outside our story. We can know how the story ends.