So as a Youth Director, I try to stay away from typical "youth pastor" sermons. You know the ones - superheroes in the Bible, surfing as a spiritual discipline, using hairspray and match to talk about hell (I witnessed that one. Yikes), etc., etc. But last night I taught on zombies. And I'm not ashamed of it. Because zombies aren't about monsters or horror movies or video games. Zombies are us. We are zombies.
Think about it. Zombies are hard to kill. They have an unquenchable desire. They hurt others without knowing why. They lose all identity and blend into the masses. They're shadows of they're meant to be.
Zombies are everything we fear about ourselves. There's not a single quality that zombies have that aren't first human qualities.
We are hard to kill.
More than ever, actually. Medical advances have kept us alive no matter how fast we try to eat or smoke ourselves to death. Maybe you're sick and old and WANT to die? Too bad, we keep you alive anyways. We are harder to kill than ever before. And what makes that even scarier is that we make a mockery of death in video games and movies and television shows. We hide away death in hospitals and nursing homes. Even when we do die, it's less of a reality and more of a concept for most of us.
We have an unquenchable desire.
Psychologists have discovered that no matter our outside circumstances, for the most part, we're always about the same level of happiness. Win the lottery? You'll be happy, but only for a short while. You'll be back to normal in no time. In our society, we run around pursuing pleasures - things that will finally make us happy. The next big meal, the next movie, the next video game system, the next relationship... we're always looking for something to complete us. We've got this unquenchable desire for more. We're never satisfied. And we know it. Happiness cannot come from outside sources.
We hurt others without knowing why.
This one is kind of self explanatory. We blurt things out in the heat of the moment. We poke fun at someone, telling ourselves that we're just having a little fun when we're really being passive aggressive. We know someone's feelings, and ignore them because we're frustrated. Sure, we hurt others on purpose a lot, but the worst times are when we hurt others and we didn't even intend on doing it. It's like our bodies just take over and ruin things. We lose control. And most of the time, we don't even know why.
We lose all identity and blend into the masses.
Could you define living in the 21st century any better? Facebook knows my age, my height, my hobbies. It knows how much time I spend on my computer and how many friends I have. Facebook even knows what kinds of ads are relevant to me. But does it KNOW me? Does it really know who I am?
No. I'm just another number.
Technology has connected us like never before, but these connections are shallow and weak. You could have every bit of data on me, and still not know me. You wouldn't know my deepest inadequacies or fears. You wouldn't know what makes my heart beat faster and makes me want to really LIVE. In today's world, we're always at risk of losing who we really are. We're constantly being told who we should be - but who ARE we? We want to feel important, not just another number.
Which leads me to the last idea.
We are shadows of who we're meant to be.
Isn't this the most haunting part of zombies? It's a person, but it's not. And even though zombies don't exist, we still understand this concept because we all know people who are alive but not living. They walk through life like shadows.
Don't we sometimes feel this way about ourselves? We work jobs and go to school day after day after day, doing to same routines, and somewhere in the midst of it all we realize that we're not actually living. We know we're better than this, and we're not sure how we got this way.
Resurrection and zombies.
Daniel, the head pastor at our church, has been preaching on what the Bible has to say about the afterlife. And contrary to popular culture, the Bible doesn't really talk about heaven and hell in the way most of us think about it. The early Christians believed in the resurrection of the dead. If you're not familiar with this concept, it's the teaching that at the end of time, God will bring back everyone who has ever lived. We're not talking about spirits here. We're talking about actual physical bodies. But the beautiful thing about this belief is that those beings will be the best versions of us. Essentially, they're the opposite of zombies. If zombies are the worst parts of us, the resurrection only brings back the best parts of us.
1 Corinthians 13 (you know, the one read at weddings), says that, "Now we see a dim reflection, as if we were looking into a mirror, but then we shall see clearly. Now I know only a part, but then I will know fully, as God has known me. So these three things continue forever: faith, hope, and love. And the greatest of these is love." I think that if we're honest with ourselves, we don't even know who we really are. We know a part - but our vision is dim. But someday, the truest parts of us will be set free. The parts of us that are bound to faith, hope, and love. Those will last forever. And that's beautiful.
But also a little scary.
Because if your identity is bound to things that have nothing to do with faith, hope, and love - there might not be much of you to resurrect. In the same way that we have zombie-like qualities in us right now, we have resurrected life in us right now. The New Testament is constantly talking about dying and living in this life. The process of truly living or truly dying has already begun - we only choose which direction we go. So let the dead things die, already. It's time to step up our game. Let's actually live.
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