(Editor’s note: This is an encore presentation of a previous WORDLINK.)

I Hear Dead People

We should allow our lives to be haunted a bit by spirits of the past, to reflect on the history, and the people who have passed.  My pastoral internship was with a church in Hilltown, PA that began worshipping in 1804.  They have a cemetery attached, and I often walked among the stones, reading the names, the dates.  Most of the stones marked the graves of people who have long since passed from memory, to the point that no one alive could relate a single story about this woman, or that man.  There was one set of markers that sticks in my mind, a woman, her husband and their seven-year old daughter all died on the same day.  Why?  I don’t know: the stones are silent about it, and the family members buried on each side of them weren’t talking, either.   

I don’t think it’s really so creepy as some might find it.  Rather, it inspires humility, awe, and both fear and assurance.  I use that space to meditate on the fact that I’m one in line with all who are born.  I have this moment to breathe it in.  Then, like everyone else, I will not be.  It’s a bit frightening and sad that, as time goes on, my history will quickly telescope down in size, until nothing remains at all, not even a name on a stone.  Contrary to the words that are often said after someone dies, at least in this realm, I will be forgotten.  Humbling. 

Now that they are forgotten, how can we honor them?  Our histories remember only the smallest fraction of the names or stories of all the dead people, and yet we can honor them by listening and passing on their voices.  This came home to me when one of my friends in seminary spoke of how she’d had very little interest in church and faith.  She was touring in England and stood in a very old church looking at an odd stained-glass window.  It spelled out the entire Apostles’ Creed.  Standing in that old church, she said she suddenly “heard” all those voices who have recited this Creed in that church and around the world, billions of times over, in hundreds of languages, for over a millennium and a half.  She felt both small, but suddenly a part of something she had not realized was so big until that moment: faith in God, faith that there is something much more than we can see right now. 

“Laugh at ministers all you want: they have the words we need to hear, the ones the dead have spoken.” – John Updike

Link to the First Reading

   Here’s why I speak of the voices of the dead on the 3rd week of Easter: see what God can do when all other powers destroy or fall silent!  Peter used this miraculous healing in Jesus’ name to point to the healing that happens on a much greater and more permanent scale.  

   He razed his listeners for their part in killing—not just Jesus, a man—but the “Author of Life.”  He finally relented somewhat by saying, “You were acting in ignorance [dummies], and his suffering fulfilled what God, through the prophets, had said would happen.”   In the same way, in the gospel lesson Jesus assured the disciples that his death and suffering—not only was it ineffective in preventing God’s salvation and promises—God was able to turn it around to enable that salvation …for the world, just as his prophets, said he could and would!  The words the dead had spoken were true and honored by God.

   Peter had accused them of Deicide, but assured them that God turned their condemnable act on its head.  Jesus’ own death paid the price of their act, in order to extend forgiveness and salvation to his own murderers!  “Repent, and your sins will be wiped out.”

   This is the message passed on through scripture and the church.  When we join our voices to this proclamation or pray for each other in Christ’s name, we join this greater act of healing and salvation.  In that moment, we join the eternal chorus, and we will never be silent. 

Link to the Psalm

   This psalm is a bit …bipolar, eh?  Psalmist: “Answer me, God, as you have before!”  God: “How long will you embarrass me with empty words and lies?”  Psalmist: “But remember, God has a special place for his chosen; he’ll hear me.”  The psalm includes a bit of wisdom, a call to right worship, another cry of impatience, and assurance, etc. 

   The first several lines of this psalm contain the repetitive history of God’s people in a microcosm, all crying out at once.  The last couple lines put it all into the perspective of faith.  Having God alone is having enough.  —It produces more gladness than all the abundance of grain and wine, and allows us to lie down and sleep (to be vulnerable, even to die) in peace.  Finally, God is our safety.

Link to the Second Reading

   How do we purify ourselves, make ourselves as worthy as Christ?  How do we join these ranks of God’s children before us, and those to come after us?  Vs. 3: “All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.”  Hope itself purifies.  In other words, it is enough to trust God for his word of forgiveness!

Link to the Gospel

   The disciples’ fear is a result of what Jesus called their doubts: “Why would you doubt in your hearts.”  He goes on to prove to them that he is alive, and not a dead ghost floating around to haunt them, or to suck life from them, or to do any other horrible nasty things that ghosts might do.

   I’ve heard one preacher suggest recently that all fear—fear of a mouse, fear of the dark, fear of tomorrow—is ultimately connected to our fear of death.  It shows, perhaps, that we really don’t trust ourselves in God’s hands; we are not yet absolutely convinced that it really will be okay. 

   If a big ugly ghoul came crashing through my door right now, I know I’d be out of my mind with fear, …but why should I be?  “Neither life, nor death, no power, height, depth, nothing in creation can separate us from the love of Christ.”  So, even if the ghoul could suck out my life, I would still be in God’s hands.  That may be of little help at that particular time—but comforting otherwise!

   Moreover, Christ showed the disciples that he continues to come in the flesh!  I can get through this life; I can have peace in it; and maybe even delight in it …with help!  Jesus will continue to come in human flesh and hands: psychologists, doctors, teachers, parents and grandparents, children and strangers.  They will have imperfect and scarred flesh, with holes and nail prints. 

   And humanity, my humanity, will forever be imprinted into God.  Genesis says that we are created in God’s image, but because of Jesus Christ, humanity will forever be imprinted into God, with the nail prints still there.  He loves, understands and feels with us, even understands our fear and loneliness.  He’s been there.

Questions for Discussion

1. What things or thoughts scare you?  Are they connected somehow to a fear of death, or a lack in faith?  How does Jesus bring you peace?

2. What meaning do you draw from Jesus asking for and eating a piece of broiled fish in front of the disciples?

3. Peter called Jesus the “Author of life, whom God raised from the dead.”  If Jesus, the Author of life was dead, how did God raise him?  (A little Trinitarian puzzle.)

4. What words of the church do you treasure the most?  Why?  Do you love the sound of them, their poetry, or their meaning?  How have they helped sustain you in your faith?

5. How can you pass those words on to the next generation?