1 John 3:16-24
Where do Jesus Christ and
pop-culture meet? The college sociology
major in me likes to constantly dance with my interpretations of the
Bible. I seem to always be watching for
signs and waiting on revelations as I consider popular phenomena. I stay especially alert to the entertainment
industry and how mass media influences the mainstream of our American culture. As an individual person, as a parent and as a
pastor, I want and need divine direction about how we friends of Jesus might faithfully
respond to various trends.
Sometimes I quite happily involve myself in the
latest entertainment boom. My recent
fascination with all things related to The Hunger Games trilogy of books
and their first movie adaptation is a good case point. At other times I avoid like a plague
whatever happens to be what all of the buzz is about … as in my absolutely avoiding
anything and everything related to “The Jersey Shore” reality television
spectacle. And then there are the times
when, like a fish suddenly snagged in a drag net, I unexpectedly find myself
completely caught up.
I confess that there
is one continually popular entertainment trend I never imagined I’d ever feel
called to address in a sermon. Yet I’m currently caught up in it, right along
with my immediate family. So please listen
and process patiently as I attempt to have today’s Bible passage speak to it,
even though the trend of which I am speaking has to do with … zombies!
I’m making mention of
these totally made up monsters of the human mind because in various art forms
they are a deep gold mine for the entertainment industry. Time
and time again, people gladly pay to have this ghoulish experience.
On the silver screen,
this genre was kicked off by the great Bela Legosi’s 1932 film, White Zombie. It took a defining turn in 1968 with writer-director
George Romero’s 1968 Night of the Living Dead. And more recently, the action-comedy Zombieland
gained a considerable audience.
Beyond film, folks
were singing and dancing with the undead by way of Michael Jackson’s very
successful 1982 music video for the song “Thriller.”
These days many
personal computer owners are being entertained by a popular game application
called “Plants and Zombies.”
And in the past two years, one of the hugest television
hits of all time has been an apocalyptic themed series titled “The Walking
Dead.”
There are lots of positive,
pleasant and fun ways to relax, to temporarily escape the daily grind and woes
of the world. What is it that draws so
many people to sidle up to this eerie stuff?
Why are so many rather regular folks driving the demand and making
zombie productions very popular and profitable?
Lots of well-qualified
people of various academic fields have studied this and continue to do so. I speak from my particular nook, the one
that has biblical faith in one hand and real world curiosities, trends and
truths in the other. Here’s my conclusion so far. I don’t think that the cultural zeal for
zombies is primarily about a need to be captivated by cold creepiness, gross
gore, and horrifying notions of death. I believe a lot of people pay for, watch and
get caught up in all this because of a much less morbid, more positive, and
deeply human need. I think it a good
deal about people yearning to be engaged in a dramatic fight to hold onto indomitable,
against-the-odds hope in this world. Nobody wants the terrifying and utterly pointless
zombies to win in the end. We want the
best characteristics of our humanity – our inborn love of life and need to
protect it, our fervent belief in brighter tomorrows and eternal peace, the
beauty and strength of family bonds and friendships -- to absolutely prevail
against what can seem like undying desperations and desecrations.
Every day, there are a
great many realities in this sin-saturated world that can add up to a person
feeling far from fully alive, trapped by a sense of dread existence, arrested
in any excitement or hope for the future, imperiled by truly monstrous things
that want to consume them. It’s
liberating and energizing to escape such realities, however briefly, by
imaginatively conquering them in the fictional form of defeated zombies.
So, people of biblical faith, how might we respond to this profitable
pop-culture phenomenon and what it may more profoundly be telling us about the
human hunger for indomitable hope? We can try to ignore it, though from a market
perspective there aren’t any indicators it’s going away. We
can choose to dismiss it as mostly mindless entertainment, or conversely, to
condemn and try to censor it. Or, as I’ve
been suggesting, we can pay attention and focus on its popularity being at least
partly the result of the human need to fight for hope in the face of great fear
– fear of a meaningless life, death, and afterlife. There is a strong root reason why The
Walking Dead television series resonates so strongly with me and millions of
viewers. The title doesn’t actually
refer to the zombies, but to the survivors
struggling to hold on to the best of their humanity -- including faith, hope
and love – in the midst of all a horrifying reality trying to consume it.
1 John reminds us what
we friends of Jesus have to offer people who feel constantly pursued by fear
and are yearning to escape deadly despair.
It reminds us of the good news that no matter how dreadful, how
conflicted, how heart-condemning and utterly hopeless life can seem at times,
Jesus – God in the flesh -- suffered it all and came through it all and
conquered it all with love and light and true life. His rising from the grave was the profound polar
opposite of a morbidly entertaining fiction – it miraculously embodied all human
hope for good, abundant, purposeful life here and in the hereafter. We are people of His resurrection. With faith, hope and love, we strive to
positively influence others and the greater culture we live in as we follow our
Risen Lord’s footprints in this too often terribly grave world.
Believing in Jesus
Christ has this very practical consequence.
We should not confess His name and say we belong to Him but then live as
though we aren’t paying diligent attention to His holy example. Our faith should not be so half-dead. And, further, being Christian is first and
foremost not about future survival beyond the grave … it’s about living every
day with the durable responsibility of loving one another. It’s about daily demonstrating our
“crossover into life that is real and indestructible.”[i]
This means, 1 John
reminds us, we are to lay down our lives for one another in the name of our
Lord. There is ample historical and for
many of us personal witness to people who have done this unto death. Selfless, heroic action is what we most think
of when we read and hear this commandment to “lay down our lives.” But the focus here in 1 John is on being
alive, fully alive in the Risen Lord, and making smaller, practical,
life-affirming, doing-as-Jesus-taught-us sacrifices. It is, as one of my favorite scholars has
written, “obviously not about vicarious sacrifice, but love which goes the
whole way in the interest of others.”[ii]
Our Scripture lesson
this morning also reminds us that God knows everything about what’s on our
hearts. So ask your heart a question
that God already knows the answer to, but perhaps you need to hear today. Where are you on this walk of faith? Are you sort of lifelessly lumbering
along? Are you constantly craving things
to consume that don’t actually feed your spirit, help your neighbors out, and
glorify God? Or is every step an
Easter one striving to walk in faithful truth and action? Are committed to keep walking to all the
grave places with the real love, light, and life of Christ? Amen.
[i]
New Interpreter’s Bible commentary on 1 John
[ii]
William Loader, First Thoughts on Year B Epistle Passage from the Lectionary,
April 29
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