The Walking Dead - First Time Again

This past Sunday night, the new season of The Walking Dead began with our survivors trying to adapt to life in the so-far peaceful town of Alexandria. The people of Alexandria have been living a sheltered life, almost completely oblivious to the dangers outside. And so comes our group - Rick, Glenn, Maggie, Daryl, Carol and the rest. They have been fighting "walkers" (zombies) for around two years, but they have an uphill struggle convincing their new friends to learn. Because where is the danger?

It was a very puzzling plot line for the last few episodes of Season 5. Yes, the people of Alexandria were naive. No, they were not equipped to deal with the dangers of the zombie apocalypse. But why? Why had they been so sheltered? Why were their walls not being swarmed by the walking dead?

And then, as the new season opened, we saw this:

It was a quarry. A ravine filled with hundreds - no, thousands - of walkers. Trapped by the walls, and trapped by some large commercial trucks that blocked the openings. There they were, all these deadly creatures. The town had been safe because they were trapped, trapped nearby, just out of their view. But always out there, always on the verge of escaping. And the time was coming when they would escape. Soon. How would Alexandria prepare? What was the plan?
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And so it goes. For many of us, we are cruising through our day-to-day, mundane lives. We're reasonably happy. We're mostly safe. We have fallen into a routine that we fool ourselves into thinking will go on forever. Or at least for a while, and we'll worry about the after when we get there.

But lurking are the walkers. Just beyond our walls in the quarry. Danger, heartbreak, cracks in the armor. Things that can bring the walls come crashing in. Walkers named...

• Cancer
• Greed
• Accidents
• Selfishness
• Hatred
• Heart disease
• Resentment
• Hurricanes
• Lust
• Death of loved ones
• Earthquakes
• Sexual permissiveness
• Laziness
• Anger
• Tornadoes
• ..................................

And on and on and on.

Lurking in the quarry, waiting for an opening.

Rick and the residents of Alexandria have a plan. What is your plan?

My only plan, my only hope, for dealing with the hundreds of manifestations of death waiting to devour me is this: Trust in the God of the universe, and put all my hope in the saving death and resurrection of his Son. He is sovereign over the world and over all the forces of sin, evil, and destruction that want to take me down. He won't keep me from having to face them. But his power will bring me through them.

How about you? You have a quarry full of walkers too; I know you do. Please don't just whistle in the dark, pretending they'll never come out. Oh, they will. And what will you do?

Powerful foolishness

But Jesus was saying, "Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing."

- Luke 23:34, NASB

Paul refers to the cross of the Messiah as the foolishness of God, which is wiser than the wisdom of men (1 Corinthians 1:25). And no wonder. Because it does not make sense to us that we can conquer evil by suffering. By submission. By forgiveness. And yet there he is, on his way to his death, and he proclaims forgiveness for the ones pursuing his death. And by that act, he has conquered evil forever.

Many of these same themes were interwoven into last week's episode of The Walking Dead. Yeah, I know...

Wait, what?!?

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD

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If you are one of the 16 million people who watched last Sunday, you know the background well. Our band of survivors in this zombie apocalypse have been on their own for at least a couple of years and have beaten the odds on all sorts of perils. But now they are face-to-face with a different challenge - a naive community (Alexandria) of people that have no idea of the danger outside their walls. How will they fit in? Will the things they have learned help them protect their new community? Or will it get them kicked out?

(For more, read a synopsis here.)

Well, the path to getting control of the situation was surprising.

• Glenn, who was there when his friend Noah was killed through the negligence and cowardice of Alexandria native Nicolas, confronts Nicolas out in the woods. Nicolas shoots Glenn in the shoulder, attacks him, and leaves him for dead as "walkers" pounce. Somehow, Glenn turns the tables and has Nicolas on the ground with a gun to his head. He has the power of revenge and maybe even justice right in his hands. But he lets Nicolas go. Forgiveness? Well, at least the first step.
• Sasha is still struggling with the deaths of her brother and her boyfriend, and is not handing it well. She comes face-to-face with Father Gabriel in the chapel, and two lost souls come face-to-face.
• Maggie recently overheard Gabriel condemn the entire group in a private conversation with Deanna, the leader of Alexandria. Somehow, she sees through his hypocritical actions and sees a lost and hurting man in desperate need of forgiveness. Reaching back to the faith her father taught her (and which she seemed to have lost for a while), she reaches out her hand - literally - and pulls Gabriel up. The three of them end up praying together:

• Then there's Morgan, whose connection with our group is a past connection with Rick Grimes. He helped Rick get his feet under him shortly after the world changed. When we last saw him, he seemed lost after facing the death of his son. But now, he has come to the conclusion that all life is precious. He rescued Daryl and Aaron from certain death, and seems to be on a mission to show you can survive and keep your humanity.

The name of the episode was "Conquer." That seems like a very strange name; there was no conquest in sight. Not in the traditional since. But.....

Glenn conquered his bitterness over Noah's death as he let Nicolas off the hook.

Sasha is at least on her way to conquering the deep hurt over the death's of Bob and Tyreese.

Maggie has conquered the hopelessness she felt after the deaths of her father and sister.

Maybe Gabriel is on the verge of conquering his shame. We'll see about that one.

And, as the people of Alexandria witness selfless sacrifice by these flawed characters, including Rick - who was out protecting them from intruding walkers when he could have been trying to save his own skin - our group seems to be conquering. Conquering fear, conquering mistrust, conquering the disconnect with their new community. Rick thought they would have to do it by force.

Not so much.

Forgiveness. Suffering. Sacrifice. Nor conquering by force, but conquering with love. Does that work? 

Is it foolishness to think so?

Which brings us back to Jesus. Love, self-sacrificing love, forgiving love, is the only thing that can conquer evil. And that's exactly what happened on the cross, when the King of the universe was crowned with thorns, bore our sins, and destroyed the works of the devil.

And then rose from the dead to claim that victory.

This is the foolishness of God, wiser than all our wisdom. Amen.

The Walking Dead: Them

How does God work in the universe he created? Did he just set it into motion and then watch things play out, occasionally intervening with a miracle when it's important to his purposes? Or is he intimately involved with every aspect of his creation, working through the natural processes and relationships to bring about his purposes?

Daryl

In this week's episode of The Walking Dead, this question seemed to explode from the screen.

It was a strange episode, one that I felt was a little slow. There has been a lot of death recently and our characters, especially Maggie, Daryl and Sasha, are at the end of their ropes. Food and water are scarce, they are running out of energy as they try to make it to D.C., and grief is overwhelming. As Rick notes in a story he tells toward the end of the hour, they - not the "walkers," - are really the "walking dead." (It was really cool how the name of the show actually made its way into the dialogue.) The only thing is, we have spent nearly two episodes dealing with these emotions without much plot movement. In my opinion, it's time to restore the balance with some plot development.

That said, I was really moved by Maggie's character progression, and it related directly to the questions at the start of this post. For those who don't follow the show (you probably stopped reading long ago anyway), Maggie's father, a deeply religious man was beheaded recently. She wandered through Georgia wondering whether her husband Glenn and sister Beth were dead. She was reunited with Glenn, but thought Beth was dead. She then found out that her sister was alive, only to have her snatched away in a gruesome death shortly after learning the good news.

She is devastated.

And as the episode begins, it is clear that whatever faith she ever had is, at best, hanging by a thread. First, she has a conversation with Gabriel, a priest who is dealing with his own failings to do what he knows is right. Gabriel tries to help, offering to be there if she needs someone to talk to. She says to him, "My daddy was religious. I used to be." When he offers to listen, she says, "Please stop" and cuts him off cold. She doesn't want to talk about it.

Later, the group is overjoyed by a rainstorm that blows up providing them much needed water. Gabriel gives thanks to God, but Maggie just sands with a blank expression. She is not impressed.

The group finds shelter from the storm in a barn that Daryl had seen. As they walk in, Maggie notices a Bible sitting on top of a stack of books. The fact that she sees it is emphasized by the way the scene was shot. Clearly the role of God in all this and whether Maggie can return to her father's faith is being set before us.

That night, after they have all tried to go to sleep, a bunch of walkers (zombies) comes to the barn door and are attempting to break it down and kill them all. And the storm is raging with high winds that may blow the door in. With our three grieving characters taking there lead, the group works together to keep them out.

Cut to the next morning. Everyone is safe, and we see Maggie awaken first and soon she and Sasha are walking outside the barn. It's hard to describe what they see. Look at the tornado path, the way tress have been leveled, and how a bunch of walkers were disabled:

Sasha says, "Look at this......it should have torn us apart.....it didn't."

And then, while looking at a beautiful sunrise, "Why are we here?"

And you can see in their eyes that they are trying to make sense of it all:

Sasha and Maggie

So back to our question...how does God work? Without attributing intent to the writers (which is never a good idea), I saw a very clear journey through pain and doubt, with the first steps back toward faith. As they surveyed the wreckage after the storm (tornado?), it was very clear that something had happened, something significant. A miracle? The natural result of weather?

God as presented in Scripture is one who works his will through everything that happens. So while so many want this to be an either/or question, I believe it is more accurate to see it as both/and. It was the working of God to save them, but he did so through the working of his creation. He sent a storm to give them water and, as it turned out, to protect them from the walkers who were about to kill them. He wills and works for his good pleasure.

As I watch over the next few weeks, I hope I'm going to see this a turning point of hope and faith. That Maggie, one of my favorite characters, will see why her father believed and return the the faith of her youth. And that this will provide hope for everyone as they navigate this post-apocalyptic world.

More than that, I hope and pray that I will learn from it as I navigate the stresses of my world and seek to interpret the tragedies we are seeing in the news. Things may seem to be at their worst, but there is a God working for our good, and all the suffering, tragedy, and even stress are being used to mold his children into what he wants us to be.

Then we, the walking dead, can have life.

The Walking Dead: We Ain't Ashes

One of the great things about a continuing tale like the popular TV show The Walking Dead is how characters are developed. You see a person coping with something as overwhelming and unlikely as the zombie apocalypse, and you wonder how they got to be who they are. And then there's an episode like Consumed (aired November 16, 2014), where through flashbacks and dialogue, you get to see inside their soul a little. Such was the case with Carol.

(Note: For the Dead fans, yes, I know a midseason finale loaded with meaning aired last night, and it screams to be written about. But this post has been on my mind for about two weeks, so here we go.)

For the uninitiated, Carol is a woman who has been through an abusive relationship that affected both her and her daughter. Then early in the apocalypse, her daughter was lost and subsequently turned out to be dead. As the group sought shelter in a (nearly) abandoned prison, she tried to reinvent herself into one who would cope with the new world, teaching the children how to protect themselves. But alas, even that fell apart.

And so we see her and Daryl, whom she has just been reunited with, discussing who they are and how they got there:



Everything is magnified in the apocalypse, but I believe it's an amplification of the struggles we deal with every day in this broken world. As you look back on your life, can you identify with Carol at all? She speaks of the time with her husband as another Carol that got burned away. Then she thought she had found refuge and a purpose in the prison...nope. Now, she is in despair. Is there any hope? What happens when everything you had trusted in is burned away...consumed?

Her world is bleak. It doesn't seem like it even matters who she is anymore. But her friend Daryl reminds her, that whatever has been burned up, it's not her. What really makes Carol, Carol is still there. Through all the hardship and the feeling of being consumed, they're still there. As Daryl says, "We ain't ashes." We've survived.
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This reminds me of something the apostle Paul wrote to the first century church at Corinth. He points out that life is exactly like that. Trials are a fire, meant to refine us and burn away what's worthless, leaving the best - glorious creation that God intended us to be. Here's what he said:

For no one can lay any foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw - each one's work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. (1 Corinthians 3:11-14, ESV)

 Wood, hay, straw - they all will burn up. What won't be consumed is gold, silver and the like. So the question for me is, what will I lay on the top of the foundation which is King Jesus?

Love? Peace? Patience? Forgiveness? Caring for the poor and oppressed? Considering others better than myself?

Or....

Bitterness? Hatred? Selfishness? Lust? Greed? Rage?

The trials will flame up and burn what is flammable. The latter things will go up in a blaze of glory. But the former, the character that God would have me build, it'll last.

In this fallen world, I pray that God would help me develop character so that I will not be consumed. I don't want to leave a pile of ashes. Do you?

Random?

In the zombie apocalypse world of The Walking Dead, we see characters dealing with some of the most important issues in life: survival, freedom of choice, hope, family, community, forgiveness. I see so much in the bleak world that speaks of how important hope is in the midst of our fallen creation. So you can imagine how fascinated I was to see the wall sign in this picture during the recent episode "Four Walls and a Roof":

For those of you who did not grow up in a small church, let me assure you this style of sign is very common. It usually has statistics such as attendance and offering amounts on it. But in this church, where the priest Gabriel has holed himself up to escape the "walkers," it has a list of Bible verses. Needless to say, I had to look them up. Surely there is no detail from these talented writers that is there by accident. So what do they say?

Romans 6:4 - Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death; so that as Christ was raised up from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.

Ezekiel 37:7 - So I prophesied as I was commanded; and as I prophesied, there was a noise, and behold, a rattling; and the bones came together, bone to its bone.

Matthew 27:52 - The tombs were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised.

Revelation 9:6 - And in those days men will seek death and will not find it; they will long to die, and death flees from them.

Luke 24:5 - (A)nd as the women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, "Why do you seek the living among the dead?"

Yes, there does seem to be a thread of a theme, doesn't there? Each verse has some sort of reference to death and/or a renewing of life. One speaks of attaining life by dying to yourself. Another speaks of the impossible, dead bones coming back to life. Out of context, the verses are very strange - maybe that's part of the point.

The last two are the most interesting to me in the context of the show: 

• Clearly, the show's zombie apocalypse is a world where many people despair of whether life is even worth living. And in a way the show's premise is a representation of this verse: People don't really die, they just become walking, shallow shells of themselves.
• And the question "Why do you seek the living among the dead?" lurks in every corner of this world. And perhaps our world, as so many people live empty lives.

Anyway, a very interesting group of verses, clearly displayed for a reason. While I've shared a few thoughts, I'm not sure what they're getting at.

So what about you? Do you see a theme? Or do you think it was just a random collection, a meaningless prop?

What do you think?

The Walking Dead: Who are we?

Sunday night over 17 million people watched the Season 5 premiere of the popular AMC show The Walking Dead. For those who don't know, it is a show set in a dystopian world, the result of a "zombie apocalypse." It may seem like one long zombie movie, but it's really a show about human nature, survival, hope in the midst of despair, moral choices in the face of extreme adversity, and community. It is in many ways gruesome, dark, and at times hard to watch. But it also is a story that keeps sending me back to examine the meaning of life and how God fits into the picture.

SPOILERS AHEAD


Leading up to the this episode, Rick and his son Carl are approaching a place where sanctuary has been promised, but the promise is a lie. Those who are waiting for them have gone off the deep end, doing unspeakable things to their fellow human beings. As they walk along, this conversation takes place:



They have been through so much. Done so many things out of necessity. So have they lost their identity?

Fast forward to Sunday's episode. Rick and his friend Glenn have just escaped from one of the most gruesome deaths imaginable, at the hands of the people who had promised them sanctuary but only wanted to use them....for food. That's how low these people had sunk. And as they are plotting their escape, they notice a train car with some fellow human beings trapped. Would they save them, or just look out for themselves? And so the question of identity comes up again:



They're still holding on to their humanity. By a thread, but they are. "That's still who we are...it's gotta be."

As the episode progresses, we learn about the journey of the captors at Terminus. How they started out providing sanctuary and really trying to help people, but were betrayed. Tortured, killed, and assaulted in every way imaginable. And so they hardened. They became determined to never let it happen again. And the end result? Total depravity.

So who are they? Who were they before it happened? Are they different people, or were the depths of sin always there, crouching at the door, waiting to devour them? (And whoever they might trap.)

And what about the supposed heroes of the story? Who are they? Are they on the same journey as the evil captors? Are they becoming jaded, one crisis at a time, until they are just as depraved as the Terminus crowd?
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So what about us? Who are we? It's so easy to look at myself as I live my relatively comfortable life (no zombies here) and think I'm a pretty good person. But am I? Or is there a level of adversity where  I would progress into something I don't recognize?

This is where I need the grace of Jesus, the resurrection power to change me from the inside out. Through his death and resurrection, my heart can be changed and the evil lurking there defeated. There is hope...hope that I do not have to become what I hate in order to defeat it.

When the world tried to force Jesus to fight back against its power structures, he defeated evil in a surprising way: by submitting himself to a humiliating death. He defeated evil by taking on sin and allowing it to die with him, and then rising from the dead.
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I'm not sure where Rick's journey will lead. It looks like there is a real danger of becoming everything he hates in the struggle to survive and protect those he loves. I look forward to seeing how far down that road he goes...and whether he ever recognizes what's happening to him. But the real question is, do I realize what's happening to me? Do you? And what are we going to do about it?

We can live here for the rest of our lives…

Beth

As episode 4.10 ("Inmates") of The Walking Dead opens, we see two of our favorite characters   - Beth and Daryl - desperately making their way through the woods, having to fight and run from zombies for their lives. Overlaying these intense scenes is a narration from Beth's diary, where she wrote about how they had finally found a place she felt safe. You see, in this world after a zombie apocalypse, the few people left are always on the run, always trying to find a way to survive the danger and death that constantly surrounds them. But not too long ago, Beth's group had found a prison where they could settle down, grow crops, and begin to feel safe.

But it all was shattered in an instant, and now they were on the run again. So the show simultaneously shows how their fragile state of security is gone (visually) while reminding us of the illusion with the audio voiceover. Powerful. And as Beth and Daryl collapse in exhaustion and look up at vultures circling overhead, we hear the final words of her diary entry:

We can live here…we can live here for the rest of our lives.

But they couldn't. And neither can we.

I look at my life and I see how easy it is for us to convince ourselves of the same lie Beth believed...

• When I was a child, I had a routine of playing with my friends, coming home to dinner with family, going to bed and start it over again the next day. It was never going to end. And then I grew up and everything changed.
• In high school, I had a group of friends and we were almost inseparable. What great times we had. And then, we graduated. I seldom see any of them anymore.
• As a young adult, I was blessed to be close to my family as we all stayed in our hometown.  I bought a house next door to my sister and her family, and it seemed like I would grow old hanging out with them. And then a tragic accident claimed her life. Nothing would ever be the same.

On and on I could go, and so could you. Jobs are lost. Friends move away. Kids grow up and leave home. Loved ones die. People disappoint us. Whenever we get to thinking like Beth that we can live like this forever, we can be sure that we are wrong.

Life is good. I like the way things are. But I'd better not be putting my security in the way things are, because it won't last forever. I need something bigger. Something that will.

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Later in that same episode, a different group of characters from the prison is on the run like Beth and Darryl. Carol and Tyrese encounter a man who is dying from a zombie attack, and he tells them to follow the railroad tracks. Carol thinks it's safer to travel in the cover of the woods. But the man's last words to them are this:

No, you don't understand. There's a place…up the tracks…it's safe. You can take the children there.Trust me…please. Follow the tracks.

 As we begin Holy Week, the death and resurrection of Jesus tells us that there is a place of safely. There is something that we can put our trust in that won't change, that won't fail us. If our hope is in the comfort of our surroundings - in our present circumstances - we will be disappointed. But if we look, so to speak, down the tracks, we can see a place of safety. The Messiah came and was proclaimed KIng, and he will come back again, bringing the world we long for every time we are rocked by life circumstances.

No, we can't live here for the rest of our lives. We have got to keep moving, keep living, keep fighting. But one day there will be such a place.

Trust me, please. Follow the tracks.

Really? That was me?

What a strange day. I consider myself pretty flexible, pretty laid back. I strive to be the kind of person who is not easily angered. I know that I'm not capable of that on my own, but most days through the power of the Spirit I'm even-keeled.

Today was not one of those days.

Twice I found myself getting really...really...irritated. Yeah, I'd say even angry. I wish I could say it was over something important. Or righteous anger. Or even just understandable.

Nope. Trivial stuff, stuff that I should just let go. But for some reason, it was easy to get under my skin.
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Today was a stark reminder of something that I know - just how dark the human heart is and how much we need mercy and grace. The heart is the cradle of all sorts of negative crud that messes up families, friendships, marriages, and, well, relationships. I'm reminded of in so many places:

• Jesus said, "What comes out of man, that defiles a man. For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceipt, lewdness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness." (Mark 7:20-22)
• My pastor John Ed Mathison, now retired, used to say that when you bump a person holding a glass of water, guess what spills out. That's right - water. The thing that spills out of us when we're "bumped" (like I was today) is what's already inside.
• Paul wrote in Romans 7:15, "For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I want to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, I do."
• And similar to Paul, the character Merle Dixon on The Walking Dead, reflecting on a life of regret, anger, and self-centered decisions, said, "I don't know the reasons for the things that I do. Never did. I'm a d--- mystery to me." (Episode 3.15, 2013, "This Sorrowful Life")

Merle

The fact is, if I'm going to avoid days like today, I'm going to need help. I'm a mystery to me too. I can't do it alone, because there's too much natural rottenness. As Paul wrote later in Romans 7 (verses 24-25), "O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? I thank God - through Jesus Christ our Lord."

That's my only hope. But I am so thankful that... It. Is. Enough.