Dawn of the Living

Jim:
Jeremiah 16:1-21
When I was in college I saw the film "Dawn of the Dead," a horribly violent story about zombies walking the earth killing people. The result was carnage and gore everywhere. Well that's what I thought about in the early verses of the reading from Jeremiah this morning: carnage and gore. What a horrible image! Bodies lying everywhere, and no one to mourn the dead. But then, right when it seems bleakest we get the words of verses 14-15: "Therefore, the days are surely coming, says the Lord, when it shall no longer be said, 'As the Lord lives who brought the people of Israel up out of the land of Egypt,' but 'As the Lord loves who brought the people up out of the land of the north and out of all the lands where he had driven them.' For I will bring them back to their own land that I gave to their ancestors." This is very similar to last Friday's readings, by the way, where the seared landscape would produce new growth. In this case the devastation will be restored when the people are brought home again.

Romans 7:1-12
In Romans, Paul offers what I would call an expanded image of pretty much the same phenomenon. In verse 4 he says, "In the same way, my friends, you have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead in order that we may bear fruit for God." Paul sees the carnage caused by sin as replaced by the grace of Jesus Christ and his death on our behalf.

John 6:1-15
In John I focused on verses 8-9 because they say something about what it means to bring people to Jesus. "One of the disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, said to (Jesus), 'There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But what are they among so many people?'" In his book, "Good News Travels Faster" Joe Donaho describes Andrew as someone who helps people come to Jesus. It was Andrew who brought his brother Peter to meet Jesus. It was Andrew who brought the Greeks to Philip so they could meet Jesus, and it is Andrew who brings the boy with his loaves and fish. Donaho offers Andrew as one way we can live lives of discipleship, by pointing others in the direction of Jesus. I like that image.