Raised from the Dead

Lent 4 – March 10, 2024

Exodus 21:4-9
Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22
Ephesians 2:1-10
John 3:14-21

When most people think about being raised from the dead they think that it's a future event. But, here in his letter to the Ephesians, Paul is talking about the present time. You who once were dead have now been raised to new life. He is not talking about the future but here and now – in the present. While we are familiar with getting things now and paying for them later with credit cards, mortgages, and loans, we may be taken aback when we hear that we who were dead have been made alive through Christ Jesus. If pressed on the subject, we may be more acceptable to the idea of Exodus. The Israelites had sinned by complaining about their situation. In response, God sent poisonous snakes among them and if they were bitten they had to look to the bronze serpent that was lifted up on a pole. This certainly is a strange story. It may be a remnant of a story from the time the Israelites were in Egypt where one of the Egyptian gods who protected the people was shown as a snake. Here, though, the writer of Exodus turns the meaning around and indicates that, by looking at the snake, the people are recognizing that they had sinned and only God can save them. That is a lesson for our time as well. We are inundated with so many messages that tell us that we don’t need anyone else, especially not God, to achieve our goals. When we succeed we are congratulated and when we fail others belittle us. But, as I have told you before, I believe the zip code that you are born under is a better indicator of your success or failure in life than anything else, even your IQ. Wealth comes from luck.

But that is not the way of God. God does not set up an obstacle course for you to run to see if you are good enough to be God’s children. Neither does God give you a list of things that you must do in order to be raised from the dead. God has already provided for you by giving His son Jesus for you. Just think about it. If you had to do specific things in order to receive God’s salvation you would never reach the goal. Just like Sysiphus, you would never achieve the goal of perfect obedience. But you don’t have to worry because of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, you have been raised from sin and death to new life in Christ. You have been given what you are unable to achieve.

Since you have been given new life you can then answer the call of God to be the people who give God’s love to the world. If you listened to our reading from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians you might have heard the other unusual item in it. That is, now being raised from the dead we have been made for good works God has prepared for us. Again this goes against our culture today. Even now, being raised from the dead, we still think that we’re to figure out what we are to do and where we are to share God’s love. Paul tells us that God has taken care of that too. We just need to step into the task God has prepared for us. 

Paul is reminding us that we often make our lives overly complicated. This Lent as you ponder the great mystery of faith, how the great gift you have received and the countless opportunities to share all that God has given to you, pray that you may be able to see the good works that God has prepared for your hands, feet, minds and voice, and do them.