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Saturday, June 08, 2013

Touching the dead



 There are a few troublesome things about any story which deals with dead people being brought back to life!
The truth is that the experience is probably not as strange as we are inclined to think it is. I imagine that if we talked to each other for half an hour about our experiences of death we find quite a few strange things. Only a couple of weeks ago we had a funeral for a beloved parishioner who was told forty years ago that if he survived an operation then he would probably have ten years to live.
One of his sons joked that he delighted in proving people wrong.
Of course we also live in an unprecedented period of human history when people are living longer and surviving conditions which even in your life and mine were certain killers.
This is a source of great puzzlement to us
Where do we place ourselves in this story?
Let’s not get so puzzled by the supernatural in this story
It may be that this story tells us a human truth
that there is much about death that
we do not understand
and yet we are all engaged with it.
As we picture the story,
where do we identify our own need today?
Am I the young man
who looks and perhaps feels dead
and who is awaiting the Jesus touch.
If Jesus touched me what would I want that touch to do for me.
Am I the grieving woman
so bereft, perhaps by a recent death
that I need the consolation of Jesus?
Or am I one of the crowd who are just amazed
by what the presence of Jesus might mean at the time of death.
A wonderful story I read during the week told of a sister who whilst grieving for her own brother at age 40,
and praying that he might know the peace that we pray for in death
recognized that Jesus was also healing her too.
Can we be so open to death
that we allow Jesus to touch us in our own life
and experience resurrection now?


For thought and prayer and action

During this time we are trying to care for ourselves, to allow Jesus to touch the place where we might be dead

What do I want Jesus to do for me today?

Can I allow the work of resurrection to begin in me immediately?

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