Famous Monsters (a Steve Orr scripture reflection)

When I was a pre-teen, kids my age often assembled plastic models from kits; model cars, ships, airplanes, jets ... even the occasional model rocket. As for me, I saved my few dollars for something truly special: I built model monsters.

The Aurora Plastics Company, the source for many of those other kinds of models, had signed a deal with Universal Studios to create model kits of some of Universal’s well-known movie monsters. By the end of my ”tween” years, I had managed to buy, paint, and assemble The Wolfman, Dracula, The Mummy, The Phantom of the Opera, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, and, of course, the one that started it all: Frankenstein.

I can’t imagine Mary Shelley could envision such a future for her invention. When she conceived Dr. Frankenstein’s monster, she was responding to a kind of dare: a competition among soon-to-be famous writers to see who could dream up the scariest tale. The results were all interesting, but it was Mary’s tale of science-gone-wrong that “galvanized” the public and created the most famous monster of all time.

The re-animation of the dead has been on people's minds ever since people started dying. But the power to do so has never really presented itself to us. When Mary Shelley suggested that electricity was the way to do it, she was reflecting the cutting-edge science of her day ... something that eventually led modern scientists to create heart defibrillators.

In the non-fiction world, though, electricity can only do so much. There is still a point beyond which people do not return. And that point was certainly long past when Jesus, in this week's scripture from John 11, finally came to Bethany. Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. Not even modern medicine could have brought him back to life at that point.

But Jesus could ... and did.

Mary Shelley’s monster was a complete fabrication (as were all my plastic ones). But not all monsters are made of words or plastic. Some are quite real. Take death, for instance. For many of us, it’s the biggest monster of all. We fear it. There is one, though, for whom a monster, even death, holds no fear. And He lives to inhabit both the means and the ultimate method of our escape from all monsters ... famous or otherwise.

All of this week’s scripture selections address redemption and resurrection, and rightly so. The two are inextricably tied together. Every redemption story is a Jesus story and every resurrection is a Jesus resurrection. Jesus is redemption and resurrection; neither exists outside of His person.

Like Ezekiel’s valley of bones and four-days-dead Lazarus, only the power of God can infuse us with the “breath of life.” Jesus is not just alive: Jesus is life.

No monster can prevail.


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Portions of this reflection were borrowed from “Alive!” (April 2017).

PHOTO CREDIT: https://www.amazon.com/Frankenstein-Classic-Starts-Wollstonecraft-Shelley/dp/140272666X

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READINGS FOR THE COMING WEEK
Fifth Sunday in Lent (March 29, 2020)
LINK HERE or copy and paste —> https://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/texts.php?id=28

Ezekiel 37:1-14
Psalm 130
Romans 8:6-11
John 11:1-45

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Due to the COVID19 shelter-in-place order, DaySpring’s Lectionary Breakfast is still not meeting. This separation will make it all the sweeter when we finally do.

Keep safe. Keep in touch.

Blessings,
Steve