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 models of monsters.
The Aurora Plastics Company had signed a deal with Universal Studios to create model kits of some of Universal’s most famous movie monsters. My first model was the Wolf Man. By the end of my tween years, I had also painted and assembled the Phantom of the Opera, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, Dracula, the Mummy, and, of course, the one that started it all: Frankenstein.
I can’t imagine Mary Shelley envisioning such a future for her fictional creation. When she conceived Dr. Frankenstein’s monster, it was on a dare: a competition among soon-to-be famous writers to see who could dream up the scariest tale. The results were all quite interesting. It was Mary’s tale of science gone wrong, though, that galvanized the public and created the most famous monster of all.
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 been ours. When Shelley suggested that electricity was the way to do it, she was just reflecting the cutting-edge science of her day—an idea that led to today’s heart defibrillators.
Still, in the nonfiction world, electricity can only do so much. There remains a point beyond which people do not return. That point was long past when Jesus finally came to Bethany. In this week's John passage, Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. Not even modern medicine could have brought him back.
But Jesus could—and did.
Shelley’s monster was a complete fabrication, just like my plastic ones. But not all monsters are made of words or plastic. Some are quite real. Take death, for example. We fear it. For most of us, it’s the biggest monster of all. There is one, though, for whom a monster, even death, holds no fear. He lives to inhabit both the means and the ultimate method of our escape from all monsters, famous or otherwise.
This week’s scriptures all address resurrection and redemption. 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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PHOTO:
Info about the documentary “The Aurora Monsters: The Model Craze that Gripped the World”
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1773715/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0
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Life moves pretty fast. Pause for an hour: Join us Friday morning for DaySpring’s Lectionary Breakfast. We've been meeting in the back room at Our Breakfast Place and on Zoom.** The fun starts at 8:00 and is supposed to stop at 9:00 ... and sometimes it does.
Food, fun, fellowship, prayer, scripture, and the free flow of ideas. What an hour!
Full of life.
Blessings,
Steve
**Contact me for the Zoom link
NOTE: Zoom allows you to mute the camera and the microphone if you don’t wish to be seen or heard.
SCRIPTURES FOR SUNDAY AND THE COMING WEEK
Find them here:
https://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/texts.php?id=28
Print them here:
https://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/pdf//Ax_FifthSundayinLent.pdf
Ezekiel 37:1-14
Psalm 130
Romans 8:6-11
John 11:1-45
Fifth Sunday in Lent (March 26, 2023)
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