Friday after Epiphany
In my preschool room, this is the time of year when we start to talk about the mystery of life and death. This is partly because it is the middle of winter when things appear dead, but relatively soon the children will be seeing the first shoots of green under the snow on tree branches- and partly because we are preparing, even in January, for Lent and Easter and the big celebration of Jesus' life, death and resurrection, and our own victory over death in Jesus Christ.
How do you talk to a three year old about the mystery of life and death? (And it IS a mystery still, despite all our studying and conjecturing - for we adults still ask the "why" question ourselves when it comes to newborn babies and the deaths of loved ones.) I talk to them about this mystery in terms of seeds, partly because the Bible is quite full of examples about seeds. ("Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a single grain. But if it dies, it bears much fruit.") So in my classroom, we spend much of the late winter and early spring discussing seeds and watching them grow and eventually die. And we spend much time contemplating how it is that these seeds have life. The kids usually reflect on how "having life" means that you grow and grow.
Despite the seedlessness of today's scriptures, I think there is something here to be learned about the mystery of life and death and, perhaps, seeds. The author of 1 John 5:5-13 speaks about the mystery of life and death very concretely, suggesting that those of us who have Jesus possess God's OWN testimony about life and death: that is to say, death does not overcome us but we have eternal life. If we think about it, this MUST be God's own testimony about life and death, for God is eternal and does not die. If we share in God's own life, then this eternal life is ours, in some kind of mysterious way. The author gives a clue as to how this eternal life is ours: the Spirit, the water and the blood, all of which are references to baptism. We share in God's own life because we are baptized into Jesus' life, death and resurrection.
I think there are at least two ways to understand our baptisms as a sharing in God's eternal life, and both are true. The first is on an individual basis - my own individual baptism means that I, Jana, have the possibility of eternal life. As the church teaches, we hope for heaven though we do not necessarily know we will get there. But the second way is a little more visible and concrete here on this earth. My preschool kids suggest that having life means that you grow. In the case of baptism, it is the church as a whole that visibly grows and (hopefully) puts out fruit. The visible growth we see in our baptisms is meant to support our belief in God's eternal life, not just on an individual basis but for the life of the whole world.
This image of life as growth and fruitfulness is carried through in the gospel (Luke 5:12-16). Lepers, like the one in today's scripture, were a bit like the "living dead," forced to live on the outskirts of the city and "forgotten" by everyone else because of the fear that the disease would spread. But this leper encounters Life, in Jesus, and is able to rejoin society and be counted among the living once again. More than that, though, the leper's healing leads to his desire to give testimony to Jesus, which in turn causes a huge growth in the crowds and people that surround Jesus and seek his words. Jesus' movement becomes like the growth of seeds that Jesus talks about elsewhere in the gospels.
Today, let us reflect on the ways we can testify on Jesus' behalf, by spreading growth and life to the people in our lives.
- Jana M. Bennett