Clergy Day of Preparation                                                        Acts 5:29a;30-32
March 14, 2006                                                                       Romans 6:3-11
Given at Church of the Annunciation, Vidalia                             Mark 16:1-8
The Rev. Linda McCloud                                                  

Isn’t it nice to be already dead? 

In his book Spiritual Life, John Westerhoff has a formula for clergy wellness.  He says that we “need regularly to disengage from our human relationships and enter into a conscious state of total dependence on God.”[1]  To me, that sounds exactly like dying.  Westerhoff goes on to say that if we do this regularly, God will transform our lives.  We will grow with God and be sent back to our stations in life more alive than ever before. This sounds like resurrection.  He says that in order for this to happen, we have to be willing to be changed when we pray.  In this way, prayer will not merely be an escape from our routine.  Prayer will be the place and time when we are nourished and challenged, and when we will grow to become the person God means for us to be.   

This is also the concept that I believe St. Paul is trying to get across in his letter to the Romans.  Our translation says that if we have been united with Christ in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.  The original word that is translated “united with” comes from a horticultural term meaning “grown together with.”   It might refer to grafting techniques such as the ones our peach farmers use.   

Maybe you have seen this done, but I understand that when you graft peach trees, you have to make a cut in the tree and insert a section of a stem that has leaf buds.  You would even use what is called a “wound dressing” to help heal the cut on the tree.  You can buy this stuff by the gallon.  But the desired result is for the newly grafted branch to grow together with the tree.  Eventually, it’s hard to tell the new branch from the rest of the tree because it has grown together with it and takes its nourishment from the roots.  But first, before you can graft a stem into an understock, you have to cut the stem from the old tree.  The stem has to leave the old tree in order to be grafted in to the new tree to produce new growth.  Left without being grafted in, the cut stem would die and be thrown away.     

We might think of the Holy Spirit as the “wound dressing” as we are grafted into Christ and begin to grow in him.  Whatever we were previously is thus changed so that we can blossom, grow, and produce fruit.  This is the life of every baptized Christian.  Our privilege is participation in the activity of God through the Holy Spirit who dwells within us.  In some wonderful, mystical way, we participate in the risen life of Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit.  Some day, we shall have a resurrection like his.  But if we jump straight to the resurrection, we might miss something.  We might miss what it means to be already dead to our old way of life.  

Isn’t it nice to already be dead?  Being already dead has meant different things to different Christians through the ages.  For some, it has meant having the strength to face martyrdom.  For some it has meant going to the desert to leave behind all worldly affections and turn their whole attention solely to God.  For others, it has meant that they were able to live in their surroundings but make God the center of their affections.  These people are neither flattered by nor flattened by popular opinion. Fads and fashions hardly turn their heads.    

            When I read this passage in Romans, my thoughts often turn to the early Christian martyrs.  The Apostles come to mind, as does Stephen the Deacon.  Then there were the Bishops – Cyprian, Ignatius, and of course, Polycarp, whose death is probably the best documented.  The example of Polycarp’s martyrdom is important because he set the standard for martyrdom, as it were.  He did not seek martyrdom, as others had done.  The seeking of martyrdom had been condemned by the Christian community.     

On the contrary, Polycarp’s martyrdom has been compared by his biographers to the death of Jesus Christ.  He was betrayed into the hands of his captors.  He prayed before he was captured – who wouldn’t?  He stood fast in his convictions and faith before his judges and the gathered crowd.  In so doing he became the twelfth martyr of Smyrna in the mid-second century.  His was considered to be a noble martyrdom because his refusal to deny Christ was the very reason he was put to death.  His calmness could only come from a person who believed he had already died with Christ and would surely live with him.           

            During Lent I also revert to thinking about those Desert Fathers and Mothers who came along after it became legal to be a Christian.  Martyrdom was less of an issue by that time.  These saints had to find some other way to express their belief that through their total allegiance to Jesus Christ, death had no more power over them.  Sometimes during Lent I get out my books and try to catch the glow of their Godly fire.  I like to read about people like Abba Anthony, who lived to be a hundred and five.  The desert must have been very good for Anthony.  His story, told by Athanasius, inspired the monastic movement to go beyond the desert.  And then there is Amma Theodora, whose godly living caused others to seek her advice about the monastic life.  These people come to mind because they are extreme examples, and I think that during Lent we look for such examples of following Jesus into his death.  These people took seriously their intentions to be dead to the world around them and alive to God.   

            It has been said that the Twentieth Century saw more Christian Martyrdom than any previous century.  Here in the Twenty-first Century we still have Christian Martyrs.  The most notable recent example is Tom Fox, one of the Christian Peacemakers who last week was killed by his captors in Iraq.  While trying to build bridges between warring factions, Tom and his three colleagues were taken captive last November.  

Shortly before that incident Tom had written that the reason they were in Iraq was to stop the dehumanization of other people.  It sounded much like our own Baptismal Covenant – to respect the dignity of every human being – to seek and serve Christ in all persons.  Our baptismal covenant says that we are to love our neighbors as ourselves, but Tom’s statement included his enemies in that group.  He was trying to bring about the peaceable kingdom of God.  He frankly forgave those who considered him to be their enemy.  He wanted to make the oppressors’ concerns known to the world, as well as the concerns of the oppressed.  Only someone who had been buried with Christ in Baptism could walk in that kind of love. 

If we as baptized persons are going to give ourselves to be fully alive to God, we are going to be dead to something else.  We are going to be dead to the old tree from which we were cut when we were grafted into Jesus Christ -- so that we could grow together with Him.  The old tree from which we were cut no longer gives us nourishment.  We now get our nourishment and life from Christ.  That’s what it means to be dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.