October is here. It’s the month in which people claim that the dead walk among us.

I have no quarrel with that pronouncement for I have seen them.

I have worshipped beside the dead.

That’s why I find no humor in movies like “Weekend at Bernie’s” because, in reality, it’s not funny at all to have to drag a corpse around with you and pretend that it’s alive.

Just ask the modern church.

Sounds harsh, right? Judgmental? Yeah, it’s a tricky thing to say that some people showing up at church on Sunday are still dead in their sins, not alive to Christ at all,

but it’s the truth.

It’s not our job to judge others nor to sort out who is dead in our particular congregation

But it IS our job to be sure that WE are not one of the worshipping dead.

The Pharisees of Jesus’ day thought they had it all together. These were religiously confident men.

But most of this group who spent their time studying the scriptures, the very scriptures that described the coming Messiah, missed the Messiah when He was standing right in front of them!

How could that happen? How could you know all the prophecies about the One you’re waiting to see and then miss Him when He actually arrives?

Probably, at some point, the exercise of studying became just that, an exercise, an end to itself.

Somewhere inside, many of these men had stopped believing that the Messiah would ever come, so they spiritualized everything they read into a metaphor or a rule for living and stopped anticipating the actual fulfillment of God’s plan.

Maybe they were tired of waiting.

Maybe they were afraid of looking stupid for holding on to hope for so long.

Maybe the ones who did keep believing were told to “grow up” and stop hoping for an actual living fulfillment of God’s word.

Maybe they were looked down upon by those who had “evolved” to the more “enlightened thinking” of simply viewing the prophecies as “good moral teaching for life”.

That is a lot of pressure. The Pharisees were a sophisticated, informed, educated, well-behaved bunch. If they stopped hoping for Jesus to really come, how hard would it be to be a quiet holdout?

But Jesus had no problem being alive right in front of their deadness.


He told them “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.” Matthew 23:27-28

Yeah, they had become the walking dead without realizing it.

There is an indication that a few Pharisees made it out alive. They came to Jesus in the night to confirm their hopes. They stepped out of their tombs and breathed the reviving spirit of the Son of God.

The others remained the living dead.

So, since we aren’t supposed to judge each other (and we’re really NOT), how do we know ourselves if we are alive to Christ.

Here’s the test – like vampires who have no reflection in the mirror – those who are dead to Christ do not see their reflection in scripture.

When we are alive in Christ, we read God’s word and see a thousand ways it applies to us.

When He talks about sin, we see the sin in our own lives. When it says that Jesus is our one hope for salvation, we know we need to be saved and cry out to Him as our only hope.

When it says we must receive Him, we do, and we continue to study God’s word that then seems alive with messages for us every day that must be acted upon, lived out, and believed.

When we are dead to Christ, we read God’s word and don’t see anything there that is a reflection on us.

It talks about sin but we don’t do anything really wrong. It says we need Jesus to save us but we’re not really in trouble so, we’re fine.

We see stuff that we should tell other people is wrong with them. We see interesting stories along with some quaint characters and engaging literature to be analyzed and dissected but we don’t see ourselves.

We don’t see ourselves because the dead do not see their reflection in the mirror of God’s word.


How’s that for a scary thought?

Let me be the one to warn you. If you don’t see your own reflection in the word of God, you’re in for scarier things than the walking dead, vampires, or Halloween

There is hope.

If you look into God’s word and don’t see your reflection but want to be free from your state of living death, ask Him.

Even if you’re not sure He’s listening (He is), ask God to show you yourself in His word. Tell Him you want to see Him and you want to see yourself as you truly are.


Then, open the Bible again and read (try the book of John).

Why walk through life like a zombie? Why live on the blood of others? You don’t have to be dead.

One infusion with the blood of Jesus and you will come alive in ways you didn’t know were possible.


Without it, no matter where you sit – on a barstool or in a pew – you are dead and there’s nothing funny about that.

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1 Comment

The Conversation

1. Cynthia Howerter says:

   October 12, 2011 at 12:51 am

   Well-written, Lori. Your article forces your readers to take a real assessment of themselves. And if it doesn’t, we know which side of the coffin lid they’re on.

   Reply