Zombies are a big thing these days. Ask a child today what he knows about zombies and you're going to get a long list of really interesting stuff about zombies that you didn't know before. I actually looked up the number of television shows about zombies. Here is the list: "The Walking Dead," "Z-Nation," "CWI Zombie" (I don't know what that is), "The Returned" (Sounds like the day after Christmas), "In the Flesh," "Fear the Walking Dead" (so now we not only have "The Walking Dead" but we have "FEAR the Walking Dead"), "Empire of the Dead," (Did we get "Nation of the Dead"? No. That's not there, sorry), and then (and I found this most intriguing) I found a show called simply, "Resurrection."

 

Now all this zombie talk, it seems to me, has as its original source the Christian theology of the resurrection of the dead. We Christians believe that the dead don't stay that way. But we also know that the resurrection of the flesh is not like zombie-ism. I'm ugly enough now. I don't need to come back as a zombie. That's bad. No, indeed, I come back at the resurrection of the flesh with my flesh completely renewed for Christ's sake. This changes everything.

 

Now, where did this zombie business come from? In part it comes from Christian theology that is still out there in our culture but it's also a case that we tend to want to mock or make fun of what we truly fear. And the fact is we truly fear death. We hear today medical talk about people being terminal. I hate to tell you this; We're all terminal. We're all going to die. That fear is universal. But Christ, our Lord, has come into our world, bearing our flesh (not zombie flesh), bearing our flesh so that He might have it pinned up on the tree of the cross, there, pouring out his blood, suffering and dying for our sins. That He might give back to us a true and cleansed flesh. We have made a mess of this flesh and life. Because of the fall and because of our sin and depravity. But Christ has taken that flesh on himself to defeat the very thing that we all fear so desperately.

 

What this means for us is we are not afraid of the dead. And we're not afraid of death. We're not afraid of death because we know what our Lord has promised us. We are going to be among those who have the white robes. We will stand about the throne of the Lamb, crying His honor and glory for eternity. And so it is that we Christians do actually believe that the dead are not gone. We actually have this as a euphemism, right? When we are standing at the deathbed of a loved one and the Lord takes them, we say, "He's gone. She's gone." But it's really not true. They are not gone. They are only divided from us by sight as Christ himself is. They now see Jesus face-to-face. They are there. The dead are in the "nearer presence" of our Lord Jesus Christ. At the resurrection of the flesh we will be among those dead pristine and holy, not zombies.