Beyond Resuscitation

Have you ever had CPR training? It was so long ago for me that I peeked online for the latest on cardiopulmonary resuscitation. In my training years ago, I remember the instructor giving a little hint on how to pace administering 100 to 120 compressions per minute. She said to think of the old disco, easy listening hit by the Bee Gees, Stayin’ Alive…you remember: “Ah, ha, ha, ha, stayin' alive, stayin' alive.” It later occurred to me roughly the same pace is prompted by the funk rock hit by Queen, Another One Bites the Dust, but the message is just not fitting.

Next Sunday we are offered scriptures through the liturgy that bring up God’s provision of life through Christ. The passage from Numbers talks about the deadly conditions of the wilderness through which the children of Israel walked. They looked to God for saving their lives. John’s gospel speaks of how the Son of Man was lifted on the cross that those who believe in him might have eternal life. Ephesians proclaims how God made us alive together with Christ by grace. As we put faith in the saving gift of Christ, we are saved and he becomes our way of life.

The passage opening the second chapter of Ephesians announces a life-and-death matter. Before Christ, we live and walk through our trespasses and sins, under the enemy spirit, that is, “the power of the air,” Satan. This is a walk to our spiritual death. Instead of this kind of living, following the impulses and imaginations of our fleshly nature, we turn to walk in the love of Christ offered as a gift, not attached to any merit on our part. God has in this way shown the tremendous generosity of divine kindness and grace. Look over the passage:

You were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you once lived, following the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient. All of us once lived among them in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else. But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ-- by grace you have been saved-- and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God-- not the result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.  —Ephesians 2:1-10

Our living faith is not resuscitation, but transformation and in time, resurrection. Though dead in our trespasses, in the beginning, we are taken up by God and made alive with Christ. This gift spurs in us a new way of living, a new walk. The two songs mentioned have lyrics that have to do with a certain kind of walk: “Well, you can tell by the way I use my walk I am a woman's man, no time to talk” and “Steve walks warily down the street with his brim pulled way down low. Ain't no sound but the sound of his feet

Machine guns ready to go.” The song Stayin’ Alive is about a confident strut of one who was “kicked around,” but now has a lively step because of his gains on the dance floor. The song Another One Bites the Dust uses a violent image of one hurt, now utterly callous to others, and armed with deadly force. They are both about ways to stay alive, in the face of the harshness of life experience. The walk forward in these cases is rooted within what Paul calls “the cause of this world…following the desires of flesh and senses”.

Such resuscitations are neither longstanding nor promising. We are recommended to a transformation and resurrection that is full of promise for this life and the next. It is not fifteen minutes of fame on the disco dance floor; it is not a cynical burst of verve in retaliation against the world. It is the walk developed through gift and response, grace, and thanksgiving. We find ourselves changed into the image of Christ, looking for ways of kindness and love. Let Christ work his compressions upon you; let his grace course through you and raise you to walk in his ways.