Hebrews 13: Zombies and the Moreh's departure

Our brother Tim Steiner offers the following comment about Hebrews 12:3, "consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart." I must confess that as I type this AMC's "Walking Dead" is playing on my television....

"I get a glimpse of Jesus as the only living, healthy one in a sea of `Zombies,' (a theme enjoying great popularity for some years now).  In fact, compared to him, we all fit the classification very nicely, and all the more when we put forward our own righteousness--as we are all skilled at doing--and profess how good we are.  To him, it must look like animated corpses with this and that kind of rot staining every square inch of us.  Yet, he loves us, passes out crosses to each to help us finish off this beast that we are, and pulls us up into the divine fellowship of walking in his Spirit and of Eternal Life." 

And so - what does a spiritually de-zombified human look like? For the answer, I return to the first century.......

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In the final moments of the final sermon of the Moreh's final week with us here in our smalltown synagogue, he describes how a keeper of the New Covenant acts.

1. Keep on loving one another as brothers and sisters. Yet cast your net of love wider, to include strangers, those in prison, and those mistreated by the world.

2. Do not yourself be caught in the world's counterfeit net of love: the love of money and sexual immorality. Keep the marriage bed pure, and be content with what you have.

3. Imitate the godliness of your leaders, but always remember that they are bound by time, culture, sin, and the remnants of their own zombiefication. Follow Jesus the Shepherd, He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. 

4. Go with Jesus outside the city gates, where the world sends those it rejects as impure and unworthy. Bear the disgrace he bore.

5. Continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise.

And with this final exhortation, and a few words of greeting to and from other brothers and sisters, the Moreh strode alone into the sunset, a pair of scripture scrolls hanging from his belt. As we watched him go, we knew our little town would never be the same again. A man turned to me and said, "who was that man?" And I answered, "I never did get his name."