Asking for the Dead Thing

A faith that moves mountains willingly rejects current circumstances, disowns common sense in pursuit of beholding radical hope

The stairwell was filled with raccoon droppings. We tip-toed around each one and made our way into the large steel-framed room that opened up near the bottom of the staircase. Letting our flashlight lead the way, the yellow beam caught glimpses of material hanging down from the ceiling, like giant rags torn in two. The beam of the flashlight held in the pastor’s hand darted around the room. The light reflected just a dim glare off of the dirt-covered windows—once beautifully designed, now revealing cracks where vandals wreaked havoc.

The eleven of us gathered near the center of the over-sized shell of a sanctuary, surrounded by concrete and cold. We huddled inside our jackets, burrowed underneath our winter hats, and began talking about the future of this space. This was not our average monthly Operations Team meeting, in which we served as the church’s legal board. But it was also not an entirely new experience. We had dreamed up wild things before, impossible things, things that should not be. And yet, we’d seen time and again, God take the faith—whatever amount of it we had—and turn it into fish.

We had dreamed up wild things before, impossible things, things that should not be.

For another wild, impossible story, read about our family’s experience with “When a Sandwich Works a Miracle”

This time, we were standing in a decade’s-long abandoned building in a medium-sized town 45 minutes north of our main church location, in a forgotten community, ravaged most recently by the opioid epidemic, and for much longer by unemployment from the downturn of the auto industry in which this community of blue-collar workers and their families relied upon for its livelihood. Churches had come and gone in recent decades, unable to stay afloat in this economically unstable environment.

Echoing high up into the rafters, our worship leader began to softly strum his guitar. It was an impromptu gathering to see, to sense, and to plan. Between songs, board members poured out their hearts about the implications of what taking on this project meant to them. Ethan, whose heart had been beating for this town for three years now and whose active waiting had brought us to this very space, came forward with the words he had read just that morning from Mark 15:

“Joseph of Arimathea, a prominent member of the Council, who was himself waiting for the kingdom of God, went boldly to Pilate and asked for Jesus’ body,” Ethan read through tears. With this city and its people on his heart for many years, he was now catching a glimpse of the plan that God would carry out on its behalf through the unlikeliness of this building.

It is a bold thing to request the thing that everyone else deems dead; an indicator of an other-worldly proclamation. Joseph of Arimathea who otherwise would have gone down into anonymity ends up taking his place in the gospels because of one bold move: he asks for the dead thing. The thing that is dead, that is ugly, that is not, and he finds it worthy of his attention.

Asking for the dead thing is an indicator of an other-worldly proclamation.

Most everyone else had abandoned Jesus at His point of death. They left him at the cross to bleed out, suffer, and waste away to nothing. He was gone. And yet. Joseph makes a bold move. In faith, he recognizes the deity and the authority of the Christ and responds with reverence. It didn’t matter how dead and gone His Christ seemed. This Jesus had left a mark on Joseph’s life, and something in his heart told him to see the matter out. If nothing else, he was going to give him a proper burial even if it cost him his reputation as a member of the council who had tried and convicted Jesus, who from day one had mocked and tried to stomp out the God-child.

Nevertheless, Joseph of Arimathea asks for the dead thing. Perhaps he sensed there was more to the story than what met the eye. What if we, in similar vein, looked at the “dead thing” and saw it not according to the lifelessness of its appearance but more like a root. Or a cavern that will contain the root and hold space for the living.

That will house the growth.

That will commence a living story.

Shot at one of my new favorite locales: Root 31 in Westfield, IN

Alicia Britt Chole, in her Lenten devotional “40 Days of Decrease,” says, “Roots are perhaps the most humble of God’s creations on earth. They require neither acknowledgment nor praise.” Often, they are given neither. They are hidden in humility and yet, “Their reward is reaped when the living stand upon them and reach for the fruit the roots made possible.”

The Bible is full of stories of roots whose flowers had stopped blooming, whose leaves had wilted and dried up, whose plants had been chopped blunt at the base. And yet the root remains. Where there is a root, there is hope. The greatest of all of these is Jesus Himself who was the shoot out of the stump of Jesse.

All other hopes stem from this One.

The “Hall of Fame of Faith” listed in Hebrews 11 is fragrant with the source of that one Life. It reminds us that faith “is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see,” and that “what is seen was not made out of what was visible” (vv. 1, 3). For we know that Abraham, “and he as good as dead, came descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sand on the seashore.” (v. 12)

The Bible is full of stories of roots…whose plants had been chopped blunt at the base.

So what is our application in the here and now?

Even when our own faith feels like it has been put through the wringer, my Lent devotional reminded me that John the Baptist is an example of why we should not give up hope—why we should spend our efforts scooping up the raccoon poop and make a home for our cross-stained Christ. In John 11, I was today years old when I realized that John the Baptist wasn’t always rock-solid; he had moments of weakness, where doubt settled in and made an unwelcome home in his heart. When all seems but lost, from prison, John sends his disciples to Jesus “to ask him, ‘Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?’”

John’s expectations of how the Messiah—that, mind you, he himself had prepared the way for—was going to show his power and influence in their land hadn’t exactly panned out how he had pictured. He was stuck in a filthy prison (which was probably filled with poop) and was unable to personally witness much of what was going on since the day he had been held captive. But in his place of many questions that show his dwindling hope, Jesus mercifully reminds him that in fact, things are alive. He, King Jesus, is alive. And his miracles are bringing life everywhere he goes.

King Jesus is bringing life everywhere he goes.

In this life, we have many little prisons where the stench of death can wreak. Maybe it’s that dream that’s hanging on by a thread. The marriage that’s on its last rope. The youth who seems without hope. The timeline that’s too slow, the relationship too hard, the obstacle too big.

Chole points out that, “A key invitation of our spiritual journeys is to be emotionally honest about our uncertainties. Questions such as the one asked by John are signs of a living, growing, active faith, not evidence of a dying one.”

Why?? Because our God holds up to the questions. In the very last chapter of the last book of the Bible, Jesus gently leaves us with this picture as He proclaims, “I am the Root and the Offspring of David, and the bright Morning Star” (Revelation 22:16). And for those grieving in Zion, we get to enter into the ministry of that Root Jesus described in Isaiah 61:4:

“They will rebuild the ancient ruins

and restore the places long devastated.

They will renew the ruined cities

that have been devastated for generations.”

So picture yourself sitting among the waste of that little prison you feel like you’re in, and then picture the root that breaks through concrete. That’s the stuff your faith is made of—that your God does from generation to generation.

Where in your life do you need to see the hope of a Root rather than the current reality of the plant? Let’s get the conversation started. Comment below!

Need help removing the scales and revealing God in your everyday life? Click HERE.

POSTED BY

Jenna

Jenna Kruse is a teacher but not in a classroom. She loves to think outside the box and inside the Word and is daily in need of an attitude adjustment. She is a wife to Justin, a mother to three children ages 10, 8 and 5 and a mentor to teenagers and young adults. You can learn more about the heart behind her blog HERE.

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