Warning! This post is admittedly going to be a bit weird . . .
There is an interstate junction near my home – the Atlee Elmont exit on I-95. Regardless of which direction you go, if you take that exit you will be on Sliding Hill Road. The stretch of Sliding Hill that passes over the freeway has a narrow median that divides the traffic lanes. I pass over this stretch of road often, sometimes multiple times a day.
For the past few days, a rather large deer has been laid out on the median, an obvious victim of colliding with a vehicle. At the risk of oversimplification, the deer is, as the munchkin coroner declares, “most sincerely dead.”
Of course, it’s up to some agency such as Animal Control to remove animals from the street. It would be a bit strange if a car were to stop, the driver grab the deer, throw it in the trunk and drive off. But I’m trying to make a point here so stay with me.
About the fourth or fifth time I passed by this dead deer on the median, noticing that other cars were passing by on each side as well, it occurred to me that a sermon illustration, or at least a didactic analogy, was brewing. The deer was physically dead and was essentially being ignored by passers-by. Here’s the analogy: there are many people in our lives who are spiritually dead and many of us who have the key of life fail to stop and help them.
The Parable of the Good Samaritan comes to mind where the priest and the Levite, both church leaders, pass by the man who had been beaten and left for dead. Lots of connections could be made to my deer in the road account. But the scriptural address that has been running through my mind since conceiving this analogy is not from Luke 1o (Good Samaritan) but from Ephesians 2 as follows:
And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— 3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. Ephesians 2:1-3
There are many in our lives who are still dead in their trespasses and sins, who are chasing after the things of this world, who are following the leading of the devil, and who are dominated by their own physical and intellectual cravings. Paul teaches in Ephesians that we who follow Christ used to be among them, but by the grace of God we have been saved. Are we bringing that grace to others, those who are still physically alive but spiritually dead or do we, like the priest and the Levite, like those driving by the deer, simply pass by on the other side. Granted, only God saves by grace through faith, but we have an opportunity and responsibility to work inside of God’s grace to bring life to the living dead.
Here’s the rest of the story:
4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. Ephesians 2:4-10
Could it be that these “good works” include sharing our living faith with the living dead stretched out on the medians of life all around us?
