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The psalmist's phrase "I walk before the Lord in the land of the living" comes out of a context marked by a death: "the snares of death" and "the cords of death." There are, in fact, 13 references to life-threatening elements in this fairly brief Psalm 116: snares of death, pangs of Sheol, distress, anguish, save my life, brought low, death, tears, stumbling, greatly afflicted, consternation, death of his saints, my bonds. That adds up to a lot of trouble. This is our context. The land of the living is dangerous country. A lot goes wrong. There is a lot of trouble brewing out there and in here. Resurrection takes place in the country of death.

The land of the living is obviously not a vacation paradise. It's more like a war zone. And that's where we Christians are stationed to affirm the primacy of life over death, to give a witness to the connectedness and preciousness of all life, to engage in the practice of resurrection.

We do this by gathering in congregations and regular worship before our life-giving God and our death-defeating Christ and our life-abounding Holy Spirit. We do it by reading, pondering, teaching, and preaching the Word of Life as it is revealed in our Scriptures. We do it by baptizing men, women, and children in the name of the Trinity, nurturing them into a resurrection life. We do it by eating the life of Jesus in the bread and wine of the Eucharist. We do it by visiting prisoners, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, welcoming the stranger, healing the sick, working for justice, loving our enemies, raising our children, doing our everyday work to the glory of God.

When I go through a list like that, the first thing that strikes me—and I hope you—is that it's all pretty ordinary. It doesn't take a great deal of training or talent to do any of it. Not the training of a brain surgeon, let's say, or the talent of a concert pianist. Except for the preaching and sacraments part, children can do much of it as well or nearly as well as any of us. But—and here's the thing—all of it is life-witnessing and life-affirming work. And if the life drains out of it, there is nothing left: It's just Godtalk.

In the process of going about these life-giving, life-affirming tasks that derive from our Christian identities, we are easily and commonly distracted, diverted from life itself, from God alive. It is uncommonly difficult to stay centered and absorbed in our primary life-affirming, life-witnessing work. We continue to perform the vast array of activities in work and conversation that I've listed, and more than that. But we are also under the continual threat of death, of becoming disconnected from life and people and God and just going through the biological motions—mouthing clichés and not participating in life itself.

This distraction and diversion is what makes for a crisis in Christian identity—a crisis current among us. Our basic connection to life is severed, and we begin borrowing our identities from therapists and entertainers, CEOs and politicians, pastors and teachers, men and women who appear to be on the frontlines and making a difference in the world.

So what I want to do is reaffirm this primary identity that we've been given by the resurrection of Jesus. This identity is nurtured and matured in our formation by resurrection.

It's a curious thing but not uncommon for Christians to begin well and gradually get worse. Instead of progressing like a pilgrim from strength to strength, we regress. Just think of the Christians you really admire. Aren't most of them recent converts? Isn't it exciting? Then think of the Christians that you're just bored to death with. Aren't they people who have been Christians for forty or fifty years? They are wearing out not just in body but in everything else too. There are exceptions, of course.

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April (Web-only) 2006, Vol. 50