Unity and diversity

You've got to love church. Well, I do, anyhow. We're still in Leviticus, and today's sermon was on the bodily discharges bit. (Oh, boy!) Pastor Lincoln actually managed to connect it to Easter--much to everyone's appreciation, because resurrection and the doing-away-with of the fall-and-all-its-results is much more pleasant than, well, certain bits of Leviticus. The bridge there is that uncleanness symbolizes the-fall-and-all-its-results; Jesus did away with death at Easter; and the results will be done away with at the second coming. Splendid stuff, all of it. That's the unity.

The diversity came in at the audience. I was sitting with Becca and her family, the Rutherfords, and Nena, who works with my sister. It struck me that the resurrection of the saints from their graves is kind of like in The Black Cauldron, when the bad guy resurrects dead people to be his freaky immortal army, and it's all very nasty and perverted and inconvenient, as it's hard to kill something that isn't really alive, as Dr. Gruenke said about viruses. Anyway, what that's a perversion of is the true and proper resurrection that will happen when Jesus returns. Since I'd lent the Black Cauldron books to Becca's sister Emily a month or two back, I borrowed a pen from Nena to write Emily a note on the back of a bulletin insert, sharing this brilliant connection.

Afterwards, Emily told me that Becca had also whispered to her during the sermon a connection she'd made: that in the new heavens and earth, teeth won't decay and she won't have to worry about infection control. As Emily said, different people do get different things out of sermons. :-)