After the pandemic, not our old lives, but new lives

A long time ago, I broke my wrist playing pickup basketball. I had to wear a cast on my right hand for two months.

The day after I got out of that cast, I went to the gym to play basketball again and…broke two metacarpal bones in the same right hand.

I went back in a cast for another three months.

When I finally got out of that cast, my right hand was not only weak; it was not the same hand. The two bones I broke were the long, straight bones that connect the knuckles and the wrist. I broke them so bad that the doctor said he would have to open my hand, cut through muscle and tendon, break the bones some more, then set them and pin them back together. He warned that scar tissue from surgery could take away the full range of motion in two of my fingers. As a drummer, I didn’t like the sound of that.

The doctor gave me another option: Let the bones set as they were. I would have a deformed hand for the rest of my life and would have to re-learn how to use two of my fingers. But, he said I would have full range of motion.

I picked the second option.

When I finally got out of the cast, my right hand was not only weak, it wasn’t the same. Two of my metacarpal bones were now L-shaped instead of straight. That means two of my knuckles point inward toward my palm rather than straight out into the base of their fingers.

But the doctor was right. After many months of adjusting to my “new hand,” I got my range of motion and strength back. I just had to relearn to use two of my fingers. Years later, I’m barely aware that I have to use two fingers on my right hand a little different from the other eight.

Since March of this year, I’ve felt like my entire life has been in a cast.

When the pandemic reached our city, my family and I closed in most of our lives and restricted most of our movements in the world.

We are not afraid; we are taking care.

God willing, the “cast” will come off sometime in the next few months.

But I have a feeling that the “new life” that comes out of the cast will be different from the old “normal life” that went into it.

I think that is how it should be.

When my dad, a Christian pastor, baptized people, he always quoted a line from our holy book: “You will be raised to walk in newness of life.”

The full scripture verse is:

We were therefore buried with him [the Christ] through baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may walk in newness of life (Letter to the Romans 6:4).

This is a pattern at the center of the Christian faith: Dying, being hidden away, and coming out again…but different.

Jesus Christ is, of course, the prime example of this. But if you have eyes to see, you find the pattern everywhere in your life and in the world.

Things die, go into hiding, then come out again alive…but changed.

This pattern is not just a neat coincidence. In the scripture verse above, the author made the effort to write the words “in order that.” When you use those words, you are indicating intention. Pointing to purpose.

So, as the ancient Christian teacher has it, we are “buried” (presumed dead) in order that.

In order that what?

In order that we “may walk in newness of life” (just as Jesus Christ did when God raised him from the dead).

The way the author put the words in this verse together tell us something important and true about God. That is: God’s purpose (will) is that he raises us to “walk in newness of life.”

Because this is God’s purpose (will)–because God wants to raise people to “walk in newness of life” and because he makes the personal choice to make a way for it to be so–he first raises Christ from the dead.

In other words, being raised from the dead to walk in newness of life is not just a nice side benefit that falls to us like crumbs from the table. No, God set out to raise us to walk in newness of life and therefore sent the “only begotten” to die, go underground, and rise again to “walk in newness of life.”

If you’ve ever wondered what is God’s will for you, that is it: To raise you from the dead to walk in newness of life.

You could take this to mean that God raises us from the dead so that we can go to heaven.

Yes, but I think that the ancient Christian teacher who wrote about walking in newness of life meant this life here and now.

Remember: He was writing about baptism (go back and read the verse from Romans 6:4 again). Baptism means a lot more to us than the ancients who first heard this letter from their Christian teacher. Here in the 21st century, we think of baptism as something holy, rare, sacred, spiritual. Most branches of the Christian family tree treat baptism with special significance.

But to the ancients, to speak of baptism was to use language that came across as common and everyday. You might think of baptism along the same lines as doing the laundry or washing the dishes.

Baptism was a common word that common people used to describe common everyday things.

I think the ancient Christian use of baptism is on purpose.

Imagine that every time you clean the house, do the laundry, take a bath, or wash the dishes, you are reminded that God raised Jesus Christ from the dead to walk in newness of life. Imagine that the common, everyday things you do remind you that God is raising you, too, and making you new.

I think that is how the ancient Christian teachers wanted apprentices and students of Jesus Christ to think. By using a common, everyday activity (baptism), they taught Christians to see every activity and every day as being raised to walk in newness of life.

So, do you see God’s purpose and God’s pattern?

God’s purpose (will) is to raise you to walk in newness of life.

We see God’s pattern in Jesus Christ. The way we imitate that pattern is baptism. But I don’t take that to mean just one big event in front of the church; I take it to mostly mean the many common, everyday events of our lives.

The Good News is that God turns death into life.

The Good News is also that this is not some point in the distant future; it is here and now. God raises our common, everyday lives into newness. Each step we take, each thing we do, is made new by the same power that raised Jesus Christ from the dead.

So, what does any of this have to do with the pandemic?

Everything.

Now that we know what God is doing with us and how he does it, we can see circumstances and current events in a new light.

In the pandemic, our old lives died. We feel like we are buried, closed in, cut off, hidden from the life and world we once knew.

But, good news! This is the familiar pattern, the setup for God’s signature work that we first saw when he raised Jesus Christ from the dead. The end of life as we knew it and its burial in the pandemic sets us up for resurrection and newness of life.

This is God’s will.

What we need to be asking now is: What will we choose to do with our new lives? When God raises us up out of this pandemic and we have the chance to walk in newness of life, will we really walk in newness? Or will we try to go back to our old lives as they were before?

As sure as I had to re-learn how to use my “new” (deformed) right hand, we will have to re-learn how to live in a world that is not the same as it was before the pandemic. This is as it should be. God will not raise us to go back to the old ways; God will raise us to walk in newness of life. We will receive, not our old lives back, but new lives for new things.

What we should be thinking about now is what we will do with our new lives when God gives them to us. When we are finally able to walk free in the world again, how will we walk in the newness of life that God gives us?

We were therefore buried with him [the Christ] through baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may walk in newness of life (Letter to the Romans 6:4).