By Kelli Scott, Soul Signal
The request lines on a country station light up in a certain way when somebody has something heavy to say. You learn to tell the difference between a lady wanting a George Strait song and a lady wanting somebody to listen.
One afternoon a woman called in and asked me to play a song her husband used to sing in the truck. He had been gone about a year. I said I’d be glad to. Then she got quiet, and she said, “I’ll be honest with you. Some days I feel like they buried me right along with him. I get up, I make coffee, I go through the motions. But I ain’t been alive in a year.”
I didn’t have a good answer on the air. I played the song, and I let it breathe. But I’ve thought about her ever since, because a few weeks later I ran across a line in an old book that I believe was written for exactly her. And for me. And, if I’m guessing right, for you.
The Gospel of Philip Says Don’t Wait
The book is called the Gospel of Philip. It was one of the writings pulled out of a sealed jar near Nag Hammadi, Egypt, in 1945, the same jar that held the Gospel of Thomas. It’s a strange, beautiful, sometimes puzzling book, full of short sayings that read more like riddles than sermons.
In one place, the writer says that folks who believe they will die first and then get raised up are making a mistake. If you don’t receive the resurrection while you are still alive, he says, then when you die you will receive nothing.
Read that again slow. Most of us were taught the resurrection is something that happens to you after the funeral. You wait. You behave. You hold on, and some day the lid opens. This book says no. It says the getting up is supposed to start now, while your lungs are still working and your coffee is still hot.
What the Word Really Means
The Greek word behind “resurrection” in the New Testament world is anastasis. Now, that sounds fancy, but if you break it in two, it’s plain as a fence post. Ana means up, or again. Stasis means standing. So anastasis is, near about, a standing up again.
That’s it. Not a magic trick. A standing up again.
And when you think of it that way, you realize you can lay down long before you ever get put in the ground. Grief can knock you flat. So can shame, or a bad marriage, or twenty years of a job that ain’t yours, or a church that told you your questions were sin. A body can walk around breathing and still be laying down on the inside.
The woman on my phone line knew it. She had the words for it before I did. “I ain’t been alive in a year.”
Dead While Breathing
I know what that’s like, and I’d guess most of us do if we’re honest. There was a stretch in my own life when I did everything right on paper. I showed up. I said the prayers. I sat in the same pew, and I kept my mouth shut about the questions rattling around in my chest. From the outside, I was fine. On the inside, I was a man holding still so nobody would notice he’d quit.
It wasn’t the day I left that program that I started to stand back up. It was a smaller thing. I asked one honest question out loud, a question I’d been scared of for years, and nothing fell on my head. The sky stayed where it was. And something in me, I can’t explain it better than this, put a hand on the floor and pushed.
That’s resurrection, friend. It ain’t always trumpets. Sometimes it’s one honest question, or one phone call you’ve been dodging, or one morning you open the curtains for the first time in a month.
Why This Is a Dangerous Idea
I’ll tell you why I never heard this one preached. If new life is something you receive here and now, then nobody can hold it hostage until you’ve paid your dues and died in good standing. There’s no waiting room. No line to stand in. Nobody has to bless it first.
I don’t say that to run anybody down. There’s a lot of comfort in the old picture, and I would never take that from a grieving person. I still believe the ones we love ain’t gone to nothing. But the Gospel of Philip is asking us to look at the other half of the question. Not just what happens when we die, but whether we’re living now.
Jesus says in the Gospel of Thomas that the Kingdom is inside you and all around you, and that folks just don’t see it. Put that next to Philip and the picture gets clearer. The Kingdom ain’t a place you get shipped to after the funeral. It’s a way of being awake, and the invitation to wake up is open this very afternoon.
The Next Small Thing
I never found out how that woman is doing. Calls come and go on a radio show. But I hope she heard the song and felt something move. I hope she took one small step. Called her sister. Walked to the mailbox. Sat on the porch and let the afternoon touch her face.
That’s all a standing up is. One small thing, done on purpose, while you still can.
So I’ll ask you what I wish I’d asked her. Where have you been laying down? And what is one small way you could stand back up today? Tell me in the comments. I read every one.
Kelli Scott
Soul Signal
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