“Oh my people, I will open your graves and have you rise from them... I will put my spirit in you that you may live.” Ezekiel 37:12-14
“If the spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, then the one who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also” (Rom 8:11)
What does it mean to live? To be called from the grave that a spirit might be put in you and that life might dwell within you. To live is to be “ec-stasis”. It’s not to implode or to explode. I use those images because it helps us understand what it means to be “ec-stasis”.
A thing that implodes upon itself crushes itself underneath its own weight, as with a black star. Scientists and astrologers try to figure out what a black star is and the theory that some have arrived at is that it’s a star that has gained so much material weight - so much mass - that it crushes itself underneath its own gravity. Its gravity is stronger than the molecular bonds of all of its material and, because it’s stronger, it takes something that’s tens of thousands of times larger than our sun and crushes it down into what they consider an infinitesimal point. (Something as tiny as my fist or as my finger) The gravity of such a massive thing in such a small space doesn’t even allow light to leave. Light, itself, is not able to overcome the gravitational pull and so what remains is a black hole - a thing that is so full of itself that it implodes on itself and no light can leave.
This is as opposed to a supernova. A supernova is the opposite of an implosion - It is an explosion. A supernova occurs whenever a star gains a type of mass that can no longer maintain its own interior balance and it becomes unstable. In this instability, it explodes and that casts light, fire, and destruction all around it. For billions and trillions of miles, this star’s occurrence can be seen through our telescopes even though it was millions and millions of years ago when it exploded. Like a black star, a supernova that explodes also loses its light. It loses its very self. There may be cosmic dust but there is nothing in itself.
However, our sun, the stars, and the sky that we can see with our eyes have a proper balance to maintain their integrity and to allow light to leave. Similarly, the human person is called, as Jesus says inside scripture, “to let our light shine so that others might see it” (Mt 5:16). A star properly balanced is “ec-stasis” ‘Ex’ means ‘out,’ ‘stasis’ means “to stand.” Meaning a star is able to “stand outside” itself. For us in our common language, English, ecstasis is translated as “ecstatic”. To be ecstatic is to stand outside oneself and to have something move you from within. That, then, allows you to move towards other people.
The common idea of ec-stasis, or ecstatic, is to be joyful or expressive. Whenever Lazarus was dead, Jesus called into a tomb and called him out and to stand out of the Tomb – ec-stasis. To live is to be called out of oneself and to be a light for others so that others can participate in the joy and gift of self.
A black star represents a person who is so full of himself that no light can leave them. Either they are so filled with arrogance that everything gets pulled in themselves and crushed or they are so filled with self-loathing that they are unable to consider themselves as valuable to anyone else and so they live in complete isolation or bitterness. For them, life has so overtaken them that they live in a despair that allows no light to leave them. In these ways, we can implode on ourselves, and life is diminished - if not destroyed.
In addition, other persons could be so unstable inside their own self that they have to have the validation of every other person. They cannot define themselves so they put themselves into frenetic activity, doing everything they can. Because of this, they are stretched too thin, do too much, and say too much. They are so pulled by the media, the desire for wealth, and other meaningless things that they don’t even have a sense of self anymore. This person lives so explosively that it destroys their own identity, and they can’t think for themselves. They live with the latest trend, or the latest movement and they compare themselves to every other person so to see how they should live. They have no idea how Christ has called them to live inside themselves by the power of the created gift that they are as an individual person.
The secret of life with Jesus Christ is to remember that you were created to live.
A phrase that has come to me over the past couple of months that I’ve been meditating on is “God gave you life for YOU to live - not for someone else to live it for you.”
That is burdensome and in a certain sense, it is almost terrible. Under the weight of the burden of life, some, not knowing how to manage themselves, implode or explode, and, in both cases, they lose themselves.
This world fits into this lacuna; this darkness and instability. It tries to pacify people with the art of distraction. It tries to assuage everybody’s fears, selfish desires, or lack of self-identity in every possible way. Our society brings out more products stating, “If you have my product you’ll know who you are!” They make more clothes stating, “if you have this latest fashion everybody will think you’re something special!” Even more promise that, “if you have a better 401k, a bigger salary, or a bigger house it’s all going to be what you want.” They flood you with information like babbling talking heads because they give you the sense that if you can just hear somebody talking then you’re doing something worthwhile.
The amount of information that floods the normal human person today is incredible. I think one of our challenges in modern-day society is that we don’t know how to handle all the information that is given to us. What’s worse is that we don’t know how to define the difference between good information and bad information. Because of this, we get flooded with a horrible diet of mental trash and we get lost in the meanderings of media. Before we know it, we’ve wasted so much time surfing the web or going through social media that it’s almost as if we blacked out. We come out of our “media blackout” two or three hours later saying to ourselves, “I thought I was going to bed at 10 pm and it’s 3 am!” How many of us must use our televisions like pacifiers just to lull ourselves to sleep? It’s almost like if we don’t have that thing blinking around our room then the strange silence doesn’t allow us to rest.
The world has tried to fill this lacuna - this blank space where our sense of self should be - through all of these pacifiers shoved into our mouths. We are no longer standing outside ourselves, ecstatically living well - we are actually taken away from ourselves explosively or falling in on ourselves, imploding.
I remember one time my mom and I were walking through a baby aisle in a store. As we were walking, she stopped, looked at me, and said: "Jarrod, notice this.” And I said, “Notice what?” She continues, “Notice how many products are designed to keep the baby away from the parents.” How much money do parents spend on materials to keep the baby out of their hands? This world has spent billions of dollars to keep you away from yourself, away from one another, and away from the Lord. They want you to implode or explode because then you must be defined by somebody else. Why? Because, then, they can control who you are.
However, Jesus Christ has come to yell into each one of our tombs, “Lazarus come out” (John 11:43). “Come out and stand on your own two feet!” We must recognize that we are called to live in love. Life is love. Death is separation from relationships. In the story about Lazarus, the situation of death separated him from his sister. It separated him from his friends. It separated him from Jesus, Himself, who wept at the death of a friend. Jesus went to restore the relationship and to bring him back into Mary and Martha. He brought him back into his own life. Life is relationships well lived and that is truly ecstatic! That makes life worth living! An ecstatic life is when we savor every moment with intensity and intelligence, knowing that this moment is valuable. It is when we become a gift given to other people; a light shining for other people.
God calls us to these levels of love that are the definition of ecstatic living:
To love God with your whole heart, mind, soul, and strength.
To be who you are - created in the image and likeness of God with intellect and a will
To enter a relationship with the Lord and to worship Him.
The tomb of life is distracted living. True life is living for other people and when you love God and love your neighbor then you’ll live...ecstatically.
Father Jarrod Lies, Pastor