Good old Yusuf Islam AKA "Cat Stevens" is credited by most people with writing the tune "Morning Has Broken".* Sometimes people call it a hymn and want to sing it in church, especially at funerals. It is certainly singable by a group, so it is musically appropriate for congregational song, but have you ever looked at the lyrics? What in the world is it saying other than "Yeah, nature is so pretty. What a great big, big, big god (small g) you are"?

A closer look at these lyrics (copied from here) reveals a little bit of "content" other than just "God is so big, yeah god!" But only IF you know that "the Word" is a reference to Jesus (John 1:14); only IF "His feet" is a reference to Jesus as both the one who walked in the perfection of Eden with the man and the woman (Genesis 3:8) and walked on earth bringing all things to completion (John 19:30); and only IF "God's re-creation of the new day" is a reference to the world saving redemption worked by Christ on the cross and revealed on the new day of His resurrection. None of this is very clear, and therefore, though the melody may stir up warm fuzzies, this song is hardly comforting to anyone who is grieving a loved one who died in the Lord. 

Instead, if a grieving Christian insists on this song at the funeral of their loved one, I offer these lyrics that proclaim the saving Gospel of Jesus Christ a little more clearly, and offer the hope of the resurrection in Christ Jesus. 

*The words for this Scottish Gaelic tune (BUNESSAN) were actually written by Eleanor Farjeon (1881-1965)

I know its been said before, thought before.  Then again, maybe it hasn't.  This keeps coming up in Catechism classes though... 

Zombies.  You are a zombie.  A "Walking Dead" zombie to be exact (TV show, I haven't read the comics).  In that universe the zombies don't just eat brains.  They eat the living.  They devour the flesh of anything that moves and breathes, especially and primarily human beings, in whom is the breath of life, the breath of God. 

All human beings in the "Walking Dead" universe are infected with the virus or disease that causes zombieism.  Many of the living give up and chose to become zombies.  Many of the living are already zombie-like predators, preying upon the living, killing to "stay alive".  In essence, to be alive in that world is already to be a zombie.  Nor does it seem to matter how you live, because the worst always comes out in you, as that harsh realm always robs you of virtuous choices, reducing every situation to a catch 22.  Many words are spoken there about whether you can "come back" from what you've had to do.  They are already dead.  Dead in sins and transgressions.  Alive, but merely waiting to become what they already know they are. 

You are zombie.  The nature you were born with has predetermined that you are a zombie, preying upon the "living", never able to make up for the choices you've made, the things you've been forced to do, the things you can't help but do.  It is a fact of your birth.  You are already infected.  It is what you are.  Even while you are "alive" your actions will hardly be better than the mindless undead zombies which seek to kill you.  You cry out, "But I'm a human being, with the ability to love and chose."  And yet, you do not love.  You do not chose what is good, but only what is expedient, indulgent, or "necessary". 

The only way to deal with your zombie state is to die to it.  A head shot.  A crushing blow.  From a gun, sword, sharp stick, bat, or the heal of a boot crushing the skull of the snake, I mean, zombie. 

That is you.  You must die.  Die to sin.  Die to self.  Die to Satan, whose power was crushed by a stake through the skull of Golgotha, by a heal blacking out the undead nerve endings in that zombie-snake mind.  That undead zombie-snake bit that heel.  It infected that heel with death.  Twas just a flesh wound, but it caused death in the flesh of that Man.  That man ought to have turned zombie Himself.  Except for two facts, He'd already crushed death, and all its works and all its ways, and, His flesh is incorruptible.  Though it dies, it lives.  And it gives life to zombies. 

You are a zombie, already limping around like a dead thing, seeking to devour the living.  But this living One gives His flesh to be eaten by zombies.  And lo and behold, the zombies live!  Their colour improves.  Their desire for a pound of flesh wains.  For they are no longer zombies.  They are now men, trapped in the flesh of a zombie.  Men who wage war on the zombie impulses within their flesh, and grieve whenever it breaks out as it inevitably will.  This Living Flesh that these men eat gives life to both the living and the dead. 

There is still no way to deal with zombieism except by a head shot.  Death.  But you are already dead.  This Living One gives His living flesh to the flesh eaters.  It slays zombies and makes alive.  They still have corruptible bodies.  Decaying bodies.  Bodies that will betray them and turn on their loved ones in a moment's notice.  But this Man's flesh is both the cure and the promise.  It slays zombies and raises men, living men, on this side of eternity.  But it does not fully deliver that promise yet.  The fullness of that life is yet to come. 

This metaphor hasn't nearly been stretched to its breaking point yet.  But that's about what my catechumens and I have talked about so far.