THIS MIGHT SOUND FAMILIAR TO YOU. I looked out from the podium at the mere handful of participants in our small-church-with-the-big-auditorium just before announcing the "Good evening" part of our Wednesday testimony meeting—and my heart sank. I tried to use my spiritual eyes and ask God what He was seeing, but just then I couldn't. Instead, I decided to carefully listen to the message from the Bible and Science and Health and try to absorb what I was reading.
During the silence after the second hymn, a sentence of Mary Baker Eddy's— one of those, for me, milestone teachings of hers—popped into my head: "The greatest wrong is but a supposititious opposite of the highest right." Science and Health, p. 368.
What is the highest right in this case? I asked myself. Life—rich, vibrant, productive, joyful, divine Life. I knew the Life that is God is the only Life we could experience here. And I knew that must be what God was seeing, too—not "a supposititious opposite," suggesting a low-energy meeting of a very faithful very few.
Not long after that evening, I went to the Annual Meeting of The Mother Church. Some of the church officers gave us all a challenge—that we give consideration to the "raise the dead" part of Jesus' charge to his followers in the book of Matthew. See Matt. 10:8.
In an afternoon question-and-answer meeting later that day, Richard Bergenheim, Editor of The Christian Science Monitor, mentioned the story of Paul raising the young man Eutychus from the dead, as described in the book of Acts. He zoomed in on what Paul said to worrried bystanders after Eutychus fell from the third loft: "His life is in him." It wasn't what everybody's eyes saw, but Paul was using spiritual sense at that moment, which ended up presenting—and demonstrating— "the highest right" of that situation: "They brought the young man alive, and were not a little comforted." See Acts 20:9-12.
For me, Life was the theme of the weekend in Boston.
The topic of my next set of Wednesday evening readings was, predictably, Life, including Paul's raising of Eutychus. I wanted our church to feel as blessed as I felt in being reminded that our life, the life of our church body—in all its fullness and beauty—is very much in it, clearly manifest in this church body too.
As I listened to a testimony from a member of the congregation that night, it occurred to me that raising the dead is not the huge leap we reflexively think it to be. I thought of this passage in Science and Health: "Through all the disciples experienced, they became more spiritual and understood better what the Master had taught. His resurrection was also their resurrection. It helped them to raise themselves and others from spiritual dulness and blind belief in God into the perception of infinite possibilities." Science and Health, p. 34. Jesus' resurrection truly is our resurrection. And understanding what he demonstrated of divine Life's power is helping us raise ourselves and others, too, from "spiritual dulness and blind belief in God into the perception of infinite possibilities."
Everybody is capable of raising dead thought. It may be a discipline, sure, but it's a discipline we are certainly capable of, and it's a Christian's duty. Isn't it really the prayer without ceasing See I Thess. 5:17 . that Paul spoke of in one of his letters? Part of Jesus' mission was to lift all his present and future followers' thought—and open their eyes—to the infinite possibilities presented by an infinite, all-good, all-loving God and a God-caused life.
Actually bringing someone back to life, as Jesus did with Lazarus and as Paul did with Eutychus,isn't the whole of raising the dead. As we practice raising ourselves—our thought—moment by moment, in church, at home, at work, no matter what eyes and ears seem to be telling us, we are indeed being obedient to our Master's charge. This practice doesn't just alleviate dead, depressed thought; it enriches life—infuses our lives and others' lives with the understanding of Spirit's infinite ability.
Anyway, who is really doing the raising, and what is really occurring? Paul actually asked King Agrippa, "Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you, that God should raise the dead?" Acts 26:8. Note that he didn't say, "that I should raise the dead," though that's undoubtedly what Agrippa thought he was talking about. Who does the raising really? Who is the only Mind? Mary Baker Eddy taught that God is the only Mind. So really, raising dead thought is replacing the belief of a finite mind separate from God with the fact of Mind's oneness, and letting that Mind, God, be our Mind—the only "I" of our being. It's a yielding to Mind's knowing.
It's meaningful and joyful to take up the challenge— to approach Church and all of life with this effort to lift dead thought, or blind acceptance of the material senses' presentation, to what God, divine Life, is ceaselessly seeing and presenting. What's wonderful about this approach is that it's not so much a human effort as it is a yielding to an ever-clearer "perception of infinite possibilities."
Bringing someone back to life isn't the whole of raising the dead. As we practice raising ourselves—our thought—moment by moment, in church, at home, at work, we are indeed being obedient to our Master's charge.
