“But you know what?” Laney, co-keynoter with Jo Nygard, said. “Not even 30-year-olds can understand it today. What sin really means,” he concluded, “is separation from God.”
Laney is associate pastor for youth and families at First Church of Tuscaloosa, Ala. Nygard is associate pastor at Hudson Memorial Church in Raleigh, N.C.
Through a dizzying array of Scripture readings, dramatic presentations, country music hits, movie and television clips, and personal reflections, Laney, Nygard and several young volunteers from among the throng of 1,300 attending the conference laid out the question of sin and how it affects contemporary young people.
The theme of the conference is “Throw Open the Doors,” but sometimes, Laney said, “We don’t wait for God to open doors — we barge right through them and break those doors. Calvin called it ‘depravity,’ but we’re more likely to call it ‘rebellion,’” he said.
Nygard, citing Paul in Romans 7 about “doing the evil I don’t want rather than the good I do want,” asked if there were any nail-biters in the crowd. “Ever tried to stop?” she asked the scores who responded in the affirmative. “From what I hear it’s hard to stop,”
Nail biting isn’t a sin, Nygard assured the group, “but how about gossip? Gossip does separate us from others and thus from God and we have the same problem with it — we want to do what is right, but the sin within us separates us from God and prevents us from stopping, even if we want to.”
After a dramatic presentation of the story of the raising of Lazarus in John 11, Laney, Nygard and several role players illustrated the relationship between separation (death) and redemption and rescue (resurrection) in the biblical narratives and the life of believers.
“It’s not always easy being alive, whether you’re Lazarus or a youth pastor trying to keep up with what’s going on,” Laney said, illustrating the conundrum with clips from the Spiderman movies, the “Twilight” series of novels and the “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” television show.
The disciple Thomas, for instance, was a fun-loving leader of his friends before becoming a follower of Jesus, a young actor posited. “I did a lot of things I wasn’t proud of, but there was never enough fun to make me whole,” faux-Thomas said. “Then Jesus came to me in the middle of my mess and offered me something different, not asking me what I’d done, just said ‘follow me.’ I’m scared to think about what I’m going to do when he’s gone,” Thomas said, pondering Jesus crucifixion. “Who’s going to rescue me from being me.”
Mary the sister of Lazarus, portrayed by another young actor, wondered the same thing. Guilt-ridden over having doubted Jesus’ ability to raise her brother, this Mary has become anorexic. “I’ve been starving myself because I just don’t like myself very much any more,” she said. “I’m just tired of being me and I blamed Jesus when it was really me — I needed him to heal Lazarus and to heal me, too. Who will rescue me from being me?”
The struggle to do what is right in the face of sin’s temptation makes Lazarus wonder if being alive again is such a bargain, the young actor playing Jesus’ friend said. “My best intentions keep getting sabotaged. Sin keeps getting the better of me — that’s why it’s so hard being alive again,” he said.
The hard thing about living is not the dying, faux-Lazarus
said he learned from his resurrection experience. “It’s so hard to live but I’m glad to have another shot because now I won’t have to worry about who’s going to rescue me.”
