What is life? Not just biological life, with its neurological synapses and hiccuping beats of the heart, but real life, true life, the kind of full life we know deep in the fiber of our beings that we were created to live? What is THAT and how do we begin to live it?
What's ironic for many of us is that just when we think we're basking in the fullness of life we begin to experience deep-seated doubt that perhaps we're just great pretenders, pretending to be someone we're not, pretending that the life we're living is the ultimate in satisfaction when in reality, it's not. If we're honest in these moments, we quickly realize that something is out of sorts with the world and we happen to be complicit in its disorder.
In Bartender, Dave expresses doubts about his own life - doubts about his purpose, his desires, his legacy - and offers them directly to God, the bartender. More than anything else, Dave wants to know that the life he is living is the life he was created to live - a life of generosity, not greed; a life of humility, not pride; a life of compassion, not indifference. You can sense he's wrestling with a deeper question, namely am I making a positive contribution to the future of the world? Given his history and the impact of the "industry" on his life, Dave has his doubts. Will he be punished for having too much "gold"? Will the artistic expressions of his gifts and talents be for naught? Many of us would be kidding ourselves if we don't ponder the very same things.
After some serious wrestling, Dave concludes that what he really wants is a glass of the same "wine" God "gave Jesus that set him free after 3 days in the ground." Or to use biblical language, what Dave wants is resurrection.
What makes resurrection so desirable for Dave? Perhaps it is that resurrection is the only hope for the broken, disorderly, and chaotic world we find ourselves in. The first followers of Jesus, living under an oppressive Roman Empire, held on to such a hope in the midst of the messy world they lived in, and for nearly two thousand years that hope has been passed down from generation to generation, with each one boldly declaring along with one author of the Bible that all of creation is being made new by God - the entire cosmos, including humanity, is being renewed, recreated. And it just so happens that the inauguration of God's renewal project began with the resurrection of Jesus - his historical, bodily coming back to life from the dead.
As the story goes, what started out as beautiful and harmonious has been polluted (both literally and figuratively) by sin and death. But if it's true what the first followers of Jesus believed - that in his crucifixion Jesus pardoned the world of sin and in his resurrection he overcame death - then there exists a hope for us today, not just in the future. Our hope is not in a set of principles or a doctrine of belief. Nor is it in our own good deeds. Our hope is in the living Jesus and his resurrection, because what God started with the resurrection of Jesus - namely, repairing the world (again, including humanity) to the way it was created to be - he will carry on to completion, which necessarily involves us.
In light of Jesus' resurrection - if indeed we believe it to be true - our big questions about life are shrunk down significantly. Questions such as how can I get into heaven when I die? and what good deeds can I do to earn God's favor? become secondary, if necessary at all. The greater question we're faced with is how can I participate with God right here and right now in his project of renewing the world? If it's true that one day there will be a new heaven and a new earth, then what can I do to point the world in that direction?
Given such a mission, we need to take on the resurrection life, and in order to do that, Jesus tells us that we must first let go of our former life. Or to put it bluntly, we must die to all the things in us and in the world (attitudes, thoughts, behaviors, systems) that lead us to work against God's renewal project. This list of things is nearly endless, but the acknowledgment of such things provides the only way to receive and embrace the resurrection life. So stop pleading with the bartender and don't run and hide. Instead, drink up because the resurrection life is waiting.
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