Sermons and Reflections:

Easter Wednesday
April, 23, 2003
Lutheran Theological Seminary Chapel
The Rev. Dr. Philip Krey

Mark 16: 1-8

"There is no sense in trying to refine it," the colonel said. "The crueler it is, the sooner it’s over. We’re killing ‘em. Things are going well," he said. "Really well." In a sobering article in the New York Times Magazine titled "Good Kills" Peter Maass describes how at a critical bridge before Baghdad the marines disposed of the loyalists of Saddam Hussein, the self -acclaimed Saladin redivivus, with massive force whether they were attacking or running away. Thus, with cruel force, empires make examples of stubborn and recalcitrant opponents.

Tacitus, the 1st Century Roman Historian and contemporary of St. Mark, said as much in his account of the death of Jesus—The King of the Jews--and his followers from another rebellious corner of an empire. He describes the execution of Jesus at the hands of the procurator Pontius Pilate and the cruelty of the imperial policies trying to stop the spread of this evil superstition from Judah. That is, to keep it from spreading to Rome where all evils seemed to wind up. He writes, "Checked for the moment, this pernicious superstition again broke out, not only in Judaea, the source of the evil, but even in Rome, that receptacle for everything that is sordid and degrading from every quarter of the globe, which there finds a following." Paul and possibly Peter were martyred in Rome in these early persecutions.

As Peter Maass reports, after they discovered that innocent fleeing civilians were part of the carnage on the other side of the Diyala Bridge, the Colonel was impenitent but the battle hardened grunts felt pangs of guilt that they would relive for the rest of their lives. Upon close reading, historians have also concluded that the Roman Tacitus felt powerfully ambivalent about Rome’s cruelty and its aftermath. And I too, and perhaps you, read and watched the media circus now all but ended and the aftermath begun with profound ambivalence, sadness, and a sense of human tragedy. Like many Europeans and like the disciples on the road to Emmaus in the 1^st Century I had really hoped in some kind of proleptic way that conflict could be different for us at the dawning of the 21^st century. How wrong we were 1^st Century/21^st Century still caught in the weight of sin and death. With blood again on our hands our image of ourselves is less innocent. Perhaps a better image is scattered in confusion and betrayal like the disciples during the trial of Jesus. The Gospel of Mark was written for a community of believers for such a time as this.

Dear Easter people, I do not wish to spoil our bright Easter gladness, but when we confess that Christ suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried and descended into Hell, we profess a real innocent albeit definitive suffering and death, with attendant blood and screams at the hands of soldiers. The grieving was not unlike the wailing of loved ones in Iraq around the bullet-ridden civilian victims, whom the press calls collateral damage, or the tears of parents and family here at home who must commit their dear ones to the ground and under or behind real stones. Young soldiers like the Jewish Corporal that Peter Maass writes about ambushed and torn apart by Iraqi gunfire, who when the Chaplain read the Sh’ma and the 23^rd psalm, protested, "Chaplain, I’m not going to die!" And shortly after went into shock and died. When the coffin is lowered into the ground, the body is covered with earth, a large stone is rolled in front of the tomb as was true for my brother-in law a couple of weeks ago, there is a sense of finality and defeat.

On that Easter morning the women come to the tomb with spices. The soon-to-be-commissioned women of the nascent Church always ready to be there when there is grief and need. Mark hadn’t given them the buildup in his Gospel that one finds in Luke for example. On the way, they remember the large stone. They hadn’t thought of that. Thank God! What would the world do if the women of the Church would ever consider beforehand the enormity of the things they take on?

The stone had been rolled back. Jesus of Nazareth had been raised. God had acted. A journey through hell that we know all too well was ended – unique but not unlike the floodwaters that Noah endured, Abraham’s terrible test, the drowning of Jonah, the fiery trial of the three young men. God made the waters recede around the fragile ark so that doves could fly, placed a ram in the thicket, caused a great fish to swallow Jonah in the deep and spew him onto land, and walked as a fourth with the three men so that they would emerge unscathed in perfect ritual attire. Now, "It was a strange and dreadful strife. When life and death contended. The victory remained with life. The reign of death was ended." Now God raised Jesus from the dead for us. Alleluia, Christ is risen.

"They saw a young man dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. But he said to them. ‘Do not be alarmed: you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look there is the place they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee."’

Alright, here we stand with the women full of fear and struggling inarticulate before the Good News like grieving relatives at an interment –The Easter greeting rings in our ears and the flood is supposed to be over; our faith is still tested; we have one foot in and one foot out of the whale’s mouth; It’s still pretty hot here--some of us have betrayed our baptismal callings, some of us feel defeated in our ministries, some of us like the women have bravely hung in there. But you are mature believers. You can handle meat and not just milk. As the baptized you understand good killing words. You know what it is to be like the young man earlier in the Markan passion account who ran away naked leaving the linen cloth in the hands of those who demanded a witness. You can understand that we have life in the midst of death that we must ourselves be killed to have new life. The reconciling word of the Easter Gospel reaches out to Peter and to all of you.

For Lo, there sits the young man in a white linen robe like one newly baptized saying: "Do not be alarmed. Hence you are free to profess your faith in Christ Jesus, reject sin, and confess the faith of the Church. Christ is risen; your baptism is renewed. Hence, you are free to renounce all the forces of evil, the devil, and all the devil’s empty promises. Free to debate, protest or support the war in these times of test and trial; free to discuss issues of human sexuality though it may feel like it will capsize the fragile ark, the church; free to be commissioned for ministry as were the women at the tomb though the difficult tasks of ministry in your Galilee may feel like being tossed into the deep; free to go forth from this seminary with all its wondrous strengths and contradictions: at the same time biblical and confessional, interconfessional, inclusive, cross-cultural, and missional. For Christ is risen and goes there before you! Free to go in wonder, terror, and amazement and say nothing at all; for the one who raised Jesus from the dead and brings this Easter Gospel to us on this day has spoken and speaks through water, rams, whales, fire, bread, wine, the speechless women at the tomb and the whole ensemble will speak volumes through your saintly and sinful baptismal witness.

Alleluia, Christ is risen.