Duane Larson, President
Wartburg Theological Seminary
May 14, 2010 

Witnessing to Resurrection

We pray today for the healing of the nations, as we have prayed in this holy place on Fridays after Fridays and innumerable days in between.  Truth to tell, it is often easier to pray for the healing of the nations than to pray for healing between one’s self and one’s neighbor. Perhaps especially in a school, it is easier to think about and pray over abstractions. Abstracted conflict between nations—or however one would label large groups of people—does not engage our visceral passions as deeply as conflicts among neighbors that make our faces flush and our hearts race. So it is easier, and probably less faithful, to pray without faces.

Of course, for real healing to come between and among the nations, there must come the real healing between individuals, their associations and their societies that is both a bottom-up and a top-down act. Thinking big and working small go hand in glove. Like politics, all prayer is local. And so in our Friday and daily discipline of praying for the nations we at the least hold quietly the faces and names of individual people in our hearts and minds. The demand on the Christian to love and care for particular faces is harder than loving “in principle” those we cannot see.

That means that peacemaking is really hard.  That means that healing is a gift from God, if not an outright miracle, because we individual people—even we individual Christians—get in the way of the healing for which we ask.

It is the same in witnessing to the resurrection, which I have been asked to do this morning as my last public presidential word in Loehe Chapel. It is really hard, if not impossible, to witness to the resurrection for two reasons. First, I cannot testify to the resurrection except by referring to my own experience. I cannot witness to resurrection without resort to my own narcissism, my own construal of my relationship between me, God, and neighbor. Just as we should be suspicious of academics who cite their own work far more than other authorities, thus showing their disinclination toward real conversation, so also all of you should suspect my own witness to resurrection when the sources are the stuff only of my own life. And about other’s lives, who am I to say?

But the second reason why it is difficult to witness to the resurrection is because of the almost inevitable category mistake we make when we so testify. Bugs becoming butterflies may be new life, but the butterfly is still a bug and is not resurrected from the dead. I have gone through the long and lonely cocoon of cancer and emotional and literal heartache. Since then I know love and health again, but, to the dismay of some and joy for some others, I am still Duane and I am not resurrected from the dead. We each have had our times of the worst and most private challenge and sadness. We each have come to know joy again after such times, which fact may be what holds some of us together in spite of present trouble.  But not one of us has been raised from the dead. It is not something we can know. Not even Lazarus knew resurrection when he was brought back. Please pardon my seeming irreverence. But his was a resuscitation, when Jesus uniquely told the others, “clear!”.  Indeed, when I am raised finally and get to meet Laz, I will not be surprised to learn that his first thoughts were, “Oh crap. I’m back. Does this mean I have to die again!?”

So what of my life, and all other lives so dearly wrapped in Christ’s new clothes? Resilient?  That word will work. New life? Sure. Resurrection? Far from it.  Resurrection is difficult to witness to directly because it is eschatological. It is a whole different category and dimension, the kind that obtains when we say that Jesus has risen and ascended to God’s right hand and to all around us. I believe that the real “me” will live joyfully with God and you. But more about resurrection I cannot say beyond speculation. Except perhaps to say, like the man blind from birth who was healed by Jesus, “All I know is that once I was blind. Now I can see (at least better). And it happened when this guy put some mud in my eyes.” And even when I say that, I must confess that my egotism, if not narcissism, likely will get in somebody’s way.

Still, I witness. I confess. I believe in the resurrection of the body. When I say that, with any version of the creed, I also hit on one thing really tangible and important that supports my belief in the resurrection. It is the fact that in the creeds the forgiveness of sins is linked directly with the resurrection of the dead.   “We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. We look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come,” or, “I believe in…the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.” These are not just unrelated bullet points. They are related implications. “Forgiveness of sins” prefigures resurrection, and the promise of the resurrection makes it possible for the forgiveness of sins to be real, now, or for however long in God’s time it will take for that to happen.

Why am I making such a seemingly complicated point? Because this is where my life and our life together—and it will remain together!—come together in the most personal way as testimony to the resurrection. This point is the very ground, maybe the only ground, by which we can even pray better than abstractly for the healing of the nations.  The point is this: I believe in the forgiveness of sins because I believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the coming resurrection of the dead.  This event of forgiveness I am confident in having seen directly. It happens and it will yet happen, however long it takes, here. And it is not, as they say, “natural.”

Forgiveness is a miracle related to the miracle of resurrection.  Individuals, families, tribes, nations: all are premised on identities that must be over and against others, and so depend on alienation and injustice for their narcissism writ large to prevail. But I have seen repentance and forgiveness. More often I have seen forgiveness entice repentance. I have seen and received it throughout my life.  And when I am able to rest and reflect on my life here at Wartburg, I expect I will claim this as a most poignant time of witness to forgiveness for all my life.

We’ve lived, prayed, played and worked closely. That is what Wartburg does under Christ’s Spirit. That is what makes it utterly unique and critical to the future of the church and world. And when people live, pray, play and work together closely, edges will cut and differences healthy or otherwise will offend.  I need not name events or names now. You surely can name your own times of offense and reconciliation. Right now I know that I am sorry for all my offenses, that I have been forgiven by some whom I have offended, that I have forgiven others their offenses, that where reconciliation is slow in coming that it will come nevertheless in God’s good time, and, perhaps most importantly, that I have forgiven God’s offenses to me throughout my own life, for they have become occasions of better self- and other-understanding and they have become gifts of knowing deeper the love of God. I do not believe any of this would be possible unless Jesus is raised from the dead. Only because Jesus is risen can I believe; only because he reigns with his love can forgiveness happen.

I so pray that each of you will live, pray, play and work ever deeper into that love. For me to have had this time with you is nothing less than blessing, honoring, and life-giving. I will cherish it always. Only because of what God has done in you and with us all in our life together, am I ready to receive what God offers next. What will that be? I do not really know. In a certain blessed way, I do not really care. New life, not yet resurrection, may be as a pastor in a congregation or as a teacher again in a classroom. Maybe some of us will even get to work together in a congregation. After all, a couple of you have asked already whether you might be a Wartburg intern with me! That would be interesting. And I do expect to remain connected to our vocation of formation. I will share that I had a dream that was both funny and disturbing. In it I turned out to be the chairperson of the Board of Directors of Luther Seminary. I do not believe that would equal resurrection. I do believe I will connect to theological education in other ways.

So I do not know what I will do, yet, other than receiving my life partner, loving her, and taking rest before the next thing. Whatever that thing is, it will include what I have learned again here. Because forgiveness is real and will be real here and throughout the depth and breadth of God’s reign, I believe in the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. And because we believe in that and that we are dedicated to the life now that resurrection intends for us, we will be a forgiving people, no matter how difficult the task. And because we can believe in that, we are ready and able to pray for the healing of the nations. May it always be so for and with Wartburg Seminary, wherever and however far our members are sent.