Life from Death

At one point in his Easter sermon, our senior pastor John Buchanan waded into difficult waters and connected the Easter message about death to the realities of death in our world today.

"We think we know all there is to know about death. Barbara Brown Taylor says you go to the funeral home, view the body, go home and eat fried chicken and green bean casserole with your neighbors, and get on with your life (Journal for Preachers, Easter 2008). Will Willimon says we live in a world that thinks death has the last word, a world in which we can be convinced easily that the way to deal with death is more death: lose 3,000 civilians in a terrorist attack—invade a country that had nothing to do with it, kill tens of thousands. Deal with death with more death (Thank God It’s Friday)."

I imagine that this statement might have made some people in the congregation uncomfortable. I'm glad he said it, though, because it boldly spoke of the reality of the Iraq War.

Holy Week was unique this year because it came so early in the calendar, as early as it will come for over two centuries. In Chicago, this meant that we had some snow on the ground on Easter Sunday.

Holy Week was also unique this year because it coincided with the five year anniversary of the current war in Iraq. It also marked the 4000th American death in this war. And while we spend most of our time focusing on American and Coalition casualties, the death toll for Iraqis is staggering. Just think about the almost 90,000 people who have died in Iraq during the past five years.

Dealing with death with more death.

The story of Jesus' resurrection tells us that God is in the business of bringing life from death. In the resurrection, and in the return of exiled Jews from Babylonia before that, and in the liberation of Israel from Egyptian slavery before that, we discover a powerful truth about our God: nothing is beyond God's redemption.

This is a truth that I cling to time and time again in the face of the many tragedies we face in this life.

As we look to Iraq at the beginning of year six, after celebrating the hope of Easter, we must ask ourselves: will there be life from death there too?

And if so, what role do we play in bringing it about?

(For a collection of blog posts marking the fifth anniversary of the war, see the special series on God's Politics, The Cost of War.)