Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which you were indeed called in the one body.  And be thankful.

Colossians 3:15

Years ago, when I was still in seminary, I worked a part time job as a hospital chaplain in the northern suburbs of Chicago. I loved the work.  It felt like a holy privilege to get to walk alongside people through some of the darkest and most difficult days of their lives.  

One patient visit I still think about a lot was with a woman named Donna.  Donna was near the end of her life, dying of stage IV breast cancer that had metastasized to her liver.  I knew this would also be a challenging visit for me, because Donna, who was almost the exact same age my mom would have been, was dying in exactly the same way my mom did over two decades earlier.  She even had a daughter that was pretty close to my age.  And while Donna had made her peace with death and was more than ready to enter hospice care, her daughter was decidedly not ready for that.

I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate… For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do…  For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!

Romans 7:15, 19, 22-25a

Martin Luther loved this passage from Paul’s letter to the Romans – which we’ll be reading in the lectionary coming up in July.  Luther was a man tortured by his own shortcomings and failings; fearful that he would never be good enough for God, he would sometimes even leave the confessional booth only to go right back in to confess other sins that he had thought of.  He identified deeply with the struggle Paul names here: despite his best intentions and efforts to be a model Christian, Luther kept finding himself giving in to sin and brokenness.  

It was in this struggle of feeling like he would never, ever be good enough that Luther experienced the revelation of grace.  He would never be good enough to earn his own salvation.  Yet he had been redeemed by Christ’s self-giving love, once and for all time.  He had been saved by grace through faith, apart from works, for the sake of Christ.  And this revelation actually freed Luther to start becoming the better Christian he wanted to be.  His focus shifted from being directed inward toward himself to going outward toward the church and the broader world, a change that enabled him to become a powerful voice of reform in the church.  This is the legacy that we, as Lutherans, inherit.  

But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet.  They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.”  When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus.  Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?”

John 20:11-15a

Early on the morning of the very first Easter, Mary Magdalene stands, weeping, outside the empty tomb.  So much has happened – so much hopeful excitement, followed by so much sorrow, so much loss.  And now, when she has come to say her goodbyes to her friend, to her hope, it seems that the universe has added insult to injury and someone has taken his body, so that she cannot even mourn him properly.  

The worst thing imaginable had happened to Mary and the other followers of the Way – they had watched helplessly as the Roman Empire crucified their Messiah and Lord.  Their hopes for God’s reign were snuffed out.  

Yet God was not done.