O is for "open tomb," "open living"(words for Easter)

So for now, Christ has our death. We have his life. Which allows us, if you'll permit me to switch gospel stories for just a moment, to live in that strangely comic scene at the end of Luke's passion narrative when the crucified guys out there on Golgotha strike up a conversation about their future plans. Think of the soldiers listening to this: "Hey you, with that 'king' sign above your head, remember me with some kind of job when you come into your power."

"Sure," the other answers. "You and me, friend. We'll do our thing in Paradise."

That's the church, or my favorite picture of it. A bunch of crucified folks hanging around making plans, thinking about their next job. I see Ed in that picture, with those 80,000 holes in his limbs and his side, and the rest of you with holes in your hearts, your strength, your courage, with gashes torn through your good humor and wounds in your integrity. There is your home, too, in the company of the crucified. So repent, and believe the gospel. That is your place. Christ's life is yours.

Which leads us to the last two R-words in the gospel lesson. Re-joice, and be glad. Well, we're busy as can be at that right now. It's why we came here, to rejoice.

And Re-ward. What is our reward? I'll speak personally for moment. I don't dare to speak for all of you about the experience of the past. It took me a long, long time to discern the blessing and reward I'd received for being in this particular company of those in the church body I trained to serve. For many years I grieved over all I thought I'd lost when that church body disintegrated and I could see my life would not go as I'd once dreamed. But over these past few years, oddly enough as we've gathered to do such things as look backwards, or bury Bob Bertram, John Tietjen, Sam Roth, and David Truemper, it's dawned on me that the reward for all the piercing and reviling and ugliness that Christians found ways to do to each other, if we can also find ways to repent of it all, happens right here, in this company. Look around. See whom we get to go through life with! I discover repeatedly at all those funerals that my church [my church?] doesn't meet in one place very often, but when it does, "Wow!" There is so much for which to rejoice and give thanks, such amazing reward in your company, your presence.

So, dear Ed, you who have been teacher, friend, mentor, and prophet to so many of us, a husband to one, dad and grandpa to a few, we give thanks with you for this day and for all the years that God has given you, from the Illinois farm years to the many stints as a manna-plucking teacher you've spent as your vocation all through the wildernesses of the world in the last decade.

Buried, blessed, and edified. It's a way to talk about all of us, really. But today we've come here especially to bury Ed, in Christ's baptism and in our embrace as Christ's body. We've come to bless Ed, and with that blessing to send him into whatever additional years God gives to him and to us in his company. And we come to give thanks for all the ways this teacher of the church has Ed-ified so many of us so that we, too, might remember that most promising of R-words, and know our way home to the cross.

Fred Niedner