R is for R-words (words for Lent)

Whatever peculiar happiness they have, Ed has had his share of it, too, for Ed is one of those who still uses the R-word when trouble comes and our hearts and minds crave revenge, retaliation, and retribution, when only repentance would cure what ails us. We seldom want to hear that whistle blow in the midst of our cheering and screaming. Ah, but the reviling didn't begin with reactions to felled towers and middle-east wars. Three decades later, I can still hear the echoes and epithets from Egypt's fleshpots: "Gospel reductionist! Bible-doubter!"

There must have been days when Ed wondered why he hadn't stuck to his original choice of vocations. Arriving at Valparaiso University at age 16 (having finished high school in three years), he intended to prepare for medical school. But. . . [Gospel stories always have a big BUT, don't they?] It wasn't exactly a burning bush, though it might have been dropped handkerchiefs, that distracted and redirected Ed. And there was also one of those woman-at-the-well stories, specifically involving a woman in the class ahead of Ed, which meant he also had to finish college in three years, not four. But it wasn't biology and chemistry he studied so fast. Having come upon three teachers in Valparaiso's Philosophy Department, Jaroslav Pelikan, Robert Bertram, and Richard Luecke, he began to study theology, Greek, and whatever else it took to get him into that seminary down the street a ways.

Many of you know that the rest of the story, complete with all its remarkable turns and sojourns in strange lands, such as times of study in Europe with the likes of Elert and Thielicke. But the story reveals, too, that it's really true, not just in the lectionary, that the poor, the meek, the hungry, and thirsty are blessed. For one thing, that woman Ed rushed through college to marry found someone else, which meant he got to St. Louis just in time to find Marie. (Can you imagine the world without Ed and Marie?) And for another, while a student at Valparaiso, still in his teens, Ed was diagnosed with diabetes. Doctors said he might live to 50. All the more reason to live quickly!

Here's a fact that tells, in a way, the story of Ed's life. He estimates that in the 55-plus years since that diagnosis, he's had some 80,000 injections of insulin. That's a lot of needles, and a lot of piercing. It's not crucifixion, but it's closer to it than I have ever been. And it's a daily reminder of living always and only at the borderline of life and death.

Ed has lots of reasons to use the R-word, for it's not only the language of sobriety and reproof. It's also the language of homecoming. Repentance is return. It's coming home, and for this Crossings crowd that means coming to stand, sit, kneel, or lie down with one's final breaths at the cross, the place where God has joined us most fully in all of time and space. Here we know the gift of the sweet swap Ed loves to tell of, where our abandonment becomes the Christ's, and his ours. He takes our cross, and we get his. We trade deaths, and thus we exchange lives.