Let Jesus Reign

How to Preach (and Live) After Easter Amidst These Evil Times

It’s the day after Easter. We’ve just celebrated and worshiped the Risen Lord. Jesus Christ is Risen! He is risen indeed!

Meanwhile, it is Monday again. We return to our lives, our work, our routines, the chaos around us, the politics of antagonism, the powers that oppress, the sin and brokenness that plagues the land. We return to this bloody mess of a world. We have just proclaimed that the powers of sin, death and evil have been defeated in Jesus Christ. But how do we make sense of this great truth in the midst of such a broken world. How do we live in the reality of the victory of God in the face of the powers working their abject evil?

To answer this question I invoke the story of WW2 heroine Marthe Cohn.

Occupation and Liberation

Marthe Cohn, a Jewish French teenage woman, grew up in the northeastern Lorraine part of France on the Franco German border in pre-WW2 years. When the Nazi’s invaded France, and took this region over in WW2, here was a Jewish woman with her family, very vulnerable and in great danger. She tells the story, in her famous autobiography Behind Enemy Lines, of how throughout the war, she is constantly escaping Nazi capture, how she loses her sister to the Auschwitz death camp, her Dad is sent away, even her fiancée, a French resistance fighter is shot by the Germans. All around her, the world is in massive turmoil.

But finally D Day arrives June 1944. The Allies invade Normandy. Germans surrender at the shores of France and the rest of the German armies begin a slow retreat out of France. Marthe Cohn tells how she and her mom sat around every evening listening to their radio hearing the news of liberation happening as the Germans retreat, anticipating the liberation of their own town. Paris is liberated and the whole city of Paris marches through the boulevards singing. Italy to the south gets liberated. D-Day had happened. The decisive battle had been won, yet outside of Marthe’s door German soldiers still stand guard.

No one doubted, including the Germans, that the war for all intents and purposes is over. But skirmishes still exist everywhere. Even in the liberated territories, there were German snipers still hiding and shooting people in the streets. Indeed there were whole towns in France who had not yet heard the Germans were defeated, and they were still being held by Germans. There were battles that continued right until Berlin was taken by the Allies, and Germany surrendered on V(E)-Day May 8, 1945. From D-Day to V-Day there were many people and villages in Europe still living under the assumptions that the Nazis still ruled.

Between D-Day and V-Day

Following the great Oscar Cullman, and his classic book Christ and Time, it is this existence, somewhere between D-Day and V-Day, that describes the Christian’s cultural existence after Easter. We live in the tension between the decisive victory of God in the resurrected Christ (and his coronation as Lord to come 40 days later with the ascension) and the completion of Christ’s reign over the whole earth leading to His final return.

Marthe Cohn lived in one of the last German held territories after D-Day near the Siegfried line. When France was liberated, Marthe, now living on the liberated side of the Siegfried line, would pose as a German nurse (she was blonde and spoke perfect Deutsche), and cross the Siegfried line, into the still German-held territories of Germany, and work among the hospitals, learn valuable information, where the armies were, what their condition was, and sneak back and tell the allies, who were preparing to invade across the Siegfried line.

In one particular incident, Marthe famously discovered a whole section of the Siegfried line had already been abandoned by the Germans. The allies were preparing an invasion, anticipating huge costs and yet the battle had already been won. They just needed to walk across and stake a flag and claim it as Allied captured territory. Marthe knew the ironies of living in the nuances between D-Day and V-Day.

Like those days between D-day and V-day, we Christians are tempted to live as if we are still under enemy rule, even though we have been liberated. In these days after Easter, we are tempted to celebrate Easter, and then go back to living as if nothing happened on Easter, as if indeed sin, death, and evil have not already been defeated. It seems more than ever, we are surrounded by war, horrific evils, evil dictators, and a broken and evil world. Strangely, we may find ourselves living around Christians who are under the false illusion that the battle against evil is being won by an election. That it will be through national politics that God shall save the world. All around us, there seems a complete lack of any awareness that another Lord reigns over us and the world NOW, that He rules through a different power than hate and coercion, that He is actually taking the world to its fulfillment, and His name is Jesus. The only question is, will we participate? Will we join in, like Marthe, to tell the good news, refuse to cooperate with evil, cooperate with Jesus, and all He is doing to heal and renew the world?

On this Monday, as we enter again into the struggles of our times, we are tempted to move on after Easter and say the Resurrection is a great idea, a very inspiring one. Yes, “Jesus Christ is Risen!”, but now we have to get back to living in “the real world.” But I say “no,” we shall not leave this proclamation behind as we go back. The decisive victory over death, evil and sin has been won. We must now live into this new reality, as Marthe did, living between the times, between D-Day and V-day.

Life After Liberation

The Apostle Paul, in his great gospel text of 1 Cor 15: 19-25 is speaking against any such diminishing of the power of the Resurrection. He announces that Jesus Christ in fact … (vs 20) has risen. He is the first fruits of those who have died. The liberation has begun. Jesus is the first of many who shall be liberated from the fear of death, the rule of sin and evil.

But never does Paul deny that there is more struggle and skirmishes to go before the final V-Day. And so in verse 25, he states For he must reign until all enemies have been made subject. God in Christ is reigning. Christ has risen and has ascended to the right hand. And yet rebellion continues. God in Christ rules as the lamb who was slain slowly allowing time and space for the world to come to Him. Meanwhile He works in every struggle, skirmish and ongoing suffering to make all things subject. We are to be present to His work and His presence in all these processes so as to witness and participate in His reign being established one territory at a time, one after another, breaking through one Siegfried line after another until the whole world is reconciled to Himself.

And so, against the false prophets, the declarers of another Savior, against false idolatries of state power in the name of God, we proclaim today with all those who will join: JESUS CHRIST IS THE ONE RISEN LORD. Let Him rule … over all things, one territory at a time!

Let Him rule in every part of our lives, our neighborhoods, our relationships. As we engage the evil in the world, let us stand with the marginalized, protect the brutalized, demonstrate against the deceptions, lies, and racialized practices of the state. Let us refuse to participate in evil. Let us speak truth sincerely person to person wherever we are. Let his Lordship by the Spirit manifest his rule in our lives, our relationships, our families, our churches. Let us be His people, present to His presence, until the false rulers be laid low. When we feel the most surrounded, let us peacefully give witness to another power, the one Lord, one faith, one baptism.

JESUS CHRIST HAS RISEN – THE LIBERATION HAS BEGUN … NOW LET US PARTICIPATE

I’ll be back in a few weeks to finish up my series on “Bonhoeffer- A Person for our Times - with 2 more posts to go. Subscribe for free to be notified when they hit (normally every couple of weeks).