The Wrangell sentinel., 1940-03-22
Al EASTER MESSAGE By the Rev. Arnold Krone

As we observe the ancient eere- monies Of Holy Week, the experience of two thousand years of Christen- dom. becomes in a peculiar sense our own. The life and death of our Lord the growth of the early Christian Church, the lives of martyrs and saints in every age, and the pulsing heartbeat Of the Body of Christ in our own day become a part of the mystical experience of the indiyid- ual Christian as he follows his Lord along the way of sorrows that leads to the Cross on Calvary.
 Il is an amazing thing, when one steps to think about it, that the cru cifix. the visual reproduction of our Lords execution as a condemned criminal, should have become the central symbol of the Christian Faith What other religion has dared to adopt as it's banner such a strange device? How can this instrument Of death and degradation symbolize a religion of life and liberty?
 If the Crucifixion were the end of the story, the erueifix would never have been adopted as a Christian symbol Indeed, if there had been no sequel to the death of Jesus Christ on the Cross there would have been no Christianity. If Jesus had been but a Jewish teacher and prophet, even the greatest of the Tav,;-A ,~apb.sg LIa onuId net bava so fired the hearts of millions of fol- lowers in ages to come that they literally turned the world upside down in His name.
 But the Cross was not the end. It was but the gateway to the empty tomb and the glory of the Risen Christ. When on Easter Day We shout the glad words CHRIST IS RISEN and hear the joyous response, HE IS RISEN INDEED, we are pro- claiming the very keynote of our holy religion. Make no doubt about 1.-the Resurrection is vital to the Christian Faith. St. Paul had no question on that score. He did not hesitate to say that if the Resurrec- ton was not true the Faith built upon it was a false one. The Chris tian Faith cannot exist apart from the great and glorious fact of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ
 We here much these days about the social gospel We read articles and we hear sermons about the Church's responsibility for society and social aspects of our Faith. The world about Us is becoming increas- ingly aware of a corporate social responsibility. We see 1t in our laws, our politics, and our business rela- tionships. Holy Week and Easter call us back to a sense of our per- sonal responsibility. Sin is an essen tially personal matter. There is no such thing as 'The Sins of Society apart from the sins of the individual who constitute society. There is no such thing as the immortality of na- tions or of social systems. apart from the immortality of the indiY iduals by which they are fashioned.
 It was the sins of individual men and women that nailed Christ to the Cross As He suffered there He bore upon His shoulders the weight of your sins and mine as we'll as those of past generations and of ages yet unborn. It was sinful man that nail ed the Son of God to the Cross. Is it not always SO? Does not man left to his own devices always cruelty the best that is within him? We create noble works of art and arch literature only to destroy them later in the holocaust of war. That is but an example on large scale of a process that is constantly going on in individual lives.
 But when God enters the individ- ual life the situation is different. It was so in Palestine that first Holy Week and Easter. When Jesus hung upon the Cross virtually all of His disciples abandoned Him. Even Peter denied Him. Only the Blessed Moth CT, the other sorrowing women, and the Beloved Disciple stood by to wit ness the end.
 Yet three days later the Son of God, having overcome death, rose and appeared to His disciples, filling them with joy and inspiring in them a faith and zeal that were to reyolutionize the world. Death and sinswere conquered once and for all in that glorious triumph of the Ris- eR Lord; sorrow and suffering were transmitted into the joy that no man can take away.
 Here is the lesson that we need tremendously today The whole world is going through Holy Week an agony of suffering and change. 0la la nd ma rkr arc .I,a asi nnr- a Huav 0ld