Risen, but Still Rising

2 Thessalonians 2:1-2; Mark 16:1-8

Robert M. Watkins

Easter

 

I would guess that everyone knows what it’s like to run out of time. We have all felt that helpless lurch inside when we look at the clock, see what’s left to be done, re-check the deadline, and know without a doubt that there is no possibility of making things work.

 

Once while I lived in Charlotte, I left my house in plenty of time to make a meeting at church. I made it about two miles from home and then traffic came to a stop—not creeping, not inching along, STOPPED. I sat for a few minutes, watching the clock race along. My cushion was rapidly disappearing. Finally, I whipped around in a slightly legal u-turn and began to seek cut throughs to the church. Apparently, a lot of people had had the same idea—the back streets were every bit as clogged as the main ones. I watched the clock draw closer to the meeting time. I found myself in an unfamiliar cul-de-sac. I had to turn back around and march toward home. Panic began to set in. I was driving frantically east and west when what I needed more than anything was a route north. Finally, a road popped open. I raced up the street. I hit the tail end of still another traffic snarl. I inched forward and the clock ran at full tilt. Suddenly, zip, there it went, the hour of the meeting slipped by and I was still twenty minutes from church. There was nothing I could do.

 

Such things happen all the time, but they always seem to occur at the most inopportune times. When we really, absolutely, positively need to be somewhere on time, something happens. Time flies and we don’t! A loved one sits stranded at the airport; a client sits in a meeting with no meeting; a friend occupies a booth in a restaurant for an unplanned dinner for one. Meanwhile, we fret, fume, and curse the inexorable passage of time.

 

Have you ever felt that way in terms of faith? That time is racing out of control and we still haven’t gotten where we want to be?

 

It happens a lot when we suddenly have life’s frailty presented to us, when we suddenly confront the fact that we are finite with a limited number of days, and when we know there is still a long way for us to go to number ourselves among the truly faithful. We begin to feel like we’re stuck in traffic, getting nowhere, and that God is beginning to wonder where we are. We’re running out of time and there’s nothing we can do.

 

Well, stop a second. It’s Easter. Stop and consider something with me.

Easter is God’s own miracle. A tomb stands empty. A grave is suddenly vacant.

 

There is nothing more final than leaving a funeral. As the last car pulls away from the cemetery, there is no question that all is finished. There is nothing more to be said and there is nothing more that will happen. It’s all over. The clock has stopped.

 

Not on Easter morning. The women come to tend the tomb. They come with a sense of overpowering defeat and loss. They had been there when the stone was rolled across the mouth of the tomb. Can we really imagine what it felt like when they heard the dull thud of stone fitting into stone, locking the tomb and sealing it? Can we fall into the depth of that abyss? They come with that thud still pounding through their souls. They come with that thud still drumming their steps as they walk to the cemetery. They come not really wanting to come—who would? But then the tomb is open. The tomb is open and it is empty! Had there been one, a clock would have suddenly sprung back to life, numbers rolling again.

 

The last word had not been spoken. Something else was happening.

 

Jesus was not there, he was raised.

 

Think for a moment about any utter finality that you can think of—think about just how final that moment felt; think of the absolute certainty that there would be no more moments, ever. Now imagine that it suddenly roars back into being.

 

A man named Fred had a 1951 Chevy truck parked by a back fence at his home. It had sat there since 1969, the last time his son drove it. The son had died tragically that year and Fred had never had the heart to move the truck. It simply brought too many memories to mind. So, the truck sat. Weeds grew under it and vines wove through it. At one point, a fox nested in the front seat.  The old truck just sat there and deteriorated, a symbol of loss and its finality. Well, a few years after his son’s death, Fred started mentoring boys in the community. One of them was a natural-born mechanic who loved to tinker with stuff. He looked longingly at the truck and wanted to mess with it, but Fred always demurred. Then, one day, as the boy was about to embark on being a young man and head for college, a dream that he really had no business realizing, Fred decided to let him have a go at the old truck. It had been there twenty years by then. The boy started by clearing out all of the refuse that had accumulated in and around it. He drained the gas tank and emptied the oil pan. He found that the engine had endured very little damage. He replaced the spark plugs and retooled pieces and bits of the inner machinery. Then came a fateful morning when he decided to start it up. Fred was beside himself. On the one hand, he was ecstatic that the boy had found a labor of love in the old truck, but on the other hand, Fred was terrified about that truck coming back to life. He wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to re-confront all those now still memories of his own son. The scars had healed.

 

Thinking about that gives us a path into the women at the tomb. Jesus was not there, he was raised, but what did that mean? New hope or a horror worthy of Edgar Allen Poe?

 

We all want more time to work things out the way they need to be worked out, but do we really want to do that work when it presents itself? How many times have we asked for the time to reconcile with someone we know we’ve hurt, but should that opportunity present itself, how many of us would dread the actual meeting to get it done? Too many ghosts and spirits might be afoot.

 

A friend of mine in college was a gifted miler. He could run the mile with the efficiency and ease with which most of us run to the kitchen for a snack. His senior year, he blew out a knee in a freak accident getting out of bed. It killed him not to run. He decided to undergo ACL surgery and then waited out the recovery itching to run again. Then, as the knee strengthened, the doctor told him about the risks of resuming running, especially the sort of running he would need to do to get anywhere near his old form. The realization that there was significant pain ahead—not the kind a couple Advil knock out, but the excruciating pain of retooling a joint—suddenly made him wonder if it was worth it. Days began to go by and he still didn’t run. There just didn’t seem to be the time. Other things began to become too important to set aside. But we all knew the truth and he did, too—that pain was too real to take on.

 

It happens in all sorts of arenas of life. We know what needs to be done and what can be done, but we’re not sure we want to face the ordeal of making it so.

 

Easter speaks to that, as well. Mark’s version of the story is particularly powerful in this regard. He will not tell us what the women did after they fled the tomb. He leaves the story hanging. What happened next? Here, Paul intervenes as he writes to the Thessalonians—time will tell. Easter tells us that there will always be time. With God, there will never be that horrible moment of realizing the hour is gone while we sit stuck. With God, there is always a new day, another day, the sun will reappear. God will wait for us, eternally. Moreover, Easter tells us that God will be with us to hold us up and give us the strength and power to see through whatever we need to see through. Death could not hold Christ in the tomb, neither will death, nor its compatriots, fear and despair, hold us.

There is still time. There will always be time, even time to deal with demons like pain, fear, and doubt. There will always be time to heal, no matter how long it takes to get back into the game.

 

Praise be to God.

 

Amen.