“You Won’t Find Him in There”

Mark 16:1-8

Easter Homily

Some old but still relevant advice: “Don’t sweat the small stuff; and it’s all small stuff.” With the first half of that I heartily agree. Contrary to the second half, there are things in life important enough to sweat. Last week, as he was dealing with some sort of administrative foul-up on the part of someone else, I overheard Paul saying, “Sometimes it’s just too hard not to sweat the hard stuff.” I have his permission to share that, by the way.

Several years ago during my Church Redevelopment Pastor training the following phrase was repeated again and again: “Let the main thing be the main thing.” In other words don’t let all the small stuff cause you to lose focus on what really matters. Or as someone else so well put it, “Don’t be overwhelmed by the tyranny of the urgent.” A lot of the small stuff in life and in ministry has a way of taking on a sense of urgency. Supporting our families can cause us to lose touch with our families. Church work can, and often does, get in the way of God’s work. Over and over again we will give into the temptation to sweat the small stuff.

Even today. This has been a busy service, chock full of important stuff. It has been good to be part of carrying out and celebrating all that important stuff. But now comes the MAIN THING, the proclamation of the Gospel, specifically the Good News of our Lord’s resurrection.

Years ago there was a book titled What Do You Say after You Say Hello. A yearly issue for this and every other preacher of the Gospel on Easter Sunday is what do you say after saying the Lord is risen. That is the MAIN THING for today. All else pales in comparison to it. The Lord is risen. He is risen indeed. On the third day rose again from the dead. That’s absolutely the “goodest” piece of the Good News. Reality is that if there had been no resurrection there would be no Easter – there would be no church – there would be no hope.

So let me say it again: The Lord is risen. He is risen indeed. The tomb was empty that first Easter morning. God’s messenger said to the perplexed women who had looked within it, “You won’t find him in there. Stop looking for the living among the dead. He ain’t there. Deal with it.” Deal with the awesome, frightening, overwhelming reality of resurrection. Stop grieving and start celebrating. Let the MAIN THING be the MAIN THING. Don’t focus on what if’s and maybes. The Lord is risen. He is risen indeed.

During this past week I found it hard to focus on resurrection, to let the MAIN THING be the MAIN THING. As is true in the life of any pastor, especially during Holy Week, it’s not always easy to differentiate between church work and God’s work. There was important stuff like bulletins, services, and sermons that needed to be addressed. There was the necessary administrivia that must be dealt with in any church office. This year there was even the necessary evil of preparing for, moderating, and debriefing after a Session meeting. There was a lot of small stuff to sweat. Important stuff, no doubt, the means to the end of letting the MAIN THING be the MAIN THING.

But that’s not where I lost focus. I got overly caught up in some issues that carry with them some pretty heavy emotional and spiritual baggage. I found myself obsessing about Grace being a truly multicultural congregation rather than simply being just one more congregation containing several different, separate but equal, cultures. That led to obsessing about my own abilities to be a truly multicultural pastor. This, as often happens with me, led to scary fantasies about major conflicts in the church and everything falling apart because I didn’t have the tools I needed to keep things running smoothly.

Fortunately some people who loved me got me to step back and deal with reality, to remember that what Grace does or doesn’t become is ultimately in God’s hands not mine, to take a deep breath and refocus on those things that really matter. In the middle of all this some words of Max Lucado literally jumped off the page and into my heart. In discussing the prayer life of our Lord Pastor Lucado wrote, “… he lifted his head out of the confusion of earth long enough to hear the solution of heaven.”

In my case long enough to be reminded of that MAIN THING that must always be the MAIN THING. The Good News about Jesus. The Gospel of salvation. Our Lord’s atoning sacrifice on a cross. The glorious triumph of life, light, and goodness over death, darkness, and evil that was our Lord’s resurrection. That didn’t make those questions that were troubling me go away. It simply put them in their proper perspective: important things, things probably worth sweating, but not last week and not today.

I was also reminded that as a Christian I am one of God’s resurrection people. No matter what happens, in time there will be resurrection and redemption. I will die. In Christ I will never be destroyed. I will fail. In Christ I will never be a failure. I will have moments of anxiety and despair. In Christ I will not be ruled by them. Dwelling within me and every Christian is that power by which Jesus was raised from the dead. God is by my side. Our risen Savior has my back.

And forever and always I have the comfort of Scripture, especially those words from I Corinthians that served as this morning’s Affirmation of Faith: “For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised again on the third day in accordance with Scriptures…” And those words spoken to those startled and confused women as they stood at the mouth of Jesus’ tomb that first Easter morning, “You won’t find him in there.”

The Lord is risen. He is risen indeed. That is the MAIN THING that must always be the MAIN THING. Amen.