THE FAMILY I GREW UP IN was highly conflicted. You would think that, for all the fighting we did, we would have gotten good at it – or, at least, that we would have seen something constructive come out of it. But the incessant bickering never seemed to bring about change; we just grew farther and farther apart. My dad and my older brother never could seem to get along, and that fueled one quarrel after another between my parents.
It was not what you would call a peaceful environment, and so, I began to seek a means of escape. When I was about twelve years old, I got the notion that maybe religion was my “out.” My family wasn’t involved in church, so I didn’t have a clue how to begin. I found an old crucifix that my brother had brought home from somewhere, and along the way I had come into possession of a Bible. So, I took those things and I made a little altar in my room. I would open the Bible at random and read a few verses out of it. Of course, I had absolutely no idea what I was reading or how it all fit together. I would give anything if I could recover those first, uninitiated thoughts that went through my mind.
It wasn’t until later that I started going to church. I met a girl that I wanted to spend time with, and she went to church every Sunday. So, in order to be with her, I started going to church, too. Over time, of course, I began to understand the faith, and one day I acknowledged my need of a Savior and put my faith in Jesus Christ.
But the truth is: I never found the escape I was looking for. In fact, just the opposite happened. I had originally started exploring religion in hopes of finding a smooth path, a means of getting away from all the contention and discord. It makes me think of the movie, Sound of Music, when Maria comes back to the abbey after being the von Trapps’ governess for only a short time. The Reverend Mother inquires why she has returned. And Maria says, “I was frightened….. I was confused…. I’ve never felt that way before. I couldn’t stay. I knew that here I’d be away from it. I’d be safe.” To which the Reverend Mother said, “Maria, our abbey is not to be used as an escape.”
And she was right. Christianity will never provide the “out” we may be looking for. I can still remember being a student at Baylor and coming back to the dorm one day after class. I had three books in my hands – all of them required reading for an ethics course I was taking. They were Harvey Cox’s The Secular City, Joseph Fletcher’s Situation Ethics, and Thomas J. J. Altizer’s Radical Theology and the Death of God. I threw them, all three on my bed, and cried out for the recovery of a simpler faith.
But faith implies risk. Otherwise it’s not faith. And it was the risk of faith that challenged me. It still does. I wonder how it is for you. Can you imagine falling in line behind Jesus and following him, believing that the road will lead to “green pastures” and “still waters,” only to find yourself one day in “the valley of the shadow of death”? You might raise a protest: This isn’t what I signed on for! I wanted clear skies and smooth sailing, not harsh winds and choppy waters! But do you know what I have learned? Our risen Lord thrusts us into a future we’d never choose but we’d hate to lose.
Take these women, headed for Jesus’ tomb on that first Easter Sunday morning. They had bought spices, and they were going to anoint the lifeless body of Jesus The biggest problem they expected the future to bring them was – what does verse 3 say? – “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?” The only future they could conceive of was one with a dead Messiah in it.
But, of course, when they got to the tomb, the stone had already been rolled away. And when they went in to check it out, there was what Mark calls “a young man” – no doubt, an angel. And suddenly the future was beginning to take an unanticipated turn. Mark says, “They were alarmed” (v. 5). The angel, of course, told them not to be. “You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified” he said. “He has been raised; he is not here.”
I don’t think they found his words very reassuring. And when he told them to go tell the others, they went all right. But they didn’t tell anyone anything. Mark says, “Terror and amazement had seized them” (v. 8). They were afraid.
What do you think they were afraid of? Nothing in their past – that’s for sure! No, what frightened them was the future. Things had taken a strange twist into unknown regions of experience. They were now in a future they could not understand, and so what they did is, they tried to run away from it.
We might wonder what exactly it was that they feared about the future, and there seems to be a hint. The angel instructed them to “go, tell.” But how do you tell about this? It’s like the future is demanding of them a task to which they are not equal. And so, they do the only thing they know to do: they run.
Now, I want you to notice something. To this point, none of the women has seen Jesus. In fact, no mortal has. But in verse 9 we are told that “he…appeared to Mary Magdalene.” She was the first. And now here is the part I want us to see. Once she experiences the risen Lord, once she encounters Jesus, now alive, she is able to go back to the others and tell them. So verse 10: “She went out and told those who had been with him, while they were mourning and weeping.” In other words, she tells the disciples.
And what do they do? They dry their tears and lift up their voices in shouts of joy for the news that Jesus is alive! No! No, that’s not what they do. What they do is, they refuse to believe it! They are no different from the women who first discovered the empty tomb. They cannot embrace a future they cannot understand.
So, Jesus appears to two of them on a country road. They experience the presence of the risen Lord; they encounter Jesus, now alive. And they respond the same way Mary Magdalene did. They go back and tell the others. But still, the others do not believe.
In fact, Jesus appears to them a bit later, and he finds them “sitting at the table” (v. 14). The most phenomenal thing ever to happen in the history of the world has just taken place – a man who was dead has been raised to life – and how do his followers respond? They run in fear. They refuse to believe. And they collapse into passivity.
Why? What do fear, unbelief, and lethargy promise that makes them so much more appealing than the future now made possible by the resurrection? You know what I think? I think fear causes us to flee for safety. Fear is a reaction to a threat – real or perceived – and we try to put a much distance between us and the threat as possible. Running away promises security.
By the same token, unbelief offers us a way out of commitment. It promises us that we ourselves do not have to promise anything. We can keep our options open. And that’s closely related to sheer lethargy or passivity. We don’t have to believe anything. We don’t have to commit to anything. We don’t have to do anything.
But notice again how the presence of Jesus blasts all of that out of the water. When he appears to those early followers – the women and the other disciples – they stop running away from the challenge of faith, and they start running toward it. They move from unbelief to its opposite – conviction. And they forfeit passivity for engagement. We’re told in verse 20 that “they went out and proclaimed the good news everywhere” – just like Jesus commissioned them to do. They weren’t afraid to go anywhere, and they weren’t slow in the going. Not anymore.
The risen Lord thrust them into a future that they’d never chose but they’d hate to lose. Could that happen to you?
Maybe you’re here today, and the truth is: You don’t make it to church all that often. But you’re here today. And I am grateful. I love seeing you here. My prayer for you is that you will have such an encounter with the risen Lord – the Savior whose resurrection we celebrate today – that you will risk a future in which he plays the biggest role in your life. I would love to see all of us here today become a people with a vibrant faith, actively engaged in witness “everywhere,” as Mark puts it, fearful of nothing and completely dependent upon the Lord. That’s a future you’d never choose but you’d hate to lose.
I’d like to ask you to do something if you will. I’d like to ask you to make plans right now to alter your future in a very small way. I’m not asking you to make a huge change. I’m not asking you to jump all in. Nothing like that. But I would like you to consider putting a toe in the water. What I am asking you to do is: Plan now to be in church next Sunday. Here, if you can, but, if not here, then somewhere. That’s the only commitment I’m asking of you. Just go to church next week.
You could run in fear. You could opt for unbelief, maybe even put the whole thing out of mind for another year. Or you could risk an encounter with the risen Lord, who just might thrust you into a future you’d never choose but you’d hate to lose. What do you say?
