The Future as a Friend
Mark 16: 1-8
March 31, 1991
Kierkegaard, the great Danish philosopher, was once asked to define anxiety. Like a guard put it very simply, anxiety is the next day.
For Kierkegaard, the future was the great unknown; the next day was the scary part of existence. The past was over, the present could be managed, but the future, the next day, was the source of our greatest anxieties. Here is where our nightmares and our malignant fantasies begin. Here is where I’ve desperately held on to whatever seems good in the present and become paralyzed when we contemplate the future.
Do you agree with Kierkegaard? Does this not yet, old fears for you? Would you define anxiety as the next day?
The disciples of Jesus certainly found this to be true. Since Friday, their anxiety had risen 100%. They had invested their dreams in a young man called Jesus of Nazareth. Expectations of every sort had been attached to the Carpenter of Galilee, but their illusions had been shattered on Friday. Their master, their teacher, their inspiration had been snatched away on that fateful day.
If any of them could have written a line at the foot of the cross, it would have been the words, life isn’t fair! It isn’t fair that someone should die abruptly and unjustly. It isn’t fair that goodness is on the scaffold and evil sits on the throne. And its life isn’t fair. in the present, you can just imagine what they thought the next day would hold. You know about those feelings, don’t you?
Well, that’s how the first Easter morning started. Despair, sadness, and aching loss, a feeling that tomorrow will probably be worse than today. A sense that life isn’t fair and never will be.
But then some friends of Jesus arrived at the tomb, and things were not the way they had expected. Someone was standing in the tomb and told them, guess what, if you’re looking for Jesus, he is not here. He is risen. He is back at work in the world. Go tell his disciples that Jesus will be with them in the next day.
Now that’s quite a message. What the women learned, that Easter morning, was that the love of God continues, and that it isn’t fair are not the last words. The future can be friendly. The next day need not be an enemy. The great not yet can be filled with hope and promise.
Could it be true? Is it really true that God’s love, God’s presence, and God’s goodness will continue? Is it really true that I can trust my future to God? I find it hard to believe, but that’s the message of Easter. That God goes before us into the next day and the future can be friendly.
It is precisely that message which allows us to sit loose on life, good to put aside our anxiety over the next day period, to be able to lose some battles and not yet get bogged down in despair. Life isn’t fair, but the love of God continues, and this enables us to laugh, even through our tears. The future is friendly with the presence of the risen Lord.
At Easter, I usually look for some resurrection experience that illuminates this cataclysmic message. Several years ago, a friend shared a small incident that was an acted-out parable of the Easter message.
My friend was walking along the street in front of a Community Center. The circus had just finished, and there were a bunch of children waiting for the light to change. Each child was clutching tightly a gaily colored balloon. As my friend watched, the string of a red balloon slipped through the fingers of a four-year-old and drifted towards the clouds. The little boy’s face curled up in despair, and he began to cry as if his heart were broken and would never be healed.
But then, my friend said, the Easter message got acted out. It didn’t happen inside an empty tomb. You’ve occurred downtown, outside the Community Center. A girl standing about 3 feet away from the dejected little boy caught his eye and opened her small fist and released her own balloon as if to say it’s all right. The future can be bright even without a balloon. And here’s where there was a small Easter miracle. Within seconds, four or five more balloons were soaring upward, the little boy, tears still glistening on his cheek, stood tall amongst those other children and laughed and laughed and lived.
Through our tears, we can laugh. The miracle of Easter is that the future is friendly. And nothing we can do, nothing that has been done, will separate us from God. Jesus is risen and goes before us into the next day.
Amen