God's Answer to Life's Sinkholes

“Do not be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen; he is not here.”

Mark 16:6-8

Have you ever heard of a sinkhole?  This is a hole in the ground that suddenly appears where before there was solid earth.  Well a man from Florida was driving home when a large sinkhole opened up right where he was driving.  It swallowed his car.  He didn’t get hurt but he was dazed and confused.  For a while he didn’t know where he was or what had happened to him.  He later said, ‘One moment I was driving in my neighborhood on a bright sunny day.  The next minute I was at the bottom of a deep, dark hole with the world caving in on me.’”  

We understand that experience. A husband comes home from a business trip, happy to see his family.   He has no clue that a sinkhole has opened beneath him until his wife says to him, “This isn’t working anymore. I’m not happy.  I want a divorce.”   A woman goes to her Doctor for a routine checkup.  A sinkhole appears.  We found something. You have a tumor.  Death happens that way.  You are just going about life.  The phone rings. “Dad’s gone.”  But I just talked to him last night.  “I know.  He didn’t wake up this morning.”  There are all sorts of sink holes – You lose a job.  You fail one exam and you are out of the program. The world caves in.  It’s overwhelming.  “What just happened?” you wonder.  “What’s going on?” 

I wonder if that’s how these two women felt that morning as they walked out to the tomb.  They had believed Jesus was the Messiah.   A week earlier, they had entered Jerusalem in triumph.  Three nights earlier they had celebrated Passover with Him.  Then on the way out to the Garden - the sinkhole opened.  Soldiers arrested Him. By 9 the next morning He was nailed to a cross.  By three in the afternoon he was dead and they were rushing to bury him.  Now, Sunday morning, on their way to finish the embalming, they had to be dazed and confused.  A sink hole had opened beneath them  They had to wonder, “What just happened?  How had it all gone so wrong so fast? 

Easter is God’s answer to that confusion.  On their way to the tomb, those women had no idea that yet another shock awaited them – an unexpected, logic defying, life changing shock!  Looking up, they saw that the stone had been rolled back—it was very large. And entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe, and they were alarmed.  And he said to them, “Do not be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen; he is not here. It was so unexpected.  His death was so real. to them.  They just couldn’t quite grasp what the angel has told them.  “Not here?  Risen from the dead? How? What was going on?”  So “they went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had seized them, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”  Even we who know the story so well have trouble really grasping what Easter means for us.   Sometimes the grief... the shock… the pain… the trial we face is so “in Your face” real that Easter’s answer seems hard to believe.   Yet I would tell you that in the good news of our Lord’s resurrection, here is God’s Easter Answer to our shocked and dazed question, “What’s going on?  What do these trials and struggles mean?  What is God doing?”

First, Easter assures us that even when we are disoriented by life’s crosses, God is not!  Even as life crashes down around us, and spins out of control, Christ’s resurrection assures us that God is still in control.  Though we cannot perceive His plan… He does have one.  He was working His plan all the way through.  At his birth Simeon warned Mary of the cross, á Sword will pierce your own soul.”  Jesus had told His disciples again and again, “the Son of man must suffer many things, be delivered over to sinful man, be crucified and on the third day be raised to life again.”    Confident that His Father was in control Jesus prayed in the Garden, “never the less, not my will but Thy will be done.”  His last words from the cross expressed that confidence.  “Into Thy hands I commit My Spirit.”  All of that is confirmed by the news of the angels.  “He has risen.  He is not here.”  I love a text message Ben sent me. “Dad, Kyah just gave me the best signal yet that I ain’t too terrible a dad.  She was teaching her stuffed bears to go down the slide.  ‘Don’t be afraid, she told them, ‘Don’t worry.  It’s okay.  Your daddy has you.’”  That’s God’s Easter answer.  When you find yourself at the bottom of sinkhole God speaks through the resurrection.  He says, “It’s okay.  Don’t be afraid!  Your daddy has you.”

Second, in the resurrection of Jesus God has given us a glimpse at what lies beyond life’s sinkholes.   Christ’s resurrection is God’s promise to us of the victory that He has already won.   The empty tomb is all the assurance that we need that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose... Think about it.  How is it that a man could raise his fist in triumph even as his wife… the woman he had loved for 30 years died of cancer? How could he, with tears streaming down his cheeks, shout with joy to their son, “The cancer didn’t win!  The cancer didn’t win?”  How could He believe that, when staring him the face was his wife’s lifeless body – enough evidence for most people that the cancer had won?   He and His wife knew God’s Easter answer..  They had journeyed in faith to the empty tomb.  There in Christ’s victory God had shown them their victory… the victory that He had already won over sin, over death, over cancer… over whatever sinkhole comes our way.  Because Jesus lives, we know this about all our sinkholes - that our light and momentary afflictions are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.  If Good Friday is Jesus crawling down into our hole with us, then Easter is Jesus lifting us up on His shoulders and out of that hole.  This is God’s answer to our sink holes… this great good news - “He is not here.  He is risen!  He is risen indeed!  Alleluia.  Amen.