Timothy J. Clarke - The Blessing of His Absence

I know this isn’t traditional, but work with me. What’s amazing, what grips us in this moment this morning, and in the context of the text we’re looking at, is that on that morning—that first resurrection morning, that first Easter Sunday morning—His presence was a blessing, but so was His absence. Yes, we always get excited when He’s present, but on that morning, it wasn’t His presence that was the blessing; it was His absence. You don’t believe me, do you? Kim Moseley Watson, look at the text, verse 6. About midway through the text, there it is—about midway; I guess that would be the C clause of verse 6. Here it is: He is not here. Y’all missed it! Yeah, that’s all I got. That’s all she wrote; the pencil broke. That’s it. That one statement, that one line, C clause, verse 6: He is not here. I’m absent.

Okay, let me track this. He’s not where we left Him, not where we put Him, not where we last saw Him. I feel this really good now! Not where we expected Him to be. We got up this morning; we came in the dark to anoint His body. We expected His remains to be present. Hey y’all, and He is absent. He’s not accounted for, and the angel simply says, «He is not here.» Sister Melanie, I know what that’s like. There have been some times in your past when I felt I heard somebody say, «He is not here» in my pain, in my grief, in my sorrow. There have been moments when I felt like those women at the tomb must have felt: «What do you mean He’s not here? We left Him here! We put Him here! We expected Him to be here!» And then comes the word of this glorious disappointment: «He is not here,» and His absence is a blessing.

I know you don’t believe it. I know you’ve been upset with God since you got sheltered in place. You’ve been fussing and fuming and fighting ever since, saying, «You can’t go out, can’t go to the restaurant, can’t go to the movie, can’t go here…» Can you be as angry and upset as Geneva? But I came to tell somebody tonight, today: calm down; it’s going to be all right! Because even in His absence, Denis Gowdy, there’s a blessing. What is it? I know you’re wondering. I know Deacon Cox is wondering, «What in the world is Pastor preaching about? He must be hot in that robe and delirious!» Nah, I’m not really hot. My grandson is coming today, and he said, «Grandpa, why are you wearing that robe?» He said, «You gotta be hot.» I said, «No, I’m a preacher. The Holy Ghost keeps me cool.» And then I told him, «Now, plug, when you take over, you’ve gotta keep the tradition alive, and every now and then, you put on a robe and just say, ‘I know y’all are wondering why I’ve got this on. I’m doing this for my grandpa. If he were here, he’d have it on.’»

But I want y’all to know that even in this robe today, I want to confess and challenge us that we must learn how to embrace the blessing of His absence. He is not here! We love it, LaShonda; we love it, Nina; we love it, Deacon Cox. We love it when He is here! But what do we do? How do we handle those moments in our lives, Herschel and Linda Cray, brother and sister Elliott, Trusteer, sister Elliott? What do we do, Minister Gerry, in those moments when the word that comes to us from eternity and from our own existential experience is: He’s not here?

Well, here’s the question, and we’ll go, because I’ve never had these preachers calling me, texting me today about how long I preach. Here’s the first one, Lawrence Calloway: there’s a blessing in His absence. Here’s why: because, first and foremost, maybe His absence is a sign that death does not win. In His death, praise team, you’re helping me— in His death and in His resurrection, Jesus declares from an empty grave that death does not have the final word! Paul says that death reigned over there in 1 Corinthians; that death reigned from Adam up until… I want to shout, boy, I tell you! I want somebody to get behind the organ, but we’re not going to do that. But here it is: death reigned from Adam until… and the until was when it ran into Jesus! The moment death ran into Jesus, the moment it had reigned, Adam and Eve had died, Lot had died—come on, y’all aren’t helping me here—Abraham and Moses, Joshua had died, Miriam had died, all of them had died: David, Joseph, Mary and Martha, and Lazarus— all of them had died. But when death ran into Jesus, that’s when death met its match! The fact that Jesus was not there is a blessing because it tells me that death does not have the final word! Yesterday, we sent Trustee Chairman Emeritus Willie League to his home, and I thought as I watched his body, his remains, roll down the aisle that I could not even escort him out of the building because of our shelter in place and physical distancing. I stood here and watched, and I thought to myself, «You think death wins?» No! Not for the child of God! The fact that He was absent—He is not here—says that death does not have the final word. Well, how do we know that? Three ways…