"Indeed"

As in “Risen indeed!”

“Indeed” is a nerd-word, that only Star Trek’s Spock can utter without sounding pompous. ‘Indeed’ is a compound word: ‘in deed’. You know, as in the saying, “Not just in word, but in deed.”

My grandmother used to say, “Yes indeedy!” whenever someone questioned her purpose and she was determined to carry it out in spite of any difficulties.

Do we really need that extra reassurance? Do we really need to belabor the point by saying, “No, really! Christ is really risen! For sure! No doubt about it!”

Yesterday, I got to thinking about Time (yes, with a capital ‘T’). 

Kairos time: the time that’s always the right time. God’s time.

In that time Christ is being born, dying, and rising from death, all at one and the same time,  eternally. There’s a response from the congregation in the Episcopal liturgy of the Eucharist where, after the words of institution, the celebrant says, “Therefore we proclaim the mystery of faith,” and the congregation responds, “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.”

I keep wanting to change my response to this: “Christ dies, Christ rises, Christ comes.” 

To me that’s the real mystery: Christ is both dead, and risen from the dead, at one and the same time.

Christ has arrived; is present in this moment, and yet is always eternally on the way— still coming from somewhere far off, around some dusty bend in the road that we haven’t reached yet.

I wish I could express this better, because to me it’s somehow the very core of my trust and confidence in God. 

All times are this time; all times are the right time. There just ain’t no ‘pie in the sky by and by’!

Christ can’t be with us unless, at the very same moment, the tomb is echoingly empty.

Christ can’t be the savior of the world unless, at the very same moment, all safety is utterly lost.

God’s a slippery bar of soap that if we squeeze it too tight, it pops out and slithers maddeningly around the sink, evading every attempt to capture it.

It’s all happening at once, and it’s too big for us to understand. We keep trying to grab the mystery and make it come when we call, sit on command, and play fetch for us.

We keep trying to train God to jump through our hoops; to be our personal life coach; to render judgment on behalf of our resentments.

But God keeps right on being dead and gone, and yet still right here, alive and breathing.

God keeps right on rising from the dead, leaving us sobbing over an empty coffin.

God keeps right on looking at us dubiously when we demand to be the winners.

God keeps right on breathing with our lungs; God’s heart keeps right on beating in time with ours.

God keeps right on giving us no guarantees, other than the unbreakable fragility of Love.