It was a long day and a long night. Matthew tells us
that the women got up early and went to the tomb of Jesus to grieve, perhaps to
just sit quietly and recall the love Jesus had shown to them. Never in their
wildest imagination had they dreamt of what happened next.
“Behold, there was a great earthquake, for an angel of
the Lord descended from the sky, and came and rolled away the stone from the
door, and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white
as snow. For fear of him, the guards shook, and became like dead men”
And that’s where Easter begins. Easter is a shock to
the participants of the story. It shouldn’t have been, but having seen the
brutality of the cross and the dead body of Jesus placed in a tomb and a stone sealed
across it, it was not expected, despite all that Jesus had said.
This morning I want to suggest to you there are three
Easter events in this passage from Matthew for us to see and respond to.
First,
Easter is an earthquake.
There was an earthquake, not just a tremor or gentle
rumble, but a violent earthquake. Perhaps this is symbolic of the way Jesus’
resurrection would rock the whole world and shake up our understanding of
Jesus’ power over death. Jesus’ resurrection would shake up the world’s understanding
of who Jesus was and how he came into the world to die to save all people and
to rise again on the third day.
There are two earthquakes in Holy Week. They happened
just three days apart. The first one occurred when Jesus breathed His last on the
cross. 'The earth shook, and the rocks were split. The tombs also were opened.
And many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, and coming out
of the tombs after his resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared
to many. When the centurion and those who were with him, keeping watch over
Jesus, saw the earthquake and what took place, they were filled with awe and
said, "Truly this was the Son of God!"
The second one occurred just three days later. 'It was
toward dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary
went to see the tomb. And behold, there was a great earthquake, an angel of the
Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone and sat on it.'
Two great earthquakes mark the death and the resurrection
of Jesus Christ. It is as though almighty God is announcing the great and
awesome thing that His Son Jesus Christ has done by shaking the earth, first in
His great wrath and then in His great joy. God is tying the crucifixion and the
resurrection of His Son together with a seismic knot.
The women went to “see the tomb” much like we go to a
cemetery. It's good to have a place to focus our grief and connect the sorrow
we feel to the loved one for whom we grieve when death comes into our
life.
God in heaven sees these two Mary's headed for the
tomb of Jesus. How will they know that the One for whom they are grieving is
not dead but alive? The stone that the Chief Priests ordered rolled in front of
the entrance to the tomb is blocking their view. 'No problem,' says God. He
dispatches one of his angels to hurry down to earth and roll that stone away
from the entrance so that these women can see that He has raised His Son and
their Lord from the dead. 'I'll shake the earth and you roll that blasted thing
aside. And make sure the see the place where He lay. They need to see it to
believe it.' And after the angel had rolled the stone away from the entrance of
the tomb, he sat on top of the stone, waiting for the women to arrive. Just
another day's work for an angel of the Lord.
Can you imagine it? Mary Magdalene and the other Mary,
their eyes red and still filled with tears, barely able to see where they were
going because of their tears and because of the early morning light.
The two Marys who had witnessed Jesus’ death and
helped lay his body in the tomb, saw the huge stone rolled over the entrance of
the tomb, could not believe their eyes when they saw this angel, as bright as
lightening on dark night, roll the stone away and then sit on it.
The stone wasn’t rolled away to let Jesus out; he had
already risen. It was rolled away so that the two Marys could look inside and
see that the tomb was empty. Matthew tells us that this wasn’t just the
imagination of some over stressed women. There were other witnesses to this,
independent witnesses if you like. The guards at the tomb saw all this and were
terrified.
He is not here. We know the end of the story, we’ve
brought our flowers this morning and dressed the cross. Death is defeated. But
for those women it was a shock, there was an earthquake, an angel rolls the
stone away - it is huge. I think I say every year, the first response to Easter
has to be awe. We do the death bit for a while on Good Friday, but then we want
Easter and its loveliness to come. I was shocked driving round on Good Friday
how many Easter egg hunts there were. We parked in the churchyard at the Parish
Church in Rye on Good Friday afternoon to attend the hour’s devotion there at
2pm. Having led so many services this past week it was nice for me to be led. I
did go to sleep in one of the talks but it was good to be there. We got blocked
in the churchyard though, because the minute the benediction was pronounced the
ladies from the Flower Guard began the military operation of putting Easter
flowers all over the church. Good Friday afternoon was not Easter. Yesterday,
Holy Saturday in some traditions, was not Easter. The Saturday should be used
as a day to watch and wait and offer God those things we think will never be
sorted and then and only them do we journey to Easter morning. Easter takes some time to sink in. Imagine
God having an earthquake here this morning. What needs to be shaken and rocked
to remind us of his power in our lives?
Secondly,
Easter is an announcement of good news.
The angel sitting on the stone speaks, “Don’t be
afraid”, he said. “I know that you seek Jesus, who has been crucified. He is
not here, for he has risen, just like he said. Come, see the place where the
Lord was lying.”
Matthew, unlike the other Gospel writers, doesn’t tell
us if the women actually went inside the tomb, but filled with fear (who
wouldn’t be!), over awed at the power of God, they ran with joy and excitement
to tell the disciples. As far as Matthew is concerned, they didn’t need to look
inside. They believed the impossible. Jesus was dead – now he is alive.
Why is it that we so often only hear the first half of
Jesus' prediction: "The Son of Man will suffer and be killed..." and
forget what comes next?
I especially love the angel in Matthew's version of
the Resurrection. This is an angel who knows how to make an entrance. He comes
in with a flourish! He rolls back the large, sealed stone. This is an angel
with attitude. After he rolls back the stone, he sits on it, and crosses his angelic
arms. He glances over at the guards who are displaying certain physical
symptoms of extreme terror we won't go into. He doesn't tell them not to be
afraid, I assume, because he doesn't care if they are afraid or not. That
message is being reserving for someone else, or two someone elses.
This angel rolls his eyes, as if to say: "Take
that, Caiaphas. Take that, Pilate. That's what God thinks of your effort to put
the Messiah in a tomb! A tomb as a prison for the Prince of Peace, the Son of
God? Think again! A tomb for his final resting place? I don't think so."
Then, for his main message, he turns his bright
angelic eyes toward Mary Magdalene and the other Mary and says: "Do not be
afraid. I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not
here. He has been raised, as he said."
Matthew wants to make sure we notice these three
little words "as he said." Because in Matthew's gospel, Jesus told
you so—three times.
Why do we—like them—despite the witness of Scripture,
tradition, and our life of worship and service, still come to so many
situations looking for death when we have been promised life is waiting there
for us?
The announcement of good news at Easter means two
things I think. First, that death does not have the last word. We need an angel
to tell that to our world this morning. A world of threatening words and
impending military force to see whose muscles are stronger – North Korea,
China, Russia, America. Talk of nuclear weapons, and dropping of bombs on
nations with unrest to sort it out. Funny before the 20th January we
had little of this. And nearer home, Spanish ships sailing round Gibraltar.
That’s the reality of Brexit etc. We need an angel in our community, to remind
people there is always hope. Perhaps we are to be the angel! And second the
angel sitting on the stone shows us you cannot limit God. You can’t put God in a tomb. Dick Dengate
helpfully writes about this in his book of sermons warning us when we do that
in church:
“Time and time again various denominations, or little
sects or congregations, or individual believers, seem to be claiming that their
limited point of view encapsulates the full vision of God. God loves me and the way I do things, with
all my faults (if any) but he condemns to eternal punishment the people over
there who are not quite like me. In so many ways we behave as if we think we
have got God trapped. We have placed barriers in front of God’s love. God
cannot be restricted by the will of mankind, nor even by the will of religion.
He can roll away the stones. Even they with all the grief and apparent finality
they symbolise do not allow the grave to be a silent prison, but turn it into a
gateway to God’s glorious kingdom.”
Easter reminds us just when we think all is lost, God
does something. Sometimes we need to go to the place we hurt and name it. It’s
no use just bemoaning President Trump seems to be unhinged, Kim Jong Un having
a parade of his arsenal to wag his finger back and the world crazy, we need to
pray for it earnestly. Go read some Psalms. I picked a strange one today for
you: Psalm 136. A reminder on a bad day
that God’s love is steadfast. The Psalmist lists all the things God has done to
make the world he made better again. He confronts evil. He subdues the likes of
Og, King of Bashan. He was who, along
with his army, was slain by Moses and his men at the battle of Edrei. The
Jewish Talmud tells us that Og was so large that he sought the destruction of
the Israelites by uprooting a mountain so large, that it would have crushed the
entire Israelite encampment. The Lord caused a swarm of ants to dig away the
centre of the mountain, which was resting on Og's head. The mountain then fell
onto Og's shoulders. As Og attempted to lift the mountain off himself, God
caused Og's teeth to lengthen outward, becoming embedded into the mountain that
was now surrounding his head. Moses seized a stick of ten cubits length, and
jumped a similar vertical distance, succeeding in striking Og in the ankle. Og
fell down and died upon hitting the ground… Evil, death, threats, you see do
not have the final word.
(I need to tell you here while I was writing this
paragraph I was listening to Pick to the
Pops from 1974 on Radio 2, my Saturday routine, and moved quickly from being
despairing about the world to singing along to Remember You’re a Womble!! You
see death does not have the last word. How many of you have Womble records on
vinyl? Oh just me then J
Also sometimes when it feels God isn’t doing anything
we need to voice our lot. I imagine the women voiced their sorrow as they
journied. And sometimes when we are not looking for it, God comes and points us
to a way we never felt possible.
We were travelling one direction and then we get this
good news invade us, in a person or a event, that life is never the same
again. Easter is an announcement of good
news. So, let’s make sure Calvert is alive with it every day. Whose tombstones do we need to sit down and
tell them, you know that, there is a new way for you. Death is no more.
And
thirdly on this Easter Sunday, let’s remind ourselves Easter was always planned
and we need to get on and live it.
Perhaps Palm Sunday, a week ago, seems a distant
memory – but remember Jesus entered Jerusalem we think in a procession at the
same time Pilate entered on the other side of the city to show us, that God has
another way. That violence is not the way. That hatred is not the way. That
brute force and brutality are not the way.
Jesus came to show us there is another way. The way of
unselfish, sacrificial love. That’s why he entered Jerusalem. That’s why he
went to the cross. It was the power of that love poured out from the throne of God
that even after the horror of the crucifixion would raise him from death to
life.
God came among us in the person of Jesus to start a
movement. A movement to change the face of the earth. A movement to change us
who dwell upon the earth. A movement to change the creation from the nightmare
that is often made of it into the dream that God intends for it.
We are called to speak the truth about the things that
corrupt, that nail godliness to a cross, that destroy hope and potential; and
then we are called to offer a glimpse of what Walter Brueggemann calls ‘newness
after loss’. This means enabling people to be surprised by Sunday when Friday
and Saturday seem so endless. Like those
women found.
Resurrection isn’t the nice, neat resolution of the
horrors of injustice and pain; rather, it reinforces the compulsion of God’s
people to plunge themselves into the realities of the world, willing to suffer,
not escaping from it all, but unafraid: because both our living and our dying
have been transformed by God who raised Christ. Let’s go out from here to be people of the Resurrection through our worship and
our activities, our mission plans, our care for each other, our interaction
with our community. Let’s follow in the way of Jesus. Let’s not be ashamed to
love. Let’s not be ashamed to follow Jesus.
He sends his church, his people, those in pain and
fear, those who cannot believe there is anything good in this world for them,
those worrying about the world, and indeed the world that not even the titanic
powers of death can stop the love of God.
Today we proclaim, he rose from the dead, and proclaimed love wins.
