Matthew 28:1-10 "The Earth Shook: Evidence of Resurrection"

You are welcome to use parts of this sermon, but if you do, please attribute them properly! 

         United Church of Christ pastor, Jim Hibbett, tells the story of his own young children who, one Easter morning, awoke to find their pet gold fish lying on its side, so very still, in its round glass fishbowl, looking, for all intents and purposes, completely lifeless. It took only a glance for their father before he declared the children’s finned friend dead and suggested that the toilet be used as the best means of burying the fish.

         And so, the young ones gathered around the watery porcelain tomb and watched as their father slowly poured the fish into its final resting place.  They were about to say their final goodbyes even as their father’s hand reached for the flusher handle when the fish suddenly did a little flip and began to swim about actively.

         Needless to say, on that particular Easter morning and for those particular children, the story they would hear later in church took on a very real and exciting meaning.   But evidence of resurrection?  Sounds to me more like resuscitation or even a near death experience!

         Many years ago, a pastor did an Easter children’s sermon.  The kids flocked around her on the steps at the front of the sanctuary, all of the boys and girls dressed in their Easter finery, most of them on the wired or hyped up side after consuming large portions of the contents of their Easter baskets before leaving for church – chocolate rabbits, yellow marshmallow peeps, colorful malted milk eggs, and the like.  

         As one would expect, the pastor engaged the children by retelling the story of the resurrection.  He talked about the women coming to the tomb early in the morning before sunrise.  He told them about the stone that sealed the tomb being miraculously rolled away.  He reminded them of the fear and trepidation the women felt as they peeked into the darkened mouth of the cave.  And finally he asked the essential Easter question:  “And when the women looked into the tomb, what do you suppose they saw?”

         One particularly wide-eyed little girl could barely contain her excitement and enthusiasm as she blurted out the greatest miracle about a tomb she could think of that morning:  “Jellybeans?”

         Evidence of resurrection?  Sounds to me more like a sugar coated version of this story that lies at the very heart of the Christian faith.

         Each of the four Gospel writers – Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John – have their own version of what happened three days after Jesus was crucified outside the gates of Jerusalem, the Holy City.       The four storytellers have their own ways of relating what occurred three days after the disciples had resigned themselves to the finality of death and the defeat of their dreams (“"It was a good campaign while it lasted. But we didn't get Him elected Messiah. Death has the last word. We had hoped, but you've got to face facts.”). 

         The four evangelists have their own ways of narrating what transpired three days after Jesus was hurriedly laid to rest in a garden tomb, three days after hope had been killed, three days after the tomb was sealed shut with a massive rock blocking the only way in and out of it.

         However, it is Matthew’s story, the one we just read, that is the most dramatic of the four different versions, peppered as it is with bunches of colorful and unique details. 

It begins at dawn, as all the narratives do, with women (in this case, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary) tiptoeing through the dew on the garden grass, making their way to the tomb.  These women, however, do not take sweet spices and oils to anoint the body of Jesus, as the women in the other Gospel accounts do. 

         In the Gospel of Matthew, these women are no dummies.  They know there is a boulder sealing the tomb, an immovable rock that was set permanently in place on Friday just before the Sabbath began.  They know there is no way on God’s green earth that they could get to the corpse no matter how hard they tried – even if they had wanted to – which they did not. 

         Were they going to the tomb to discover evidence that Jesus had actually done what he said he was going to do?  Did they go to the garden to be assured of his resurrection?  Not a chance! 

         As Episcopal priest Barbara Brown Taylor notes, “Resurrection (unlike springtime) is entirely unnatural. When a human being goes into the ground, that is that....You say good-bye....and you go on with your life as best you can, knowing that the only place springtime happens in a cemetery is on the graves, not in them...."

         Face it: The two Marys were going to the cemetery just like we might go to a cemetery – to touch the cool and solid marble of the gravestone of a loved one, to lay a flower atop the freshly mounded dirt, to pay our last respects, and, for the two Marys, to acknowledge that death and evil and all the malice and all the ridicule and all the hate that was heaped onto Jesus had won out.  They came to the cemetery to soak up the silence and to acknowledge the finality of the end:  “That was it,” they might well have whispered to each other as they approached the cave.

         But they were wrong.  Instead of yet again having to confront their own powerlessness, they confronted the power of God.  Instead of being haunted by the death knell silence, they were shaken by the rocking and rolling of a violent earthquake, so strong, so sudden that, as the Gospel writer tell us, it knocked the socks off the Roman guards assigned to the garden and flattened them – like dead men. 

         Instead of witnessing the world as it had always been, the women were the first to experience a world transformed because it was the two Marys who heard the message of an angel that, the Gospel writer tells us, looked like lightening and wore clothes as white as snow and delivered news –

Good News - that was meant to shake, rattle, and rock the world. 

         And in one fell swoop, as the earth shook, that angel – the power of God personified - rolled the stone away, perched himself on top of the boulder, and said to the two Marys, “I know – in your heart of hearts - you’re looking for Jesus, the One they nailed to the cross.          But guess what?  He is not here. He was raised, just as he said. If you want, you can take a look inside the tomb where he was placed. But get on your way quickly and tell his disciples, ‘He is risen from the dead. He is going on ahead of you to Galilee. You will see him there.’ That is the message.”

         You know, if you read this story carefully, you will note that the women did not even take the time to look inside the cave.  They just took off to tell the others. And maybe it was because they had faith enough not to take a peek – even at the heavenly invitation - to see if the angel was telling the truth or just joshing them, but, if that encounter in the garden was not enough to ensure that they would believe what had happened, then surely what occurred next would. 

         Whom should they meet on their way out of the cemetery, but Jesus himself?  “Good morning!” he whispered (Good morning?). And he reiterated the angel’s message: “Don’t be afraid. Go and tell the others.”

         And presumably the women did as they were instructed – because here we are, over 2000 years later, gathered together in this sacred space to say to one another on this Easter morning, “Don’t be afraid.  He is risen.  We need to go and tell the others.” 

         Tell the others?  Why?  Because the earth is trembling beneath our feet.  Why?  Because you just do not keep Good News to yourself.  Why?  Because on that morning just before dawn long, long ago in a garden far, far away, the world was rocked and rolled and shaken to its very core – never, ever, even these millennia later, never to be the same.

         “We need to go and tell the others” – just like the women did.  That is the commandment of Easter, you know.  Both the angel and Jesus proclaimed it.  “Go and tell the others.” 

         But what, pray tell, do we tell them? Ah, the essential Easter question.

         Do we jump through analytical hoops to come up with a rational explanation of what happened in that cemetery?  Do we say that, because the Bible tell us so, that is reason enough to be convinced –and do not worry about the discrepancies between the four Gospel versions of the story?  Do we tell them that they will not get to heaven (whatever that means) if they have any doubts at all about what happened there in the graveyard?

         “Go and tell the others.”  But what, pray tell, do we tell them?  I can think of three things as starters.

         First of all, we bluntly and forthrightly tell them that Easter is not about them.  Rather, Easter is about God.  As Methodist Bishop William Willamon writes, “It is not about the resuscitation of a dead body….It's not about the "immortality of the soul," some divine spark that endures after the end. That's Plato, not Jesus.

         It's about God; not God as an empathetic but ineffective good friend, or some inner experience, but…. God who makes war on evil until evil is undone, God who raises dead Jesus just to show us who's in charge ….On the cross, the world did all it could to Jesus. At Easter, God did all God could to the world.”  We tell them about our “God who creates a way when there was no way.” 

That is resurrection - and the earth shook.

         “We need to go and tell the others.”  But what, pray tell, do we tell them?

         Second, we tell them that what happened at Easter really says little about what they will experience when they die. 

         Episcopal priest Michael Marsh puts it this way:  “The joy of Easter is not only that God has raised Christ from the dead. Easter joy is also about the possibility and the promise that, regardless of what our lives are like now, new life is available to each one of us here and now…..Perhaps we should worry less about whether there is life after death and more about whether there is life before death.” We tell them about all the holy possibilities for renewal and transformation in our lives right now. That is resurrection – and the earth shook.

         “Go and tell the others.”  But what, pray tell, do we tell them?

         Third, we tell them that at the heart of the Easter story is the fact that God has said yes to Jesus and no to the powers that killed him. (Borg/Crosson).  God has said yes to love and forgiveness and no to hatred, revenge, and vindication. 

         We tell them that to declare that Jesus is risen is to proclaim that Jesus exists in the present and is not simply a figure of the past that we read about in four ancient Gospel accounts with conflicting details and differing sequences of events.  

         As Michael Marsh has noted, “What matters most about Easter is not the empty tomb (of 2000+ years ago) but (what matters most) is what we do tomorrow, the day after, and the day after that. How will we now live differently?

         Jesus did not die and rise again so that we might continue life as usual. If this new life and freedom do not change us we might as well put the stone back over the tomb. If we leave here today and don’t think about Easter again until next year then we’ve entirely missed the gift and, I would say, the point of Easter. Our lives are the evidence of resurrection, or not….Life is eternal. Love is immortal. We are free to live. We are free to love.

         We tell them that the end of the (empty tomb) story is the beginning of our life.  We tell them that Jesus continues to be known - even to us, even today.  That is resurrection - and the earth shook.

         “Go and tell the others.”  That is the commandment of Easter.

         We need to go and tell the others that Easter is not about our afterlife but is about the power of God – and the power of love.  We need to go and tell the others that Easter is not about whether we will experience life after death but rather whether we will experience life – real life – before death.  We need to go and tell the others that Easter is especially not about the mechanics of how the stone got rolled away and whether there really was an earthquake that morning but rather is about the mechanics of how we are going to live our lives differently going forward and whether we will reflect the Risen Christ in the justice and mercy we will inevitably be called upon to show toward others.

         That is what we need to tell the others. Those things are evidence of resurrection. Those things are what will make the earth shake and tremble beneath our feet.

         The dean of a Catholic seminary told a first year student that he should plan to preach the sermon in chapel the following day. The student had never preached a sermon before.  He was nervous, and he stayed up all night.  However, in the morning, he had no sermon.

        

         So he stood in the pulpit, looked out at his classmates and said, “Do you know what I am going to say?”

         All of them shook their heads “no” and he said, “Neither do I. The service has ended. Go in peace.”

         The dean was not happy. “I’ll give you another chance tomorrow, and you had better have a sermon.”

         Again, the student stayed up all night; and again he could not come up with a sermon. Next morning, he stood in the pulpit and asked, “Do you know what I am going to say?”

         The students all nodded their heads “yes.” “Then there is no reason to tell you,” he said. “The service has ended. Go in peace.”

         Now the dean was really angry. “I’ll give you one more chance; if you don’t have a sermon tomorrow, you will be asked to leave the seminary.”

         Another all-nighter, but, again, no sermon. The student stood in the pulpit the next day and asked, “Do you know what I am going to say?”

         Half of the students nodded “yes” and the other half shook their heads “no.”

The student preacher then announced “Those who know, tell those who don’t know. The service has ended. Go in peace.”     

         “Go and tell the others,” Jesus told the two Marys. 

         “Those who know, tell those who don’t know.  Those who know tell those who don’t know that Jesus is risen in a way that we will never understand but in a way that we all have the potential to experience.  Those who know tell those who don’t know that evidence of the resurrection lies in our acknowledgment that new life is bursting from within each one of us, in our affirmation that the world, through our doing, can be transformed.

         “Those who know, tell those who don’t know. This sermon has ended. Go in peace.”      

by Rev.Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church (U.C.C.)