Resurrection Of Our Lord / Easter Day
Preaching
Lectionary Preaching Workbook
Series VIII, Cycle A
Object:
Theme For The Day
Matthew's account of the Easter earthquake reminds us that the resurrection is a world-shaking, life-changing experience.
First Lesson
Acts 10:34-43
Peter Proclaims The Faith
This passage occurs in all three cycles of the lectionary for this day. See Baptism of the Lord/First Sunday after the Epiphany/First Sunday in Ordinary Time.
Alternate First Lesson
Jeremiah 31:1-6
Everlasting Love
The first part of Jeremiah's prophecy is a message of doom. By the time we reach chapter 31, however, the tone has changed. The exiles have suffered long enough. It is time for a change in key -- a message, now, of comfort and hope. Jeremiah has just finished writing about "the storm of the Lord... a whirling tempest [that] will burst upon the head of the wicked" (30:23). Yet, he now proclaims, there will come a time when the Lord "has executed and accomplished the intents of his mind" and will relent (30:24). In that day, Israel will once again know the words of the Lord to be true: "I have loved you with an everlasting love" (31:3). Their ancestors, of old, "survived the sword" but "found grace in the wilderness" (v. 2). Much the same will be true for those now living in the wilderness of exile. Israel shall be rebuilt. Its people shall once again plant grapevines in Samaria and enjoy their fruit (v. 5). In that day, the people shall once again take up their tambourines and dance (v. 4). This passage strikes a note of rejoicing, appropriate for Easter and its message of "everlasting love" is appropriate for those who worship Jesus Christ, the one whose love could not be ended, even by death.
New Testament Lesson
Colossians 3:1-4
Raised With Christ
"So if you have been raised with Christ," this brief passage begins -- if you have ceased to be merely a seeker, a spectator, and have staked your life on this good news -- then look not to the things of this world but to "the things that are above" (verses 1-2). "For you have died," begins verse 3, chillingly. Yet, you have not entered the place of torment, nor have you been lost in eternal oblivion: "Your life is hidden with Christ in God." Now, we live in the between-time, a time of waiting. When the waiting is ended, and "Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory" (v. 4). It is hard to imagine a more direct, concise expression of the resurrection hope than this. Colossians is filled with baptismal imagery; much of the book can be seen, in fact, as catechetical instruction for those new to the faith. It was the practice, in many parts of the early church, to conduct baptisms on Easter. Those who have come up, sputtering, from the baptismal waters are raised with Christ. From now on, they will view everything differently, with an eye to "the things that are above."
Alternate New Testament Lesson
Acts 10:34-43
Peter Proclaims The Faith
This passage, which occurs in all three cycles of the lectionary for this day as a first lesson, can also be used as an alternate New Testament lesson. See Baptism of the Lord/First Sunday after the Epiphany/First Sunday in Ordinary Time.
The Gospel
John 20:1-18
John's Resurrection Account
This passage occurs in all three cycles of the lectionary for this day. Mary Magdalene is a woman of rare courage. "While it was still dark," in more ways than one -- a time when so many of Jesus' other disciples have made themselves scarce, out of fear -- she makes her way, boldly and publicly, to his tomb (v. 1). What she intends to find there, she's not entirely sure. A corpse, yes -- for, how could she have imagined anything different? Yet, Mary is hoping for something more: even if it's only a bit of closure on the gut-wrenching events of the past few days, a sorting-out of the random, tortured memories that have kept her awake most of the night. When she reaches the dreary place, Mary sees the one thing she does not expect to see: The stone is rolled away. Stones are not typically rolled away, in our human experience. Coffin lids stay closed. Children leave home. Dreams deferred are unattainable. Losses are permanent. "Life's a bitch; then you die." An inexplicable hope rises up, unbidden, in Mary's heart, before she stuffs it back down again. Surely, his grave has been robbed.
This is a spiritual disaster: for, in the first-century Jewish worldview, death is a process. The corpse must be left at peace for the soul to complete its process of detaching itself from the flesh. A year or so later, the deceased's loved ones would typically collect the bones from the grave, and re-bury them -- often in a stone box known as an ossuary. Only then could they cease their mourning: for their loved one's bones would, at last, be ready for the general resurrection. Mary runs to the other disciples gasping out her incomprehension: "I do not know where they have laid him" (v. 2). Peter and another, unnamed, disciple (possibly John himself) dash to the empty tomb, and see the grave clothes carefully rolled up, inside. It's as though whoever did this had all the time in the world (verses 6-7) -- not the way most grave-robbers would have left the crime scene, to be sure. The other disciple "sees, and believes" (v. 8) -- believes what? He may only believe, with Mary, that the grave has been robbed. If he believes anything more, it may be that God has, inexplicably, done something miraculous with Jesus' body -- perhaps taking him directly into heaven, as happened with Elijah -- because, John is quick to add, "as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead" (v. 9).
John specifies no particular scripture, here; he could mean the entire biblical record. Scene two of John's Easter drama follows. Mary is alone on stage, weeping (v. 11). Two new characters show up, in an unexpected place: inside the tomb (v. 12). They are angels -- although John doesn't say for sure whether Mary realizes who they are. "Why are you weeping?" the strangers ask -- the same question one might put to a disconsolate child. Mary's numb repetition of her announcement to the other disciples -- "They have taken away my Lord..." -- suggests she does not, at this moment, realize who it is she's talking to (v. 13). Now comes the moment of high drama. Turning around, Mary sees a figure standing behind her (v. 14). Repeating the angels' question, he asks her why she is weeping. Thinking him to be "the gardener" -- a cemetery groundskeeper -- she implores him to lead her to Jesus' body. She will make sure it is returned, so Jesus' soul may continue its process of detaching itself from his body, in peace (v. 15). The stranger calls her by name and, instantly, she knows him. She calls him "Rabbouni" -- an honorific Aramaic title, similar to the Hebrew "rabbi" or "teacher" (v. 16). Jesus' command, "Do not hold onto me" (v. 17), does not -- as some have assumed -- mean that he inhabits a "spiritual body" that could be harmful for a mortal to touch. Although this line has often been mistranslated, "Do not touch me," in fact it means "do not hold me." Jesus must be on his way, so he cannot linger long. Mary's news, "I have seen the Lord," is the first Christian proclamation (v. 18).
Alternate Gospel Lesson
Matthew 28:1-10
Matthew's Resurrection Account
Alone among the resurrection accounts, Matthew involves Pilate and the Roman authorities in placing a guard at Jesus' tomb (27:64-66). This means that when the two Marys come to the tomb, they cannot expect to have access to the body for embalming purposes; they come simply "to see the tomb" (28:1). They are startled by an earthquake -- an eschatological sign. Matthew has told of an earlier earthquake, at that other momentous event: Jesus' death on the cross (27:54). The resurrection earthquake is caused by the arrival of an angel, who -- in the sight of the two Marys and the Roman guards, rolls the stone away and sits defiantly upon it (v. 2). The angel is glorious in appearance; at the sight of him, the panic-stricken Romans shudder and "become like dead men" (verses 3-4). The angel gives the traditional angelic greeting, "Fear not." Jesus is not here, he informs them. "He has been raised, as he said" (the "as he said" refers to Jesus' earlier predictions of his resurrection: see 16:21, 17:23, 20:19, and 26:32). The angel invites the two Marys to inspect the tomb and to ascertain that Jesus is truly gone (verses 5-6). The angel gives the women a message for the disciples that Jesus has been raised, and "is going ahead of you to Galilee" (v. 7).
Leaving the tomb with the contradictory feelings of "fear and great joy," the women run to deliver the angelic message to the disciples (v. 8). On the way, Jesus himself meets them, addressing them with a word the NRSV translates, rather oddly, as "Greetings!" (the Greek chairete is difficult to translate, although the Hebrew or Aramaic underlying it could well be the conventional shalom; it can also be translated, "Rejoice!"). The two women fall at his feet and worship him (v. 9). Jesus, greeting them as the angel did with "Fear not," gives them his own message for the disciples: They are to meet him in Galilee (v. 10). Jesus calls his disciples "brothers" -- indicating his forgiveness of them, despite their having deserted and denied him. Matthew goes beyond Mark's "they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid." In his resurrection account, the divine command is to fear not and to carry the good news to others. In The Lectionary Commentary (Eerdmans, 2001, p. 154, ed. R. Van Harn), Dale C. Allison identifies numerous parallels between Matthew's crucifixion and resurrection accounts:
"And behold" (kai idou -- 27:51; 28:2)
An earthquake and the opening of tombs (27:51-52; 28:2)
The guards are afraid (27:54; 28:4)
The witnesses (those resurrected from the tombs; the guards) go to the city (27:53; 28:11)
The two Marys are the primary witnesses (27:55-56; 28:1)
The two stories are presented as bookends. Point by point, the joy of the resurrection undoes the agony of the crucifixion.
Preaching Possibilities
Alone among the four gospel writers, Matthew provides a vivid, physical accompaniment to the world-shaking events of Jesus' resurrection. He literally gives us an Easter earthquake -- and not just a single one during Holy Week -- but three.
The first of these earthquakes isn't a physical disturbance at all although he uses the same Greek word he'll later use to describe the trembling of the earth. In chapter 21, verse 10 he says that as Jesus rides into Jerusalem on his donkey, "the whole city was in turmoil." Literally, what Matthew says is that the whole city is quaking. The Greek word is seis, the same word from which our modern words "seismic" and "seismograph" come. As Jesus rides triumphantly into Jerusalem, and as the jubilant crowds wave their palm branches, bow down and shout "Hosanna," it's as though the whole social order is being shaken to its foundations.
A few days later -- at the very moment Jesus exhales his last breath on the cross -- Matthew speaks of another, more literal earthquake: "Jesus cried again with a loud voice and breathed his last. At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. 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. After his resurrection they came out of the tombs and entered the holy city and appeared to many. Now when the centurion and those with him, who were keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake and what took place, they were terrified and said, 'Truly this man was God's Son!' " (Matthew 27:50-54).
Sounds a bit like Good Friday as told by Stephen King, doesn't it? Earthquakes, open graves, dead people walking around, befuddled -- Matthew wants us to know that this death was not like any other death. This was the death of the Son of God.
Matthew's third use of the Greek word seis, or earthquake, occurs in his account of the resurrection:
"After the sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. And suddenly there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone 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." (28:1-4)
There's nothing peaceful or beautiful about Matthew's Easter story. The rising of the Son of God is a profoundly disturbing, disorienting event. His death had resulted in dead men walking; his resurrection leaves battle-hardened Roman soldiers writhing on the ground in terror. As for the women -- who just happen to be at the tomb when the earthquake hits, and the angel descends from on high to kick the heavy stone away -- the first word the angel speaks to them is "Do not be afraid." Evidently, even these courageous women are shaking with fear.
Well, why should it be that way? Why should Easter -- this day of lilies and tulips, of spring fashions and baby parades, of family reunions and baskets full of chocolates -- be the stuff of fear and trembling? Matthew's Easter is not the sort of spring-festival holiday most of us have been taught to observe.
For Matthew, Easter changes everything. To fully realize the impact of the dawning of this day of days, we moderns must try to enter for a moment or two into the mindset of the ancient world -- of the people who first heard the good news.
Remember, these are people who do not know Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. They don't really believe there's such a thing as eternal life -- not life abundant, anyway. Most of the Greeks and Romans believe that souls migrate from the body, at death, into some shadowy underworld, like the Hades of their mythology. It's not the sort of place in which anyone living wants to dwell. It's a dark and haunted landscape, bleak and barren, populated by wandering, discontented spirits who yearn for the life they've lost. Every once in a while, by permission of the capricious demigods who guard the gates of the underworld, one of those spirits makes its way back into the land of the living. Whenever this happens, it is emphatically not a good thing. Such spirits often return to haunt the living, to announce to them that they are accursed, and that terrible calamity is soon to follow.
As for the Jews, they were of a divided mind when it came to life after death. Some first-century Jews believed much as the Greeks and Romans did -- that this life was pretty much all there is, and whatever awaits us on the other side of the grave is unpleasant at best. There was a significant party within the Jewish religion, however, that had come to believe in a new idea: a general resurrection of the faithful at the end of time. Yet, even for them, the prospect of somebody rising from the grave in the here and now would have filled them with fear.
The bottom line is -- as one Bible scholar put it -- if the typical first-century Jew or Roman were to hear rumors that a man had risen up from the grave, that person's response would likely be, "How can we get him back in?"
Matthew gives his first-century readers -- and us, as well -- an earthquake as part of his Easter story. He includes the earthquake so his readers will understand that Jesus' resurrection is no haunting from beyond the grave, and no mere resuscitation, either. The defeat of death and evil must necessarily occur not with a whimper, but with a bang. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is something utterly and entirely new. It changes everything.
Matthew finishes his account of the angel's message in a peculiar way: "So they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples" (28:8). "Fear and great joy" together: what a contradiction! Most of us, if asked to describe the greatest, most joyful event that could possibly happen in our lives, probably wouldn't include fear in that description. Yet, isn't it often just that way, when it comes to the great milestones in our lives? What beaming bride has ever walked down a church aisle without also feeling some measure of fear? Or, what new father has sat in the delivery room, clad in hospital scrubs and surgical mask, filled with gladness at the new life he cradles in his arms -- but who has not also been filled with a new and unaccustomed fear, as he reflects on what should happen if this life should be snatched away from him? What entrepreneur has ever opened a new business without an equal measure of joyful accomplishment, and fear of failure? What person has ever embarked on that journey called "retirement" without both enjoying newfound leisure and fearing it?
Matthew wants us to know that the resurrection of Jesus Christ marks both the dawn of a new and hopeful age, and the death of something old and familiar. Sometimes the familiar dies hard. That's what those earthquakes in Matthew are all about. They're the tremors of an old world dying. Yet know that they also mark the start of something new.
G.K. Chesterton has written,
"On the third day the friends of Christ coming at daybreak to the place found the grave empty and the stone rolled away. In varying ways they realised the new wonder; but even they hardly realised that the world had died in the night. What they were looking at was the first day of a new creation, with a new heaven and a new earth; and in a semblance of the gardener God walked again in the garden, in the cool not of the evening but the dawn."
So we, too -- like those holy women of old -- leave the empty tomb of Jesus with fear and great joy. We have felt the earth move beneath our feet, and we're not entirely happy, having had that experience. We don't understand everything we've heard and seen of Jesus of Nazareth and his deeds of power -- especially not his resurrection -- that greatest of all mysteries.
Yet, we do also know, somehow, that having heard this good news, we can never return again to the way things were before. The good news will not leave us alone. It demands something of us. Having heard this news, and believed it, we have crossed a threshold we can never cross back over again.
Prayer For The Day
God of terror and joy,
you arise to shake the earth.
Open our graves and give us back the past;
so that all that has been buried may be freed and forgiven,
and our lives may return to you
through the risen Christ. Amen.
-- Janet Morley, "God of Terror and Joy," All Desires Known: Prayers Uniting Faith and Feminism (Morehouse-Barlow, 1988), p. 16
To Illustrate
Eight-year-old Dorothy awoke one morning, to feel her brass bed sliding across the floor of her bedroom. There was no one pushing it; the bed seemed to be moving of its own accord. Not only that, the floor was shaking, and the very walls of her room seemed to be moving.
The walls of Dorothy's bedroom were moving. For this young girl was experiencing one of the most devastating earthquakes in American history: the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. That quake measured 8.25 on the Richter Scale -- or so today's geologists have estimated. By contrast, the most recent major quake to hit San Francisco -- the one in 1989 -- measured only 6.7.
The 1906 earthquake lasted only 140 seconds -- just over two minutes -- but it made a lifelong impression on young Dorothy Day. Later, in her autobiography, she would tell not only what it was like to feel her bed sliding across the polished wood floor, but also her impressions of the hours and days that followed, as San Francisco reeled from this unimaginable and unforeseen catastrophe:
"The earthquake started with a deep rumbling and the convulsions of the earth started afterward, so that the earth became a sea that rocked our house in a most tumultuous manner. There was a large windmill and water tank in back of the house and I can remember the splashing of the water from the tank on top of our roof."
After the tremors subsided, Dorothy would tell of the wreckage that choked the streets... the columns of smoke rising from uncontrolled fires... the tears, the heartache, the pain. But Dorothy would also write of something else she saw: How an entire city of strangers joined together in recovery. Suddenly, social distinctions that had seemed so important no longer mattered. Everyone was affected. The men pitched tents and constructed lean-tos amidst the smoking rubble, the women cooked and lent their families' spare clothing to those who had none.
What Dorothy Day witnessed in the aftermath of the great quake of 1906 would change her life. The earthquake taught her an unforgettable lesson -- how human beings are actually capable of caring for one another, when the need arises:
"What I remember most plainly was the human warmth and kindliness of everyone afterward, as the refugees poured out of burning San Francisco. Each person was a little child in friendliness and warmth; they were united in Christian solidarity. It makes one think of how people could, if they would, care in times of stress, unjudgingly with pity and love." (cited by Paul Elie: The Life You Save May Be Your Own, An American Pilgrimage [Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2003])
Dorothy Day, of course, would become, in the estimation of many, a modern American saint. She would spend her adult life dwelling in voluntary poverty in America's cities. Her politics were radical: not everyone agreed with her, but no one doubted her commitment to those people whom Jesus called "the least of these, my brothers and sisters." The Catholic Worker Houses she founded have become beacons of hope to the disadvantaged of our cities.
It took an earthquake to plant that idea in her mind: The idea that life could be different from what it otherwise is -- more loving, more caring, more Christlike.
***
The Danish theologian Søren Kierkegaard likens the good news of Christianity to a razor-sharp knife -- one that can wound as easily as it can help, one that must be handled with the utmost caution and care:
"I wonder if a man handing another man an extremely sharp, polished, two-edged instrument would hand it over with the air, gestures, and expression of one delivering a bouquet of flowers. Would this not be madness? What does one do, then? Convinced of the excellence of the dangerous instrument, one recommends it unreservedly, to be sure, but in such a way that in a certain sense one warns against it. So it is with Christianity."
-- Søren Kierkegaard, Works of Love, trans. Howard and Edna Hong (New York: Harper & Row, 1938), p. 191
***
We forget so readily what Christianity brought into the world; we are so used to it that we think it is obvious. In the ancient world there was absolutely no assumption that every life was precious. Fathers had the right to kill their children in certain circumstances, masters their slaves; crowds flocked to see criminals or prisoners of war killing each other in the theatres; massacre was a normal tool of war.... It is a shock to realise just how deeply rooted such an attitude was. And when all is said and done about how Christianity has so often failed in its own vision, the bare fact is that it brought an irreversible shift in human culture.
-- Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, Easter sermon, 2004, distributed by Anglican Communion News Service
***
Many centuries ago, church father John Chrysostom preached a famous Easter sermon that's still read aloud each year in many Eastern Orthodox churches. In a string of powerful verbs, he bangs home again and again the point that the resurrection is an event of unimaginable power that throws the nether reaches of the universe into turmoil:
"Hell was in an uproar because it was done away with.
It was in an uproar because it is mocked.
It was in an uproar, for it is destroyed.
It was in an uproar, for it is annihilated.
It was in an uproar, for it is now made captive.
Hell took a body, and discovered God.
It took earth, and encountered heaven.
It took what it saw, and was overcome by what it did not see.
O death, where is thy sting?
O hades, where is thy victory?"
***
William Sloane Coffin's last book, Letters to a Young Doubter, ends with an Easter sermon he preached at Yale University many years before, that includes these eloquent words:
"Easter has less to do with one person's escape from the grave than with the victory of seemingly powerless love over loveless power. And let us also emphasize this: too often Easter comes across very sentimentally like a dessert wafer -- airy and sweet. But there's nothing sentimental about Easter: Easter represents a demand as well as a promise, a demand not that we sympathize with the crucified Christ, but that we pledge our loyalty to the risen one. That means an end to all loyalties, to all people, and to all institutions that crucify. I don't see how you can proclaim allegiance to the risen Lord and then allow life once again to lull you to sleep, to smother you in convention, to choke you with success."
There's nothing sentimental about Easter. Try as we may to cover the entrance of the empty tomb with tulips and lilies, we must remember that, in the end, it's the gaping, ravenous mouth of death we're staring into and that sight can't be prettied up. Yet, the stone that once guarded the sepulchral entrance has been cast aside. The powers of death have been vanquished. Their defeat, while not yet fully accomplished, is fully assured.
That changes the way we live -- or, at least, it ought to. Just as the risen Christ greeted his followers with the words, "Fear not," we, too, can put fear behind us. Just as he commissioned them, saying, "Go and make disciples of all nations," we, too, can go forth courageously in his name.
Easter is not about feeling sentimental. It's about being charged up with divine power: power to hope, power to believe, power to love.
Matthew's account of the Easter earthquake reminds us that the resurrection is a world-shaking, life-changing experience.
First Lesson
Acts 10:34-43
Peter Proclaims The Faith
This passage occurs in all three cycles of the lectionary for this day. See Baptism of the Lord/First Sunday after the Epiphany/First Sunday in Ordinary Time.
Alternate First Lesson
Jeremiah 31:1-6
Everlasting Love
The first part of Jeremiah's prophecy is a message of doom. By the time we reach chapter 31, however, the tone has changed. The exiles have suffered long enough. It is time for a change in key -- a message, now, of comfort and hope. Jeremiah has just finished writing about "the storm of the Lord... a whirling tempest [that] will burst upon the head of the wicked" (30:23). Yet, he now proclaims, there will come a time when the Lord "has executed and accomplished the intents of his mind" and will relent (30:24). In that day, Israel will once again know the words of the Lord to be true: "I have loved you with an everlasting love" (31:3). Their ancestors, of old, "survived the sword" but "found grace in the wilderness" (v. 2). Much the same will be true for those now living in the wilderness of exile. Israel shall be rebuilt. Its people shall once again plant grapevines in Samaria and enjoy their fruit (v. 5). In that day, the people shall once again take up their tambourines and dance (v. 4). This passage strikes a note of rejoicing, appropriate for Easter and its message of "everlasting love" is appropriate for those who worship Jesus Christ, the one whose love could not be ended, even by death.
New Testament Lesson
Colossians 3:1-4
Raised With Christ
"So if you have been raised with Christ," this brief passage begins -- if you have ceased to be merely a seeker, a spectator, and have staked your life on this good news -- then look not to the things of this world but to "the things that are above" (verses 1-2). "For you have died," begins verse 3, chillingly. Yet, you have not entered the place of torment, nor have you been lost in eternal oblivion: "Your life is hidden with Christ in God." Now, we live in the between-time, a time of waiting. When the waiting is ended, and "Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory" (v. 4). It is hard to imagine a more direct, concise expression of the resurrection hope than this. Colossians is filled with baptismal imagery; much of the book can be seen, in fact, as catechetical instruction for those new to the faith. It was the practice, in many parts of the early church, to conduct baptisms on Easter. Those who have come up, sputtering, from the baptismal waters are raised with Christ. From now on, they will view everything differently, with an eye to "the things that are above."
Alternate New Testament Lesson
Acts 10:34-43
Peter Proclaims The Faith
This passage, which occurs in all three cycles of the lectionary for this day as a first lesson, can also be used as an alternate New Testament lesson. See Baptism of the Lord/First Sunday after the Epiphany/First Sunday in Ordinary Time.
The Gospel
John 20:1-18
John's Resurrection Account
This passage occurs in all three cycles of the lectionary for this day. Mary Magdalene is a woman of rare courage. "While it was still dark," in more ways than one -- a time when so many of Jesus' other disciples have made themselves scarce, out of fear -- she makes her way, boldly and publicly, to his tomb (v. 1). What she intends to find there, she's not entirely sure. A corpse, yes -- for, how could she have imagined anything different? Yet, Mary is hoping for something more: even if it's only a bit of closure on the gut-wrenching events of the past few days, a sorting-out of the random, tortured memories that have kept her awake most of the night. When she reaches the dreary place, Mary sees the one thing she does not expect to see: The stone is rolled away. Stones are not typically rolled away, in our human experience. Coffin lids stay closed. Children leave home. Dreams deferred are unattainable. Losses are permanent. "Life's a bitch; then you die." An inexplicable hope rises up, unbidden, in Mary's heart, before she stuffs it back down again. Surely, his grave has been robbed.
This is a spiritual disaster: for, in the first-century Jewish worldview, death is a process. The corpse must be left at peace for the soul to complete its process of detaching itself from the flesh. A year or so later, the deceased's loved ones would typically collect the bones from the grave, and re-bury them -- often in a stone box known as an ossuary. Only then could they cease their mourning: for their loved one's bones would, at last, be ready for the general resurrection. Mary runs to the other disciples gasping out her incomprehension: "I do not know where they have laid him" (v. 2). Peter and another, unnamed, disciple (possibly John himself) dash to the empty tomb, and see the grave clothes carefully rolled up, inside. It's as though whoever did this had all the time in the world (verses 6-7) -- not the way most grave-robbers would have left the crime scene, to be sure. The other disciple "sees, and believes" (v. 8) -- believes what? He may only believe, with Mary, that the grave has been robbed. If he believes anything more, it may be that God has, inexplicably, done something miraculous with Jesus' body -- perhaps taking him directly into heaven, as happened with Elijah -- because, John is quick to add, "as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead" (v. 9).
John specifies no particular scripture, here; he could mean the entire biblical record. Scene two of John's Easter drama follows. Mary is alone on stage, weeping (v. 11). Two new characters show up, in an unexpected place: inside the tomb (v. 12). They are angels -- although John doesn't say for sure whether Mary realizes who they are. "Why are you weeping?" the strangers ask -- the same question one might put to a disconsolate child. Mary's numb repetition of her announcement to the other disciples -- "They have taken away my Lord..." -- suggests she does not, at this moment, realize who it is she's talking to (v. 13). Now comes the moment of high drama. Turning around, Mary sees a figure standing behind her (v. 14). Repeating the angels' question, he asks her why she is weeping. Thinking him to be "the gardener" -- a cemetery groundskeeper -- she implores him to lead her to Jesus' body. She will make sure it is returned, so Jesus' soul may continue its process of detaching itself from his body, in peace (v. 15). The stranger calls her by name and, instantly, she knows him. She calls him "Rabbouni" -- an honorific Aramaic title, similar to the Hebrew "rabbi" or "teacher" (v. 16). Jesus' command, "Do not hold onto me" (v. 17), does not -- as some have assumed -- mean that he inhabits a "spiritual body" that could be harmful for a mortal to touch. Although this line has often been mistranslated, "Do not touch me," in fact it means "do not hold me." Jesus must be on his way, so he cannot linger long. Mary's news, "I have seen the Lord," is the first Christian proclamation (v. 18).
Alternate Gospel Lesson
Matthew 28:1-10
Matthew's Resurrection Account
Alone among the resurrection accounts, Matthew involves Pilate and the Roman authorities in placing a guard at Jesus' tomb (27:64-66). This means that when the two Marys come to the tomb, they cannot expect to have access to the body for embalming purposes; they come simply "to see the tomb" (28:1). They are startled by an earthquake -- an eschatological sign. Matthew has told of an earlier earthquake, at that other momentous event: Jesus' death on the cross (27:54). The resurrection earthquake is caused by the arrival of an angel, who -- in the sight of the two Marys and the Roman guards, rolls the stone away and sits defiantly upon it (v. 2). The angel is glorious in appearance; at the sight of him, the panic-stricken Romans shudder and "become like dead men" (verses 3-4). The angel gives the traditional angelic greeting, "Fear not." Jesus is not here, he informs them. "He has been raised, as he said" (the "as he said" refers to Jesus' earlier predictions of his resurrection: see 16:21, 17:23, 20:19, and 26:32). The angel invites the two Marys to inspect the tomb and to ascertain that Jesus is truly gone (verses 5-6). The angel gives the women a message for the disciples that Jesus has been raised, and "is going ahead of you to Galilee" (v. 7).
Leaving the tomb with the contradictory feelings of "fear and great joy," the women run to deliver the angelic message to the disciples (v. 8). On the way, Jesus himself meets them, addressing them with a word the NRSV translates, rather oddly, as "Greetings!" (the Greek chairete is difficult to translate, although the Hebrew or Aramaic underlying it could well be the conventional shalom; it can also be translated, "Rejoice!"). The two women fall at his feet and worship him (v. 9). Jesus, greeting them as the angel did with "Fear not," gives them his own message for the disciples: They are to meet him in Galilee (v. 10). Jesus calls his disciples "brothers" -- indicating his forgiveness of them, despite their having deserted and denied him. Matthew goes beyond Mark's "they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid." In his resurrection account, the divine command is to fear not and to carry the good news to others. In The Lectionary Commentary (Eerdmans, 2001, p. 154, ed. R. Van Harn), Dale C. Allison identifies numerous parallels between Matthew's crucifixion and resurrection accounts:
"And behold" (kai idou -- 27:51; 28:2)
An earthquake and the opening of tombs (27:51-52; 28:2)
The guards are afraid (27:54; 28:4)
The witnesses (those resurrected from the tombs; the guards) go to the city (27:53; 28:11)
The two Marys are the primary witnesses (27:55-56; 28:1)
The two stories are presented as bookends. Point by point, the joy of the resurrection undoes the agony of the crucifixion.
Preaching Possibilities
Alone among the four gospel writers, Matthew provides a vivid, physical accompaniment to the world-shaking events of Jesus' resurrection. He literally gives us an Easter earthquake -- and not just a single one during Holy Week -- but three.
The first of these earthquakes isn't a physical disturbance at all although he uses the same Greek word he'll later use to describe the trembling of the earth. In chapter 21, verse 10 he says that as Jesus rides into Jerusalem on his donkey, "the whole city was in turmoil." Literally, what Matthew says is that the whole city is quaking. The Greek word is seis, the same word from which our modern words "seismic" and "seismograph" come. As Jesus rides triumphantly into Jerusalem, and as the jubilant crowds wave their palm branches, bow down and shout "Hosanna," it's as though the whole social order is being shaken to its foundations.
A few days later -- at the very moment Jesus exhales his last breath on the cross -- Matthew speaks of another, more literal earthquake: "Jesus cried again with a loud voice and breathed his last. At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. 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. After his resurrection they came out of the tombs and entered the holy city and appeared to many. Now when the centurion and those with him, who were keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake and what took place, they were terrified and said, 'Truly this man was God's Son!' " (Matthew 27:50-54).
Sounds a bit like Good Friday as told by Stephen King, doesn't it? Earthquakes, open graves, dead people walking around, befuddled -- Matthew wants us to know that this death was not like any other death. This was the death of the Son of God.
Matthew's third use of the Greek word seis, or earthquake, occurs in his account of the resurrection:
"After the sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. And suddenly there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone 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." (28:1-4)
There's nothing peaceful or beautiful about Matthew's Easter story. The rising of the Son of God is a profoundly disturbing, disorienting event. His death had resulted in dead men walking; his resurrection leaves battle-hardened Roman soldiers writhing on the ground in terror. As for the women -- who just happen to be at the tomb when the earthquake hits, and the angel descends from on high to kick the heavy stone away -- the first word the angel speaks to them is "Do not be afraid." Evidently, even these courageous women are shaking with fear.
Well, why should it be that way? Why should Easter -- this day of lilies and tulips, of spring fashions and baby parades, of family reunions and baskets full of chocolates -- be the stuff of fear and trembling? Matthew's Easter is not the sort of spring-festival holiday most of us have been taught to observe.
For Matthew, Easter changes everything. To fully realize the impact of the dawning of this day of days, we moderns must try to enter for a moment or two into the mindset of the ancient world -- of the people who first heard the good news.
Remember, these are people who do not know Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. They don't really believe there's such a thing as eternal life -- not life abundant, anyway. Most of the Greeks and Romans believe that souls migrate from the body, at death, into some shadowy underworld, like the Hades of their mythology. It's not the sort of place in which anyone living wants to dwell. It's a dark and haunted landscape, bleak and barren, populated by wandering, discontented spirits who yearn for the life they've lost. Every once in a while, by permission of the capricious demigods who guard the gates of the underworld, one of those spirits makes its way back into the land of the living. Whenever this happens, it is emphatically not a good thing. Such spirits often return to haunt the living, to announce to them that they are accursed, and that terrible calamity is soon to follow.
As for the Jews, they were of a divided mind when it came to life after death. Some first-century Jews believed much as the Greeks and Romans did -- that this life was pretty much all there is, and whatever awaits us on the other side of the grave is unpleasant at best. There was a significant party within the Jewish religion, however, that had come to believe in a new idea: a general resurrection of the faithful at the end of time. Yet, even for them, the prospect of somebody rising from the grave in the here and now would have filled them with fear.
The bottom line is -- as one Bible scholar put it -- if the typical first-century Jew or Roman were to hear rumors that a man had risen up from the grave, that person's response would likely be, "How can we get him back in?"
Matthew gives his first-century readers -- and us, as well -- an earthquake as part of his Easter story. He includes the earthquake so his readers will understand that Jesus' resurrection is no haunting from beyond the grave, and no mere resuscitation, either. The defeat of death and evil must necessarily occur not with a whimper, but with a bang. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is something utterly and entirely new. It changes everything.
Matthew finishes his account of the angel's message in a peculiar way: "So they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples" (28:8). "Fear and great joy" together: what a contradiction! Most of us, if asked to describe the greatest, most joyful event that could possibly happen in our lives, probably wouldn't include fear in that description. Yet, isn't it often just that way, when it comes to the great milestones in our lives? What beaming bride has ever walked down a church aisle without also feeling some measure of fear? Or, what new father has sat in the delivery room, clad in hospital scrubs and surgical mask, filled with gladness at the new life he cradles in his arms -- but who has not also been filled with a new and unaccustomed fear, as he reflects on what should happen if this life should be snatched away from him? What entrepreneur has ever opened a new business without an equal measure of joyful accomplishment, and fear of failure? What person has ever embarked on that journey called "retirement" without both enjoying newfound leisure and fearing it?
Matthew wants us to know that the resurrection of Jesus Christ marks both the dawn of a new and hopeful age, and the death of something old and familiar. Sometimes the familiar dies hard. That's what those earthquakes in Matthew are all about. They're the tremors of an old world dying. Yet know that they also mark the start of something new.
G.K. Chesterton has written,
"On the third day the friends of Christ coming at daybreak to the place found the grave empty and the stone rolled away. In varying ways they realised the new wonder; but even they hardly realised that the world had died in the night. What they were looking at was the first day of a new creation, with a new heaven and a new earth; and in a semblance of the gardener God walked again in the garden, in the cool not of the evening but the dawn."
So we, too -- like those holy women of old -- leave the empty tomb of Jesus with fear and great joy. We have felt the earth move beneath our feet, and we're not entirely happy, having had that experience. We don't understand everything we've heard and seen of Jesus of Nazareth and his deeds of power -- especially not his resurrection -- that greatest of all mysteries.
Yet, we do also know, somehow, that having heard this good news, we can never return again to the way things were before. The good news will not leave us alone. It demands something of us. Having heard this news, and believed it, we have crossed a threshold we can never cross back over again.
Prayer For The Day
God of terror and joy,
you arise to shake the earth.
Open our graves and give us back the past;
so that all that has been buried may be freed and forgiven,
and our lives may return to you
through the risen Christ. Amen.
-- Janet Morley, "God of Terror and Joy," All Desires Known: Prayers Uniting Faith and Feminism (Morehouse-Barlow, 1988), p. 16
To Illustrate
Eight-year-old Dorothy awoke one morning, to feel her brass bed sliding across the floor of her bedroom. There was no one pushing it; the bed seemed to be moving of its own accord. Not only that, the floor was shaking, and the very walls of her room seemed to be moving.
The walls of Dorothy's bedroom were moving. For this young girl was experiencing one of the most devastating earthquakes in American history: the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. That quake measured 8.25 on the Richter Scale -- or so today's geologists have estimated. By contrast, the most recent major quake to hit San Francisco -- the one in 1989 -- measured only 6.7.
The 1906 earthquake lasted only 140 seconds -- just over two minutes -- but it made a lifelong impression on young Dorothy Day. Later, in her autobiography, she would tell not only what it was like to feel her bed sliding across the polished wood floor, but also her impressions of the hours and days that followed, as San Francisco reeled from this unimaginable and unforeseen catastrophe:
"The earthquake started with a deep rumbling and the convulsions of the earth started afterward, so that the earth became a sea that rocked our house in a most tumultuous manner. There was a large windmill and water tank in back of the house and I can remember the splashing of the water from the tank on top of our roof."
After the tremors subsided, Dorothy would tell of the wreckage that choked the streets... the columns of smoke rising from uncontrolled fires... the tears, the heartache, the pain. But Dorothy would also write of something else she saw: How an entire city of strangers joined together in recovery. Suddenly, social distinctions that had seemed so important no longer mattered. Everyone was affected. The men pitched tents and constructed lean-tos amidst the smoking rubble, the women cooked and lent their families' spare clothing to those who had none.
What Dorothy Day witnessed in the aftermath of the great quake of 1906 would change her life. The earthquake taught her an unforgettable lesson -- how human beings are actually capable of caring for one another, when the need arises:
"What I remember most plainly was the human warmth and kindliness of everyone afterward, as the refugees poured out of burning San Francisco. Each person was a little child in friendliness and warmth; they were united in Christian solidarity. It makes one think of how people could, if they would, care in times of stress, unjudgingly with pity and love." (cited by Paul Elie: The Life You Save May Be Your Own, An American Pilgrimage [Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2003])
Dorothy Day, of course, would become, in the estimation of many, a modern American saint. She would spend her adult life dwelling in voluntary poverty in America's cities. Her politics were radical: not everyone agreed with her, but no one doubted her commitment to those people whom Jesus called "the least of these, my brothers and sisters." The Catholic Worker Houses she founded have become beacons of hope to the disadvantaged of our cities.
It took an earthquake to plant that idea in her mind: The idea that life could be different from what it otherwise is -- more loving, more caring, more Christlike.
***
The Danish theologian Søren Kierkegaard likens the good news of Christianity to a razor-sharp knife -- one that can wound as easily as it can help, one that must be handled with the utmost caution and care:
"I wonder if a man handing another man an extremely sharp, polished, two-edged instrument would hand it over with the air, gestures, and expression of one delivering a bouquet of flowers. Would this not be madness? What does one do, then? Convinced of the excellence of the dangerous instrument, one recommends it unreservedly, to be sure, but in such a way that in a certain sense one warns against it. So it is with Christianity."
-- Søren Kierkegaard, Works of Love, trans. Howard and Edna Hong (New York: Harper & Row, 1938), p. 191
***
We forget so readily what Christianity brought into the world; we are so used to it that we think it is obvious. In the ancient world there was absolutely no assumption that every life was precious. Fathers had the right to kill their children in certain circumstances, masters their slaves; crowds flocked to see criminals or prisoners of war killing each other in the theatres; massacre was a normal tool of war.... It is a shock to realise just how deeply rooted such an attitude was. And when all is said and done about how Christianity has so often failed in its own vision, the bare fact is that it brought an irreversible shift in human culture.
-- Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, Easter sermon, 2004, distributed by Anglican Communion News Service
***
Many centuries ago, church father John Chrysostom preached a famous Easter sermon that's still read aloud each year in many Eastern Orthodox churches. In a string of powerful verbs, he bangs home again and again the point that the resurrection is an event of unimaginable power that throws the nether reaches of the universe into turmoil:
"Hell was in an uproar because it was done away with.
It was in an uproar because it is mocked.
It was in an uproar, for it is destroyed.
It was in an uproar, for it is annihilated.
It was in an uproar, for it is now made captive.
Hell took a body, and discovered God.
It took earth, and encountered heaven.
It took what it saw, and was overcome by what it did not see.
O death, where is thy sting?
O hades, where is thy victory?"
***
William Sloane Coffin's last book, Letters to a Young Doubter, ends with an Easter sermon he preached at Yale University many years before, that includes these eloquent words:
"Easter has less to do with one person's escape from the grave than with the victory of seemingly powerless love over loveless power. And let us also emphasize this: too often Easter comes across very sentimentally like a dessert wafer -- airy and sweet. But there's nothing sentimental about Easter: Easter represents a demand as well as a promise, a demand not that we sympathize with the crucified Christ, but that we pledge our loyalty to the risen one. That means an end to all loyalties, to all people, and to all institutions that crucify. I don't see how you can proclaim allegiance to the risen Lord and then allow life once again to lull you to sleep, to smother you in convention, to choke you with success."
There's nothing sentimental about Easter. Try as we may to cover the entrance of the empty tomb with tulips and lilies, we must remember that, in the end, it's the gaping, ravenous mouth of death we're staring into and that sight can't be prettied up. Yet, the stone that once guarded the sepulchral entrance has been cast aside. The powers of death have been vanquished. Their defeat, while not yet fully accomplished, is fully assured.
That changes the way we live -- or, at least, it ought to. Just as the risen Christ greeted his followers with the words, "Fear not," we, too, can put fear behind us. Just as he commissioned them, saying, "Go and make disciples of all nations," we, too, can go forth courageously in his name.
Easter is not about feeling sentimental. It's about being charged up with divine power: power to hope, power to believe, power to love.
