Matthew 28:1-8 (9-20) Easter Day, March 23, 2008
Easter's coming. Are you scared yet? On Easter Day we'll go out of our way to make our worship joyful. Best music (we'll try, anyway). Best sermon (please, God!). Best attendance (and offering, we hope). Tune the organ. Dust the balcony. Clean the windows. Make the church the best place to be on a long-weekend Sunday morning.
We Presbyterians can do joy. What about fear? Matthew 28:8: “So they left the tomb quickly, with fear and great joy …” Joy and fear. Jesus is alive! Hallelujah! Jesus is alive! Oh no!
As Matthew tells the story, Mary and Mary get to watch the opening of the tomb. Enough to frighten anyone. But the angel who rolls back the stone says, “Don't be afraid!” They may want to run away. They're supposed to trust enough to stay and listen for the word from God that always follows an angel's call to calm down. The angel knows why they're there and has good news. Come and see. He's not here! Now they're supposed to run! To go and tell the men, then go with them to Galilee. Happy Easter! Get to work! As they turn to go they meet Jesus. He gives them the same orders (verses 9 and 10). They can worship Him for just a moment. Then there's work to do.
Joy and fear. If Jesus is alive, what's next? If this can happen, what else might come? He had power before this, what must He be like now? He asked so much of us before He died, what will He want us to do now? Caesar couldn't defeat him after all. He'll try harder next time. Next time it'll be you and me on our own crosses! Fear and great joy.
The official version of the story will be that Jesus' friends robbed the tomb (11-15). A capital offence. There's good reason to be afraid!
As Matthew tells the story, there's no doubt they'll learn to live with the fear and joyfully accept the Great Commission (16-20). We're still under that commission. We celebrate his resurrection with great joy. Where's the fear?
Years ago, the Women's Missionary Society chose as an annual theme, Threatened With Resurrection, from a book of poems and prayers by Julia Esquivel (Threatened with Resurrection: Prayers and Poems from an Exiled Guatemalan, Brethren Press). She is a poet and lay preacher who was exiled from Guatemala in the 1980s. Esquivel confronted daily threats on her life with the power of her faith in the resurrection. She sustained hope by believing the powers of the world face a greater threat than they could ever wield. The powers are threatened with resurrection.
Why not make that our Easter sermon titles and service themes this year? It's dangerous to dare to declare Jesus is alive. To tell the story of the empty tomb is to say even the greatest earthly power is a failure. To declare an end to oppression. To celebrate the defeat of everything that denies life and everyone who deals death in this world. To declare our course against the current.
Esquivel says resurrection is “something that doesn't let us sleep, that doesn't let us rest, that won't stop pounding deep inside … it is the earthquake soon to come that will shake the world and put everything into place.” She invites us to join in “this vigil and … know what it is to dream! Then you will know how marvellous it is to be threatened with resurrection.”
