Easter Sermon: "I feel the earth move under my feet."

Easter 2014

April 20, 2014

Matthew 28:1-10

Alleluia! Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia!

As I was preparing for this Easter this year, I couldn’t help but think about this time last year. I remember last Easter very well. Actually, not so much Easter itself, as the week following Easter. On Monday, I had my bridal shower, on a beautiful day in my aunt and uncle’s home on Lake Ontario, surrounded by many of my friends and family. On Tuesday, my parents left Rochester and returned to their home in California. On Wednesday, I had a routine scan, a usual check-up following my little bout with cancer the previous fall. We had every reason to believe it would be clear… but the scan turned into a biopsy of some suspicious tissue. And on Thursday, while I was having lunch with some friends, I got a phone call from the doctor, and I was diagnosed with cancer. Again. For the third time.

I remember sitting at that lunch table, telling my friends what I had learned, head in hands, tears in eyes, as my Pad Thai was set down in front of me. Here I had been planning my wedding, and celebrating with friends, and getting excited about starting a family soon with the love of my life. And suddenly, everything changed. Everything was different. Plans had to change. Major surgery was on the horizon. Dreams were put on hold. My heart, my world had been shaken.

An emotional earthquake. These things happen, don’t they? I am sure you all have your own stories of times when the things you were sure of were suddenly challenged, when you felt that you no longer stood on solid ground. Or times when everything you had built and were comfortable with was suddenly changed. Or times when your heart was ripped in two and nothing was as it should be and you no longer could tell which way was the right way. An earthquake. If you have made it this far without one, you will undoubtedly experience one at some point, because, as Ernest Hemingway said, “Life breaks everyone” eventually.

In Matthew’s account of the resurrection that we just heard, he mentions that there was an earthquake that first Easter morning, which moved the stone away from the tomb. You may remember, if you were here on Passion Sunday, that this is not the first earthquake we’ve had this week. Matthew also tells us there was an earthquake the moment that Jesus died, the moment when those who had been his followers and believed him to be the Messiah must have doubted and despaired, because this man who now hung on a cross could certainly not be the one who would save them, as they had hoped he would be.

And so it was surely with heavy hearts that those women approached the tomb that morning. A physical as well as an emotional earthquake had shaken their very foundations. Their plans had to change. Their hopes had been dashed. And just when they could not be any more in despair, the ground shakes again – another earthquake! Hadn’t they had enough?!

And yet this earthquake is something entirely different. There, before their eyes, an angel moves

across the sky like lightening, wearing clothes a dazzling white, and moves away that big heavy stone, which Matthew tells us had been placed there to prevent Jesus’ disciples or anyone from stealing the body. The first earthquake had devastated; this one shocks, as the inside of the once tightly sealed tomb before them comes into view and they find that, as the angel tells them, it is empty. Rather than devastation, this earthquake had brought hope to the women at the tomb – hope in the possibility (even if they still feared!) of new life.

Maybe you have seen the movie Fight Club. It’s a difficult movie to watch, but the themes are quite fascinating. In it, a group of men rediscover the spark of life by engaging in consensual fistfights with each other, and through this, they find a new way to live. As the main character explains, “Only after disaster can we be resurrected.” Could this not be the take-away from the experience of those women at the tomb? They had experienced disaster – seen their friend and teacher crucified before their eyes, and endured an earthquake of the land and of the heart. And now, as they try to move on with their lives, tending to the dead body of their beloved teacher, they experience another earthquake, now showing them that when the earth moves under your feet, you might just look up to find an open and empty tomb, and an angel telling you with the authority of God himself, “Do not be afraid.”

            And in these four words is the best news of all. An earthquake that opens a tomb by itself is not good news – it is earth-shattering. An empty tomb by itself is not good news – it is confusing. Even an angel that moves like lightening and is dressed like the sun is not good news – it is terrifying. But those words – “do not be afraid” – offer us the promise that comes with the shock of the resurrection. When the angel says these words, and when Jesus says the same words a bit later, it is not to assure us that nothing will ever go wrong. We know from experience that things do frequently go wrong. We have all

had earthquakes in our lives – you may even be in the midst of one right now. We have gotten the dreaded phone call, watched the heart-breaking scene, and experienced what we thought could never happen to us. So those words don’t shield us from trouble. “Do not be afraid” does not mean that everything is going to work out for the best, because while we may like to tell ourselves that, we know that it isn’t always the case, and in fact, it often isn’t.

            No, when we hear those words, “Do not be afraid” from the angel, and then later from Jesus, it is an assurance that what earthquakes we may endure, whatever ways our lives may get turned upside down, whatever gutters we may find ourselves in, God has the power to hold us and strengthen us through it. With those words, we know that whatever we may have to face, we need not face it alone, and that no earthquake, no matter how strong, is stronger than God’s love for us.  

            At the end of the day – or in the case of the resurrection story, at the beginning of the new day, just before dawn – God gets the last word. God’s love wins. God’s love and power turn our earthquakes and our despair and our devastation into an opening, into hope, into the possibility for growth and newness and new life. Sometimes it is an earthquake that we need in order to see and experience resurrection.

            Alleluia! Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia! Amen.