Easter Sunday (A)
April 12, 2020
Matthew 28:1-10
(COVID-19, online worship)
Alleluia! Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia!
My kids are at the stage of emotional development where we are trying to teach them that it is possible to have more than one emotion at the same time. A frequent one for my 3 and 4yo is, “Sad and a little bit mad.” A couple of common ones for me are, “excited and scared,” and, especially when something beloved but difficult has just ended, “sad and relieved.” Emotions are so complicated, right?
Well today we are faced, both in the Easter story and in our own current story, with an emotional pairing that is not so familiar, at least not to me: “fear and great joy.” This is what the women felt after seeing an angel arrive at the tomb like a flash of lightening, and being told that Jesus was not, in fact, dead, but risen! “With fear and great joy” they race to tell the disciples the news.
I feel this dual-emotion this Easter. It is always a great joy to celebrate the resurrection – the incredible story, the great hymns… it’s my favorite day of the year! Yet this joy is bittersweet this year by the reality that even as we sing, “Christ has triumphed! Alleluia!” …we are still looking so much death and fear right in the face. This Easter is definitely one that we experience “with fear and great joy.”
But in this, I find it really helpful to recognize that while this Easter is different from any we have experienced before… it is not that different from the very first Easter morning. While we may be used to packed churches, brass and flowers, the first Easter had only a couple of women, an angel and Jesus. While we are used to joy and celebration, that first Easter had so much fear that two Roman guards passed out, and both the angel and Jesus himself had to assure the women with the words: “do not be afraid.” While we are used to carrying out our various Easter traditions – brunch, egg hunts, ham, whatever it is – the women who went to carry out their usual burial custom were faced with the disruption to end all disruptions: an angel zipping down from heaven like lightning wearing clothes like the sun, an earthquake, and the utterly unexpected empty tomb. Small gatherings, fear, and disruption – that is what the first Easter was like!
This year, I’ve been especially drawn to that last one, that earthquake. This is not the first earthquake we have seen in this story – if you tuned in last week, you may remember that there was also an earthquake when Jesus died, one that Matthew tells us caused the earth to shake and the rocks to be split. It would seem that Matthew is really hitting home the point here that new life does not and cannot come about without some serious, earth-shaking disruption. I’m sure neither of those quakes was a pleasant nor satisfying experience (earthquakes never are), but then again, bringing about new life is also seldom a pleasant or peaceful experience. In fact, when I think back on the moments of my life which, in retrospect, are the ones that marked a turning point toward something new and important, they often correspond with some of the biggest and least welcome disruptions in my life. Things I would never wish on myself or anyone, but which in the end set me on the right path (or at least took me off the wrong path!). Those disruptions set me heading toward 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.” Only after disaster can we be resurrected. I suspect the women at the tomb that morning might find some truth in that! And so do we: I think we often find it difficult to change our ways until we have been faced with the worst case scenario beginning to come true. Only after disaster can we be resurrected.
Disaster. Whether the brutal death of a friend and teacher, or an earthquake, or a global pandemic, disaster has the potential to serve as a great reset. That is the great gift of disruption: it forces us out of our rut, out of our usual way of doing things, and causes us to re-examine where we are and where we are going. There are many ways this may happen on a national or global level in the coming months and years, but I’m thinking more personally and maybe even more immediately. I have heard from several people in the past weeks about how their priorities have shifted during this time, generally for the better. Many report having been pushed closer to God, which is a great side effect. Many have realized how detrimental our frantic pace and our always striving for perfection is during a time like this. I hear this especially from parents. It has always been an impossible ideal that one can be a perfect parent and a perfect worker simultaneously. But add homeschooling your children and managing both their and your big emotions, and all without the ability to rely upon your village of support, and this fact becomes utterly clear in a big hurry! Standards have lowered, both as we take stock of what is most important or needful in any given moment, and as we recognize the importance of offering grace to one another. I have been abundantly aware of how much grace I need from people right now, and so I am eager to offer the same to others when I can. I was telling someone this week that my greatest accomplishment this Holy Week was recognizing when it is time to say, “Good enough!” and let grace take over. We are all doing the best we can, and that is enough!
I believe these realizations (as well as others that you have made for yourself) are fruits of new life pushing out of the dark dirt and into the morning light. And this quarantine may end up being long enough that some of these life-giving realizations might actually stick. To be clear, I do not believe God brought about this pandemic, but I do believe God is using it to show us a different way. God has a history, after all, of going to extraordinary lengths to get our attention and set us back on the right track. If the death and resurrection of his own Son wasn’t enough, add a couple of earthquakes to literally shake people into recognizing, “Hey, I’m doing a thing here! Pay attention!” I know that I need a shake like that sometimes, to get me to look around and see what God is doing. I need to be knocked off my feet before I recognize the possibility of new life in a different direction.
With all this mind, I have wondered if we might be in the Easter earthquake stage of this pandemic, the part that is still dark and fearful, that is shaking our foundations, that maybe is even knocking us off our feet… but also the part that is what moves the stone away from the tomb to reveal that it is empty, that death does not get the final word. The part that shows, as unexpected and even terrifying as it is, where new life is possible – even, is already happening. The part that can fill us with fear, yes, but also, ultimately, with great joy.
“Do not be afraid,” the angel says to the women. And while this may seem impossible at times, these four words are also the best news of all, because they 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 are experiencing a huge communal disruption right now, even as the earth-shaking things that are unique to our individual experience haven’t stopped: injuries and illnesses, pains in our bodies and hearts, loss and grief, broken relationships, all the burdens we were already carrying. So no, 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,” 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, and to use it to point us toward new life. Furthermore, those words tell us 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 of a tomb, into hope, into the possibility for growth and newness and new life. Sometimes it is an earthquake that we need in order truly to see and experience resurrection.
Let us pray… Resurrected God, you bring life out of death, possibility out of disruption, and resurrection out of disaster. Do that again for us this Easter, Lord, and every day after. Shake us out of death, and set us on the way toward life. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment