"Only the Beginning"
Matthew 28:1-10
For a lot of people, this is a season of spring flowers, a
time for getting together with family, a time for chocolate bunnies and yellow
marshmallow chicks. But on Easter Sunday
mornings Christians make our pilgrimage back to the tomb, looking for Jesus.
We
go with Mary Magdalene and the other Mary as they go to the tomb. They were
there when Jesus was crucified, and they saw him die. They were there when Jesus’ body was carried
into the tomb. Now that the Sabbath is over, the women head to the tomb at daybreak. In their despair and grief, they’ve come to say goodbye to the One who had given reason to their hopes.
Preachers and regular church-goers know what’s coming next. But these women at the tomb didn’t know. They had no idea--even if they had heard Jesus say things about how dying, and three days, and then rising.
The women were approaching the tomb in the darkness, when suddenly they feel the earth quake, as an angel of the Lord comes down and rolls back the stone and sits on it.
The
angel shows the women the empty tomb, saying,
“Don’t be afraid. I know that you
came looking for Jesus who was crucified.
He is not here, for he has been raised.”
Don’t
be afraid. He has been raised.It’s Easter Sunday, but for a lot of people, it feels like we’re living in a Good Friday world. If you feel like you’ve been living in a Good Friday world, you can probably relate to the two Mary’s and the other disciples. They’re stricken with grief…disillusionment… disappointment. Things haven’t turned out the way they’d hoped.
As Paul Raushenbush writes, “I’m waiting to feel Easter this year. That morning when I shout with that particular joy, and laugh with that particular freedom that comes from a certainty within my soul that what we say--that love is more powerful than death--is really true. Because today as hearts break and bombs drop and leaders betray and bonds fray, I don’t see love overcoming anything, and there is, deep within my soul, a despair that I can’t shake, won’t shake, because I know, for too many souls, death is real.
“I’m waiting to feel Easter this year, even as crucifixions continue unabated and sisters and brothers of all genders and colors and races and creeds find themselves hung out to die, cut off and alone. I’m waiting for Easter this year, even as my fist clenches and mind flinches and inside me I feel walls built, and closing in, and my defense is a good offense and, meanwhile, “where is my Lord? I am looking for him and they took him and buried him and I don’t know what I am to do….”[1]
Do you wonder too? How do we celebrate Easter when vulnerable people are the victims of brutal attacks/? When undocumented immigrants in our country are having their families separated by deportations? When the people of Flint are still struggling with unsafe water and the children are facing a lifetime of developmental problems? How do we celebrate Easter when refugees from Syria and Sudan are crowded into camps or risking their lives to escape violence and warfare? When, for the poor of our country and the world, it’s always Good Friday? When gay men in the Chechen Republic are being detained and tortured? How do we celebrate Easter in a world where we try to make ourselves safe with guns… and make peace by shooting missiles and dropping bombs?
And yet, even in the most heartbreaking of times, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary show up, even when their hearts are broken by overwhelming suffering and loss. They love Jesus, and their love for him compels them to face death head-on. So, despite pain and loss, despite their fear, because they love Jesus, they keep showing up.[2]
The angel says, “Don’t be afraid.” The way our English translation reads, “Don’t be afraid” could sound like a command, and it’s impossible to overcome fear on command. But, as one of my colleagues points out, what the angel says is not a command, but rather a comforting assurance. “There is nothing to fear. You don’t need to be afraid.” Matthew tells us that this calming voice comes from a messenger who speaks with power that’s beyond this world--a messenger who rolled a huge stone away from the door of the tomb and shone like lightning.[3]
God’s power has overturned all expectations of how things happen in the world and show that goodness is stronger than evil and love is stronger than death.
The women were still afraid, of course. But they believe the good news of the angel and obey. They take the angel’s message to heart and, in fear and great joy, they’re on the way to tell the disciples, when they meet the risen Christ.
The way Matthew tells the resurrection day story, we know that the women “ran to tell the disciples,” but we don’t get to listen in when they deliver the good news.
But we know the women delivered the message, because Matthew tells us in verse 16 that “the eleven disciples went to Galilee.” And we know the story didn’t end there. This was only the beginning.
The good news of Easter is that Jesus Christ is risen from the dead, and
goes before us.
Don’t be afraid. There is nothing in the future that can
separate us from the greatness and goodness of God. In the Resurrection, God has triumphed over
death. God's power and love are stronger
than even the power of death. The God of
LIFE-- who is powerful enough to have raised his Son from the dead-- promises
that-- because he lives-- we shall live
also. In the presence of God's greatness
and love, we don't need to be afraid of the future.
Christ is risen! Anyone who encounters the Risen Christ will
never be the same again! When we commit
our life to the Lord who lives now and forever, our fear of the future changes
into hope, whether that hope is
fulfilled in this life or the next.
Do we believe that? If we do believe it, how can that good news
transform our lives?
Easter is a celebration of the
resurrection of Jesus. But it’s more than
that, or we wouldn’t be here over 2,000 years later, singing our “Alleluias!”
In the resurrection, God showed us
God’s wondrous love and power. When we
follow Jesus, we learn more about the amazing plans God has for our lives, and
we gradually learn to trust in God’s promises.
The angel suggests that if we want
to encounter the resurrection of Jesus Christ, we need to look toward a
resurrection happening in present and future tenses. Resurrection isn’t something that happened
just one Easter Sunday morning, long ago. It keeps happening, and is continuing today
with you and me. God has big dreams for us and for the world, and
Easter is just the beginning.
In the letter to the church at Colossae, we hear the
apostle Paul talking about resurrection in terms of new life. I like the way Eugene Peterson paraphrases it
in The Message:
“So
if you’re serious about living this
new resurrection life with Christ, act
like it. Pursue the things over which
Christ presides. Don’t shuffle along,
eyes to the ground, absorbed with the things in front of you. Look up, and be alert to what is going on
around Christ—that’s where the action
is. See things from Christ’s perspective.
Your
old life is dead. Your new
life, which is your real life—even
though invisible to spectators—is with Christ in God. He
is your life. When Christ (your real life, remember) shows up again on
this earth, you’ll show up, too-- the real you, the glorious you.
Meanwhile, be content with obscurity, like Christ.” (Colossians 3)
Our new life in Christ isn’t about spiritual perfection—but
of spiritual progress. Whether we’re eight
or eighty, God isn’t finished with us yet.
We are all works in progress.
In the film “Tender Mercies,” Robert Duvall
plays Mac Sledge, a down on his luck country singer who manages to climb out of
a bottle long enough to find a new life for himself as husband to a young widow
and step-father to her young son. The
way the film tells it, all this happens through “tender mercies”—the “tender
mercies” of God.
Because that is the case, one Sunday morning
Mac and his stepson are baptized in the Baptist church of the small East Texas
town where they live. On the way home,
their hair still wet, they talk about what has happened to them. The boy seems pleased enough that he has been
baptized, but perhaps a little confused that the high drama of his baptism has
had so little apparent effect on him.
“I don’t
feel any different,” he says. “At least
not yet…. How about you, Mac? “You feel any different?”
“No,” Mac
says. “I don’t feel any different. Not yet.”
“Not yet,”
he says. Those words “not yet” hint at expectation
and promise.
Not yet,
perhaps. But there is a power at work
within us, the power of resurrection.
I believe
that God never meant for there to be only one resurrection, but many resurrections—
enough to bring all of God’s people alive with the kind of life Christ
has.
In the resurrection, God showed us God’s
wondrous love and power. We discover
that God has an amazing plan for our lives.
We come to trust that the story of our life with God has a joyful ending.
In the meantime, with God’s help, we can move
beyond our fears, in the presence and power of God. We have been raised with Christ into new life. As we learn to live as freely and openly as Christ
lived, we will find our deepest and most abiding joy… and we can work in
partnership with Christ to bring in God’s kingdom-- on earth, as it is in
heaven.
Christ is risen! Alleluia!
Rev. Fran Hayes, Pastor
Littlefield Presbyterian Church
Dearborn, Michigan
April 16, 2017
[1]
Paul Brandeis Raushenbush (April 2017) Michael Adee shared this on Facebook,
and I haven’t find another link.
[2]Jill Duffield, in The Presbyterian
Outlook. http://pres-outlook.org/2017/04/easter-sunday-april-16-2017/
[3]
Melinda Quivik, in Working
Preacher. http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=1990
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