Earthquakes and Easter Eggs
Christ is Risen!
He is risen indeed!
What does it mean for our world that Christ rose from the dead? Why do monks stay up all night to celebrate the resurrection? Why do we, 2000 years later, have the largest church attendance and the biggest egg hunts, and the best communion bread on this Sunday of the year?
Each of the four gospels tells the story of Jesus’ resurrection in a different way. Luke describes Easter as a meal on Sunday evening in the Upper Room with the disciples and the risen Christ. John has the resurrected Jesus meet Mary Magdalene in the garden. Mark has Easter dawn as a quiet morning as three women go to the tomb to anoint Jesus’ body only to find that it is empty.
But Matthew? In that gospel, Easter is an earthquake with doors shaken off tombs and dead people walking the streets, the stone rolled away by the ruckus and an imprudent angel sitting on it.
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. But the angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here, for he has been raised, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples, ‘He has been raised from the dead, and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.’ This is my message for you.” So they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy and ran to tell his disciples. Suddenly Jesus met them and said, “Greetings!” And they came to him, took hold of his feet, and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers and sisters to go to Galilee; there they will see me.”
Matt. 28:1-10
I’m not certain how many of you have been in a serious earthquake, but I’m told that seconds turn into hours while the earth shakes under you and buildings and items tumble down upon you. I have a friend who wanted to move to California so much that he looked for a job that would allow him to work for a few years and eventually he would have enough seniority to request a transfer to California. Shortly after he moved to California, a 5.6 earthquake hit. He was so frightened by that one experience that he gave up the dream of living in California, quit his job, packed his things, and moved immediately.
Matthew says Easter is an earthquake that shook the whole world. How does the writer of Matthew compare Easter to an earthquake? We modern types try to explain away the resurrection. Some say Jesus was in a deep, drugged coma and woke up. Others say that the disciples got all worked up in their grief and just fantasized the whole thing. Many say that dead people don’t resurrect. It just didn’t happen.
You can’t explain a resurrection. Resurrection explains us. The truth is that the disciples didn’t want or expect Easter. Death and defeat, while painful, are still explainable. Our world likes the facts. And the fact is: all that lives, dies. Even the good get it in the end. It may be a rather somber world, but that’s the way it is. “Life sucks; and then you die”, so to speak. There are only a few surprises. This is us.
But Easter isn’t about us. It’s about God. It is not about the resuscitation of a dead body. That’s resuscitation, not resurrection. It’s not about the immortality of the soul, some divine spark that endures after the end. That’s Plato, not Jesus. It’s about God, not God as an empathetic but ineffective good friend, or some great inner experience, but God who creates a way when there was no way, a God who makes war on evil until evil is undone, a God who raises dead Jesus just to show us that we don’t know much about death or life.
I don’t know this for sure, but I think that the Easter earthquake angel perched on the rock in front of the tomb was the same angel who, back in Matthew 1 shook Joseph awake one night with the fantastic news that his fiancée was pregnant. See what I mean? God made a way when there was no way.
In the 1950’s, in China, there was a devastating earthquake. As a result of the quake, a huge boulder was dislodged from a mountain. When that boulder was moved, a great cache of wonderful artifacts from a thousand years before was exposed. A new world was visible as a result of the earthquake.
When the stone in front of the tomb was rolled away, the earth shook, and humanity got it’s first glimpse of a new world… a world where death doesn’t have the last word, a world where injustice is made right, where innocent suffering is vindicated, and where love is the greatest force.
Have you ever been walking to the tomb like the women on that day – grieving, sick-at-heart, and hopeless? Have you ever in your life been weighed down by the facts? Has life ever handed you so much death and despair that you could find no reason for living? That is what it is like to walk to the tomb.
And anyone who has lived very long knows that when you are in the dumps, it can get worse. When you think you are at the bottom, you may sink deeper. That’s what it’s like to arrive at the tomb and find the stone rolled away. Grief heaped on grief. A stolen body to add to the pile of torture heaped on Jesus. Insult to injury. Salt in the wound.
Have you ever been so distraught, so unhappy, so hurt, that you didn’t see any way for the situation to be reversed? No way out? No hope in sight? It couldn’t get any worse? That’s what the women thought.
And then the earth shook and the storm brewed and rocks were falling, and everyone was afraid. And the news is so surreal that you can’t believe it even though the proof is before your eyes. A hopeless situation has turned around. The impossible has happened. The unfeasible has become feasible. You see what could not be seen before – a solution, a moment of hope, a miracle has happened. Resurrection.
On the cross, the world did all it could to Jesus. At Easter, God did all God could to the world. And the earth trembled and shook.
Crucifixion wasn’t just an unfortunate mistake in the Roman legal system, the first-century Judean equivalent of the OJ Simpson fiasco. Crucifixion was the inevitable, predictable result of saying the things Jesus said, and doing the things Jesus did. This is what the world always does to people who threaten the status quo. Let’s face the facts.
But on Easter, God inserted a new fact. God took the worst we could do – all our death-dealing doings – and found a way to give life again. And the earth shook.
Jesus picked up a piece of bread and ate it and you could see the nail prints in his hands. The world is about life, as it turns out, not death. And the earth shook.
Look around you. The earth is shaking. New life is possible. What was hopeless has become reality. Where death was comes life.
Stale marriages come alive and give nurture and love to a family… or stale marriages die and the couple goes their own ways and find new lives separately.
Poor children find a way to break out of their surroundings and build a new life for themselves as adults and break the cycle with their own children! A magnificent example of new life!
Researchers find cures for debilitating diseases. New life abounds!
Buds poke their heads through snow – a reminder that there is hope even when the bleak midwinter is upon us.
A baby is saved and neighbors rejoice as she is brought home. Her exhausted parents smile through their tired eyes and you know that they have peace for the first time in many long hours, days, or months.
New jobs are created and unemployed workers are back on the job. Their paychecks not only provide food for their families – they also have the warmth of homes, the security of a future, the hope they had lost.
God is doing a new thing. And the earth shakes on its foundations.
Christ is risen!
He is risen indeed!