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March 23, 2008 sermon

Emerging from the Easter Earthquake
(Matthew 28: 1-10)

Reverend Minister Sally Harris

Earth quaking God, living liberating Christ
Give us discerning hearts to recognize
the fear in our anger,
the muffled hope in our cynicism,
and the wounds we carry as weapons.
Help us to see the rising of hope
even when stones seem too big to move
and what we expect isn’t there
and we are afraid of what might emerge. Amen.

The morning was still and fragrant, the same as any other morning in spring. The same sun, newly risen. The same hard-packed, dirt path. A bird singing, it could have been any morning – but it wasn’t. “Does the whole world not know what has happened?” The women wondered, in the cloud of their unknowing. They had cried and raged, till there were no more tears. It seemed like weeks, but it had been only two days. But they were two endless days, all Mary and Mary could see when they closed their eyes was the horror of death, the darkness! The day the sun stopped shining! All they could feel was the loss and the earth quaking – opening up as if to swallow the dead! All they could hear was the cry and the splitting of rocks, as the beloved gave up his spirit. They had not slept for days. They had stood for hours by the cross, unable to move, unable to look away, with the silence all around them. Nothing seemed to matter to them anymore, nothing except that long, lonely vigil. I don’t know what they were expecting would happen. He was dead - killed like a common criminal. Such things were not unusual in this occupied land. But it was unusual for them! He was unusual to them. This was NOT usual! The two Marys wanted to shout. Doesn’t anyone see what we see, feel what we feel… A poem is recalled – words one or both of the Marys could have said: (by Rainer Rilke)

It's possible I am pushing through solid rock in flintlike layers, as the ore lies, alone; I am such a long way in I see no way through, and no space: everything is close to my face, and everything close to my face is stone.

It’s possible they could have prayed…

I don't have much knowledge yet in grief -- so this massive darkness makes me small. You be the master: make yourself fierce, break in: then your great transforming will happen to me, and my great grief cry will happen to you.

But they were silent as they walked this same, hard-packed dirt path that led to the tomb. What would we have seen if we had been there? Surely we would have seen Roman guards stirring from their sleep, stretching their sore arms and legs, grumbling among themselves. They hated this kind of duty -- the air was cold, the ground was hard. They were in a cemetery, away from their families because some religious leaders were scared to death of a peasant rabbi they had just crucified. He is dead, for God's sake! These priests had come to Pilate on the Passover, breaking their own laws -- to ask him to seal the tomb with a Roman guard to keep his disciples from stealing the body. Because of these leaders, the guards have been stationed here since Friday night and they are not happy. This will be their last day.

If we had been there, we might have noticed an eerie light filtered through the air. We might have seen the soldiers get up, rubbing their eyes, when suddenly the ground begins to shake beneath them. The guards fall to the ground and each time they try to stand, they are knocked down. It is an earthquake, like the one on Friday except, later, it was remembered as more violent. The guards hear a scraping noise by the tomb and they look up to see one who shines with a blinding light. This heavenly creature rolls back the stone like it was a pebble and then hops up on it. The guards are absolutely frozen in fear -- like dead men.

In the fifties, in China, there was a devastating earthquake. But as a result of the quake, a huge boulder was dislodged from a mountain thus exposing a great cache of wonderful artifacts from a thousand years ago. A new world suddenly became visible. When the stone was rolled away, and the earth shook, we got our first glimpse of a new world as we emerged from Easter’s earthquake. A world where death doesn't have the last word, a world where injustice is made right, and innocent suffering is vindicated by the intrusion of a transforming God.

The women came out to the cemetery to write one more chapter in the long sad story of death's superiority, one more episode of how the good always get it in the end. This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper of resignation at injustice’s dark victory.

And then – the earth shook, as if it was giving birth… and an angel appeared, the stone was rolled away, the Roman guards shook. The angel plopped down on the stone in one final act of daring defiance of death, and empires and all that, and said to the women, 'Don't be afraid. You're looking for Jesus? He isn't here.' The place of resurrection is where we are taken out of our own control finding a God who heals through the darkness – this is the word of hope in a destabilized world… For then the angel turned to the guards and said, “Return to your empire and tell them to 'Be afraid’. Everything your world is built on is being shaken.' Nobody went back the same way they came.

Are we like the women walking that hard-packed dirt path that first Easter morn, on a journey of faith? Have we tasted the acid of despair, the salt of tears, the sweetness of grace? If we say yes still it will all beg explanation, for we won’t know for sure. We will be driven to belief, a stance that sounds noble but is difficult to sustain. We emerge from Easter’s earthquake with the stone rolled away… and the intrusion of the gospel – ‘Be Not Afraid’.

[sources: John Byerly & W H. Willimon]

early in the day,
through the mourning mist,
we walk . . .having left our hopes
at the Skull
we come to our friend:
hearts empty of life.
and then the earth shook…
and at the very edge of the mystery:
the hollowness of our world
is filled with the emptiness
of the tomb;
even as we wonder,
you enter;
the grave clothes
of our morning
are turned into
garments of praise;
the Gardener tills
the ashes of our hopes,
planting the seeds
of new life,sprinkled with living water.
and we emerge
from Easter’s earthquake
into the silence of our fear.
and lay our burden down,
like a stone rolled away
(adapted from a poem by Thom M. Shuman)

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