2011-04-24 Sermon Matthew 28 (Easter Service of Light)

110424am Service of Light Matthew 28:1-10

Matthew tells the story with a great play on words. There was a great quake, because Jesus who had been dead was now risen and the stone was rolled away. The guards out of fear quaked and became as dead. The angels said to the women, Don't you fear, he has risen from among the dead. They ran off with fear and joy. Jesus greeted them and said, Greetings – literally rejoice!. Then he said, don't fear.

Don't fear. How can we not fear? I was struck deeply meditating on Good Friday how the suffering and death of Jesus was really thorough. Although in human terms it was a few hours, in divine terms he plumbed the depths. There is no kind of suffering that he didn't endure, there's no depth to which we can sink but what his love can reach us there; there's no pain or fear that we can go through where he isn't present to us with his face turned towards us. So the reason we need not fear and can be filled with joy is not just because he is alive as he was already before the Cross, in his earthly ministry, but because he is alive having come through all that, through the worst sins of the whole of human history, through the ultimate degradation and suffering, through the non-existence of death itself.

The only ones who need fear are those who are trying to keep him down, keep him dead, write him off. The great quake, I think, doesn't just mean a local tremor, it means a shock-wave passing through the whole creation. There are actually two quakes: first in Matthew 27:51, because the Word of God died. We can't see into the depths of that, it's just too dark for us to see what it meant in the depths of God's own being to be bereft of his Son, who was impelled and inspired to go to the cross by the Holy Spirit. The second is here, because the Son of Man was raised. We can't see into that because there is just too much light – sitting in the garden I carelessly looked up at the sun, and immediately you have to look away before it blinds you – we can only see the outline of the blinding light at the heart of creation that death, the ultimate destroyer, the frustration of God's creative purpose, has been destroyed.

That first quake opened the tombs of the dead and made them alive; the second quake knocked down the forces of death, including their human agents the guards, and made them as dead. [Not actually dead – God loves them too and even they could be saved.]

You and will go through our own Calvaries. We will be at one time or another unjustly treated, ignored, misunderstood, powerless, helpless, at the mercy of others, in pain, we will feel angry, afraid, lost and alone, we will be among the dead. But even then, no matter what, Jesus, God's Son, our brother, will be with us and will bring us through. The same Holy Spirit, who led him to suffering and death also raised him and will raise us.

The angels say, Don't fear. We run around with fear and joy mixed together, and Jesus keeps saying, Don't fear! Rejoice!

What happened to the guards, by the way? v.11 For a while they became evangelists – reluctantly maybe, but they announced what had happened, just as the women were told to. But the Elders bought them off, and for money they told lies. The continuing fear and joy-less misery of the world is all based on a lie, that Jesus did not rise (maybe he lived and died, but that's it, that's the end of the story just as it's the end of every story). What is a lie? It's just air, empty words that have no relation to actual reality.

As I sat in the garden thinking about this yesterday, I heard the distant rumble of thunder. It must have been like that for the Elders in Jerusalem, sitting in apparent comfort and secure in their power, but a disturbing rumble of a quake that was going to bring their world of lies and the system of death crashing down. Imagine Annas and Caiaphas in the Temple, or Pontius Pilate having breakfast with his wife, hearing the quake and saying, 'What was that?' 'Nothing, don't worry about it.' But we know different, and the tremors are spreading to this day.