Easter 2005, Year A
Melissa M. Skelton
Matthew 28:1-10
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; 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 to go to Galilee; there they will see me."
I have a picture in my office by an African American urban artist whose name is Alan Crite. The picture is a copy of the front of an Easter Day bulletin Alan created for Holy Cross Church in Acapulco, Mexico. In it, the resurrected Jesus is attired as a fierce Aztec warrior, complete with headdress, bulging forearms and a breastplate. This Jesus, his kingly face in profile, is standing tall with his arms uplifted. Under his feet is a skeleton in a fetal position.
For Crite and for Matthew, whose account of the resurrection we hear today, the resurrection is a jarring, earth-shaking event, one that upends and overturns all our expectations of how we believe things should be.
“The resurrection,” as Peter Gomes, says, “is God’s way of getting our attention.” The resurrection is not subtle, is not dreamy and hazy, like an impressionist painting. “It does not,” as Gomes says, quoting the poet, “come in on little cat feet like the fog.”
It’s all daylight, sharp angles and trumpeting flowers—earthquakes and an angel whose lightening-like appearance terrifies the guards and startles the women during what they probably thought would be a quiet morning spent attending to the dead.
“The resurrection is God’s way of getting our attention.”
And it takes a lot to get our attention, doesn’t it? After all, we’re busy people. We carry around lists of our “to do” lists. We have chronic preoccupations that fill our minds: the low-level buzz in our heads that are the first things we think about in the morning—issues with our children; tensions with our families, our partners, our bosses; concerns about money and annoying routine health matters. These are the kinds of things that we focus our energy on most of the time.
But then there are other things—bigger things—events that are more like earthquakes—situations that evoke in us an awareness of and need for something or someone larger than ourselves: serious illnesses, death, violent, even cataclysmic world situations that cause us to question what or who is in charge here.
These events really get our attention.
And, because these events also shake our foundations, God gets our attention right along with them.
That’s, of course, what happens to the women visiting the tomb in Matthew’s gospel. After being eyewitnesses to Jesus’ death, something that shakes them to the core and leaves them bereft of their teacher and friend, they go to the tomb and experience another earthquake—Jesus’ body is gone! An angel who looks like lightening is sitting on the door of the tomb!
And what does the angel say to them? "Do not be afraid; 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.”
And then they are told to go and tell the others. And notice the language again: “…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 to go to Galilee—there they will see me.”
According to Matthew’s account, at the resurrection the women have to deal with fear at every turn—fear when meeting the angel, fear on the way from the angel, and fear when encountering Jesus, himself.
New life begins for these women when they move from fear to recognition and from recognition to action in sharing the news with others.
There’s a school of thought among therapists and some clergy that what really inhibits us, what holds us back from realizing all that we might do and be is fear—all the different kinds of fear: fear that we will be abandoned, fear that we will fail, fear that we will be found out as an incompetent or as an imposter. Fear that we will be hurt. Fear that we will die. Fear that our opinions and actions will be unpopular. Fear that our efforts will be fruitless. Everyone, according to this school of thought, is a hostage to fear.
It would be easy to think that Easter is about our gaining freedom from death. It would be easy to think this given just how much the missing body, the empty tomb, the picture of the resurrected Jesus standing on top of a bag of bones catch our attention.
But the women, the women, the ones who witnessed Jesus death, the ones who were terrified upon witnessing the resurrection, by moving beyond their fear, they were able to bring the news of his resurrection to the world.
“Freedom from fear, not freedom from death is the achievement of the resurrection.” Freedom from fear.
The problem that many of us have is not that we fear death; it’s that we fear life.
Being an Easter Christian means that we, by the grace of God, are able to live more fearlessly, less in terror about what’s happening to us. It means we begin to give up the habit of living defensively, ready to drop back at a moment’s notice on account of the catastrophes that in our fear we imagine might happen.
One person took this idea a little further and put it this way: “Our deepest fear,” she said, “is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful….. It is our light that frightens us the most. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant or talented. Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. We are born to make manifest the glory of God. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
A different way of saying this is to use Peter Gomes’ words: “Christ went to the cross; we need not fear the cross. Christ went to the grave; we need not fear the grave. Christ has gone into the future; we need not fear the future. Christ inhabits life; we need not fear life.”
And if that doesn’t do it for you, here’s another take on this same issue from my wonderfully, eccentric older sister. When her twins, a boy and a girl, were seven or eight, they used to come to her complaining that they were afraid to try out for a sport, afraid to stick up for a friend, afraid to ride a roller coaster (and on and on) so that they ended up doing nothing. And this is what she told them: “That’s OK, kids. Go ahead and feel the fear….but do it anyway.”
And so, on this Easter Morning when everything is a odd and a little scary, with lots of bright light, sharp angles and trumpeting flowers, when the earth quakes and angels like lightening sit before us, God is trying to give us the gift of freedom from fear. For it is Christ our brother, the one who loves us, who stands before us, like a beautiful warrior, Christ our brother, who has not only conquered death but has vanquished fear.
Cited and drawn upon in the sermon:
Peter Gomes from “Easter: When Life Begins” in Sermons: Biblical Wisdom for Daily Living
Marianne Williamson: from A Return to Love: Reflections on a the Principles of A Course in Miracles
