Sermons from St. Paul’s Episcopal Church
Easter, 2008
The Rev. Melissa 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."
As someone still relatively new to the West Coast, I’ve never been in an earthquake. I’ve never felt the ground tremble beneath my feet or run into the street worried that my house was about to fall down on top of me. And so when I look at pictures of earthquake-devastated areas I have to use my imagination. I have to imagine a Nor’easter gone wild or a tornado that not only picks up houses and blows down trees but is so powerful that it seems to shake the earth.
Some people when speaking of faith talk about it as something unshakeable—faith as the ground that we stand on, the house that we live in that is solid, that can withstand the storms, the tornados, and the earthquakes of disappointment and doubt that inevitably come our way in life. Some people speak about faith as if it were or should be the one unshakeable place in our lives.
But this is not how our gospel from Matthew depicts the resurrection, the central and most important event in the Christian story. In Matthew as in no other gospel the news of the resurrection comes with an earthquake and an angelic messenger so dread that armed guards faint with fear at the sight of her.
The guards, of course, are not the only ones who are afraid. The grief-stricken women at the tomb are terrified too by the shaking of the earth and the sight of the dread angel. But they do not faint, for the angel tells them not to be afraid but to receive the news that they must take to the disciples, news that will forever change their understanding of their future.
The resurrection, as Martin Smith says, “is that unique and traumatic event—an event only the Creator could bring about—that released Jesus from being a dead figure who would have been soon relegated to the past (and that) released him into the future to be the Lord of our future and the world’s. Because of the Resurrection, Jesus is already in the future, as our future, and as we enter what is new—what has never happened before—he greets us, having gotten there ahead of us.”
For Smith, then, true Christian faith, comes as a result of having been shaken, having the ground move beneath us in a way that rolls back the stone of our hearts and, I would add, the stone of our minds and of our imaginations, rolls back the stone that keeps us entombed in a past that does not have the power to envision or create the oftentimes preposterous future we are meant to have.
I was struck by this in a course that a team of us taught here at St. Paul’s during the winter on the subject of forgiveness. Many of us in the course in one way or another were struggling with the subject of forgiveness in areas that we were timid to share but that easily brought tears to our eyes. And much to our consternation, we kept being confronted and shaken by the idea that God’s forgiveness of us and our forgiveness of each other is not really about sorting out who deserves what portion of the blame in a way that settles things. Instead it’s about honestly facing the cross and the tomb of what has happened to us, as far as we’re able, and then somehow walking out of that tomb to claim the new, unimaginable life we and others are meant to have. And it is never too late to do this.
It is never too late to walk out of the tomb of past political or economic mistakes. It is never too late to walk out of the tomb of our own personal or vocational missteps or disasters. It is never too late to walk out of the tomb of the tyranny of anything that seems to have us by the throat, in which we believe we have no choice but to follow a path determined by the past. It is never too late.
But it is difficult. Facing the reality of the cross and the tomb, facing what has happened, and what we ourselves have done to locate ourselves there, is difficult. But to walk out of this tomb, with the earth still quivering and our eyes blinded by the heralding of a future we do not control—this can feel impossible!
And I suppose it is—on our own.
And so finally this is what is so eerie, challenging and inspiring about Easter. In claiming it, or better said, in being claimed by it, we are surrendering to the fact that we cannot do it on our own, that the one who himself has inhabited the tomb is the one who by the power of God awakens our dead hearts, enlivens our exhausted minds and inspires our worn-out imaginations. This is the one also goes before us to Galilee, as the gospel puts it, taking us with him into the future. And it can only be love, God’s love, that would do this for us and with us.
But notice who receives the news of this love, notice who are chosen to be its messengers—the women. Women, of course, in ancient times were not thought to be credible witnesses and so their testimony was close to worthless. And so the news of a love that creates a future beyond our capabilities and imagination emerges within us from the places we are most skeptical of. Likewise, the news of the possibility of new and unimagined futures in our social, political and economic world often comes from places that the status quo is most skeptical or suspicious of.
And so, I believe, Easter asks us to listen deeply as our world quakes, to do what we can to quiet our fears, and to access our own desire to believe and trust that what the angel proclaims to the women is true, even if all that we can hear is a whisper that it might be true or that we want it to be true.
Archbishop William Temple in 1931 at the end of the Oxford Mission, a kind of English revival meeting, led a congregation in the University Church of St Mary the Virgin in the singing of the hymn "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross." This, of course, is not a hymn we sing at Easter. Rather, here at St. Paul’s we sing some of the verses during our Lenten Stations of the Cross.
At any rate, just before singing the last stanza, Archbishop Temple stopped the congregation and asked them to read the words of the last stanza to themselves. "Now," he said, “if you mean them with all your heart, sing them as loud as you can. If you don't mean them at all, keep silent. If you mean them even a little and want to mean them more, sing them very softly.” The organ played, and two thousand voices whispered:
“Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were an offering far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all.”
“Alleluia, Christ is risen,” we say at Easter. Whether you hear this as a shout of joy and liberation or whether you hear it as the fearful and tentative whispering of your heart, know this: faith is what happens after our worlds are shaken. Faith is the fearful and joyful abandonment of the tomb created by our past and the stepping into a future that only the love of God can create, a love that demands and transforms our soul, our life and our all.
Works Cited or Consulted
Martin Smith’s sermon preached on Easter Vigil in New York City in 2006.
The Archbishop William Temple story I culled from a source that I can no longer track down!
