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.”

It’s the climactic moment towards the end of the film. The unlikely leader of the uprising against the Empire has been captured, roughed up and locked away in a prison. Guards have been posted all around to insure that the leader’s compatriots and friends will not be able to get him out.

In another part of the country or the universe, the captured leader’s compatriots huddle, pooling their know-how and mustering their courage as they plan how to get their beloved leader and friend out of the prison in which he’s held.

Then in one fast-paced scene after another, the loyal little band of compatriots, breaks into the prison, overwhelms the clueless guards and recaptures their beleaguered but grateful leader. Hearing of this, others under the rule of the Empire begin to rally and the uprising, thought to be lost, is reignited.

I’ve seen this film or some version of it many times. Sometimes it takes place long ago in a small town in the Wild West; sometimes it takes place today in a far-away, foreign country, and sometimes it takes place in the future in some far corner of the universe.

But no matter where or when the story takes place, it has the same effect on me. As the ending credits scroll down the screen, I feel, well, reassured, because I have just witnessed a story that I want to believe is true containing incidents that that I want to believe are real: uprisings that actually succeed against the Empires of this world and of our lives, love and loyalty between people that allow them to prevail against impossible odds. I want, I need, to believe in these things.

But as reassuring as these stories are, and as much as I want to believe what they depict, these are not the story of Easter.

Just like the stories that reassure me, our Easter story is the story of an unlikely leader who is captured by the Empire. And just like the stories that reassure me, the leader in our Easter story has a band of followers who love him. But our Easter story is not the story of someone overthrowing the Empire; it is not the story of a band of followers whose love and loyalty prevail in the face of impossible odds.

Our Easter story will show us a Jesus deserted by his friends and executed by the Empire before it can proclaim anything about new life. Our Easter story will seal us in a tomb before it can give us any good news.

And especially, in the Book of Matthew, our Easter story for today, we get to feel not only the chill of the tomb but the despair and finality of a sealed tomb before we can know anything about life on the other side of death. We get to experience the triumph of the Empire not only in the crucifixion but even after the crucifixion through the armed guards placed outside the tomb.

Only after we see and feel these dark and despairing things can we, like the women who sit outside the tomb, be ready for the other part of the Easter story.

For the story of Easter is not about our efforts at all—about our ability to free ourselves or anyone else from bondage. It is not about how our love and loyalty for each other can prevail against impossible odds. In fact, the story of Easter is about what happens after all our efforts fail and after all our confidence in ourselves has drained away, leaving us with no story at all—no story to inhabit in the present or to run towards in the future.

The story of Easter is this: God’s loyalty and love will never fail. God’s liberating power, as strong as an earthquake, breaks open every sealed tomb, lays low every guard posted at the entrance to keep the lid on, vanquishes every Empire that would hold us in thrall. This is the story of Easter, a story that becomes ours in baptism.

But there’s more. For after the shaking of the ground, the breaking open of the sealed tomb and the laying low of the guards, we, like the women who waited outside the tomb, are sent running into a future that we are told God will travel before us. We are asked to move out, move forward in a direction before we have things sorted out, even before our wonder and terror have evaporated.

Where is the ground shaking in your life? What tomb is being unsealed and what guards are being vanquished? What new story are you being asked to inhabit? What new future are you being asked to travel toward even while you are still afraid?

It’s hard, so hard to find real Easter stories in which this shaking, unsealing and sending power of God is alive. For we are timid, aren’t we, to attribute such things to God, such power, such authorship of our stories, stories that we would like to believe we are in control of.  

This is often the stuff that people tell me about one-on-one and often tentatively—stories of personal, professional or spiritual earthquakes in which a person finds himself or herself strangely freed and brought to life. And then in companionship with something larger than self, he or she, still afraid, steps into a future that is largely unknown.

It’s hard, so hard to find real Easter stories that I can tell you, for it’s hard to put my finger on and to name the power that is in the shaking, in the unsealing, in the freeing and in the sending. For that power comes to us as a kind of inexplicable energy or life-giving momentum that people just end up acting on, taking them into the realm of hopeful action even before they are ready for it.

It’s hard, so hard to find real Easter stories, but sometimes such a story emerges from a shaken place that has lived and is living in the darkness of a sealed tomb.

In Japan, schools begin in April and end the following March, the idea being that in that school graduation ceremonies are all about renewal and rebirth, it’s fitting that they happen in March, in the springtime.

On Tuesday March 22 of this year in the seaport village of Kesennuma, two solemn and tearful crowds met in an evacuation center to award diplomas to the sixth and ninth grade classes of Hashikama Elementary and Junior High Schools. Inside hundreds of refugees rolled up their blankets and moved to make way for a ritual that anyone would recognize: the strains of Pachelbel’s Canon, the students’ march to the podium, the singing of school songs and the snapping of pictures.

But this, of course, was a different kind of graduation, for just weeks before, an earthquake had cracked open the elementary school and a wall of water had swept away homes and the families of teachers and students alike.

Some had said that it was too soon after the disaster to hold the ceremony, but then it came to them, I would say, as a kind of inexplicable energy, as a kind of life-giving momentum. One man spoke for many when he said: “We want to celebrate for these kids, because this is a cruel experience for a 15-year old. (We) want the surviving kids to shine—to continue their lives.”

And so as twenty-eight ninth graders awaited their diplomas, they were joined by one man whose son had been swept out to sea for an hour before being discovered and saved. The boy had undergone overwhelming trauma and yet wanted to be at the ceremony. Still healing from the experience, he could not come, and so his father was there to get his diploma.

Also there, was Shunichi Hatakeyama, the father of a 15-year-old boy who was still missing. He sat on the first row of the parents in attendance and held a photograph of his son.”My son is still missing,” he said. “If I don’t come, no one will take his diploma.”

As the speeches were made, as the songs were sung, the students stood, many of them unable to do anything but cry, but each one, each one, wearing a brilliant purple flower pinned to the chest.

As I looked at the photo of this event: their sad, sad faces, and the tiny, brilliant flower that each child wore, I could not help but think of our Easter story, a story that refuses to allow even the most tragic stories to have the last word, a story that draws us forward into new life even as the tears flow and as the fear remains, a story that tells us that the power of life itself, created and nurtured by our God, will prevail against every tomb.

Alleluia, Christ is risen, and with his rising, God catches us up once and for all time in God’s own story, a story in which “God does not abolish the fact of evil but transforms it. God does not stop the crucifixion, but rises from the dead.”  

Works Cited or Consulted

The story of the school graduation in Japan is from the March 22, 2011 New York Times article entitled “Diplomas and Uncertainty for Japanese Pupils.” Much of my description of this is taken directly from the Times article.

The quote at the end of the sermon is from Dorothy Sayers, taken from Letters to a Diminished Church

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