"Shook"

 Rev. Matthew Miller

FROM THE GOSPELS Matthew 28:1-11 click here to watch the sermon "Shook"

Two days ago, some of us had the privilege of listening to our music director, Leon Lake, sing his haunting arrangement of the spiritual Were You There for the Good Friday service at St. Andrew Presbyterian Church. If you know the song, each successive verse asks, were you there when they crucified my lord, when they nailed him to the tree, when they laid him in the tomb. I don’t know what causes the singer to tremble. Maybe it’s the horror of it. It was a horrible thing, to be sure. But it might also be the answer to the question. No. We weren’t there. That is what causes us to tremble. Very few were there. None of the twelve. That’s for sure. None of the ones he had personally chosen and called and walked with and taught and appointed and sent out to proclaim that the realm of God’s power had drawn near and was present in the world. The Roman centurions were there, keeping watch over the whole bloody affair. And the women were there, looking from a distance. Matthew even names two of them. Mary Magdelene and Mary the mother of James and Joseph. And when his body was laid in the tomb owned by Joseph of Arimathea, and the stone was rolled to close it, Mary Magdelene and the other Mary were there again when no one else was, sitting opposite the tomb. And at the dawning of the third day, once again it is these two lone women, Mary Magdelene and the other Mary, who show up to the tomb. When no one else is anywhere to be seen, these women showed up. Again, and again and again. They came one last time to see, according to Matthew. Nothing about spices, nothing about anointing the body. Just to see. Guards had been posted here too, because the powers that be worried about shenanigans. After all, he talked frequently and openly about rising again. I suspect that these two Marys remembered those words. Maybe that is what they wanted to see. But nothing could have prepared them for what happened next, because the earth moved under their feet.  

Maybe they should have been prepared. When Jesus breathed his last on the cross, Matthew says the earth shook and rocks split. But what looked for all the world like the end was only the beginning. When he was alive, Jesus spoke of famines and earthquakes as signs of something old passing away, the birth pangs of something new that God is about to bring forth. And ever since, every time the earth shakes and there is catastrophic loss, people talk about the end of the world. And it is. Just not in some CGI Hollywood effects kind of way. Buildings topple, lives are lost, and it is painful. Always. God knows. Jesus breathed his last and God knew the pain we experience. Every. Single. Time. But for those who see the story all the way through. For Mary Magdalene and the other Mary who bear witness to the pain, and watch as the tomb is sealed, the shaking of the earth at Jesus’ death is only the foreshock of the much larger and much more significant shift to come. Because in Matthew’s telling, when they went to see the tomb, they didn’t even have time to wonder who would roll the stone away when they experienced a seismic shift of cosmic proportions that continues to reverberate this morning. They were there when the world that died with Jesus two days earlier, a world as Professor Tom Long puts it, where hope is in constant danger, and might makes right, and peace has little chance and the rich get richer, and the weak all eventually suffer under some Pontius Pilate or another, and people launch murderous wars, and dead people stay dead- they were there as the earth and all of creation shook that world loose, giving way to the startling and breathtaking world of resurrection and life. Or as one song lyric puts it, The rule has been disproved/ The stone it has been moved/ /The grave is now a groove/ All debts are removed. Can’t you see what love has done? 

Such a revelation is too much for the powers of this world. The soldiers sent to secure the dead man become like dead men themselves at the sight of it. Because there is no power on earth- no army, no leader, no arsenal of weapons, no nation, no diagnosis or illness, no economic forecast, no market, no family secret or addiction that can secure itself against the power of love set loose in the resurrection of Jesus Christ to make all things new.  

And you begin to see how even for the two Marys who were there to witness it all- the two Marys who are now the first ordained apostles of the resurrection- you can see how they were filled with both fear AND great joy. Because even when you are a person who holds little to no relative power in this world, resurrection threatens to shatter what small certainty we might have in the few things we think we can control. All bets are off. I was struck by the words of another Mary, Mary Poppins, when I saw the musical last week at Landmark. “Anything can happen,” she repeats time and again, “if you let it.” That is both the threat and the promise of resurrection. To surrender our lives to such a promise means leaving behind the illusion of control that holds so many of us captive. If Jesus who was crucified is not here but has been raised, then anything CAN happen.  

That is also the source of our joy in the face of so much that is beyond our control. It is the source of our joy because he is going before us, leading us into a world made new by the hope that the impossible is, in fact, possible. All the things we may have given up on or left for dead in our lives. In a world filled with hatred, love can happen. In a world filled with hurt and neglect, forgiveness can happen. For the wounded in body and soul, healing can happen. In a world rife with division, reconciliation can happen, For those struggling against what has become unmanageable, recovery can happen. In the wake of death and unfathomable loss, life can happen. 

As these women go into a world filled with such possibilities, they are suddenly met by Jesus. Jesus, whom the powers of this world tried to kill, but who death could not contain. He repeats the words they have already heard. “Do not be afraid,” he says. That could mean so many things. Do not be afraid of what’s next. Do not be afraid of what you see but cannot fully explain. Do not be afraid of what you cannot see , what sounds impossible to your ears and to your heart. The fault lines have shifted, and the only thing left to do is go with the assurance that as we go, wherever we go, we will see him there. We will see him as those blinded by the hatreds of this world receive new sight through love. We will see him as those crippled by anxiety and self-doubt learn to walk with confidence. We will see him as those corrupted and disfigured by acquisition and greed are cleansed and whole. We will see him as those deaf to the cries of the oppressed finally hear and are moved with compassion. In short, we will see him as a world once held captive to death comes back to life. And nothing will ever be the same again. Alleluia, Christ is risen.