2023 04 09 Sermon
A Disorienting Yet Welcome Earthquake
Easter Sunday
Matthew 28:1-10
Rev. Karl-John N. Stone
One August afternoon in 2011, I was sitting on a chair in my office (this was back in Pennsylvania), working on my computer, when without warning I started swaying back and forth. Not only that, but the room was swaying, and the building was swaying. The building was swaying because the earth was swaying. It was an earthquake! Have any of you ever been in an earthquake?
For me, it felt kind of like standing up in a canoe: I was off-balance and wondering what I could do to regain balance. And then I realized—oh, this must be an earthquake. A burst of confusion and fear, then adrenaline, then a realization: I don’t have any control over this. Before I knew it, it was over. I don’t remember how long is lasted—maybe 10 or 20 seconds—but it was one of those things that seemed to go quickly and take a while, both at the same time. What was the first thing I did when I realized that the earthquake had stopped and everything was okay? I ran down the hallway with excitement, to find other people to talk to about it!
Eventually we learned that the epicenter of this earthquake was over 300 miles to the south, near Richmond, Virginia, and tremors were even felt 300 miles further away than us. It was 5.8 on the Richter-scale, but we were lucky and most people were lucky that there was little damage. After the excitement wore off, we got back to work; back to our lives with little to no change.
Sadly, we know that is not always the case with earthquakes. In Turkey and Syria just two months ago over 46,000 people died in a series of earthquakes. For those who perished, and for all who knew them, loved them, or lived near them, and who are trying to recover and rebuild, life will never be the same again.
On the Sabbath day, the first day of the week at early dawn, two days after Jesus’ crucifixion and death, two women went to see the tomb where Jesus’ body had been laid. One was Mary Magdalene, and the other was another Mary—it might have been Jesus’ mother, or maybe another supporter and follower of Jesus. The tomb was hewn into bedrock and sealed with a heavy stone. They knew their lives would never be the same again, so they were going, not to roll the stone away, not to see the body of Jesus, but simply to see the tomb; like any of us might visit the gravesite and look at the headstone of a loved one.
And the reason you do this—they reason they did this—was to bear witness. Not to change anything, because they couldn’t change anything, but to begin coming to terms with what had happened; to being processing their grief; maybe to share some memories and pray some prayers and seek comfort from God and one another. These are helpful things to do when you’re dealing with the disorientation of death, when you feel off-balance like you’re standing up in a canoe—only this time the canoe is out in a storm with gale force winds. You really don’t have control.
As Mary and Mary arrived at the tomb, disoriented from their grief, suddenly the ground they were standing on started to sway. For how long, I wonder? 10 seconds? 20 seconds? A minute? However long it would take an angel of the Lord to roll the stone away and sit on it, as the gospel of Matthew describes the scene. This earthquake didn’t emanate from the shifting of tectonic plates, but from the shifting of stone across stone in that rocky cemetery. An earthquake less of Richter-scale significance, and more of surprising and earth-shaking-news significance. The kind of news that struck the two women with fear, maybe a jolt of adrenaline or a wave of confusion, and finally excitement and joy as they hear the message spoken by the angel: “I know 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 he’s going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.’” It was an earthquake in words; a message from the God of life hidden in the place of death.
They leave the tomb with fear and great joy. They’ve got to find someone to talk to about this! They run to find the disciples, and before they can reach them, and before they can make the trip from Jerusalem back to Galilee, the risen Jesus stops them in their tracks: “Greetings! Hi, howya doing?” They take hold of his feet—his nail scarred yet healed feet—and worship.
Why did the risen Jesus choose to first appear to Mary and Mary Magdalene? Why not to the twelve disciples first? Why not wait until everyone got back home to Galilee? I think maybe it was because these two women had the courage to actually go to the tomb. They went to the place where they would have to face the pain of life that washed over them and made them feel off-balance; and to face the pain that the faith they had placed in their crucified Lord seemed to have failed. They went to the tomb; to the place where you have no choice but to accept with humility that you have no control, where you don’t get to decide how long the ground beneath your feet will keep shaking; where you can only wonder if and when life will ever be the same again. They went to the place where only God can allow life to be born anew. That is where Jesus met them, and that is the kind of place where Jesus will meet you.
Jesus appeared to them first, because they were the first to embrace the great mystery at the heart of Christian faith: new life comes only through death; the paradox that there is no new life without first a death of some kind. As St. Francis expressed it in his famous peace prayer: “It is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.”
This is the kind of thing that Jesus talked about again and again during his ministry, but the disciples couldn’t fully grasp it. It’s the kind of thing that maybe no one fully grasps—that is, until you’re up against it and have no choice but to embrace the paradox of faith yourself, and you experience in your own life the power of God to reach down into the depths where you have fallen and through the Holy Spirit to raise you up again.
Jesus who was crucified has been raised; he is going ahead of you to meet you. No matter how many times you’ve heard the Easter message yourself, when it appears in our lives it still appears like a disorienting yet welcome earthquake, as a surprise: grace, love, and life will have the last word, because Christ is risen. Alleluia!