Sermons
"Rolling Stones"Pastor Russell Norris |
"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."
There are lots of Easter stories in the Bible. Not all of them quite as dramatic as Matthew's. John says when the disciples got to the tomb on Easter morning, it was empty, so they just went home!
The tomb is empty, and they go home? What were they thinking?
Luke says two disciples were on the road to Emmaus. "Some women told us that Jesus had been raised from the dead, but we had already planned to have supper over in Emmaus, and couldn't change our reservations ..."
What! A man is raised from the dead and you can't cancel lunch? What is the matter with these disciples?
You know, some folks think Jesus never really rose from the dead. They think the disciples made it up! You know, they just sat around the upper room one day and said, "Wasn't it great being with Jesus before they killed him? Remember all the great stories he used to tell? Just thinking about it makes it seem like he's still here. Hey, maybe he is! Let's just close our eyes and believe real hard that he's still here. OK?"
Hey, come on! The disciples weren't that creative! They were farmers and fishermen. These are not people with great imaginations! They were the sort of people who could see an empty tomb and not let it spoil their lunch. You don't invent the resurrection of Jesus Christ with a brain like Simon Peter's! These are just ordinary folks.
In other words, the disciples were a lot like us.
People like us are the kind of folks who want to believe you can have a resurrection and still have the world like it was yesterday. We want to have Easter and still have our little world unrocked by resurrection. We kind of like the world the way it is. We're used to it!
I think maybe that's why Matthew says that on Easter the whole earth shook. Luke does Easter as a Sunday meal with the risen Christ. John has the resurrected Jesus meet Mary Magdalene in the garden. But Matthew? For Matthew, Easter is an earthquake, with the stone rolled back and an impudent angel perched on it!
I've never actually been in an earthquake. Well, that's not true, I was once. But it was a little earthquake. I was staying in the dorm at the Lutheran seminary in Philadelphia. In the middle of the night, there was a noise, and I woke up. It was a kind of rattling sound, like rain on the roof. That's what I thought it was, and I rolled over and went back to sleep. Found out the next morning it was an earthquake, and I slept right through it!
Well, there was no sleeping through this one! Matthew says Easter is an earthquake that shakes the whole world. Lots of folks have tried to explain it -- to "explain" the resurrection. One says Jesus was in a deep, drug-induced coma and he simply woke up. Another says the disciples were so overcome with grief that they fantasized the whole thing.
Sorry. You can't "explain" the resurrection! It's not something you make up on the spur of the moment! You can see the truth about Jesus on the faces of these befuddled disciples. Not one of them expected Easter. Death, yes; defeat, yes; they're unfortunate, but that's part of life. We understand death. We understand defeat. We live with them every day.
"It was a good effort, a good campaign, but we didn't get him elected Messiah. Too bad! Death had the last word. We had hoped ... ah, but, then, you've got to face facts. Might as well go home. Would you like some lunch?"
Ah, yes, you've got to face the "facts". The world is in the death-grip of the "facts". Well, these are the facts. Everything that lives dies. And the good always get it in the end. Face facts. It may be a dark and somber world, but it's our world -- a world where things stay put and what dies stays dead. And there are very few surprises. Those are the facts!
Of course, that's not what Easter is all about. Easter is not about the "facts". Easter is about God. It's not about the resuscitation of a dead body. That's resuscitation, not resurrection. It's not about butterflies emerging in the spring. It's not about the "immortality of the soul," some divine spark that endures after the end. That's Plato, that's Greek philosophy, not Jesus.
Easter is about God; not God as a well-meaning but ineffective friend. Not God as some inner experience. Not God as wishful thinking;
but a God who creates a way when there is no way;
a God who makes war on evil until evil itself is undone;
a God who raises a dead Jesus just to show who's in charge.
You know, I wouldn't be surprised if that Easter angel -- the one who rolled away the stone and sat on it -- I wouldn't be surprised if it were the same angel who woke Joseph up one night with the news that his fiancée was pregnant. (Talk about an earthquake!) You see, what God did on Easter by invading the tomb, God did on Christmas in a virgin's womb: God made a way when there was no way. God took charge -- rolled away the stone -- shook the world.
The very angel who was sent to tell Joseph, "Name the baby Emmanuel, God-With-Us," was the same angel who told the women, "Don't be afraid. He isn't here. He is risen." Little "God-With-Us" grew up, got crucified, made the earth shake, and now he's on the move to change our world.
On the cross, the world did all it could to stop Jesus. On Easter, God did all God could to take back the world. And the earth shook, and the stone was rolled away.
You don't explain that! You can't explain that. You witness it. That's why the risen Christ appeared first to his own disciples. They were the ones who heard him teach, saw him heal, watched as he loved the poor and rebuked the rich; saw him arrested by the soldiers, tried by Pilate, crucified, dead and buried.
Why would Jesus come back first to his own disciples? Because they were the ones who knew him -- they were the ones who could recognize that this risen Lord was no one other than their own crucified Jesus. This was no resuscitated corpse, no ghost, no spirit. This was the very same Jesus they knew and loved before he died. And the stone was rolled back. And the earth shook.
Crucifixion, you know, wasn't just an unfortunate mistake in the Roman legal system. Oops! Sorry! Got the wrong man! No. Crucifixion was the inevitable, predictable result of saying the things that Jesus said, and doing the things that Jesus did, and being the savior that Jesus was. This is what the world always does to those who threaten the world. And those are the facts.
Ah, but you see, on Easter God inserted a new fact. God took the cross -- the symbol of death -- and made it the sign of victory. God -- the same God who called light out of darkness, who created the world out of nothing -- this very same God rolled back the stone from the door of the tomb. God made a way where there was no way. And the earth shook.
Jesus came back to forgive the very disciples who had misunderstood him, abandoned him, denied him, forsaken him. The world, it turns out, is about forgiveness, not about vengeance. And the stone was rolled back. And the earth shook.
Jesus took a piece of bread and ate it, and you could see the mark of the nails in his hands. The world, as it turns out, is about life, not death. And the stone was rolled back. And the earth shook.
When God rolled back the stone, we got our first glimpse of a whole new world, a world where death doesn't have the last word, where injustice is made right, and where innocent suffering is vindicated by the very hand of God.
The women came out to the cemetery that morning to write one more chapter in the long, sad story of death and defeat -- one more episode of how the good guys always finish last. This is the way the world ends, this is the way the world ends, this is the way the world ends, not with a bang but with a whimper.
But the earth heaved, and an angel appeared, and the stone was rolled back, and Caesar's guards shook in their boots. The angel plopped himself down on the stone in defiance of death and the soldiers and all that, and said to the women, "Don't be afraid. You're looking for Jesus? He's not here! He is risen!" Life is stronger than death. The stone was rolled back. And the earth shook.
Then the angel turned to the soldiers and said, "Be afraid. Be very afraid. For everything your world is built on will be shaken." And the stone was rolled back. And the earth shook.
And you know what? God is not done rolling stones. Amen.