Rev. Eugene N. Nelson, Jr.
The Community Church of Sebastopol
April 20, 2003
Easter Sunday
Matthew 28: 1-10
Charlie Brown is, for him, in a very optimistic mood. He approaches Lucy with a list in his hand and says, “You’re going to be proud of me Lucy! I’ve decided that this next year is going to be my ‘Year of Decision’. This is a list of things in my life that I’m going to correct! I’m going to be a better person!” Lucy responds, “Not me. I’m going to spend the whole year regretting the past. It’s the only way Charlie Brown. I’m going to cry over spilt milk, and sigh over lost love. It’s a lot easier. It’s too hard to improve! I tried it once and it drove me crazy! ‘Forget the future,’ is my motto. Regret the past! Why did I do this?? Oh, why did I do that?? Oh, why, why, why? What regrets, what anguish, what remorse!” As she walks away still listing her regrets, Charlie Brown drops his list of improvements in the snow and just sighs…
Well, I must confess there are times when I can identify with Lucy. There are times when I find it difficult to trust the future. Yesterday wasn’t so great, why should I expect tomorrow to be any better? Forget the future, it ain’t what it used to be! There’s nothing new under the sun. Daily living can often be a pretty toxic environment for hope, especially hope for the future.
Then it’s Easter. But again, kind of like Lucy, I’ve found it difficult to open my heart to Easter this year. Hallelujahs have been hard to come by for me. Indeed, an up-beat Easter sermon has been hard to come by. I don’t know -- it might have something to do with the war. When you think about it, much of our Lenten journey took place under the shadow of war and violence. Thankfully the war is winding down, but still I remain anxious about our ability, indeed our will, to win the peace. As you have heard me say before from this pulpit, I hope my anxiety proves unjustified. I hope that peace, prosperity and democracy indeed come to Iraq, to all the world for that matter, for the price has been so high. I think of all who grieve their loses this morning, both military and Iraqi civilians – my heart goes out to them all – they are in our prayers. So much violence in this broken world of ours. On the home front I have friends and family members who have recently lost jobs or who are fearing for their jobs. This is a suffering which has been lost in the war headlines. Also lost has been the news, that even as we send money to Iraq, millions of poor American children are now facing the elimination of health care benefits. We know about schools laying off teachers and closing early -- so much for class size discussion. In my own family, in recent weeks, there has been illness. We are now facing questions about long-term care. Visits home have become more and more painful. Many of you have walked that road. Many of you are walking it now. And all of it weighs on my heart this day. It’s been a tough Easter.
I hate to say it, but even for a preacher, the doubt begins to creep in around the lilies and the hymns and the hallelujahs. Why trust the future when the recent past has been so painful? Can we trust it? “I tried it once,” says Lucy. “Drove me crazy!” Is she speaking the truth, or is there another truth to be spoken on this Easter Sunday?
“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.” Roman soldiers had placed a great stone in front of the tomb of Jesus. As the women go to the grave that Easter morning, the stone is all they can think about. The stone symbolizes the finality of Jesus’ death, the massiveness of their loss of hope, the cold reality of their despair. They wonder, “Who will roll it away?” But in their hearts they know nothing can roll it away. It’s too big, too overwhelming. All hope has died; they have nothing left for the future. But then, suddenly, without warning an earthquake…an angel… an empty tomb! They discover that there is a power that can roll away a stone, a power greater than they dared to imagine.
The earthquake is Matthew’s unique contribution to the Easter story. I think for Matthew it signifies that the resurrection is not something private and personal, something just with Jesus. It’s Matthew saying, “Honey, this is bigger than both of us!” The earthquake signifies that this is nothing less than a cosmic earth-and-heaven-shaking event. “Pay attention!” says Matthew, “You are now in earthquake-country and this is a temblor that may reach all the way into your hearts.”
Reflecting on this text, William Willimon, New Testament scholar and Chaplin at Duke University writes: “I’ve been in an earthquake. I was preaching in Alaska and during my sermon the earth heaved. A moment that seemed forever. The little church shook. The Alaskan Methodists sat there like it was just another day at the office. Their only response was a women who said, ‘How about that, the light fixtures didn’t fall this time.’”
Says Willimon, “I ended my sermon immediately! I was shaken by the earthquake and also a bit shaken by these nonchalant Alaskans. Afterwards I asked the pastor, ‘What would it take to get this congregation’s attention? I’d hate to have to preach to them every Sunday.’”
It was Winston Churchill who said that, “History can be a great teacher, yet most of the time we just get up, brush ourselves off and learn nothing at all.” Well, I wonder, could that be how I, how we, are treating Easter? Matthew says it was nothing less than an earthquake that shook the whole world, that indeed changed the course of human life. Here is God’s great reversal of history. God’s final triumph over death and sin! And what do we do? We get up and brush ourselves off and continue our lives as if nothing of any earthshaking significance has happened. “How about that! The light fixtures didn’t fall this time.”
We continue on, pretty much like Lucy, convinced that the great stones of despair and death can never really be rolled away, that the future will look pretty much like the past and when you get right down to it, there really isn’t much new under the sun.
But even as I say that, and even as I confess to you that it has been the state of my soul in recent months, my thoughts go to another earthquake. A large quake in China in the 1950’s, you’ve read about it and I’ve mentioned it before. As a result of this quake, a huge bolder was dislodged from a mountain, exposing a vast cache of priceless artifacts from thousands of years ago. You might say that on that day a new world suddenly became visible. Well I think this is what Matthew is telling us about Easter. When the earth shook and the stone that couldn’t possibly be moved was moved, the women, indeed all of us, got a fist glimpse of a new world; a world where death doesn’t have the last word, a world where injustice is made right and innocent suffering is vindicated by no other than God, Himself. Matthew is saying, “People, you cannot live your lives the way you always have! Everything has changed!”
Willimon says it like this: “The women came out to the cemetery to write one more chapter in the long, sad story of death’s ascendancy, one more episode of how the good always get it in the end. This is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but with a whimper, or with resignation at death’s dark victory. And then the earth heaved. An angel appeared. The stone was rolled away. The soldiers shook. The angel plopped himself down on the stone and in one final act of impudent defiance of death, said to the women, ‘Don’t be afraid. You are looking for Jesus, and he isn’t here.’ Then he turned to the soldiers and said, ‘You, be very afraid! Everything your world is built on is being shaken.’ Nobody went back home the same.”
What if it’s true? What if it’s true, Gene Nelson? What if there is a power loose in our world that can move any stone, no matter how big or immovable it may seem? What if our God is a God who creates a way when there is no way. A God who struggles against evil and suffering until evil and suffering are undone; a God who raises Jesus from the dead just to show us who is really in charge here? What if it’s true? What if we are not living in the dying days of an old world, but instead are now living in the first days of a bold new world? What if, because of Easter, there is no tragedy God cannot redeem, no loss God cannot overcome, no dream, not even the elusive dream of ‘Peace on Earth’, that the God who raised Jesus from the dead cannot energize and advance. What if it’s true?
She worked hard in high school and made good grades. Even though she had come from a difficult home situation, she worked hard because she had high goals. But when it came time for her to go away to college, and she applied to a number of colleges, she received far too little financial aid to be able to go to any of those schools. Instead she went to work in a rather modest, dull job. Friends, trying to be helpful told her, “Well, you just have to face the facts, college isn’t in the big picture for you. Learn to adjust, make the best of your situation.” But then she remembered Easter. She took a deep breath and enrolled in some night courses at the community college, she worked hard, made good grades and eventually received the financial help she needed to go to a four-year school. Today she is a renowned and much loved teacher of young children. She remembered Easter. Just as Jesus could not be held by a tomb, so she was not held by the circumstances of her life. For her, what was had no power over what could be. She refused to adjust her dreams for tomorrow just based on a painful and limiting past.
Well friends, that is Easter. Christ the Lord is risen. Not yesterday, but today! Not behind us, but ahead of us, every step of the way. It’s Easter! The earth shook this morning. Did you feel it?