Year A, Easter Sunday
April 20th, 2014
With special thanks to Andrew Marr for his meditation by the same title.
Matthew 28:1-10
An Earthquake that Saves
How many of you have experienced an earthquake? In Matthew’s Gospel, the Resurrection of Jesus causes an earthquake. Just as an earthquake shakes up the earth, the Resurrection shakes us up, permanently undermines the way we have lived our lives, and gives us a radical reorientation.
According to seismology, an earthquake is caused by one or more faults under the surface of the earth. A fault can hold its position for some time but it is inherently unstable and it will slip sometime or other and cause the earth to shake. The Resurrection could not help but cause an earthquake because there were faults in human culture just waiting to shift when the resurrection occurred. A look at some Old Testament stories points out where the faults were and still are.
The story Noah and the Flood shows us what Cain’s murder of Abel led to: a society overwhelmed with violence. Actually the film “Noah”, currently in the theaters, does a good job of depicting the violence. You see, the flood wasn’t water. It was violence. As we observe the world today, where is it flooding? The people in the ancient story of the flood did not need God to create a flood to carry them away; their own violence had overwhelmed them like a self-generated tidal wave.
The near-sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham is really about the institutionalization of sacrifice to stave off the meltdown of violence. You know how it works; when things get intense and everyone is angry and in rivalry with everyone else so that nothing can happen and the community is falling apart, we unite by all of us pointing the finger at one poor sucker or some minority group and declaring them the problem. We expel them and for a time the problem seems to go away. That’s the sacrificial solution for maintaining peace.
This past week we saw this acted out through the Passion of Christ. The people in Jerusalem were in a huge stir and Pilate was nervous lest things get out of hand. Someone needed to be sacrificed to draw off the venom so that things would calm down. Pilate offered them Barabbas but the crowd had itsfinger of blame pointing toward Jesus and would not be dissuaded.Caiaphas, the high priest,put the logic into words when he said somebody must die in order that the people might be saved. In saying that he clearly named the fault line upon which all human culture is built.
Even Abraham thought somebody must die until an angel (messenger) of God told him otherwise. Human culture rests on the fault line of this thing we do when we point, exclude and destroy. It is our way of keeping the peace but it is not Jesus’ way. That’s why when Jesus exposed it by allowing us to do what we do to him and then forgiving us, it shook us to the core.
Pharaoh’s Egypt was a society held together through institutionalized sacrifice: namely, the enslavement of the Hebrews. The Hebrews did the work and the Egyptians enjoyed the good life. When plagues struck, Pharaoh blamed the Hebrews and drove them out. God transformed the event into a deliverance from slavery.
I had always thought the Hebrews left and the Egyptians chased them because they wanted them back but it’s more likely the Egyptians blamed them for things going badly for the Egyptians. Our God, who understands human ways better than we do, took up the cause of the escapees and their story of deliverance became our story and culminated in Jesus and the resurrection.
(A sidebar) I know the story from the Bible has God killing the children of the Egyptians and passing over those of the Hebrews. But that’s not God’s story, that’s the human story the Hebrews read back into their history. If you want to know God’s story look at Jesus who welcomed the children that his disciples tried to keep away. He showed for all time that God cherishes all children. And for those of us who call ourselves Jesus-followers: the life, death and resurrection of Jesus is the interpretive lens through which we view everything. Even the Bible itself, including the Old Testament with all of its violence, is viewed through this lens! The dramatic change in interpretation we are undergoing gives witness to the earthquake effect Jesus’ resurrection has had on us.(End of sidebar)
All human culture rests on a fault line, a fault line that could only slip and shake the earth when the angel of the Lord “descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it.” The guards, representatives of the old sacrificial culture, became “like dead men.” Death is what sacrificial cultures lead to.
The angel’s words “Do not be afraid” are at least as earthshaking as the earthquake. These words of peace turn us upside down and spin us in circles. What is the man we killed to stabilize society going to do to us now that he is out and about again? Surely he will exact revenge! He will want to punish us for what we did! Right! Why would he tell us not to be afraid? Where is he coming from?
Two women both named Mary living on the margin of the society, a society that would not let them testify in court because they are women;these two women are asked to be witnesses to this momentous news, to the earth-shattering presence of life not run by death. They run off with “fear and great joy.” Mary and Mary don’t get far before they meet up with Jesus who greets them and repeats the angel’s words: “Do not be afraid.” Instead of retaliation and revenge, compassion and forgiveness has entered the human equation. The way toward peace has been opened through self-sacrifice and forgiveness.
Through the two women Jesus tells his disciples to leave Jerusalem and return to Galilee where he would meet them. What was he thinking? Was he saying “now that the resurrection has happened go home and to your common life and I will teach you how to live in a new way?” Was he saying “leave this place of conflict and tension and allow me to show you a place away from rivalry where you can learn to follow me?”Was he saying,“It will take you awhile to understand the meaning of my resurrection so go back to Galilee, let it sink in and I will meet you there?”
In Corinthians 10:2 The Apostle Paulsaidthe Hebrew peoplewere delivered from Egypt when they “passed through the sea and all were baptized into Moses.” Most of us who are Jesus followers were baptized into Jesus. When we are baptized we too pass through the sea like the Hebrew people. The waters of human violence pile up on either side but we pass through on firm ground. The firm ground is forgiveness. Through the resurrection we have been delivered from a sacrificial culture that always creates fault lines to a new culture as solid as God’s eternity based on Jesus, the forgiving victim.
Can we accept the gift of peace Christ offers us? Can we spread the news to others and, most important, to ourselves that we have been delivered from the flood waters of our violence to a new land, a new way of living based on forgiveness and characterized by love and joy? Amen.
Communion Meditation:
I said this morning that human culture rests on the fault line of this thing we do when we point, exclude and destroy. It is our way of keeping the peace but it is not Jesus’ way. That’s why when Jesus exposed it by allowing us to do what we do to him and then forgiving us, it shook us to the core. This meal we are about to share embodies all of this. Explain.
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