“Ongoing Easter”
Matthew 28:1-10
Allen Huff
Jonesborough Presbyterian Church
Easter Sunrise Service
April 16, 2017
Matthew’s
version of the Easter story contains one significant difference from the other
gospels. In Mark, Luke, and John, when the women arrive at the tomb, they find
that the stone has already been rolled away. In Matthew, the women find the
tomb still sealed.
“Suddenly,”
says Matthew, the earth shakes. An angel appears, and as the women watch, the
angel rolls the stone away revealing an empty tomb. During all of this, a detachment
of Roman guards, also unique to Matthew, collapses in terror.
To Matthew,
the still-sealed and empty tomb is extraordinarily important. It refutes another
story. According to Matthew, when the guards come to, some of them, instead of
going directly to their superior officer, go first to the chief priests and tell
them what has happened. And the chief priests pay them a hefty bribe to say
that Jesus’ disciples stole the body while the guards slept.
That
story should satisfy Pilate, say the chief priests.
You know, if Pilate will be satisfied
knowing that his guards slept while on duty, and that while they slept, the
disciples stole Jesus’ body, then Pilate must not be the sharpest crayon in the
box.
And if the guards can rest easy before
the governor on the strength of a story fabricated by Jewish officials, then
none of them are going to get qualify for officer candidacy school.
And if the chief priests of Israel keep
trusting bribe money to shape reality, well then, bless their hearts. That’s
like eating salt when you’re dying of thirst.
All this
convoluted irony illustrates that we’re hounded by at least two kinds of death.
Every living thing dies. And whether buried, or scattered, or eaten, or
composted, the remnants of all living things get entombed. But Easter declares that death to be, ultimately, as
impotent as it is inescapable. That death marks the beginning of new life and
new mystery.
The truly dangerous death lives outside the tomb. It thrives on humankind’s
almost suicidal appetite for fear, selfishness, violence, and just plain
foolishness. When its name is Judas, this death will sell its soul for silver
and gold.
When its name is Peter, it will deny
true Life and Love in order to avoid the sting of humiliation and the pain of
persecution.
When its name is Pilate, or Herod,
or Caiaphas, this death will allow or even stage the murderous scapegoating of innocent
human beings and call it justice or collateral damage. When entombed in this death,
human beings will do almost anything to keep our individual bodies, our own
biological systems functioning. And we will call that mechanical existence victory.
We are,
indeed, physical creatures. And while we are somewhat bound by our physiology, Easter, as a new voicing
of Incarnation, proclaims that human beings transcend our biology.
Through the gracious power of God’s ongoing Easter, we are being
re-born to the truth that spirit and mystery are interwoven, purposefully and
inextricably, within the miracle of our physical selves.
While we cannot know exactly what
happened inside the tomb between Friday afternoon and Sunday morning, an Easter
faith is not about explaining mystery. It’s about participating in it. Here and
now.
All of this sounds happy and good.
It’s stuff you expect from a preacher on Easter Sunday. But I have to be honest,
while preparing these words, this
preacher felt like someone trying to breathe underwater. With the Palm Sunday
bombings in Egypt, the unleashing of the mother
of all bombs in Afghanistan, the rattling of nuclear sabers, anniversaries
of tragedies at Virginia Tech and the Boston Marathon, not to mention the ceaseless
and self-righteous rhetoric of blame coming from political leaders everywhere,
Holy Week felt anything but holy. Around the world and right here at home, despair
often seems more justified than hope, and death more powerful than Resurrection.
The simple truth is that while
Easter declares God’s redemption of
sin and brokenness, Easter does not end
it. We still live outside the tomb where, right alongside the ineffable splendor
of sunrises, birdsong, and our own laughter, there lives that dangerous deathliness
of hate, fear, greed, and foolishness.
I wish I had magic words to make
all that go away, or even seem less dire. Since I don’t, here’s the best I can
do: Resurrection empowers us to live in the midst of and over against all that
deathliness with the very Love of God. God’s Love is a learned gift. It’s a
discipline. And our example is Christ himself, who, “though he was in the form
of God…emptied himself, taking the form of a slave…he humbled himself and
became obedient to the point of death…on a cross.” (From Philippians 2:6-8)
This, the great good news, delivers
us to our most challenging work – following Jesus. Trusting him. Sharing him. Discovering
the deep, transforming reaches of discipleship, means taking up the practice of
emptying ourselves for others, just as Jesus empties himself for all Creation.
One of my heroes is Mississippian Will Campbell. Campbell,
who died in 2013, was raised and ordained a fire-breathing fundamentalist, but
early in his career, he began a process of self-emptying that led to a life of
ongoing Easter faith.
In the 1950’s, Will Campbell got actively involved in the
Civil Rights Movement. In the late 60’s, as part of a speech he gave at a national
meeting of college students, he had the students watch a documentary which took
the viewers inside a Ku Klux Klan induction ceremony. In one scene, the
inductees were lined up and given the order, “Left face!” One member of the
group, a boy whom Campbell remembers as looking particularly scared and
pathetic, turned right instead of left and threw the whole pack into confusion.
Seeing that, all of the students began laughing and cat calling. Beginning to
feel sick, Campbell looked out over this gathering of young “radicals” and
realized that there wasn’t a true radical in the bunch. If there had been, they
would have wept and asked what had produced such hate and bigotry.
Following the film, Campbell was to
make a speech and lead a discussion. Feeling the almost bloodthirsty energy in
the room, an energy we might call death,
Campbell rose to the podium and gave this speech: “My name is Will Campbell.
I’m a Baptist preacher. I’m a native of Mississippi. And I’m pro-Klansman
because I’m pro human being. Now, that’s my speech. If anyone has any questions
I will be glad to try to answer them.”
Campbell remembers fearing for his life
that night. He was never able to make those furious students understand that
pro-Klansman is not the same as pro-Klan.
“I tried to stand patiently,” says Campbell, “even in the
face of fear and danger, because I had so recently learned that lesson myself.”1
I don’t know
if Will Campbell could have done anything more loving for black and white people that night. His bold
love demonstrated that to be emptied of self is to be filled with God’s Life
and Love. And to be filled with God’s Life and Love is to enter the mystery of
Resurrection.
1I cannot give a page number, but this vignette appears
in Will Campbell’s book Brother to a
Dragonfly. 1980, Continuum Intl
Pub Group. ISBN: 0826400329.
Charge/Benediction:
It is my prayer for
all of you that, come what may,
you empty yourselves in the confidence
that you will be filled with new Life and new Love,
that you will be restored to the mystery
of the holiness of God that lives eternally
in all things.
Even you.
Happy Easter!
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