April 24, 2011
Seeing Easter - Matthew 28:1-10
Pastor: Luke Maybry
DownloadThis past March 11, the fifth largest earthquake in recorded history struck Japan. I mentioned this in a sermon several weeks ago, but only recently did I realize how massive it was. It measured a 9.0 on the Richter Scale. The size of the plate that ruptured was 180 miles. It actually shifted the main Island of Japan, Honshu, 2.4 meters. The shaking was felt up to 1400 miles away. Due to the shifting of the earth’s mass, March 11 was actually 1.8 microseconds shorter than it would otherwise have been. It created a tsunami that reached as high as seventy feet, and traveled at 800K an hour, which is also the cruising speed of a jetliner. As you can imagine, and as I am sure you have seen in pictures, Japan got devastated. Buildings got crumbled. Roads got washed out. Infrastructures gave way. What once was dry land became the ocean. Japan is living a completely new reality now that it did on March 10. There is no way that you could miss it if you live in Japan. You might live under a rock, but it would have to be a really big one to miss that.
Matthew describes what happened on that Easter morning as no less a massive earthquake. It was huge. This was not some spiritual namby-pamby, feel good, why-can’t-we-all-just-get-along-moment. This was real. It was definitely something that you could see. Matthew did not make this up. It either happened, and Matthew, and the women, and the disciples, and the early church (and the current one for that matter) are either telling us the truth about the Resurrection or they are on drugs. They all said that it was an earthquake. The entrance to Jesus tomb had been sealed with a massive stone. It was put there with the intent of it staying there. Easter pushed that thing away like it was a matchbox and an angel sat on top of it. You could see it. You couldn’t miss it.
Have we seen Easter? With the advent of the internet and MSNBC, we’ve seen a lot of things. I am reading a book that talks about how Europeans explored Africa. It took them close to five hundred years to find the source of the Nile River. I don’t know what their problem was. I googled “source of Nile River” the other day and found it in seconds. We can see just about everything at the click of a mouse.
Yet we’re nowhere near as hot as we think we are. I heard a headline just this past Wednesday that said that we currently consume three times more than the earth can sustain. I hate to tell you this, but if something’s not sustainable, then it’s going to stop. We keep spending money as a country that we don’t have. That’s a moral issue, you know. That’s not sustainable either. I’m sure you’ve seen lots of things just this week that you’d rather not have seen: a bad doctor’s report, your bank statement that says you’re broke, a scale that says you’re overweight, a loved-one who is critically sick. I’ve got a one-year-old little boy, and I heard the other day that one in seventy boys will develop autism.
We see lots of things. But do we see Easter? Do we see the Living God? According to Matthew, Easter is as obvious as an earthquake. Rev. Ben Dorr tells the story of a family that he knew as a seminary intern. It was a large family and the youngest child, Robert, had cerebral palsy. Nobody really knew how to treat Robert, and I guess because of that, they never treated Robert at all. They pretty much ignored him. They were a close family. They would all gather together at the dinner table as a family and eat and laugh, but not Robert. He was always on the outside. But then one day, the intern went to visit this particular family and it was just Robert and the mother. After some small talk, the mother proceeded to tell him about something that had happened to them. She had been sitting in the family room late one afternoon. Robert was standing in the hall by himself in the distance. The mother said she felt a strange shift in the room, something that caused her to look over her shoulder down the hallway at Robert. “I looked down there,” she said, “and I saw Jesus, with his arm around Robert’s shoulder.”
That seminary intern, now a seminary professor, says that he still doesn’t know what to make of that story. He first tried to psychoanalyze it. Maybe the mother had been feeling guilty, and she had projected her guilt on her perception of Jesus. And maybe he’s right. But what if the mother really did see Jesus that day? What if that really was Jesus? What if she really saw Easter? She was convinced that she did. She was so convinced that she started numerous programs for children with disabilities.
Tony Campolo tells the story of walking down an alley early one morning a rough part of Philadelphia. He was drinking a hot cup of coffee that morning, and he saw this homeless man crying. For some reason he felt that he should embrace the man. So he did, and the man just cried in his shoulders, with his scraggly old beard that hadn’t been washed in weeks dripping down in his coffee. He remembered about that time Jesus’ last teaching in Matthew’s Gospel, “when you have done it unto the least of these my brothers, you have done it unto me.” He became convinced that he was literally embracing Jesus that cold morning. We know better, of course. That man was a strung out old bum. What if Jesus really meant what he said in Matthew 25? What if it really was Jesus? What if God really does live? What if the Giver of life, the One who created everything on the earth, and over the earth, and under the earth, really does have this thing for us, and he really has gone to hell and back for us, and lived to tell the story?
According to Matthew Easter is obvious. We should be able to see it. But in reality, we often don’t. The funny thing is, the people who do often see it are the very ones who logically would not. Will Willimon tells the story of two mission trips that he took to Haiti. On both trips, the most unsettling thing for everybody was the laughter of the children there. “How dare they sing,” he said, “when their life expectancy is so terribly short.” Even CNN’s Anderson Cooper was dumfounded. “Don’t they know,” he asked on the air, “about how bad it really is?”
How can they see it, but we can’t? And why is it that we feel so compelled to prove the Resurrection? Have you ever noticed that? When the world tells us that the headlines are all there is out there, then our response is to somehow scientifically prove the thing, which cannot be done. The Haitian children did not need proof, and neither did that woman with her sick son, and neither did the women on that first morning. There is truth, after all, beyond human reason. But maybe we have put so much value in what we think we know that we’re convinced that we can live without the Resurrection. It’s convenient when we need it, but most of the time, we’re fine without it.
So therefore, we don’t always live into it. It amazes me that on mission trips, when we really get down to doing what Jesus specifically told us to do, then we really do see Easter. We see the Resurrection by living the Resurrection. I cannot think of any other reason to do something as outlandish as loving our enemies if Jesus has not been raised. And when we do that, when we obey his commandments to love one another as he has loved us, when we actually take those hard teachings in the Sermon on the Mount seriously, then we see Easter, and the things of earth grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace.”
I don’t know what you’re doing tomorrow. I’m taking it off. I have a very busy week next week, and a very busy month coming up. I’m very much like you are. I have“fightings within and fears without.” I often know what’s right, but have a hard time doing it. I’ve got relative comfort and security. I’ve got all that. We all do, and it’s normal to live in our little bubbles and never see what’s important. What’s important is Easter. We can see it. We can pay attention and live as Jesus called us to live and see Easter plain as day. An incredible thing happened. It’s an earthquake. The world shifted dramatically. There’s a whole new set of rules and possibilities. Jesus lives, and Jesus, through the Holy Spirit, is here now with me and you, today and forever. I don’t know what tomorrow holds, but whatever it is, it’s full of hope and we’re a new creation. We will never be the same again.
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
