William H. Willimon - "Easter as an Earthquake" Easter Service 9:00 am (April 4, 1999)
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
- | The third reading is from the Gospel | 0:03 |
according to St. Matthew, the 28th chapter. | 0:05 | |
After the Sabbath, | 0:11 | |
as the first day of the week was dawning, | 0:12 | |
Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. | 0:15 | |
And suddenly, there was a great earthquake. | 0:20 | |
For an angel of the Lord descending from heaven came, | 0:23 | |
and rolled back the stone, and sat on it. | 0:27 | |
His appearance was like lightning | 0:32 | |
and his clothing white as snow. | 0:34 | |
For fear of him the guard shook and became like dead men, | 0:39 | |
but the angel said to the women, | 0:43 | |
"Do not be afraid. | 0:46 | |
"I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. | 0:49 | |
"He is not here, for he has been raised as he said. | 0:54 | |
"Come see the place where he lay, | 1:00 | |
"then go quickly and tell his disciples | 1:04 | |
"he has been raised from the dead, | 1:07 | |
"and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee. | 1:09 | |
"There you will see him. | 1:13 | |
"This is my message for you." | 1:16 | |
So they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy, | 1:19 | |
and ran to tell his disciples. | 1:23 | |
This is the word of the Lord. | 1:26 | |
Thanks be to God. | 1:29 | |
- | John says that | 1:38 |
they got to the tomb on Easter | 1:41 | |
and it was empty. | 1:46 | |
And then they went back home. | 1:49 | |
They went back home. | 1:54 | |
Reminds you of the way Luke tells the story | 1:58 | |
of those two disciples on the way to Emmaus. | 2:00 | |
A stranger shows up and they start telling the stranger, | 2:03 | |
"Some women told us | 2:08 | |
"that Jesus had been raised from the dead. | 2:09 | |
"But we'd already planned to have supper | 2:12 | |
"over here at Emmaus, | 2:15 | |
"and you know how hard it is to change reservations | 2:16 | |
"once you've made them and so we just..." | 2:18 | |
A man is raised from the dead and you can't cancel lunch? | 2:23 | |
How dumb are these disciples? | 2:28 | |
So my friend, Stanley Hauerwas, | 2:31 | |
in conversation with dear Marcus Borg | 2:32 | |
of the errant Jesus Seminar says, | 2:35 | |
"Marcus thinks that the disciples | 2:39 | |
"had some kind of personal experience on Easter. | 2:42 | |
"They said, you know, | 2:46 | |
"wasn't it great being with Jesus before they killed him? | 2:48 | |
"You remember those great stories he told? | 2:52 | |
"Just thinking about it makes him seem like he's still here. | 2:55 | |
"Yep, by God, you know when you think about it | 3:02 | |
"he is still here. | 3:03 | |
"Let's just all close our eyes | 3:05 | |
"and let's make believe he's still here, okay?" | 3:07 | |
Stanley says, "Hey Jesus Seminar, | 3:12 | |
"you must not have read the Gospels. | 3:16 | |
"These are not creative people | 3:18 | |
"we're dealing with here, these disciples. | 3:19 | |
"These are not imaginative minds. | 3:24 | |
"They were the sort of people | 3:27 | |
"who could go out early in the morning and see an empty tomb | 3:28 | |
"and not let it spoil lunch. | 3:32 | |
"You don't get an idea | 3:35 | |
like the bodily resurrection of Jesus | 3:38 | |
"out of people with brains like Simon Peter's. | 3:42 | |
"In short, | 3:48 | |
"the disciples were a lot like us. | 3:50 | |
"People like us are the sort of folk | 3:56 | |
"who like to believe that you can have a resurrection | 3:57 | |
"and still have the world, | 4:02 | |
"fairly much like it was yesterday. | 4:05 | |
"We wanna have Easter, but we still want our world unrocked. | 4:09 | |
"We are amazingly well adjusted, we are, | 4:16 | |
"to the same old dead world. | 4:19 | |
"And it's odd, | 4:24 | |
"how we just hate to let go. | 4:26 | |
"I think that's why Matthew, when he tells his story, | 4:31 | |
"says that at Easter, the whole earth shook. | 4:35 | |
"Luke does Easter as a meal on a Sunday evening | 4:41 | |
"with the risen Christ. | 4:44 | |
"John has the resurrected Jesus encounter | 4:46 | |
"Mary in the garden. | 4:48 | |
"But Matthew, for Matthew Easter is an earthquake | 4:50 | |
"with doors shaken off the tombs, | 4:54 | |
"and dead people walking the streets, | 4:57 | |
"and a stone rolled away by the ruckus, | 4:59 | |
"and this impudent Angel plopped down on top of the stone. | 5:01 | |
"I've been in an earthquake, even though I'm not from L.A. | 5:07 | |
"I was preaching in Alaska. | 5:11 | |
"And I tell you, during my sermon the earth heaved | 5:14 | |
"for a moment that seemed like forever. | 5:17 | |
"That little church just shook | 5:22 | |
"and those Alaskan Methodist just sat there | 5:26 | |
"like it was another day at the office. | 5:28 | |
"The only response was from a woman down front, | 5:32 | |
"who's staring up said, | 5:35 | |
"Look at that, the light fixtures fell the last one. | 5:37 | |
(crowd laughs) | 5:41 | |
"Afterwards, at lunch, | 5:43 | |
"I asked the pastor what the heck would it take | 5:46 | |
"to get this congregation's attention? | 5:50 | |
"I would hate to preach to people like this every Sunday. | 5:53 | |
"Matthew says Easter was an earthquake | 5:57 | |
"that just shook the whole world. | 6:02 | |
"Oh, but we modern types. | 6:06 | |
"When something intrudes in our consciousness, | 6:09 | |
"out of our experience, | 6:12 | |
"we try to explain it. | 6:14 | |
"We try to explain it on the basis | 6:16 | |
"of what we knew yesterday. | 6:19 | |
"So one critic says Jesus was asleep | 6:23 | |
"in a deep drugged coma, | 6:27 | |
"and then he woke up on Easter. | 6:30 | |
"Or another says the disciples got all worked up | 6:33 | |
"in their grief and this was sort of their hysteria | 6:36 | |
"about the whole thing, | 6:39 | |
"but you can't explain resurrection. | 6:42 | |
"Resurrection explains us. | 6:47 | |
"The truth of what happened tells on the faces | 6:52 | |
"of those befuddled disciples. | 6:55 | |
"You will note, nobody expected Easter, | 6:58 | |
"nobody expected resurrection, | 7:01 | |
"death, defeat. | 7:05 | |
"Well, while regrettable, they are utterly explainable. | 7:09 | |
"It was a good campaign while it lasted, | 7:15 | |
"but we didn't get him elected to Messiah. | 7:16 | |
"Death, death is death. | 7:18 | |
"Oh, we had hoped, but you gotta face facts. | 7:23 | |
"You want some lunch? | 7:28 | |
"The world is just in this tight, death grip of these facts. | 7:31 | |
"All that lives dies, fact. | 7:36 | |
"The good get it in in the end, face facts. | 7:39 | |
"It may be a rather somber world to live in at times, | 7:43 | |
"but it is our world. | 7:46 | |
"It is a world where things are predictable | 7:50 | |
"and what dies stays that way, and there are few surprises. | 7:53 | |
"This is our world. | 7:59 | |
"But Easter isn't about us it's about God. | 8:02 | |
"It's not about the resuscitation of a dead body | 8:09 | |
"that's resuscitation not resurrection. | 8:11 | |
"It's not about the immortality of the soul, | 8:15 | |
"some divine spark that just keeps going on and on | 8:20 | |
"like in Hollywood. | 8:24 | |
"That's Plato not Jesus. | 8:26 | |
"It's about God, | 8:30 | |
"but not God as he's usually preached around here | 8:32 | |
"an empathetic but essentially ineffective good friend, | 8:35 | |
"or God as some inner personal experience, | 8:38 | |
"a helpful fiction for making it through the day. | 8:42 | |
"It's about God that creates a way when there is no way, | 8:47 | |
"a God who makes war on evil until evil is undone, | 8:51 | |
"a God who raises the dead Jesus | 8:57 | |
"just to show you who's in charge. | 9:00 | |
"I don't know this for sure, but I think | 9:05 | |
"that Easter earthquake angel, | 9:10 | |
"you know the one perched on the rock rolled away | 9:13 | |
"from the tomb? | 9:16 | |
"I think it was the very same angel | 9:18 | |
"that we meet back at the beginning of Matthew's gospel | 9:20 | |
"in Matthew Chapter One. | 9:24 | |
"You know, that angel that shook Joseph awake one night | 9:26 | |
"with the news that his fiance was pregnant? | 9:29 | |
"Some of you've been through that, | 9:33 | |
"and it feels like an earthquake. | 9:35 | |
"You see my point? | 9:38 | |
"God on Easter in invading the tomb | 9:41 | |
"did exactly what God did on Christmas | 9:45 | |
"in invading a virgin's womb. | 9:47 | |
"It was God making a way when there was no way. | 9:51 | |
"It was God taking charge. | 9:54 | |
"The same angel that was sent to tell Joseph, | 9:56 | |
"Joseph wake up. | 10:01 | |
"You name this baby Emmanuel, God with us. | 10:04 | |
"It was the same angel who told the women, | 10:09 | |
"hey, don't be afraid. | 10:11 | |
"He isn't here, he's been raised. | 10:13 | |
"Little God with us has gotten grown up, | 10:16 | |
"and got crucified, and made the earth shake, | 10:18 | |
"and is on the move to take back the world. | 10:21 | |
"On the cross, the world did everything it could to Jesus. | 10:26 | |
"And at Easter God did all God could do to the world, | 10:31 | |
"and the earth shook. | 10:35 | |
"You don't explain that, you witness it. | 10:39 | |
"I think that's why the risen Christ appeared first | 10:44 | |
"to his own disciples and told them, | 10:47 | |
"you're supposed to be witnesses, tell somebody. | 10:50 | |
"Why would Jesus come back to his first disciples? | 10:56 | |
"Because they were the ones able to recognize | 11:00 | |
"that the risen Christ was none other than crucified Jesus. | 11:03 | |
"Crucifixion wasn't just an unfortunate mistake | 11:09 | |
"in the Roman judicial system, | 11:12 | |
"the first century Judean equivalent | 11:14 | |
"of the O.J. Simpson fiasco, | 11:17 | |
"crucifixion was the inevitable, | 11:19 | |
"predictable, expected result | 11:21 | |
"of saying the things Jesus said, | 11:23 | |
"and doing the things Jesus did, | 11:25 | |
"and being the kind of Savior Jesus was. | 11:27 | |
"You can't say things like Jesus said to powerful people | 11:31 | |
"and get away with it for long. | 11:34 | |
"That's what the world always does to people | 11:36 | |
"who threaten the world, face facts. | 11:39 | |
"But on Easter, God inserted a new fact. | 11:43 | |
"God took the cruel cross, | 11:49 | |
"and made it into a sign of triumph. | 11:52 | |
"God, the same God that made light out of darkness, | 11:56 | |
"a world from a void, God took the worst we could do, | 12:00 | |
"all of our death dealings and led them out toward life. | 12:04 | |
"And the earth shook, a new world was thereby offered. | 12:10 | |
"Jesus came back to forgive the very disciples | 12:16 | |
"who had deserted him. | 12:20 | |
"Thus it was revealed, | 12:24 | |
"the world is about forgiveness, not vengeance, | 12:25 | |
"and the earth shook. | 12:28 | |
"Jesus picked up a piece of bread and ate it. | 12:30 | |
"And they could still see the nail prints in his hands. | 12:34 | |
"The world is about life as it turns out, not about death, | 12:38 | |
"and the earth shook. | 12:43 | |
"Back in the 50s, | 12:45 | |
"there was an earthquake in China, | 12:46 | |
"and a big boulder was rolled away from a mountain, | 12:48 | |
"and behind this boulder was a cave | 12:52 | |
"with a cache of beautiful treasures | 12:55 | |
"from a thousand years ago. | 12:58 | |
"The boulder was rolled away, | 13:03 | |
"and a new world was made visible. | 13:04 | |
"When the stone was rolled away, | 13:09 | |
"we got our first glimpse of a new world. | 13:11 | |
"A world where death doesn't have the last word. | 13:14 | |
"A world shaken where injustice is made right | 13:19 | |
"and innocent suffering is vindicated | 13:22 | |
"by the intrusion of a powerful God. | 13:25 | |
"The women came out to the cemetery that morning | 13:28 | |
"to write one more chapter in the long history | 13:31 | |
"of the world's cruelty and injustice. | 13:33 | |
"The story of death's ascendancy. | 13:37 | |
"And then back home. | 13:42 | |
"This is the way the world always ends, | 13:47 | |
"not with a bang, | 13:49 | |
"but a whimper at death's dark victory, | 13:52 | |
"and then back to business as usual. | 13:57 | |
"And then the earth heaved, | 14:01 | |
"an angel appeared. | 14:05 | |
"The stone was rolled away. | 14:06 | |
"Caesar's soldiers shook | 14:09 | |
"and the angel plopped himself down on that rock | 14:12 | |
"in one final act of impudent defiance. | 14:15 | |
"And the angel said to the women, | 14:19 | |
"Don't be afraid, you're looking for Jesus? | 14:21 | |
"He isn't here. | 14:23 | |
"And then that Angel turned to the soldiers, | 14:26 | |
"and to Satan, and to all of the death dealers of all time | 14:28 | |
"and said be afraid | 14:33 | |
"'cause everything your world is built on is being shaken. | 14:36 | |
"And nobody went back home | 14:43 | |
"unshaken, | 14:47 | |
"with fear, and great joy." | 14:50 |