William H. Willimon - "Easter as an Earthquake" Easter Service 9:00 am (April 4, 1999)
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| - | 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 |