William H. Willimon - "Easter as an Earthquake" Easter Service 11:00 am (April 4, 1999)
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| - | The third Gospel is from the, | 0:08 |
| the third reading is from the Gospel | 0:10 | |
| according to Saint Matthew, | 0:13 | |
| the 28th chapter: | 0:15 | |
| After the Sabbath as the first day | 0:18 | |
| of the week was dawning, | 0:21 | |
| Mary Magdelene and the other Mary | 0:23 | |
| went to see the tomb. | 0:25 | |
| And suddenly there was a great earthquake | 0:27 | |
| for an angel of the Lord descending | 0:31 | |
| from Heaven, came and rolled back the stone | 0:33 | |
| and sat on it. | 0:37 | |
| His appearance was like lightening | 0:39 | |
| and his clothing was as white as snow, | 0:42 | |
| for fear of him the guards shook | 0:46 | |
| and became like dead men. | 0:49 | |
| But the angel said to the women, | 0:52 | |
| "Do not be afraid, I know that you are looking for Jesus | 0:55 | |
| "who was crucified. | 0:59 | |
| "He is not here, for He has been raised | 1:01 | |
| "as He said. | 1:05 | |
| "Come and see the place where he lay. | 1:07 | |
| "Then go quickly and tell His disciples, | 1:11 | |
| "'He has been raise from the dead and | 1:14 | |
| "'indeed He is going ahead of you to Galilee, | 1:17 | |
| "'there you will see Him.' | 1:20 | |
| "This is my message for you." | 1:23 | |
| So they left the tomb quickly | 1:26 | |
| with fear and great joy | 1:29 | |
| and ran to tell His disciples. | 1:31 | |
| This is the Word of the Lord. | 1:35 | |
| - | Thanks be to God. | 1:38 |
| - | You can learn a lot about Easter, | 1:45 |
| by comparing the ways | 1:48 | |
| that the different Gospel writers speak of Easter. | 1:50 | |
| And you can learn a lot about ourselves and Easter as well. | 1:54 | |
| John says | 2:00 | |
| that the disciples went out to the tomb | 2:03 | |
| on Easter and found that it was empty. | 2:07 | |
| And then they went back home. | 2:11 | |
| They go back home? | 2:17 | |
| Reminds you of Luke's story, those two disciples | 2:21 | |
| going to Emmaus. | 2:23 | |
| A stranger shows up and says, | 2:24 | |
| "Why are you looking so sad?" | 2:27 | |
| and they said, "Well, some of our women, | 2:28 | |
| "some of these hysterical women came back | 2:31 | |
| "from the cemetery and said 'Jesus was raised | 2:33 | |
| "'from the dead' but we'd already | 2:37 | |
| "planned to have dinner at Emmaus | 2:39 | |
| "and you know how hard it is to change | 2:40 | |
| "your reservations once you get these made." | 2:42 | |
| A man is raised from the dead | 2:47 | |
| and you can't cancel lunch. | 2:49 | |
| How dumb are these disciples? | 2:51 | |
| So my friend Stanley Hauerwas, | 2:55 | |
| in conversation with poor Marcus Borg | 2:58 | |
| of the errant Jesus Seminar says: | 3:01 | |
| When Marcus thinks of Easter, | 3:05 | |
| he seems to think the disciples of Jesus | 3:06 | |
| had some kind of inner experience. | 3:09 | |
| Maybe they said, "Wasn't it great | 3:14 | |
| "being with Jesus when He was here. | 3:17 | |
| "Didn't you just love those stories and those sermons? | 3:19 | |
| "You know, just thinking about it | 3:22 | |
| "almost seems like He's still here. | 3:26 | |
| "Yeah if you just think about it, | 3:31 | |
| "it's like He's still here. | 3:32 | |
| "Let's all close our eyes and believe real hard, | 3:33 | |
| "maybe He's still here, okay?" | 3:36 | |
| Stanley says, "Hey Jesus Seminar. | 3:40 | |
| "You need to read the Scriptures. | 3:43 | |
| "These disciples were not that creative." | 3:46 | |
| These were not imaginative minds we're dealing with here. | 3:49 | |
| They were the sort of people | 3:54 | |
| who could go out in the morning, | 3:55 | |
| see an empty tomb and not let it spoil lunch. | 3:56 | |
| (crowd laughing) | 4:00 | |
| You don't get the idea of the bodily resurrection of Jesus | 4:01 | |
| out of people with the kind of imaginations | 4:04 | |
| and intelligence of Simon Peter. | 4:07 | |
| In short, in a way these disciples | 4:11 | |
| were just like us. | 4:16 | |
| People like us are the sort of folk who believe | 4:21 | |
| that you can have a resurrection | 4:24 | |
| and still go back to the world just like it was yesterday. | 4:28 | |
| We want to have Easter, but we still want to | 4:35 | |
| have our world unrocked by resurrection. | 4:37 | |
| We're amazingly well adjusted to the same old dead world. | 4:43 | |
| We just hate to let go of that. | 4:50 | |
| And I think that helps explain why | 4:55 | |
| when Matthew tells the story of Easter, | 4:57 | |
| Matthew says "It was like the whole earth shook." | 5:00 | |
| Luke does Easter as a meal on a Sunday evening | 5:06 | |
| with the risen Christ. | 5:09 | |
| John has Christ encounter Mary at the garden. | 5:10 | |
| But Matthew, Matthew as you heard does Easter | 5:14 | |
| as earthquake with doors shaking off tombs | 5:19 | |
| and dead people walking the streets | 5:22 | |
| and a stone rolled away by the ruckus. | 5:24 | |
| And this impudent angel sitting on top of the stone. | 5:27 | |
| I've been through an earthquake. | 5:31 | |
| Even though I'm not from L.A. | 5:34 | |
| I was preaching in Alaska and during the middle | 5:37 | |
| of my sermon the whole place started to shake. | 5:40 | |
| And the earth heaved for a moment | 5:43 | |
| and it seemed to last a lifetime. | 5:45 | |
| And that little church just shook. | 5:47 | |
| And those Alaskan Methodists just sat there | 5:52 | |
| like it was another day at the office. | 5:54 | |
| (crowd laughing) | 5:56 | |
| The only response was from a woman down front | 5:58 | |
| who looked up and said, "Look at that, | 6:00 | |
| "the light fixtures fell the last one." | 6:03 | |
| (crowd laughing) | 6:05 | |
| And I ended my sermon as quickly as possible, | 6:06 | |
| and afterwards with the pastor | 6:09 | |
| at lunch I asked him, | 6:11 | |
| "What the heck would it take to get | 6:14 | |
| "this congregation's attention? | 6:16 | |
| "I'd hate to have to preach to them every Sunday." | 6:18 | |
| Matthew says | 6:22 | |
| Easter is an earthquake | 6:25 | |
| and the whole world shook. | 6:29 | |
| Oh, we modern people like to explain things. | 6:31 | |
| Particularly things that intrude on our lives | 6:37 | |
| for which we have no good past experience | 6:39 | |
| to put it in context. | 6:42 | |
| And so we do that to Easter. | 6:44 | |
| And so one scholar says, "Maybe Jesus | 6:45 | |
| "was in some kind of drugged coma. | 6:48 | |
| "And after three days he came back, | 6:50 | |
| "or maybe you can chalk up Easter to kind of | 6:52 | |
| collective hysteria among his disciples." | 6:55 | |
| But you can't explain resurrection. | 7:00 | |
| If you notice the Gospel writers mainly show | 7:04 | |
| the reaction of people to Easter. | 7:09 | |
| Resurrection explains us. | 7:13 | |
| The truth of Jesus at Easter tells on the faces | 7:17 | |
| of his befuddled disciples. | 7:21 | |
| Not one of them expected or even wanted Easter. | 7:23 | |
| In fact you will notice the women are filled with joy | 7:27 | |
| but also fear. | 7:30 | |
| Why fear? | 7:33 | |
| Well death, defeat, | 7:37 | |
| while regrettable are so utterly explainable. | 7:40 | |
| "It was a good campaign while it lasted, | 7:46 | |
| "but we didn't get Him elected Messiah." | 7:48 | |
| Oh death, death is it. | 7:50 | |
| "We had hoped, but you gotta face facts. | 7:55 | |
| "You want some lunch?" | 7:58 | |
| The world is in a tight death grip of such facts. | 8:00 | |
| All that lives dies, fact. | 8:06 | |
| The good get it in the end, face facts. | 8:08 | |
| It may be a rather somber world at time we grieve over it | 8:11 | |
| but it is our world where things stay fixed. | 8:14 | |
| And things are predictable. | 8:19 | |
| And what dies stays that way. | 8:21 | |
| And there are few surprises | 8:24 | |
| and we learn to like it that way. | 8:27 | |
| But Easter is about God. | 8:33 | |
| It's not about the resuscitation of a dead body, | 8:35 | |
| that's resuscitation not resurrection. | 8:38 | |
| It's not about immortality of the soul | 8:41 | |
| like going on and on with Della Reese. | 8:45 | |
| That's Plato not Jesus. | 8:51 | |
| It's not about some divine spark within us | 8:54 | |
| that just kind of keeps on glowing we'll all remember | 8:56 | |
| him in our memories. | 9:00 | |
| No, it's about God. | 9:01 | |
| But God not usually as God is presented here | 9:03 | |
| to modernity God is an empathetic | 9:06 | |
| but ineffective good friend. | 9:09 | |
| Some kind of inner personal experience | 9:11 | |
| that helps you make it through the week. | 9:13 | |
| No, this is God that steps in and creates a way | 9:14 | |
| when there is no way. | 9:19 | |
| A God that makes war on evil | 9:21 | |
| until evil is undone. | 9:25 | |
| A God who raises Jesus from the dead | 9:26 | |
| just to prove who is in charge here. | 9:30 | |
| I don't know this for sure, | 9:35 | |
| but I think that that angel you know, | 9:38 | |
| the angel from the Easter earthquake, | 9:41 | |
| that perched on that rock that was rolled away | 9:44 | |
| from the tomb, I think it is the very same angel | 9:47 | |
| that you met back in Matthew chapter one. | 9:51 | |
| Remember that angel. | 9:56 | |
| Shook Joseph awake one night with the news | 9:57 | |
| that his fiance was pregnant. | 10:00 | |
| Talk about an earthquake. | 10:03 | |
| (crowd lauging) | 10:05 | |
| See my point. | 10:07 | |
| God did on Easter in invading the tomb | 10:09 | |
| what God did on Christmas in invading a virgin's womb. | 10:13 | |
| God made a way when we thought there was no way. | 10:17 | |
| God took charge, the same angel who was sent | 10:21 | |
| to Joseph saying, "Wake up, name the baby Emmanuel, | 10:25 | |
| "God with us." | 10:29 | |
| Was maybe the same angel who went to say to the women, | 10:32 | |
| "Wake up, don't be afraid He isn't here. | 10:36 | |
| "He's been raised." | 10:40 | |
| Little Emmanuel, little God with us grew up | 10:42 | |
| and He got crucified and made the whole earth shake. | 10:45 | |
| And now, even now, He isn't here. | 10:49 | |
| He's on the move to take back the world. | 10:51 | |
| On the cross the world did everything it could to Jesus. | 10:55 | |
| And at Easter, God did all God could do to the world. | 11:00 | |
| And the earth shook. | 11:06 | |
| And you don't explain that. | 11:09 | |
| You witness it. | 11:12 | |
| That's all the angel asked the women to do. | 11:13 | |
| "Go tell somebody, witness." | 11:16 | |
| Why would Jesus come back to His first disciples? | 11:19 | |
| Because they were the ones who could | 11:23 | |
| best recognize the risen Christ | 11:26 | |
| was none other than the crucified Jesus. | 11:29 | |
| Crucifixion wasn't just an unfortunate mistake | 11:33 | |
| in the Roman legal system, | 11:35 | |
| the first century Judean equivalent | 11:37 | |
| to the O.J. Simpson fiasco. | 11:39 | |
| Crucifixion was what we know | 11:41 | |
| and crucifixion is what we do. | 11:45 | |
| Crucifixion is the inevitable, predictable result | 11:48 | |
| of saying the things Jesus said. | 11:51 | |
| And doing the things Jesus did. | 11:53 | |
| And being the Savior, Jesus was. | 11:55 | |
| You don't say things like Jesus said to rich | 11:58 | |
| and powerful people and get away with it. | 12:01 | |
| This is what the world always does to people | 12:06 | |
| who threaten the world. | 12:09 | |
| So just face facts. | 12:13 | |
| But on Easter, God inserted a new fact. | 12:18 | |
| God took that cruel cross | 12:24 | |
| and made it into a sign of triumph. | 12:26 | |
| God, the same God at the beginning | 12:29 | |
| of our story, made light from darkness, | 12:32 | |
| a world from a void. | 12:36 | |
| The God took the worst that we could do, | 12:39 | |
| all of our death dealing, crucifixion doings | 12:42 | |
| and led them out toward life. | 12:46 | |
| And the world shook. | 12:50 | |
| A new world was thereby offered. | 12:53 | |
| Jesus came back to forgive the very disciples | 12:56 | |
| who had forsaken him. | 12:59 | |
| And in that moment we realized the world | 13:02 | |
| is not about vengeance. | 13:04 | |
| It's about forgiveness. | 13:08 | |
| And the earth shook. | 13:12 | |
| Jesus picked up a piece of bread | 13:15 | |
| and He ate it. | 13:17 | |
| And when He did the disciples could see the nail prints | 13:18 | |
| in His hands. | 13:21 | |
| And in that moment we realized the world is not | 13:23 | |
| about violence and death, | 13:25 | |
| it's about life, and the earth shook. | 13:27 | |
| Last week I heard interviewed the woman | 13:34 | |
| whose daughter was brutally murdered | 13:36 | |
| on a school ground in Arkansas. | 13:40 | |
| And she was talking about what a horrible year | 13:44 | |
| she had had. | 13:46 | |
| And she said, "My life was taken away from me | 13:47 | |
| "that day, I have been filled with this great sense | 13:51 | |
| "of fear and foreboding that I just can't shake. | 13:56 | |
| "Let me tell all of you other parents you better love | 14:00 | |
| "your little ones, this world is an unpredictable | 14:03 | |
| "at times terrible place." | 14:07 | |
| And she said, "I had my world destroyed | 14:11 | |
| "that day on that school ground." | 14:15 | |
| She's had her world rocked, | 14:20 | |
| by death and she'll never be quite the same. | 14:23 | |
| Well on Easter, we've had our world rocked by life. | 14:29 | |
| And how can we be the same? | 14:36 | |
| When that stone was rolled away we got a glimpse | 14:39 | |
| of a new world where death doesn't have the last word. | 14:43 | |
| A shaken world where injustice is ultimately | 14:48 | |
| put right and innocent suffering is vindicated | 14:52 | |
| by a powerful God whose on the side of the suffering. | 14:55 | |
| The women came out to the cemetery that morning | 14:59 | |
| to write one more chapter in the long story, | 15:01 | |
| the sad story of death's ascendancy. | 15:05 | |
| One more episode, you know it from the morning paper | 15:09 | |
| about how the good always get it in the end. | 15:12 | |
| And then let's all go back home. | 15:15 | |
| This is the way the world ends. | 15:20 | |
| Not with a bang but a whimper of resignation. | 15:22 | |
| When we just all go back home and settle back in. | 15:25 | |
| With death's dark victory. | 15:30 | |
| And then the earth heaved. | 15:34 | |
| An angel appeared, | 15:38 | |
| the stone was rolled away. | 15:39 | |
| Caesar's soldiers shook, the angel plopped himself | 15:41 | |
| down on the stone in one final act of impudence | 15:46 | |
| and defiance and said to the women, | 15:50 | |
| "Don't be afraid. | 15:53 | |
| "You're looking for Jesus, He isn't here. | 15:55 | |
| "He's gone on." | 15:58 | |
| And then that angel turned to the soldiers | 16:02 | |
| and to Satan and to all the death dealers | 16:04 | |
| of all time and said, | 16:08 | |
| "Be afraid. | 16:12 | |
| "Everything your world is built on is being shaken." | 16:14 | |
| And nobody went back home the same. | 16:20 |