I learned something new this week as I was preparing to preach on the resurrection account from Matthew. It was something I’d never noticed before, in many times of hearing and reading and studying resurrection accounts in preparation to preach on various Easter Sundays. All four Gospels have accounts of the resurrection, all tell of women coming, the tomb being empty, and an angel commanding them to go and tell. But each account is different. And Matthew is the only Gospel to mention an earthquake.
Maybe it came from growing up in California, but I’ve always had an interest in plate tectonics, the movement of the earth surface that causes such events as earthquakes and volcanoes. I even briefly considered a career as a geologist, until my father informed me I should go into something more practical. So instead I became a pastor. Which I don’t think is quite what my father had in mind, but anyway…
In seminary I had the opportunity to travel to Iceland, a small island in the middle of the north Atlantic. Fulfilling a lifelong dream of mine since I first heard about it on an early version of Where In the World is Carmen San Diego. Plate tectonics and Carmen San Diego, this trip was my two favorite childhood fascinations in one. Iceland sits on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, the dividing line where the North American and Eurasian plates are slowing moving apart from each other, at the rate of about one inch per year. This movement makes Iceland alive with geologic activity. Earthquakes and volcanoes are normal occurrences, most electricity is geothermal, and there are no water heaters, water is simply pumped out of the ground already hot. While in Iceland, we went to the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. As I stood in a trench with one foot on the North American plate and the other on the Eurasian, I looked around at the strange, moon-like landscape strewn with lava rock and I was filled with this profound sense of wonder. I thought, the ground under my feet is brand new. In this place God is literally still creating the world.
The next morning, we woke up to the news that four thousand miles away from us on another island, the movement of that same North American plate that had caused me such wonder the day before had spawned an earthquake. The 2010 Haiti earthquake left over one hundred thousand people dead and millions more displaced. Thousands are still without homes today, over seven years later. That’s the thing about geology, about our natural world. It is filled with both beauty and terror, equal parts awful and awesome, capable of both creation and destruction.
I wonder if this is why when the writer of Matthew remembered there being an earthquake on the morning of the resurrection. I wonder if the surprise at seeing the stone rolled away by an angel of the Lord, the empty tomb, and the appearance of Jesus filled him with such hope and terror, such fear and awe, such worship and doubt, that in his memory the very ground beneath his feet shook during the events of that fateful morning.
And resurrection, in Matthew’s defense, is pretty shocking. It disrupts the natural order of things. We are born, we live, and then we die. And that is it, the end. There is no coming back from that. There are people who have had near death experiences, who have been dead and then returned back from the dead. But a near death experience is not resurrection, because the person comes back, like pushing rewind, the thing that had happened is undone. But with resurrection, death remained even after life returned. “Do not be afraid,” the angel of the Lord said, “you are looking for Jesus, the crucified one. He is not here, for he has been raised.” The risen Jesus is still the crucified one. Resurrection is not like pushing rewind, because death is not reversed in resurrection, death is triumphed over. When you push rewind, you have to eventually go forward again, but because resurrection is forward and death has happened, the sting of death is gone. In resurrection, both joy and despair, both loss and hope, both destruction and creation are now contained in the body of our divine-human savior.
It is a lot to take in, this miracle we claim, that the crucified one is now raised. That death is destroyed, life is restored, the covenants of love are renewed, and that we now live in the long-promised majesty of the glory of the kingdom of God. Especially as we look around a world today that seems very far from such hope. A world filled with violence and despair and brokenness. And reminders of that brokenness are closer now than ever, many of us carry in our pockets devices which can tell us in seconds just how broken and painful and scary is this planet of ours. But here’s the thing, while our access to news is faster now, the news itself is really not all that different then it was in the time of Jesus. The disciples too lived in a world filled with terror and fear and brokenness. The death of Jesus meant the triumph of Rome, the continued dominion of an empire built on a foundation of oppression, violence, despair, and destruction. The disciples did not have to look far to see that while Jesus may have been resurrected, death still held a powerful sway. So it is no wonder that when they followed the direction of the women and went to Galilee to meet him, “when they saw him, they worshiped him, but some doubted.” What Matthew is telling us is that doubt is not antithetical to resurrection faith, but doubt in fact is a healthy response to living in a world where Christ has died and been resurrected, and has not yet come. Doubt is the fuel that keeps us from complacency, that helps us live in to the commission Jesus gave the disciples, to go and be about his work in the world, remembering that he is with us always, until the end of the age, until that day when, as Paul wrote in Colossians, we are revealed with him in glory.
There are differences in the resurrection accounts, but there are also similarities. One major similarity is none of the Gospel writers describe the actual resurrection event itself. In all of the accounts the stone is rolled away, or rolls away in front of them, and when they peer inside the tomb is already empty, Jesus is already gone. This is because resurrection faith is not something we can see and understand, it is bigger than our understanding. Resurrection faith can only be experienced. We come to resurrection faith not by witnessing resurrection, but by experiencing the resurrected Christ. Resurrection cannot be glimpsed in the moment of its happening, it can only be understood looking back at what we thought was the thing we could never survive and realizing that there was life after the brink after all. Resurrection does not mean that the worst thing that can happen will not happen; it means that there will be life on the other side of that worst thing. It is this persistent promise that because the crucified one is also the resurrected Christ, hope is stronger than despair, joy is more powerful than fear, and life always conquers death. When we walk through the crucifixion parts of life, the frightening diagnosis, the financial hardship, the addiction, the depression, the crippling grief, we cannot see resurrection as it is happening. It is only on the other side, when we can look back and say, that happened, and yet, that we realize resurrection has happened to us as well.
And so, this morning, I invite you to let the ground move under your feet, and also not to think too hard about it. Smell the lilies, rejoice in the trumpets, sing along with the music. Lean in to the sights and the sounds and the traditions of this holy day. Because Christ is risen. Resurrection has happened. And there is always a next thing. Thanks be to God. Amen.
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