Easter Day (Matthew 28:1-10)  4/24/2011

Happy Easter to everyone! We have now all traveled the 40 days of Lent. I hope that your Lenten journey was a time of rest, reflection and renewal. Throughout this season, I hope you were able to discover all that you were in search of and that you accomplished all that you set out to do. But most importantly, I hope that you were surprised. If even for just one small moment, I hope that you were unexpectedly swept off your feet with your mouth wide-open and your senses tingling, surprised. I hope that you were surprised because God has so many gifts to give us that our human expectations struggle to imagine the wonder and abundance of God’s love and grace.

Our Gospel lesson this morning describes the many surprises in store for those who were at the empty tomb that first Easter morning. “And suddenly there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it…For fear of him the guards shook and became like dead men. But the angel said to the women, ‘Do not be afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said’…so the [women] left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy.” (Mt 28:2-8) The author of Matthew’s Gospel account tells us that Mary Magdalene and the other Mary (Jesus’ mother) were the ones that went to see the tomb. These women are two of the most faithful followers of Jesus, with him throughout his ministry and among the very few who did not run away and abandon Jesus as he hung on the cross. Jesus told his followers many times that he would suffer and die, but that he would be raised on the third day…and so we must wonder that as these faithful women came to see the tomb, what did they come to see? The angel tells them he is not there, “for he has been raised, as he said.” The women, although they loved and believed in Jesus, although they followed him to the very end, the very horrible end, their human expectations struggled to imagine the miracle of Easter morning.

We gather together this morning to celebrate and give thanks for that very miracle, the miracle of Christ’s death and resurrection; the miraculous gift that gives us redemption and the hope of being in God’s presence forevermore. With that said, perhaps we should not be surprised that the women were full of “fear and great joy” that first Easter morning. Their expectations, like our expectations, are deeply rooted in the things we have come to know and understand. Archbishop Rowan Williams, in his book Resurrection, shares some fascinating thoughts of the human struggle to understand the power of Easter morning. Williams speaks of how our daily lives inform and shape the context of how we understand the events in our lives; how our past informs our future. Williams writes, “[Our] memory affirms that the present situation has a context; it, like the self, is part of a continuity, [our memory] is [something that is] ‘made’ and so it is not [absolute] immutable. By learning that situations have wider contexts, we learn a measure of freedom or detachment from (or transcendence of) the limits of the present. [We acknowledge that] Things may be otherwise; change occurs.”[i] Williams provides insight that on that first Easter morning, the faithful women that went seeking Jesus in the tomb were acting from their human understanding of how God works in the world, but the angel was God’s messenger, sent to testify that the miracle of Christ’s death and resurrection had broken through all the boundaries that were previously known, even the boundary of death itself. The context of understanding how God works in the world was changed forever on that first Easter morning, but still our understanding of God’s abundant love and grace is a process that we struggle to fully comprehend: a process that invites us to open our hearts and minds to the miraculous work of God in the world around us.

We have traveled through the 40 days of Lent and we have come before God in prayer, in song, and in worship. This morning we celebrate with great joy and thanksgiving the miraculous gift of Christ’s resurrection. May you live today and every day renewed, refreshed and confident that we are an Easter people, a community blessed to be given redemption and hope through the promise of being raised with Christ. Open your hearts and minds, search for God in all the surprising places of your lives and be filled with wonder as you discover the abundance of His grace. Alleluia. Christ is risen! AMEN.