Sermon for Easter Sunday 2020: Resurrection Earthquakes
Alleluia! Christ is risen!
Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia!
I admit it, it’s a little harder to
say that this year.
Our lives have been shaken…
It’s
not easy to feel all the good news of resurrection
right
now in our sheltering lives,
surrounded
by so many sick and dead.
I mean, I guess we could have
cancelled Easter…
But let’s just admit first
that
all those disciples lives’ had been shaken
when
their teacher’s little kingdom of God project failed.
The cross and the tomb shook them to
the core
when
Jesus ended up dead.
The hope for a new life and new world
where
love and justice, mercy and compassion,
ruled
above all else… those hopes were crucified
and
laid dead in a tomb, too.
The women who went to the tomb…
had
their lives shaken,
literally,
in fact.
The got to the tomb and there was an
earthquake
Matthew, earthquakes…
Death
of Jesus… earthquake!
Resurrection of Jesus…
earthquake!
I’ve been in a few earthquakes…
Los Angeles: Palm Springs
earthquake, July 8 1986
around
2:30 am…
Champagne, Illinois June
10, 1987 early evening
Whittier earthquake 7:42
am October 1, Thursday
18 days later: Black
Monday, October 19, 1987, 22% drop
And now it feels like our lives have
been shaken…
The
ground beneath us feels unstable
and
we don’t know when will things be stable again for us,
when
will things be normal again for us.
Well, when resurrection is God’s
determined act
in
a world that uses crosses to get its way,
there is no going back to normal,
there is no old false stability.
God’s earthquake of resurrection
has
reshaped our terrain.
How do we handle that?
Do we respond like the guards who
with fear and trembling,
fear
that their decision to side with Rome
and
the powers of death and crucifixion,
might
be completely impotent
in
the face of a God of resurrection!?
Matthew says the guards shake!
It’s the same word as
earthquake!
And
it says they, not Jesus, they were like dead men!
One response to God’s resurrection
power
is
to shake in your boots because you realize
you
were on the wrong side of life.
But then the women! They see and
listen and respond.
The
message comes from a stranger
who
rolled away the stone from the tomb
where
Jesus had been placed in death
and
where Jesus was raised to new life.
Come
take a look! God raised him!
You
women! Go tell all those men who are still afraid
that
God has acted, that this world has been shaken,
and
nothing can go back to what it was!
The
Jesus project of love and justice, mercy and compassion,
continues
on! And now it continues on in you,
in
your bodies, in your generous acts of love,
in
your courageous acts of resistance,
in
your bold faith in the God who holds the very power of life
and
bestows it freely and graciously to us all.
The women go. They felt the resurrection
earthquake.
It wasn’t the fearful
deadly earthquake
that the guards thought it was.
It was the
shake-you-up-so-you-can-believe temblor
of God’s life-giving power in Jesus.
Matthew tells us they
were still full of fear,
but now that fear was saturated with
joy!
In
fact the fear itself was fear rooted in such profound joy
that
they were afraid to believe it,
but
they did, and they spoke it, and they lived it,
and
even the men got their lives shaken up
and
nothing would ever be normal again.
This is the radical good news of
resurrection:
Jesus is God’s
determination
to bring life, justice, and love into
this world and into our lives.
And nothing can stop that.
Not oppression. Not rejection.
Not fear. Not crucifixion.
Not death. Not a virus.
Not failed government.
Not even our fearful and doubting selves.
That is good
news that shakes up the foundation of our lives.
After the resurrection of Jesus
we
can feel like our whole lives have been shaken up,
like
nothing can ever be the same,
but
not in the deadly way of earthquakes and pandemics,
in
the new life way of Jesus,
because God’s power of life is
greater than the powers of death.
That’s
it! That’s the tweet!
What happened to those first and
early followers of Jesus is
they
knew their lives could never go back
to
the small, fear-based, dead-end approach to life
that
had become normal
and thoughtlessly accepted among
them.
They
knew their lives had been so shaken up
that
now they could live large,
they
could live above their own fear,
they
could love one another and this whole shaken up world
without
counting the cost
or
without the old boundaries of
who is lovable and who is not,
who
is worthy, and who is not,
who
has earned it, and who has not.
No,
this was an earthquake of the power of life and love
shaking
up the whole world.
Folks, our lives have been shaken up
by a terrible virus and
so many sick and too many dead.
What we’re going through right now
has
made the foundation of our lives tremble.
But we have always been living
in
houses built on the false foundation
of privilege, and power, and pride.
We have already been living in a
world
ruled
by death, but most of the time
when
we have the ability,
we choose not to pay attention to all
the crosses,
or
respond and act.
As resurrection, new-life people of
faith,
our
challenge and promise right now
is
to see that we can’t go back to the old normal.
It wasn’t giving life to the world,
and
it was only pretending to give life
to
a few of us who could make it work.
I’m not saying this pandemic is God’s
act or will. Not at all.
But
I am saying that God is bringing new life to us
by
helping us see it wasn’t that great before.
And we are experiencing through the
mysterious
power
of the Spirit, right now,
new
depths of love, and connection, and life.
Oh the irony! Just when we can’t be
connected in person,
we
discover how deeply connected we are in spirit!
God is bringing new life in the midst
of death,
but
that’s what the God of resurrection does.
That
is the normal God offers us always, especially now.
In his book Meal from Below
(Tacoma, WA: Street Psalms Press, 2012, p. 119), Scott Dewey recounts that
before the 2010 earthquake in Haiti
a seminary in
Port-au-Prince
would seldom interact
with neighboring slums.
In the aftermath of the devastation,
both physical and social
barriers were torn down.
A seminary professor showed Dewey his
tent
where he was living with
other refugees,
and described vital new
ministries created in response to need.
“Here in Haiti,” Dewey says,
“in one corner at least,
the devastating earthquake
has served to break down social
divides
few had been willing to cross.”
We missed out on Holy Week as our
prelude to Easter joy.
And
yes, we are going to reschedule those services
and
invite you to experience those liturgies, rituals, and music
in
community whenever we are able to do that.
But it feels like we missed it this
year.
Except
we didn’t.
We
have been living our holy days and rituals for weeks.
We
have been living Holy Thursday,
watching
humble servants live out footwashing
in
how they care for other people’s sick bodies,
and
deliver people’s packages,
and
stock grocery shelves to feed us,
and
teachers going to great lengths
to
help students learn and be fed,
and
neighbors checking in on neighbors
and
making sure they have what they need,
including
toilet paper,
and
leaders humbling themselves
and
stooping down to make sure
the
lowliest among us are taken care of.
We
have been living Holy Friday
as
so much death, some of it by the virus,
and
some of it the result of powers that resist
God’s
love and mercy for all.
And
we have been living Holy Saturday,
waiting,
vigiling, praying,
sitting
in candlelight, listening to songs that inspire,
telling
stories that fill us with holy imagination,
and
living with eager expectation that yes, this too will pass.
just like the day after Jesus
was executed,
when even God rested, God sabbathed,
and
waited in patient, calm, confident silence
for the day of resurrection to come.
God is acting in this shaking up of
our lives
as
we live in this terrible coronavirus pandemic.
I don’t think God sent us this virus
to teach us something.
I
do think that God is moving among us
as
we go through this together
and
is showing us how much has been lacking in our lives
and
how much new life there is for us to have
after
this ends.
We can respond to this unsettling of
our lives
with
the fear of the guards
who
thought their job was to keep things just as they were
and
protect the interests of the powerful few.
Or, we can respond like the women
with
plenty of fear at what was,
but
fear saturated with joy at what might be.
Imagine a
world where Jesus, the lord of love and life,
got
crucified just for living God’s new normal.
Imagine a world where you can’t stop
that kind of love and life,
because
God is the God of resurrection power.
Imagine it. Trust it. Feel it shaking
up everything you thought was normal.
And
never, ever go back to the so-called normal,
to
the small, fear-based, dead end approach to life
that
had become normal
and thoughtlessly accepted among us.
Now
in the living Christ we can live large,
live
above our own fear,
love
one another and this whole shaken up world
without
counting the cost
or
without the old boundaries of who is lovable
and
who is not,
who
is worthy, and who is not,
who
has earned it, and who has not.
This
is the resurrection power of life and love
shaking
up the whole world.
Alleluia! Christ is risen!
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