Easter | 2024

Easter Sunday. Most of us have attended a few Easter services over the years. Some of us have worked most of the Easter Sundays of our adult lives. We have heard all the Easter Sunday sermons. As I was preparing for today, I kept worrying about what I could possibly say that hasn’t been said before? And then I realized that worry is pointless. Because there is nothing I can say that hasn’t been said before. And I wonder if that isn’t the point. Every year we tell this story again because this story is the very crux of our faith. Every other story in the Bible either moves us toward the cross and the empty tomb or into the life we lead because of the them. We are beginning the season of Eastertide, in which we celebrate the Resurrection for 50 days. I would invite us to hear these familiar stories again with tender and open hearts. Maybe not to learn something new, but for reassurance and affirmation of the truth that Jesus is alive.

So today we are reading from Matthew’s account of the resurrection. There is a lot of action in these ten verses, but what strikes me is the repeated use of the word afraid or fear. Its from the same Greek root word. Both Mark and Luke use the same word in their accounts, so six times between those three Gospels, making fear the most common response to the resurrection of Jesus.

These fear references take place in the Jewish culture and the Hebrew scripture in which fear means way more than just being scared. It does mean scared, but its also the realization that there is more going on here. And that “more” is God. Eugene Peterson calls it “fear-of-the-Lord” like one big run on compound word. He describes “Fear-of-the-Lord” as the “sudden or cultivated awareness that the presence of God introduces into our lives.” It makes us realize that God is God and we are not. We are not the center of the universe. We don’t know what’s going to happen next. “Fear-of-the-Lord” is fear with the scary element deleted. The Bible has a lot of commands in it and the one that appears over 300 times is also found in the resurrection story. “Do not be afraid”. But “Do not be afraid” does not result in the absence of fear but rather the transformation into fear-of-the-Lord. We still don’t know what is going on. We’re still not in control. We’re still deep in mystery.”

In Matthew, fear caused two very different responses. Peterson says,

“The contrast between those Roman guards—insensible and sprawled on the ground, paralyzed by fear—and the two exuberant women kneeling on the same ground, energized by fear. Its the same word in both cases—fear. But its not the same thing. There is a fear that incapacitates us for dealing with God, and there is a fear that pulls us out of our preoccupation with ourselves, our feelings, or our circumstances into a world of wonder. It pulls us out of ourselves and into the very action of God.”

I think I can understand why the Roman guards were afraid, an earthquake, and lightning and an angel would probably scare me too. And I think I understand why the women were afraid. The man they had left their homes to follow, the Messiah who entered Jerusalem with a triumphant Hosanna only a week ago, the one in whom they had placed all their hope, was now dead in the tomb. Maybe they thought they were next. I mean, Peter was so afraid of being associated with Jesus that he had denied him three times. It must have been a scary, disorienting couple of days.

After all this, they went to the tomb and found it empty and saw an angel. On their way back they met Jesus who told them “Go tell my brothers that they are to go to Galilee, and that I’ll meet them there.”

We live in a world filled with broken promises. All of us have been on the receiving end of disappointment. Relationships fail, businesses fail, families let us down. We learn to adjust our expectations. “Hope for the best and prepare for the worst.” We just learn to deal with our disappointment.

Now I do NOT think the women were disappointed in the Resurrection, not at all. It was everything Jesus promised it would be. “But sometimes the scariest thing in the world is to believe that your deepest most secret hopes might actually be possible.” After the angel told the women that Jesus was risen, they “hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy.” They had heard Jesus’ teachings. They knew he had predicted this. It was so audacious they were almost afraid to hope for it. And when faced with the actual reality, they could scarcely believe it. It was too good to be true.

It takes immense vulnerability to believe the one thing we have hoped for more than anything else in the world. When the fear transforms into “fear-of-the-Lord”, when we are pulled out of our own self preoccupation and into the possibility of God, then there is room for hope.

The life of the resurrection is one of hope, grounded in fear-of-the-Lord. The deepest hope of these women had come true. Jesus is Risen! And yet, there are a lot of questions still. What is everyone supposed to do now that Jesus is alive? What comes next? What will all their friends and family think when they return home? All they know is that they are supposed to go to Galilee and Jesus promised to meet them there.

The resurrection is a message of hope, proclaimed in the middle of a tomb. It isn’t empty platitudes and hollow cheerfulness, all tied up in an Easter bow. It isn’t just a story to comfort us when we are feeling down. In John Updike’s poem “Seven Stanzas at Easter” he says:

“Let us not mock God with metaphor,

Analogy, sidestepping, transcendence;

Making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the

Faded

Credulity of earlier ages:

Let us walk through the door.”

Let us walk through the door. Going to Galilee was walking through the door. Its going home. To the places where we are most vulnerable and unimpressive and powerless. To the people who know us for real, warts and all. But like Jesus promised the women, He will meet us there. And Jesus always keeps his promises.

There is a lot of uncertainty mixed into the resurrection narratives that doesn’t often get acknowledged. And as I get older, sometimes it seems like I have more questions than answers. What I love about the resurrection stories told in the gospels is the honest emotion that the women and the disciples experience. In the NIV it says that the women left the tomb afraid yet full of joy. But I also love how the Message translates it. The women are “deep in wonder and full of joy.” Its getting closer to that fear-of-the-Lord. Because they aren’t scared, but they aren’t certain what lies ahead either. They are starting to realize their small role in this Great Story. And that brings them great joy.

There is a line in a song that we sing at Christmas, “the hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.” And I think that is true of Easter too. There was hope and fear on that resurrection morning. And its ok for us to live in that tension too. We can respond to the resurrection of Jesus like the women, deep in wonder and full of joy.

This week as I was talking to the girls about the resurrection, they question they kept asking at every part of the story was “why?” And while there are probably hundreds of books that could give a multitude of carefully crafted theological answers as to why Jesus died and then rose again, I don’t think that is what they were asking for. So I gave them an answer similar to what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:14-15;

“He included everyone in his death so that everyone could also be included in his life, a resurrection life, a far better life than people ever lived on their own.”

What more is there to say than that. Jesus invites us into a far better life. Like we sang earlier, life is worth the living just because He lives.