26 March 2005

Sermon: Easter Vigil (Matthew 28: 1-10)

Christ Church Riverdale,  The Rev. Robert C. Lamborn, Rector

NRSV Matthew 28:1 After the sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. 2 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. 3 His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow. 4 For fear of him the guards shook and became like dead men. 5 But the angel said to the women, "Do not be afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. 6 He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. 7 Then go quickly and tell his disciples, 'He has been raised from the dead, and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.' This is my message for you." 8 So they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples. 9 Suddenly Jesus met them and said, "Greetings!" And they came to him, took hold of his feet, and worshiped him. 10 Then Jesus said to them, "Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me."

Christ Church is in the process of leasing a new copy machine, which not only costs less per month than the old one, but puts out more pages per minute, and has all sorts of bells & whistles. You and I live in a time when technology has made it easy and inexpensive to communicate to a wide audience. Not only can publish professional-looking documents on our computers and then copy the results at 22 pages per minute, but in an instant we can send out mass e-mails. Now I’m not suggesting that this ease of mass communication is always good; just look at the blizzard of paper we face, not to mention the mass e-mails we don’t want to receive, but how easy it is for us to communicate on a large scale is a huge contrast to the world of the Bible.

A medium-sized parish like Christ Church goes through paper by the ream and the case, but in Jesus’ day a single page of parchment cost more than a half day’s wages. Written communication was expensive and time-consuming in ancient times and for that reason it was reserved for the most important things. We have the Iliad and the Odyssey but no trashy novels because nobody would have bothered to write down the stories that were the equivalent of trashy novels. You can also expect a certain economy within ancient written records, meaning that what details do appear in these texts tend to be important ones. If something is repeated–well, then; be sure wake up and pay close attention!

The Easter story in Matthew includes three repetitions, and even though repetition is typical of stories told orally before they were written down, I still think they call us to sit up and take notice. “Do not be afraid.”

“He has been raised.” “You will see him in Galilee.”

“Do not be afraid.” This is what the angel says to the women–good advice when there’s been an earth-shaking event, the opening of a tomb, enough to paralyze with fear two soldiers of the best-trained army in the world. As a matter of fact, “Do not be afraid,” is what angels start off saying in the Bible, helping us know that these experiences are a long way from the cutesy idea of angels our culture has developed. In the same way, after the risen Christ greets the Marys and they worship him, his first words to them are, “Do not be afraid.”

The aching pain of grief is one thing--the searing agony at the death of a loved one--but now the cover is blown right off of the situation, and the routines that normally provide comfort in times of grief just aren’t going to work. This is new territory, scary territory. “Do not be afraid,” may be a little like, “Don’t look down,” when you’re way up high–even if you don’t feel any differently, it reminds you that there’s something else to focus on. “Do not be afraid,” can also mean, “I know you’re terrified, but have courage anyway.”

“He has been raised.” The news about Jesus’ resurrection is phrased in what we call the “divine passive,” grammar that points to the action of God. Out of respect and humility the divine passive is deliberately vague about how it is Jesus got out of that tomb. None of the four Gospels offers a specific explanation of how Jesus was raised; they simply proclaim that he is. “He told you so,” the angel reminds the women, and then goes over with them what to say to the disciples: “Tell them, ‘He has been raised from the dead.’” With the women in a state of shock, it’s not surprising that we would hear repeated the angel’s, “He has been raised.” “Let’s make sure you have this straight–can you repeat it back to me? OK.”

In that very moment, two mourners become the first two evangelists of the Good News of Jesus’ resurrection. The explosive, earth-shaking news that Jesus is risen comes first to women, who could not hold formal religious office, and whose testimony was not considered reliable in court. This is one way we know the resurrection story was not just made up out of whole cloth. If you were going to fabricate something like this, you’d at least respect the chain of command and have your VIPs be the first to learn about Jesus’ resurrection. But God does things the way God wants to, time and time again choosing the lowly and unlikely to be the bearers of good news and reconciliation.

“He is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him,” the angel concludes, just as the risen Christ tells the women, “Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.” “Galilee? What’s wrong with Jerusalem? It’s got the Temple; it’s ‘God Central,’” you could say, “and besides we’re already here. Why do we have to schlep all the way back home to Galilee?” Maybe because Galilee is home. Even though the events around the end of Jesus’ life took place in Jerusalem, the center of religious observance, most of Jesus’ public ministry took place to the north, in and around Galilee. Galilee is where the disciples began to follow Jesus, where they came to know him, and Galilee is home to them. They will see the resurrected Jesus not at the execution site or in the graveyard, but where they knew Jesus best, and where they will continue to lead their lives–in Galilee.

The risen Jesus will not be confined to Jerusalem, to a place that is religiously significant. The risen Jesus will be present and active on fishing boats, as homes are built and lived in, as children are raised, as water is drawn and food is prepared. Christ will be risen in the whole of life. “Go to Galilee; there you will see him,” is a message not just for the disciples, but also for us. Galilee is the whole of our lives, and we will see the risen Christ there . . . here. The risen Christ did not burst out of a tomb in order to be boxed into to religiously significant places like Jerusalem, or church. We can and do celebrate the resurrection here: we sing about it; we tell about it from Scripture; I’m talking about it right now . . . but we live the resurrection in our Galilees: at home or at work or at school, on the bus or the train or driving, at birthdays and weddings and funerals, in rejoicing and in sorrow and all the times in-between. “Do not be afraid. He has been raised. Go to Galilee.” “Go into your lives,” the risen Christ says to us. “There you will see me.”