Easter Day
We read Matthew’s gospel story of the revelation of Jesus’ resurrection with joy, excitement and delight. After the pilgrimage of the last few weeks and days, it is an extraordinary, hope-filled story. So much happens, it is hard to keep up as we react to the impact of what has and is taking place.
Matthew tells the story, matter-of-factly, yet it is a public humiliation and a reminder to every power and principality who imagines it has the last word in killing democracy, truth and love. Too many still think this is possible in our world today. A troublesome opponent, a potential new leader at the next election, the irritating people who want justice, those marching for peace who just seem to keep turning up, however much the oppressors and tyrants and would be kings deny this truth.
The subversive underside of every story where ordinary men and women resist misinformation, push back at the oppressive power which is always displayed with restrictions, both large and small. Somehow they always have the courage to ignore the fear the state seeks endlessly to impose on them, yet this underside of history is in plain view today. It gives us great hope!
In Matthew’s story, two women have come to be at the tomb where Jesus was laid before the start of Passover. They come at dawn, at the earliest possible time, as they have been waiting anxiously to tend to the body of their beloved friend and leader. The restrictions on movement on the Sabath, honoured by the women, have ended as it is now the beginning of a new week. In fact, it’s also the first day of God’s new creation.
But as they arrive, they discover Rome’s tidy little clean-up, done off the books, in collusion with the religious authorities when the body was placed in the tomb late in the afternoon, was put in place with guards ordered to keep watch over the tomb. They were an after-thought, sent to make sure the dead stay where they’re meant to stay. The order reveals the anxiety of the religious authorities; their concern about the likelihood of Jesus’ words being real, and their fearful desire to reject any such possibility, maintaining the validity of their denial at all costs. This was about their survival and holding tight to the status quo. It had nothing to do with God.
Instead, we’re told the guards shake in fear and fall over like dead men. The women, whose testimony and witness their world has been trained to ignore, are given a world shattering, life changing commission. And we realise Matthew does not give any justifications or explanations; he simply tells it as it happened.
We hear the story again and realise it is God who has reversed Rome’s verdict, rather than Jesus overpowering it through force of will. The proclamation of Jesus’ resurrection and the ongoing attempt to cover-up happen simultaneously, as in the following verses (11-15) we are told about the guards who recover from their fear and go and tell the priests and elders what has happened. They then pull together the next cover-up to prevent the truth from escaping. But they are too late, it has already been spread and told and is causing great joy.
The risen Christ is already moving to Galilee even before the disciples get the news.
So, what does this mean for us today? God is on the move and the stories told to us of empires and kings are revealed as they truly are, dreadful human vanities, wrapped up in cruelty and oppression, fed by greed, fear and hypocrisy. Those who espouse these stories and beliefs reveal a contempt for God which is egregious and self-delusional.
The risen Christ reminds us today, urgently: a cold moral vision towards those whom Jesus spent time with is unacceptable; terrorising people who are immigrants and refugees has no place in Jesus’ kingdom; spending money on weapons, war, and terror when children are starving, being maimed, murdered and trafficked is simply, unequivocally evil; urging violence, death, accepting war crimes and genocide as collateral damage is delusional and wilderness territory inhabited by the devil; and we know a clenched fist rather than an open hand of welcome and care is not, and never will be, Jesus’ way.
It seems to me it is the fear of love which drives the temptation to create a world where holding onto power and control at any cost is real, but this is Caesar and Herod in plain sight. All such power structures imposed by people who try to justify to themselves and those around them, that it is a moral, safe necessity, and the trading away of choice, free speech and the rule of law is reasonable, are wrong.
Jesus’ message is clear, strong and unequivocal. Jesus is the one who told us to love our neighbours, to seek out the least of these and welcome them, to invite the stranger to join us, to feed and clothe and love one another. This means we have finally to acknowledge the emptiness of the dream that salvation arrives on the wings of a drone or missile, or in the violence of a gun killing journalists and children.
This is a cry of grief, but on this Easter Day, I am joyfully reminded Jesus was about mercy and compassion, love, hope and peace, justice and freedom. We are reminded in the stories we have listened to through Lent, in Holy Week and now today, here in this place and in thousands of churches and homes around the world, that God’s story is the only one worth listening to and trusting.
It is God’s world raised up by the risen Christ and made visible, offered in love and peace to each of us, showing us once again it is worth dying for, just as Jesus showed us. It is worth dying to this world and living with joy to God. I hope you can remember this magnificent good news today, hang onto it with hope, and that you can join with the women and disciples who learned God is faithful, God is present with us, and Christ has gone ahead so we may be with him always.
The Lord is risen Alleluia! He is risen indeed, Alleluia!