Aftershocks of Easter

Easter Sunday/April 12, 2020

Matthew 28:1-10

In the name of Jesus.  Amen.

In St Matthew’s version of the Resurrection of our Lord…the first Easter morning began with an earthquake.

Now I’ve never been in one of those—thank heavens!—and we don’t exactly live in an earthquake zone.  But I bet at least some of you HAVE experienced an earthquake, somewhere!

There’s a famous firsthand account of an earthquake written by the great American author Mark Twain when he was visiting San Francisco in October of 1865.

Twain writes:  It was just after noon, on a bright October day…[and] all  was solitude and a Sabbath stillness.

As I turned the corner, around a frame house, there was a great rattle and jar…[and then]there came a terrific shock; the ground seemed to roll under me in waves, interrupted by a violent joggling up and down, and there was a heavy grinding noise as of brick houses rubbing together….and as I reeled about on the pavement trying to keep my footing, I saw…the entire front of a tall four-story brick building on Third Street sprung outward like a door and fell sprawling across the street, raising a great dust-like volume of smoke!

And [then]…every door, of every house, as far as the eye could reach, was vomiting a stream of human beings; and…there was a massed multitude of people stretching in endless procession down every street my position commanded. Never was a solemn solitude turned into teeming life quicker. [1]

I especially like that last line of Mark Twain’s account:  Never was a solemn solitude turned into teeming life quicker.

Well Mr. Twain, maybe there was another time when that happened—when a “solemn solitude turned into teeming life!”

It happened at a garden tomb, just outside Jerusalem, on the first Easter morning.  Soldiers were snoozing by a carefully-sealed grave.   Those guards had been posted there by the Roman Governor Pontius Pilate in order to thwart anyone outside Jesus’ grave from trying to break into Jesus’ grave.

But what those Roman soldiers failed to realize was that the biggest danger they faced wasn’t any grave robber on the outside trying to get in.

No, the biggest danger was the Grave-Robber who was already inside that sealed-up tomb!

This Grave-Robber had for three days been dead-as-a-doornail. 

But he didn’t stay dead!  God saw to that!   Jesus—having experienced the “extreme makeover” of death—came back to “rob the grave,” to deprive death from ever again having the power it once enjoyed!

And that event, that world-turning, ground-pounding event could only be accompanied by an earthquake--measuring over 10 on the Richter Scale (a scientific scale, mind you, that only goes up to 9!)

When Jesus arose, the earth shook because death was losing its grip on us, once and for all.

But that’s not all:   because that Easter morning earthquake was itself an aftershock of an earlier earthquake—described only in Matthew’s gospel.

The Easter morning earthquake was a reverberation of the Good Friday earthquake—a cataclysm that struck the moment God’s Son breathed his last.   Then, too, the ground rumbled—powerfully enough, Matthew tells us, to “wake the dead!” (Mt. 27:51-53)

When Jesus died, the earth shook because sin and the devil were being displaced—set aside—defeated for good.

Two earthquakes within three days—and here’s the kicker:  Unlike every other earthquake this old world has ever known, the after-shocks from these two quakes have yet to end.

The after-shocks of Jesus death and resurrection are still rolling across the landscape of human history.   The tremors are still being experienced by ordinary persons like you and me.  

Even in this week when another world-turning event has been unfolding….when a global coronavirus pandemic has stricken over 1.5 million human beings, killing over 100,000 of them, while terrifying everyone else.

Even during this awful time we’re experiencing here on planet earth….the reverberations of the first Good Friday and Easter Sunday earthquakes have not faded away.

• For whenever Jesus’ saving death sets one more sinner free—the earth continues to roll beneath our feet.  
• And whenever someone finally “gets it” that the Devil’s reign of terror is over—a seismograph needle bounces wildly! 
• And whenever Jesus’ grave-robbing resurrection frees up some sufferer to laugh in the face of death—the earth keeps rumbling beneath us.   
• And whenever we make our own way to a cemetery to bury a loved one—whenever we stare down into that black hole in the ground and shout the Apostles Creed into that fierce darkness—another aftershock of Easter rearranges our whole landscape!

It’s happening right here.  Jesus the Risen One is among us even now.   Can you detect the aftershocks of his death-defying love?   

And can you feel your own knees knocking—as the same God who raised up his Crucified Son, is resurrecting you into new life, boundless hope, and undefeatable love?

In the name of Jesus.   Amen.

---

[1] Excerpted from Mark Twain's book, Roughing It (Hartford:  American Publishing Company, 1872).   Accessed on 4/8/2020 at https://projects.eri.ucsb.edu/understanding/accounts/twain.html