Told You So
Matthew 28:1-10
April 24, 2011
You may have noticed that the title of this sermon on our big board is “Was.” Well, it was ‘Was,’ but now you see it is “Told You So.” Yes, I am confused. ‘Was’ refers to the way things used to be before this Easter morning; the printed title comes from the words of the angel announcing the way things are now going to be.
In our world that denies death, Easter is nigh impossible to comprehend, for no generation has found the reality of resurrection or the defeat of death a logical matter to comprehend. Easter has always been easier to celebrate than to describe and explain. There is a good reason why music plays such an important part in worship on this day – hymns, anthems, brass, all of us singing loudly – because music expresses the incomprehensible elation of resurrection and the defeat of death better than any preached words or earnest prayers.
Listening to the story once again as if for the first time, notice that no one really believed it then either. To think that it was a simpler pre-scientific age in which people more readily bought such an idea is not to have read the text. It was a struggle to get people to accept what happened on the Third Day, and historically speaking, very few people did. Is it any different today when to mention that you came here today to worship will be received generally with bemused smirks, utter boredom or incomprehension, and a bit of wondering about your worldly competence and reliability? We are back to a time in which we are equal to the reception of the earliest Christians. That is our best advantage today for the Gospel.
On Saturday, the day after the crucifixion, on the day the Apostles Creed declares that Jesus descended into hell, the chief priests and Pharisees assembled before Pontius Pilate one last time. They were even more afraid of death, for they requested Pilate to order a special detachment of soldiers to guard the tomb so that Jesus’ disciples won’t come and steal away the body and claim that he had risen. Pilate knew from his infamous trial of Jesus that this was a dangerous situation and agreed to send soldiers to seal the tomb with a stone and keep guard until the third day. Toward the dawn of the first day of the week, the Third Day, the Roman guards were there keeping watch over their dead by night.
It was still dark when Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to the tomb, and the details are scant: there was a great earthquake, yet it is unclear whether it was the angel who was the earthquake, rolling back the stone, and in a move worthy of Monty Python sat upon the stone - a mocking angel, for sure, mocking death which had just lost its biggest battle.
Being mocked did not enter the minds of the guards who fainted right away and became like dead men, an intentional choice of phrase. When those who wield the brutish power see that their death has been nullified, they lose all of their power.
The two Marys weren’t laughing either and being afraid at all this pyrotechnics, never say a word. The angel in a blinding white robe does speak to them. “I know you are here to seek Jesus who was crucified. Let me emphasize the ‘was.’ That was yesterday. As for now, he is not here, he is risen. You are in the wrong place, but for the right reasons. Now, I’ve told you so.”
The angel was not chastising the women, yet it has continued to be the inclination of many to seek Jesus in a place of death. We go to those places and circumstances where we are convinced Jesus should be – in the sacred halls of our country’s morality, always on our righteous side. We are in an election, aren’t we? Elections always bring out our moralistic sides! He is not here, he is risen.
The angel has marching orders for the women: tell the disciples that he is risen and get back home to Galilee and meet him there. It’s odd he was so geographically specific, and it’s only in Matthew that these directions are given. Galilee, I am told by some of you, is a nice place to visit, but there is no Eden to hunker down in anywhere. The women start running in a heightened state of great fear and great joy and run right into Jesus. “Hail!” he calls out. The last person who said “Hail” was Judas as he betrayed Jesus. A word of death becomes a word of life. Once they had decided to leave, Jesus was there, repeating his intention to meet everyone in Galilee.
Meanwhile the guards revived and went back to the chief priests and told them what had happened. A cover-up was devised and the guards were paid off to spread around falsely their original fear of the disciples stealing the body. The rumour is still going around. Whenever Jesus is not where we want him, therefore, he is operating illegally, absent without leave. Ironically, Jesus has never been allowed to be free from death.
In the parable of the Grand Inquisitor in Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, Jesus appears in the city of Seville during the Spanish Inquisition, just as a huge crowd gathers to witness a mass execution. He never says a word, and yet everyone immediately recognizes him. Throngs gather around him, and he blesses and heals them. A tiny white coffin passes by, and the child within it is revived.
Standing in the cathedral doorway, the Cardinal Grand Inquisitor also sees Jesus, and immediately has him arrested. The crowds immediately give way before the guard, deadly silence reigns as they meekly allow the guard to lead the stranger away. In the evening, the Grand Inquisitor visits Jesus alone in his prison cell, and explains to him that in the morning he will be burned at the stake “as the most wicked of all the heretics; and that the same people who today were kissing your feet, tomorrow at one bend of my finger, will rush to add fuel to your funeral pyre.”
The reason, explains the Inquisitor, is that Jesus came to give people freedom, but that’s not what they want. What they really want, he says, is to be told what to do and believe, and to be fed. “For fifteen centuries, we have been wrestling with your freedom, but now it is ended and over for good.”
Make that twenty, working on twenty-one. It’s just a cynical parable, isn’t it? Most genuine parables tell a fable that unveils the truth. Is the parable about Jesus or regrettably about us? Today is not about magic or miracles; it is about the freedom of one who is not here, but is always leading us away from dead silence, dead actions and dead people. Like the women, we are running scared and ecstatic beyond our wildest dreams. We yearn to stay put where we feel comfortable and justified – but stagnant water breeds disease – so we are being called to all sorts of Galilees where the freedom we share gives real life and really defeats death. Christ is alive, Christ is risen, Christ will come again!
Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan