Sitting On Stone
Matthew 28: 1-10

March 31, 2002

The story begins in bed on a Saturday morning in the B.C. (Before Children) era of our marriage. There was a factory at the end of our residential street and big semis rumbling by were not uncommon, especially in the early morning. Sleeping in a little we felt the rumbling by, but it went on for about three semis length. When it stopped vibrating the windows and house, we both strained to hear the engines of the trucks, but heard simple silence. We looked at each other: could it have been? Sure enough, the Big One, at least for Massachusetts. A whopping 2.1 on the Richter scale.

The chaplain at Duke University was preaching in Alaska at a United Methodist Church when the ground and building began to shake. Nobody seemed to mind, except the preacher who immediately cut short his sermon. One woman did evince a little surprise, “The light fixtures didn’t fall down this time.”

“What do you have to do,” Willimon asked the pastor over lunch, “to make this congregation sit up and pay attention? I’d hate to have to preach to them every week.” Earthquakes had become too casual.

If you have experienced the tremors of an earthquake, you know it is not a casual event. A friend, who was in the 1989 San Francisco Bay Area quake that stopped the World Series, said it was terrifying to have the solid ground move out from below you, to feel no control over the most basic foundation in our human endeavour. You were no longer in charge of the space upon which you stood.

I do not believe anyone still lives who can recall the 1912 Regina cyclone, but a number do remember the tales of parents and friends. The photos in our centennial history show our familiar structure tore down practically to the last brick, barely one stone left upon another, to use Jesus’ phrase regarding the Jerusalem Temple. Nothing casual at all.

The story in Matthew is quite unique. The chief priests and the Pharisees went to lobby Pontius Pilate for extraordinary precautions to be put into force. The passage is quite clear, however, that they visited Pilate on the day after the crucifixion, that is, on the Sabbath itself. Their most sacred law, by which they had tried to convict Jesus of being a heretic and a godless sort of person, so desperate were they to finish off Jesus, they were willing to violate.

They had remembered his talk about rising again on the third day, so they wanted no hoaxes. Pilate gave them the soldiers to seal the tomb with an enormous round stone which would fit neatly into a groove in the cave tomb’s entrance. Pilate told them, “Make it as secure as you can.” If you can, he almost appears to be warning them.

In Matthew’s telling the cards are clearly out on the table. The game has been named. And the name is resurrection.

Matthew’s women were different too. It was Mary Magdalene who went out at the dawn along with “the other Mary.” But there is no mention of bringing spices and ointments to anoint the corpse as in the other Gospels. The male disciples had already fled and abandoned Jesus because of their fear, but these two had heard what Jesus had said. They came expecting something to happen on the third day.

When you come to worship each Sunday - the day of resurrection for the earliest and the latest church - you should be expecting something to happen as well. We are not gathering here normally for a funeral, but for the raising of our spirits from death. Expect new life, never old death.

There was the problem of that sealing stone, yet the two women mention not a word about it. As they came to the tomb there was a great earthquake, not a neutral act of God, but God’s action undoing the conniving of human beings.

An angel came down next and ungrooved the stone from the tomb and he sat on top of the stone, mocking what he had undone. No doubt he was an angel - full uniform, white as snow, pure lightning. The guards were still there and were scared half, maybe three-quarters to death. They became like dead men, reversing roles with the one who had been dead in the tomb. The women were properly scared, yet they had come expecting something to happen.

William Willimon imagines not too wildly that this angel sitting on stone is the same angel who appeared to Joseph at the beginning of the Gospel. That angel informed Joseph that his virgin betrothed was pregnant. This angel knows how to throw about all kinds of earthquakes to the body and the soul.

The women were astonished, because now it was obvious that God was absolutely true. “Do not be afraid....He is not here. He is risen.” Jesus is not in the place of death. How often do we want to imprison our thoughts of Jesus in something already dead? Like a dead church, lifeless worship, an elitist gang of people with the same self-interests.

In fear, and in great joy, the two women heeded the command and headed out on the long road to Galilee. Suddenly, in a flash of lightning, they ran straight into Jesus. They did not go looking for Jesus, and if they had tried, probably they would not have found him. But Jesus found them.

Last week in Sydney, Australia, the annual Easter Show was performed - an extravaganza of animals and acts for children and families. The transit trains and buses were clogged. No mention of Easter on the program, however, it’s just a season. What does it take to get their attention?

Maybe it’s nice in Australia, but it’s not a nice season here yet. It’s not a season. It’s an earthquake. He is not here. He is risen.

This is not a story to be explained. How do you explain a cyclone? There is no way to explain an earthquake. You just experience it; you survive it; it turns your life upside down - not one stone left upon another. Then emerging out of death’s shadow, you live life like you have never lived before.

I have no intention to kowtow to the world’s hunger for explanations. Do you want to explain Israel and Palestine today? How about Afghanistan, Bosnia, Northern Ireland, Columbine High School, September 11th, AIDS, cancer and Alzheimers? Is this what the world claims as reality? It is an illusion of death, and to it we have nothing rational to say, except “He is not here! He is risen!”

Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan