April 4, 1999
Matthew 28:1-10
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church of San Francisco.
Scary Movies
When I was a kid, I used to love scary movies. What frightened me over the years were the Frankenstein’s monster, Dracula, and the Wolfman, the unholy three of horror movies. With the sofa pillow over my face, I would sit in front of the TV to be scared. Do you remember the scene of Frankenstein’s monster holding the hand of the little girl when she befriended him? I was always afraid of Dracula’s fang teeth. And when the full moon was up and night has fallen, Lon Chaney changes before our eyes from a sensitive and caring man to the Wolfman.
These movies frightened me and perhaps they frightened you too. They scared us because they try to change what we understand to be normal and expected. Frankenstein’s collage of body parts embodies our arrogant desire to write our own book on Genesis. Dracula represents death seducing our lives by sucking our blood to take us to a perverse immortality. And the Wolfman wrenches us back to our origins in the animal world of pure instinct, reversing evolution with its burden of consciousness and responsibility. When I used to watch these scary movies, I was scared to the point that it shocked my normal senses.
After watching, I didn’t want to go to bed. The shadows cast on my bedroom wall from the car headlights outside would scare me. My mother would yell at me and say that it will be my fault when I get nightmares!
Some of you are now wondering what’s going on here? Did he pull the wrong sermon out of the file this morning. Isn’t it Easter? It sounds like he’s preaching a Halloween sermon! Don’t be afraid, I do have the right sermon in front of me.
Scary Easter
You see, some might say that the Crucifixion is a true horror story. The death of Christ is a gruesome event. At noon on Good Friday, darkness comes over the whole land, and Jesus cries out from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” At the moment of his death the curtain of the temple is torn in two, the earth shakes, and the rocks split. One of the soldiers pierces Jesus’ side with a spear, and at once blood and water come out.
This is an agonizing, violent, bloody, dark, and destructive scene. But for sheer shock comparison, Easter morning is even scarier!
The resurrection makes us scream because it is so completely unexpected. Death by crucifixion is cruel but common, while the resurrection is scary and unique. On resurrection morning:
*An earthquake strikes with incredible force
*An angel looking like lightning in snow white clothes throws away the tombstone
*The guards shake violently and drop like dead men
*Tombs open, and the inhabitants awake and leave their tombs like the “Night of the Living Dead” walking around and wandering into the city
*Jesus, who was dead, “suddenly” pops up in front of the visiting women and says “Greetings!”
*And the women who witnessed all of this were seized with “terror and amazement.”
What happened on that first Easter morning beats all the Frankenstein, Dracula, and Wolfman movies rolled into one as scary and shocking! The resurrection shocks our normal senses.
Aren’t you scare now? When these women came to the tomb on the first day of the week after the Sabbath, the angel said, “Do not be afraid.”
Do Not Be Afraid
Which of you wouldn’t be afraid if your world had just been turned upside down by the resurrection of a friend you knew was dead and gone? The resurrection is scary because it shocks us with new and unexpected life. The resurrection of Jesus destroys death and guarantees eternal life.
1. Sat on Death
As the angel told the women, God is telling us today, “We don’t need to be afraid anymore.” When the angel of the Lord came down from heaven, he rolled back the stone that sealed the tomb. The angel “sat on it.” By sitting on Jesus’ tombstone, the angel with divine strength and authority said, “Well, so much for that!”
2. Took Hold of His Feet
As the angel told the women, God is telling us today, “We don’t need to be afraid anymore.” The resurrected Jesus is not some kind of spooky spirit, merely a ghost of a dead man back to pay his friends a visit. Matthew records that the women “took hold of Jesus’ feet and worshipped him.” They touched Jesus, they held him, they verified that he was raised as a whole person and not as some figment of their imaginations.
3. Raised in Three Days
As the angel told the women, God is telling us today, “We don’t need to be afraid anymore.“ Jesus kept his promises. The resurrection demonstrates that God keeps promises including the promise of resurrection. When Jesus rose on the third day, he fulfilled his promise that the temple will be destroyed and on the third day rebuilt again.
The resurrection is not some abstract image of a divine victory over death—instead, it is rock-hard evidence that God has won this battle. The stone was rolled away, the women held Jesus’ feet and worshipped him, and just as Jesus said that after three days, 36 hours, he will rise again. The resurrection is real and it happened to real people. Jesus’ resurrection from the dead defeated death forever so that we may have eternal life forever. This is where the resurrection parts company with scary movies. In the movies, the horror is often that someone will not die—or returns from the dead—to destroy the living. Jesus’ resurrection from the dead was because he had defeated it. He returned so that we might live. On Easter, we are shocked emotionally by the scary and terrifying events at the tomb and physically by experiencing the earth moving under our feet.
Earthquake
On that first Easter morning, it wasn’t like what’s going on today. Some of us came to a beautiful sunrise service this morning followed by a scrumptious breakfast at the Y. On that first Easter morning, there was a shattering earthquake that rippled seismic shock all around.
When Mary Magdalene and Mary, mother of James went to the tomb that morning, somewhere along the path to the cemetery, they left one world and entered another. The ground shifted and separated. Without even knowing it, they walked onto the other side. They left the old world, where hope is in constant danger,
and might makes right,
and peace has little chance,
and the rich get richer,
and the weak all eventually suffer under Pontius Pilate or another,
and people hatch murderous plots,
and dead people stay dead,
and they entered the startling and breathtaking world of resurrection and life.
With an earthquake ushering in the new day, Jesus of Nazareth, who had been dead as a doornail on Friday afternoon, was not in his tomb that morning, and the world—theirs and ours—has been turned upside down ever since.
No retrofit seismic improvement can keep this divine earthquake from changing the direction of God’s plan for our lives. This earthquake is not to be feared. The angel said, “Do not be afraid.” This cosmic earthquake is designed to send a seismic shock through history and signal that the fault lines of human history had shifted dramatically toward grace, mercy, and hope.
Easter Aftershocks
Today we are Easter aftershocks. Are we ready to walk on the side of God’s plan for new and eternal life? The prospect is scary because it means that our lives have eternal significance. Death can no longer be for us an escape, an end point or an eraser for a lifetime of errors. Through the reality of the resurrection, we have the power for living.
We have the power to make a difference in the world today. Jesus shared the power of God when he rose to life and made our lives have eternal significance. With our resurrected lives, we have the power that can support us through times of difficult trials: failures, firings, divorces, misunderstandings, illnesses and diseases, and even death itself. Easter shows us that there is always new life beyond the pain of loss, disappointment, and death.
But as Easter aftershocks, we are not only rippling through our personal lives, but we are together shocking the whole world by our faith and witness. Jesus told the women to tell his disciples to go to Galilee where he will meet them. In the power of the resurrection, the disciples, who denied and abandoned Jesus, have been forgiven and restored to their status as “brothers.” Jesus didn’t want them to hang around Jerusalem, doing the same old things depending on their normal senses. Go to Galilee where there are Gentiles and strangers.
We must also go to the Galilees of our world where it will be scary to meet strangers and to become friends with them. He does not want us to hang around the corner of Waverly and Sacramento or down the street at Uncles, Hang Ah, or Capital forever. We need to be shocked from our normal senses and become scared enough to serve God where he wants us to go. He said, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” Do not be afraid to go and serve Christ in new places with new people.
There are still times that I will cover my eyes with the sofa pillow when I’m watching a scary, horror movie; especially some of the ones that are being made today. But as far as being one of Jesus’ disciples—his brother, I am not afraid anymore. And you don’t need to be afraid anymore too.
Trust that Jesus is Not Here
But how can we believe when we have not experienced the earthquake or seen the angel dressed in snowy white light or touched the feet of Jesus with our own hands? We believe today based on trust that there is nothing in the tomb. Like the beloved disciple in John, he saw that the tomb was empty and he believed. He had no legal proof of the resurrection. Yet he had his relationship with Jesus, and that was enough to believe. To almost no one here, I suspect has the risen Christ met you on the road and said, “Greetings!” to you. No one here has touched his wounds or held his feet and believed. We have believed on the basis of the words, “He is not here.”
“Blessed are those who have not seen” says Jesus, which means all of us here, “and yet have come to believe.” We believe because we trust that when we see the empty tomb, Jesus Christ is risen.
Adorning our sanctuary this morning are Easter flowers. Their bulbs were buried over the winter months with no trace of life. For weeks, you wonder if any of these bulbs will come up. You try not to step on them or plant anything else on top of them. You believe in these flowers to come up even though you can’t see anything. We believe in the Risen Lord even though we have not experienced the earthquake or seen the angel dressed in white or held his feet. Like our trust that these bulbs will bloom beautiful flowers, our vibrant faith that Jesus is alive is based on an empty tomb.
The wonderful news about Easter is that Jesus is alive. The scary news about Easter is also that Jesus is alive. Nothing is nailed down anymore! Easter has shocked our normal senses forever. For Jesus Christ is alive! What was totally unexpected is now the life-giving power in our lives. And righteousness, mercy, and peace cannot be dismissed with a cross or a sword anymore. While we live in this frightening and scary world, we no longer need to be afraid anymore. The tomb is empty. He is not here. As Easter aftershocks, let’s go out and shake up our world in the name of Jesus Christ, the Risen Lord!
Happy scary Easter to all.
Let us pray.
Precious Lord, we give thanks for Jesus Christ whom you sacrificed on the cross so that we may have eternal life. We celebrate the Risen Christ who conquered the horror of death forever. May we live as Easter People from this day forward. Amen.