March 31, 2002—CCU Sunrise Service
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng of the First Chinese Baptist Church of San Francisco.
On that first day of the week, John says the two disciples running to the tomb, found it was empty. “Then the disciples returned to their homes.” If they woke up as early as we did to be here, they probably went back to bed.
Luke reports two disciples on the Emmaus road. They heard from some women that
Jesus had been raised from the dead. But they had already planned to have supper over in Emmaus. So what if a dead man was now alive? Those dinner reservations were made some time ago.
For these confused disciples, not one of them expected or wanted Easter. They witnessed the horror of the crucifixion and death again had the last word. They did the best they could—ran a good campaign while it lasted. But they didn’t get him elected Messiah. They faced the facts and returned to their daily lives. They returned to their homes. They made reservations for supper.
Back to Normal
We are like these first disciples. After all of the commotion is over, we adjust to the same old world we are used to. We like to believe that we can have the resurrection and still have the world as it was yesterday. We want Easter but we don’t want it to rock the foundation of our lives.
Our church on the corner of Waverly Place and Sacramento likes it when everything is normal and predictable. We can be very happy when everything is going according to schedule. But it has been rock by earthquakes two times already. In 1906, it was completely destroyed and burned down to the ground. And after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, we had to retrofit our building so that we can continue to stay in Chinatown. If it weren’t for earthquakes, we can happily go through life.
I know some of the First Chinese Baptist people here would rather be home sleeping! That’s their routine. We want our lives to be like it was yesterday.
Not only do we want predictability, we live in a world that is depended on “facts.” You can rely on facts for predictability. All that lives eventually die. The good and the bad get it in the end. “We must face the facts,” we say. We like a world where things are tied down and what dies stays that way. There are few surprises, if any.
So when Jesus died, a great stone was placed in front of the tomb to make sure it stays that way. When the women came, their main concern was “Who will roll away the stone for us?” The women have stopped following him and were only doing what was expected of them in their routine chores of washing and anointing his body for proper burial.
Easter Earthquake
While Luke does Easter as a meal with the Risen Christ on Sunday evening and John has Jesus encountering Mary Magdalene in the garden, Matthew’s Easter is an earthquake. When the women got to the tomb, there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. No one expected an earthquake to happen!
The Easter earthquake causes doors to be shaken off tombs and dead people walking the streets!
Since moving to San Francisco 3 ½ years ago, I am intrigued to read on the weather page of the Chronicle, the number of earthquakes reported each week. Last week, we had 33 quakes. Do you know the real reason why we are outside this morning? It’s because when Easter morning comes, we can expect an earthquake to rock our lives!
When Pilate’s soldiers pushed that big stone over the opening of the tomb, no one expected to roll the stone away again. This large stone symbolized the finality of the death of Jesus. The massiveness of this stone is like the massiveness of the death of Jesus. He was truly crucified and dead. The religious leaders made sure of that. Pilate gave orders to make it even more secured than it was. And the Roman soldiers stood there to make sure the dead stays that way. The stone was so great that it can only be rolled away by some higher power.
That great power is God in the form of an earthquake. Easter is about God. Easter is not about the resuscitation of a dead body. That’s resuscitation by a paramedic. This is resurrection. Easter is not about the immortality of the soul or some divine spark that endures after the end. That’s Plato, not Jesus.
Easter is about God. God is not an empathetic good friend. God is not some inner mystical experience. God comes and creates a way when there was no way. God comes to make war on evil until evil is undone. God raises dead Jesus just to show us who’s in charge here. God comes in the form of an earthquake and the whole earth shook.
I don’t know for sure, but I think that the Easter earthquake angel perched on the rock rolled from the tomb was the same angel who back in Matthew 1 shook Joseph awake one night with the news that his fiancee was pregnant. On Easter God invaded the tomb like what God did on Christmas in a virgin’s womb. God made a way when there was no way.
This same angel who was sent to tell Joseph, “Name the baby Emmanuel, God with us,” was the angel who told the women, “Don’t be afraid. He isn’t here. He’s been risen.”
On the cross, the world did all it could to Jesus. At Easter, God did everything for the world. And the earth shook.
Seeking Facts
When the Easter earthquake happened, no one can explain it. You can only witness it. That’s why the risen Christ appeared first to his own disciples. They had heard him teach, seen him heal, watched as he loved the poor and attacked the rich, watched him be arrested by the soldiers, tried by the judge, and crucified.
Jesus first appeared to his disciples because they were the ones able to recognize that this risen Lord was none other than the crucified Jesus. Crucifixion wasn’t just an unfortunate mistake in the Roman legal system. It was the predictable result of saying the things Jesus said, and doing the things Jesus did, and being the Savior Jesus was. What happened to Jesus happens to people who threaten the world. These are the facts.
But on Easter God inserted a new fact. God took the cruel cross and made it the means of triumph. God took the worst we could do—all our death-dealing doings—and led them out of the tomb toward life in the outside. And the earth shook.
All of us have experienced times when we have tried in vain to explain the unpredictable circumstances in our lives. We seek after believable facts to things that we don’t understand. Tragedy and death inevitably come and we are entombed with fear and worry. There’s a great stone preventing us from coming out.
Maybe we see our churches entombed with doubt and uncertainty. We’re unclear about where God is calling us to mission so Sunday after Sunday, we sit in our pews holding onto the old world. A great stone has been placed in front of our churches and no one can get out and no new friends can get in.
And when we look beyond our country as we have particularly since September 11th to see how so many of the world’s nations are at war with one another including the United States, we can imagine big boulders and high mountains that separate us from being brothers and sisters.
The Earth Shook
Today we proclaim that on that first Easter morning, a great earthquake shook the earth. You and I can’t just stay home, but we got up early this morning to be here. We just can’t keep our reservations to have dinner in Emmaus, but we have to eat pancakes with strangers who will become new friends. We can’t have Easter and still have our world not rocked by the resurrection. When Christ is risen, the earth shook and the whole world knows about it.
Jesus came back to forgive his disciples who had forsaken him. The world is about forgiveness and not vengeance. And the earth shook.
Jesus picked up a piece of bread and ate it and you could see the nail prints in his hands. The world is about life, not death. And the earth shook.
Matthew’s earthquake signifies that the resurrection is not something private and personal with Jesus. The earth shaking signifies the cosmic, earth and heaven shaking significance of Easter. Easter is large and cosmic, demanding us to do something for God.
It may be early for some of us to be out here this morning. It may still be too cold for some of us to be sitting on these hard metal chairs. But the reason why we are here is because God’s Easter earthquake is happening right now. We can’t stay inside and hope that nothing has changed.
See all these tall and short buildings all around us. All these Chinese buildings and banking buildings all around us. All of these apartments and hotel rooms in buildings around us are like tombs. Big and gigantic stones have been placed in front of these buildings to prevent God’s children from coming out. But the Easter earthquake has shook the earth and all these people in these buildings need to know about it. As Christ’s disciples, we can’t just stay in our respective churches and believe that it’s the same old world. We are here this morning so that we too might re-commit our lives to shaking loose the death filled tombs in the world.
The women came out to the tomb on that first day of the week to complete one more task of a sad story. They were about to do a routine thing. The good always get it in the end. For them, this is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper of resignation at death’s dark victory.
And then the earth heaved. It was a great earthquake. When the angel appeared, the stone was rolled away, Caesar’s soldiers shook. The angel in defiance to death said to the women, “Don’t be afraid. You’re looking for Jesus? He isn’t here.”
Then the angel turned to the soldiers and said, “Be afraid. Everything your world is built on is being shaken.”
Since then no one went back to the same old world anymore! You and I can’t return to our old world anymore. God’s Easter earthquake is shaking the world right now! Hallelujah! He is risen!
Let us pray.
Lord Jesus, come to us anew and make us your Easter people. Banish our solemn reserve and cause us to tremble with the joyful news of your resurrection! As we feel the foundation of our being quake, and the stone of our sorrow rolled away, may we be as amazed as were your first disciples. Let our skeptical minds also be transformed, and our fearful hearts assured. And as those resurrected in the Spirit with you, may we become fired with zeal for the building of the new world you offer us. Amen.
Benediction
Jesus said to his disciples, “Do not be afraid; go and tell…” And in obedience to our Lord’s command, let us go and tell the world the news that he is not dead but risen! And that because he lives, we, too, will live.
The blessing of God of life, the Christ of resurrection, and the Holy Spirit of power rest upon and abide with us always. Amen.