April 24, 2011
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
If a doctor had examined Jesus after the crucifixion, he might have missed the exact cause of death. Physicians make mistakes—lots of them. Did you know that about two-thirds of the findings published in top medical journals are refuted within just a few years?
But medicine isn’t the only area where mistakes are made. Having just filed your federal tax returns, you might want to know that professionally prepared returns are more likely to have serious errors than self-prepared returns. Fifty percent of all newspaper articles have at least one incorrect fact. And the studies published in economic journals? Economists say they’re all likely to be wrong. All of them. Experts are most often wrong.
According to David Freeman’s book, Wrong: Why Experts Keep Failing Us—And How to Know When Not to Trust Them, we are encouraged to be smarter about how we search for advice and to ask tough questions of people who claim to be experts.
So who were the experts of Jerusalem, back on that first Easter Sunday? The chief priests, the Pharisees, Pontius Pilate, maybe even Jesus’ disciples? None of them. All of them were wrong at least when it came to the resurrection.
The Gospel of Matthew tells us that on the first day of the week, early in the morning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see Jesus’ tomb. The two Marys are non-experts according to the standards of their times. They are seen as background personalities without speaking roles. For that matter, they didn’t matter much to the church. But they became experts to Jesus’ resurrection.
Reversal of Fortune
Easter is something that we understand, not through arguments or reasoned discourse or findings from experts, but through believing, seeing, obeying, and following the risen Christ.
Today’s Easter message is to simply walk through this dramatic story, noting the details and seeing how the resurrection is the reverse mirror image of what Matthew says about the crucifixion. The sad, violent end of Jesus in the crucifixion is being reversed in a grand, life-giving new beginning that is the resurrection.
When Mary Magdalene and Mary got to the tomb, there was an earthquake and an angel descends from heaven and rolls back the stone in front of the tomb and sits triumphantly on the stone. His appearance is like lightning and his clothing is as white as snow.
You may recall that an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph to tell him that he should take Mary as his wife because she’s carrying the child that was conceived by the Holy Spirit (Mt. 1:20). Then an angel appeared to Joseph in a dream to tell him to take his family to Egypt (Mt. 2:13). Typical of the angels in this Gospel, this angel is also sent to preach—Jesus has been raised.
The angel who announces life at the tomb makes the guards stationed at the tomb who were experts about death, act “like dead men.” Those who thought they were in power, who thought that they were keeping the dead entombed, are now relegated to death. Those experts who thought that Jesus was dead are told that he is alive. A couple of Sundays ago, in our proclamation of the story of Lazarus, we said that we are all in the grip of death. Now death is being decisively defeated and those dealers and experts of death, like the guards at the tomb, are being made to be as if they were dead.
While the guards shake with fear, the angel tells the women not to be afraid. The angel said, “I know you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell the disciples, ‘He has been raised from the dead, and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.’ This is my message to you.”
“Do not be afraid.” The soldiers whose job it is to strike fear in anyone who would challenge the empire are fearful. The women who are the most vulnerable in this world are told not to fear. Mary Magdalene and Mary left the tomb quickly with a mixture of “fear and great joy.” They still have some fear. But their fear is now mixed with joy. They who once feared death and the power represented by the soldiers now don’t fear death; they fear the wondrous truth that is contained in the words, “He is risen!”
Can’t See but Believe
As far as I can possibly see, I did not see my birth. But as confident as I can ever be that I am really standing in front of you right now, I believe that I was born.
At this point of the story, Mary Magdalene and Mary have not seen the resurrection. They’ve only seen an empty tomb. They saw the crucifixion and concluded that this was the end, the death of Jesus. Now they are shown the empty tomb by the angel with the possibility of another conclusion.
The resurrection itself can’t be seen. We couldn’t see the world begin in Genesis 1 but here we are. We didn’t see the new world beginning in Matthew 28 but after two thousand years, look at all of you here this morning. All we can see is the empty tomb and Jesus was not there.
The result of this seeing is enough to set in motion Mary Magdalene and Mary rushing from the tomb to tell the disciples. On their way, Jesus interrupts them. Jesus greets them, they see, and they recognize him. They take hold of his feet and worship. The resurrected Jesus can be touched. Jesus’ is a full, bodily resurrection—the women are not having some vague Hollywood produced spiritual experience. They are touching his resurrected body. Though he is different, they recognize him as the one they have known through much of the previous 28 chapters of Matthew.
Jesus had promised, at the Last Supper, to share his body with his followers. Jesus is now sharing his body with his disciples in order to be in relationship with us and to invite us as followers to rise with him when his kingdom comes.
The women worship Christ. They give Christ worship that which we only give to God. And since these women are Jewish women who know that Israel is commanded to worship nothing and no one who is not the true and living God as spelled out in the first of the Ten Commandments, they believe they are in the presence of God in Christ.
Jesus tells them not to be afraid, but to go tell his brothers who abandoned Jesus to go to Galilee where they will see him. They will fully “see” him only as they obey him, only as they go and tell others the truth. Jesus now calls his disciples “his brothers,” indicating that they are the first of a new family that is being created by Easter. This is the first birth pangs of the church.
The women are not told to go to the temple, to Jerusalem, the capital city. They are told to go where Jesus began his ministry: Galilee (Mt. 3:12). The disciples are being reassembled in Galilee; later, it will be from Galilee that they are sent forth.
Meanwhile the guards get themselves together, go to the city, and tell the chief priests what had happened. The authorities move into action and bribe the soldiers to lie. Soldiers who are experts in following orders lied that Jesus’ disciples came by night and stole away his body while they were asleep. The soldiers took the money and ran off.
Obey and See
Sometimes people say that in order to believe in the resurrection you must suspend your normal understanding on how things work. There is much truth to that. We live in a world in which what’s dead stays that way and what Caesar and his legions declare to be is the order of the day. Our problem is that we have difficulty seeing the resurrection because it is far beyond the scope of our assumptions about the way the world works and doesn’t work that we can’t see what the angel is trying to show us is right before our eyes. We are still seeking for experts to tell us that it’s true.
There is a sense in which we need to believe in the resurrection before we can “see” what is really going on in the world now that God has risen the crucified Jesus from the dead. You can’t really “see” the resurrection but you must believe the resurrection before you can see. The women show us that it’s only as we venture forth—dare to come out of the tomb of our darkness, willing to be surprised, willing to obey the messenger of God, willing to obey the risen Christ, willing to go back to Galilee expecting to meet him there—that we will “see.”
Last week, we were blessed to witness the baptism of three of our new members. Most likely, George Chen, Jimmy Chen and Caitlin Ung haven’t seen the resurrection before they came to believe that Jesus Christ is their Lord and Savior declared in their baptisms. They like the women dared to venture forth with their lives and publicly declared in front of you that they are going to believe that Christ is alive in their lives and in faith they will see him.
We are called to not only loving Jesus, but also obeying Jesus, of not only admiring Jesus but also following Jesus. We will see Jesus only as we are willing to venture forth, risk, obey, be surprised, mix up fear and joy, will we be able fully to see and believe. The truth of Easter is a truth that is not to be apprehended in arguments, detached, measured reflection and consideration. The truth is not going to come from any self-declared experts. It is truth that is known only as we are in motion, going out to obey and to tell.
The world is not what we have been led to believe it was. This world has been shaken like an earthquake. Things have been turned upside down. The powerful soldiers are shaking in their boots, powerless to comprehend what’s happened. The powerless women are now taking over, telling the story, proclaiming to the world what is really happening in the world. No longer do the government-religious officials need to bribe somebody, to deny the resurrection. There is a power set loose into the world that is not contained or constrained by those who think they are in authority.
And yet there’s more that I get from Matthew’s story of Easter. The fact that Matthew is even telling this story, maybe a century after the first Easter, that there were those who braved social pressure, persecution, even the fear of death to tell this story and to live this story is to me a validation of the story. And here we are.
Seeing Jesus
You may have your doubts about all of this. You may find yourself with feelings of joy mixed with fear. You may have come today out of habit that on Easter Sunday, I should at least come to service and have no expectations except those that you have always had. That makes you very much like Mary Magdalene and Mary, the first witnesses.
Let us not attempt fully to understand this story, or to debate its possible validity. We don’t need another expert to advise us on what to believe to be true. Let us obey the risen Christ: “Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.” If we obey, if we overcome our fears of seeming irrational, or pre-modern, or against the dominant ideology of the age, if we go and tell, out in Galilee or wherever we find ourselves, then we too will see the risen Christ, raised so that he might return to us, encourage us, reveal himself to us.
Some of you here this morning can testify that in these moments when you have ventured out, obeyed Jesus, and done what he commanded you—even when you had doubts, even when you couldn’t fully understand what he was doing through you—you discovered the risen Christ there to meet you.
There was someone who was asked to serve her church by working with the youth of her church. She thought the idea was completely absurd. She had no experience in working with young people. She was no professional expert in youth ministry. She suspected that she had few talents for this sort of ministry. But she prayed about it and decided to overcome her doubts and her fears and do the best she could to work with the youth.
That was ten years ago. The youth ministry that she created is famous, all over her town, as being a model of how youth ministry ought to be done. “Funny,” she said, “those kids have strengthened my faith. They have revealed Jesus to me in ways that I could never have imagined. I have more faith now than I did at the beginning. I simply went, did as I was told, and on my way, I discovered the Jesus I never knew.”
Her name was not Mary Magdalene. It was not the other Mary. But it sure could have been. Two thousand years later, wherever there are people who do as some heavenly messenger tells them, they see Jesus.
Let us pray.
Keep returning to us, Lord. Continue to reveal yourself to us in all your resurrected glory. Give us what we need to see you, and then, give us the courage and the determination to obey you that we might be brought to a sure and living faith in your ultimate victory. Amen.