Easter is the high point of the church year. No Sunday, no feast compares, not even Christmas. Without the resurrection, no one would have celebrated the birth of Jesus. Instead, both his birth and his death would have faded from the world’s memory.
Pope Benedict observes, “Whether Jesus was or whether he also is…this depends on the Resurrection.”
What literally happened is anyone’s guess for there were no witnesses to the actual event. But something did happen. The shroud of Turin, long believed to be the burial cloth of Jesus, has been carefully scrutinized by scientists. Trying to account for the negative image scorched on the linen and the nature of the blood stains, one non Christian examiner said, “The only way I can account for these phenomena is that, to leave the blood stains intact and to produce this kind of image, the body must have somehow passed through the cloth.”
Last night at the vigil, we heard dramatic, detailed filled stories…the beginning of creation, the waters of the Red Sea drowning the Egyptians and the waters of prophets quenching our thirst for life. Today, Matthew provides us with a dramatic detailed resurrection story. A great earthquake happens; perhaps an aftershock of the one that occurred when Jesus died days before, an angel appears like lightning. The guards were stunned, becoming like dead men. This same angel rolls back the stone, not to let Jesus out, but to let the women look in. They could see that the tomb was already empty.
The empty tomb which they and later the apostles found doesn’t prove anything, although an empty tomb is a necessary condition for resurrection faith. An ordinary morning soon turned into an earth shattering event. Jesus’ resurrection is a seismic shift in the way we see the world. Like moving from thinking about the world is flat to understanding that it is round, Jesus’ resurrection opens dimensions of life that one day we will see face to face.
What makes his resurrection so earth shattering is that no one expected it. Yes, Jesus said that he would rise again, but what he said was incomprehensible, like black ink on black paper. The gospels relate many instances when the disciples did not grasp what Jesus meant. That doesn’t mean that they didn’t believe in the resurrection. In those days, some Jewish believers looked and hoped for the resurrection, but they expected it to happen at the end of time when all peoples would be raised up together, all at once, to share in the new heaven and the new earth. No one expected it to happen to just one person so soon.
When the women went to the tomb, they were going for the same reason we visit cemeteries…to get a sense of closeness to someone who has died. They didn’t expect to encounter the risen Lord. Maybe they were looking for some peace and quiet after that godforsaken Friday, but peace and quiet was the last thing they got. Their world was shaken to the core by the angel’s message, “He is not here, for he has been raised.”
The death and resurrection of Jesus is earth shaking in the truest sense of the word. Like two plates colliding, Jesus’ resurrection is the meeting of God’s world and our world. The God who was silent on Good Friday is now having the last word, and it is a word of victory. That cruel death on the cross did not end Jesus’ life or what his life means. Now raised from the dead, Jesus lives for us all. The resurrection means that sin, death, and evil have been defeated like the Egyptians drowned in the Red Sea. The resurrection means that streams of living water are flowing to us. Victorious over death; Jesus lives in our midst. The kingdom of God is now on earth as it is in heaven.
That reality escapes us for we live today in a culture of fear, nurtured by media that conduct an up to the minute feeding frenzy on every horror in our world. Watching the news, we are left feeling that death seems far more victorious than life: another day of bloodshed in the Middle East, gruesome details of a gang shooting in a shopping mall, headlines about a murder-suicide. This kind of fear can blind us to the light of God’s truth.
“Do not be afraid,” the angel told the women when they arrived at the tomb. Fearful yet overjoyed, they left to tell the apostles what they had seen but before going far, they encountered Jesus. He greets the two Marys with the same words the angel used, “Do not be afraid.”
These words did not entirely dispel their confusion. The risen Jesus did not lay down a clear path for their immediate future. They had no clue how the story of Easter was going to unfold, still the words, “Do not be afraid,” gave them hope and comfort, inspiring them to remain faithful to their beliefs and hopes about Jesus and his mission of building the kingdom of God on earth.
On this Easter, as he did on the first Easter, the risen Jesus offers us the same message of comfort and hope. “Do not be afraid.” The problems in our personal lives, our church, our country, the economy, and our world will not be solved overnight and disappear. Because of them, some of us may still remain confused and discouraged amid what seems like chaos to us. But the promise of Easter is that in the end, life will triumph over death, good conquers evil, and hope overcomes despair.
Easter is more than an event; it is also an attitude, a perspective, an outlook on life, the turning point of God’s world. By his resurrection, our sorrow is exchanged for Jesus’ joy. Our broken lives are transformed by his forgiveness and new life. Our lives are made new. No wonder, Jesus says to us what he said to the women when they met, “Do not be afraid.”