SHAKING THE FOUNDATIONS

Matthew 28:1-10

Easter Sunday

March 23, 2008



The first shock wave rolled through the city of San Francisco at 5:12 in the morning.  The after shocks began less than two minutes later.  In the space of less than 120 seconds, the most devastating earthquake ever known to have hit the United States was over.  The subsequent fires were just beginning.  And on April 18, 1906, 490 city blocks were destroyed, 25,000 buildings crumbled, 250,000 were left homeless, and it’s estimated that as many as 2500 people lost their lives.  One eyewitness reported seeing buildings, giant skyscrapers, being moved off their bases out onto the sidewalks before they crumbled.  It was a shaking of the foundations of an incredible magnitude.

Earthquakes do that.  They’ll shake our foundations to the core.  Matthew bears witness to just such a shaking in his telling of the Easter story.  Mary Magdalene and another Mary go to the place where Jesus was buried just two days earlier.  Already there’d been an earthquake on Friday.  When Jesus cried out in a loud voice and died, Matthew tells us that

the curtain of the temple was torn in two,

from top to bottom.  And the earth shook,

and the rocks were split (27:51).

At the death of Jesus, the foundations began to shake.  And now, once again, Matthew says that when the two Marys approach Jesus’ tomb, there’s another earthquake as an angel descends from heaven and rolls back the stone in front of the tomb.   

The earth shakes, the guards shake, and the women shake when they hear the angel’s announcement that Jesus—crucified by the power of Rome, declared dead, and buried in a tomb sealed by a huge stone—has been raised out of death by the power of God.  “Come, see the place where he lay.”  And then go quickly and tell his disciples that he’s been raised from the dead.  They’re to meet him in Galilee.  

The foundations begin to shake.

Of course, in our 21st century scientific minds, we have an abundance of explanations for earthquakes.  The ‘whys’, the ‘hows’, the ‘what-to-do-to-prevent-extensive-damage’ scenarios.  But in biblical times, earthquakes were a sign of something significant.  They were a sign that God was at work.  They were a sign that God was intervening in human history, and that something of even greater magnitude was about to happen.  Something of earthquake proportions.

So that when the Bible wants to announce the in-breaking of God at the end of all time and history, the writers employ the image of an earthquake, like the prophet Isaiah who declares:

…the foundations of the earth tremble.  The earth is utterly broken, the earth is rent asunder, the earth is violently shaken (24:18-19).

Or Jesus, too, when he describes the end of this age, he uses the image of an earthquake:

…nation will rise against nation, and kingdom

against kingdom, and there will be famines and

earthquakes in various places (Matthew 24:7).

God is about to shake things up.  And in the resurrection of Jesus, the foundations of the Dark Powers that seek to hold us captive are shaken to their core: the powers of Sin, of Evil, of Death.  

In the resurrection of Jesus, the power of Sin that holds sway over our lives has been broken.  In today’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles, Peter preaches an earth-shaking word when he declares:

(The authorities) put (Jesus) to death by

hanging him on a tree, but God raised him

from the dead on the third day (so) that

everyone who believes in him receives

forgiveness of sins through his name.

We think about our sins as those things we do or don’t do, but we need to remember that they come from a great power that seeks to dominate our lives.  That power is the power of Sin—Sin with a capital ‘S’ if you will.  And if you think that this power doesn’t hold sway over your life and mine, then ask yourself why the sins we’ve committed so long ago keep coming back to haunt us.  Why it is that we can’t let go of their memory.  It’s no wonder that the psalmist cries out to God,

Remember not the sins of my youth or my

transgressions, (but) according to your steadfast love remember me…O Lord! (25:7)

When we confess our sins on a Sunday morning, there’s an incredible, earth-shaking word that goes forth.  Maybe we hear it too often, or maybe we don’t hear it—really hear it—often enough.  But the words that Kathy spoke to us a few moments ago, these words, as Luther reminds us, should be heard as if from God himself:

God, who is rich in mercy, loved us even when

we were dead in sin, and made us alive

together with Christ.  By grace you have been

saved.  In the name of Jesus Christ, your

 sins are forgiven.

It’s a word of earthquake proportions.  For when this word goes forth, the power of Sin is shaken, because the only power more powerful than the power of Sin is the power of Christ’s word of forgiveness.  And when that word goes forth, the foundations begin to shake.



Or consider the Dark Power of Evil.  For it too has its foundations shaken by the resurrection of Christ.  At times Evil is blatant.  We can name it: Terrorism.  War.  Hunger.  Poverty.  Abuse.  The list seems almost endless.  At other times Evil is much more subtle.  So that the writer of I Peter describes the power of Evil as prowling “around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (5:8).



In today’s story, the power of Evil is institutionalized in both church and state.  One of my mentors once wrote about what he called “the tragic necessity of institutions.”  Institutions, he said, are both a tragedy and a necessity.  They’re a necessity because for anything of value to be passed on from one generation to another, it must become institutionalized.  But institutions are a tragedy whenever they lose the purpose for which they were created, and through the power of Evil, become corrupt and unjust.

 

When Jesus was crucified both temple and state failed miserably.  And his resurrection from the dead shook the very foundations of both.  For the state no longer could wield death as its ultimate weapon.  And the temple would have to confront a reformation of sorts, the kind that would turn the temple—and the whole world—upside down.



We invest a lot in the institutional powers of both state and church.  We give them great responsibility to shape our lives.  It’s the responsibility of governments to protect us, especially the least among us—the poor, the outcast, the homeless, the foreigner.  It’s the responsibility of religious institutions to guide us on our journey of faith.  But when they fail to protect the weakest among us—when they fail to protect the poor, the outcast, the foreigner, when they fail to protect our children—then it’s time for a shaking of the foundations.   



So in the story of the Risen Christ, in the story of the church, in the Acts of the Apostles, the earliest followers of Jesus declare that there are times when they “must obey God rather than men” (5:29).  And, over time, whenever the institutions of state and church have been co-opted by the power of Evil, God has raised up a Martin Luther, a Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Rosa Parks, a Martin Luther King, Jr.  For Christ is risen!  And in his resurrection, even the Dark Powers of Evil are shaken to their foundations.



Sin.  Evil.  And the power of Death.  Mary Magdalene and the other Mary go to the place where Jesus is buried.  The tomb.  The cemetery. The graveyard.  By whatever name it’s called, the power of Death holds sway here.  



According to Matthew’s telling, the women go to the tomb to do what?  To anoint the dead body of Jesus because there wasn’t time when they took him down from the cross?  To simply sit at the tomb and weep, pouring out their grief because Jesus was truly dead?  Whatever their reason, they didn’t go to his tomb with any expectation that Jesus had been raised by the power of God!



But that’s exactly what God did!  And it was of such magnitude, the only way to describe it is to tell the story in earthquake proportions.  A shaking of the foundations, for not even the power of Death—the ultimate power of Death—could contain him.  

I know you are looking for Jesus who was

crucified.  He is not here; for he has been

raised….

C. S. Lewis, in his Chronicles of Narnia, uses the image of an earthquake to describe the power of God over the power of Death.  You may remember the scene.  There’s Aslan the lion, the Christ figure who gives his life to save the life of a child.  At dawn, on the following day, the children in the story—Peter, Susan, Lucy, and Edward—visit the rock on which Aslan has died.  But when they arrive,

shining in the sunrise, larger than they had

seen him before, shaking his mane…stood

Aslan himself.  “Aren’t  you dead then, dear

Aslan?” asks Lucy.  “Not now,” says Aslan,

for the table of death has cracked and Death itself has now started working backwards.

Christ is risen!  Even the foundation of Death has been shaken.  So that when we stand in the face of its power, we look at Death squarely in the eye and we announce, we sing, we shout, “Jesus lives!  And so do we!”



For Easter is the shaking of the foundations.  The foundations of the Dark Powers: the power of Sin, the power of Evil, the power of Death.  Christ is risen!  Alleluia!  Alleluia!  Alleluia!