Matthew 28:1-10
1 After the sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. 2 And suddenly there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. 3 His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow. 4 For fear of him the guards shook and became like dead men. 5 But the angel said to the women, "Do not be afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. 6 He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. 7 Then go quickly and tell his 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 for you." 8 So they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples. 9 Suddenly Jesus met them and said, "Greetings!" And they came to him, took hold of his feet, and worshiped him. 10 Then Jesus said to them, "Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me."
One early, fall afternoon, Sallie and I were taking a walk around the neighborhood where we lived, when we turned the corner onto a narrow street and came upon an elderly woman who appeared to be in some sort of distress. She was obviously delirious, perhaps she had forgotten to take her medication, and she was terribly distraught. I seem to remember her telling us that she had been locked out of her house and that the men who had locked her out had spray-painted her windows so she couldn’t see inside. I had my phone in my hand, ready to dial 911 in case we couldn’t find where this woman lived and hopefully a relative inside her house. As it turned out, she wasn’t far from her home at all, just in front of it in fact. She lived in the last home in a row of neat, brick townhouses, each with a hip-high brick fence around the front lawn. Sallie and I walked her through the little wrought iron gate in her front yard, down the short sidewalk, and up to the front door. I asked her one more time if this was her house—just to make sure before I rang the doorbell. I heard the sound of hurried footsteps inside. I saw a figure in the privacy glass of the front door as I heard the deadbolt turn and the doorknob twist. I was caught off guard when Harold answered the door.
You see, Harold was a member of the church where I was the pastor, and as it turned out, this scared, confused woman was his wife. Harold invited us into his home, and as I walked through the front door, he began apologizing to me, saying that she “got out” and that she “has these sort of spells.” After assuring him there was nothing to worry about, and that we were glad she was alright, we sat in their tidy living room and visited for a good while. When Sallie and I got up to leave, we thanked them for welcoming us into their home, told Harold’s wife we were glad to have met her, and as Harold showed us to the door he was still apologizing for her actions, saying, “She hasn’t always been like this.”
A few months later, I was standing with Harold next to a hole in the ground as his wife’s body was being lowered into it. I had visited with the two of them a few times since the day we came across her in the road. Her health faded quickly, and Harold’s wasn’t too far behind. I went to see him a few days after her funeral; he was in the hospital. I remember him telling me about his wife, about the things they used to do together, how, because they were not able to have children, they spent their time and money on each other and extended members of the family. And I remember Harold saying to me—right there from that hospital bed—“I just want things to go back to normal, back to the way they used to be.” I remember telling him words I would repeat at his funeral a few short weeks later, “We can’t ever really go back to what once was ‘normal.’ This is the new ‘normal.’” Isn’t it something: when life throws us a curve, when things aren’t the way we would want them, we just want things to go back to “normal?” But things can’t ever really go back, can they?
Perhaps those first followers of Jesus had hoped things would just go back to normal after everything seemed to run off the rails. I can hear them, Peter and his brother, Andrew, talking about how things used to be. Peter might have said something to Andrew like, “Don’t you miss how it used to be? You know, back when things were simpler, when it was the two of us out on the lake in Dad’s boat, throwing the net out, hauling the fish in. You remember how the folks would wait for us on the shore and how thrilled everyone would be when we had a good catch? Don’t you wish we could just go back, back to before all of this ever started, back when we knew what we were doing, when the world made sense, and we didn’t have anything to be afraid of expect flipping the boat over or not catching anything?” I can hear them. I can hear them just wanting things to go back to normal…but things can’t ever really go back, can they?
I can imagine Levi, the tax collector, thumbing through his contacts, trying to find the number for the tax assessor’s office, hoping he could get his old job back, wishing he could just pretend all of this never happened and he could pick right up where he left off. Why, I can imagine Simon the Zealot, wondering to himself if it wasn’t too late to rejoin the movement, to join with the other zealots longing to overthrow the Roman oppressors. I can see him mulling over the possibilities, going over the scenarios in his head of how he might find his way back to normal...do things ever really go back to “normal” though?
Maybe normal was a bit different for some of the other disciples. Perhaps for Philip and Bartholomew, they just wanted things to go back to the way they were before Thursday, when Jesus was still drawing a crowd, when he was a healer, a prophet, a wildly popular teacher, and worker of miracles. Perhaps there were some among the disciples who wanted things to go back to the way they were when Jesus was just an itinerate preacher, one who said some radical things, but hadn’t taken them to their ultimate conclusion. If things could just go back there, back before it all got out of hand, back before Jesus got himself in all that trouble, back before they had to lay low in fear for their own lives—if things could just go back to safe, reliable, “normal”…can they go back?
Of course, for a few of Jesus’ followers, the desire to go back to normal was about more than their own safety or a wish for steadier times. We Protestants tend to overlook the reality that Mary—his own mother—was among his disciples. I can’t imagine what pain and terrible grief she must have been experiencing in the night Friday, on through Saturday, and into the dim hours of Sunday morning. Perhaps she left the tomb Friday night, made it home in time for the Sabbath, and after supper, in the restless hours of the night, she pulled a photo album from the shelf. There’s a picture of her husband Joseph, the one who had stayed with her despite her questionable pregnancy, the one who raised Jesus as if he was his own: he’s been gone for a while now. There’s a note tucked in the pages where the memories of Jesus’ early days are kept; the note says, “Enjoy the frankincense and myrrh. Don’t let him spend the all the gold in one place,” and it’s signed “From the Magi.” Maybe Mary gazed at the pictures of Jesus growing up, pictures of him playing with his cousin John, his brothers and sisters, pictures of him working alongside Joseph as he learned his trade, and pictures of Mary holding him as a baby, pictures of Jesus nearly holding her as he had grown to be a man. I can’t help but believe that Mary wanted things to go back to normal too, back to when her son was her son and she didn’t have to share him with the world, back when he was hers, when he was growing and learning and it seemed he’d never grow up into the promise spoken to her by the angel all those years ago. I can’t help but believe that Mary just wanted things to go back to the way they had been, to the way they used to be…but they can’t go back. They can never go back.
Matthew tells us of two other disciples—two other Marys—who find themselves on the way to Jesus’ tomb in the early hours of the first day of the week, after the Sabbath, in the pre-dawn hours of Sunday morning. Matthew says they went to see the tomb. Notice, he doesn’t mention anything about them buying spices (along with Salome) to anoint Jesus’ body; there’s no conversation about who will roll away the stone (those things appear in Mark’s telling, yet they are absent in Matthew’s account). No, Matthew simply says the went to see the tomb. Now, while many commentators say this is a continued emphasis from Matthew around the notion of seeing, I think there may also be something else involved. Sure, Matthew may be calling our attention to what we should be seeing, but I think that these two Marys are doing what so many of us do from time to time.
Every once in a while, on your way home from work, you take that short little detour. You turn onto the narrow drive, park your car, and then walk through the field of headstones looking for a name—his name, her name. You stop by the grave, maybe kneel down to brush away the dry leaves and grass clippings, and you just stop for a moment. There are the dates: “Born___Died___,” words like “Beloved Father…Loving Mother…Dearest Friend.” You stop just to see the grave, to visit where they buried the body of your wife, your husband, your mother, your son—you stop just to see it because every once in a while you need to feel like they’re still close by, like you can still talk to them, like they’re sitting right there to tell you what you need to hear one more time. Maybe that’s why the two Marys simply went to see the tomb: they weren’t expecting Jesus to be there, alive again. Perhaps they wanted to just see where they laid him one more time, to remember how it used to be one more time, to reminisce just one more time the way it was when he was still there, because it’s those times when we wish the most that things could just go back to normal, back to the way they used to be…but if Easter morning teaches us anything, it’s that we can’t ever really go back, that this life of faith is a life lived in an ever-forward fashion.
Can I tell you something, though? The truth of Easter, the truth that things can’t ever go back, that this life of faith is lived in an ever-forward direction, it’s troubling. It unsettles so many of us, especially in a day when so many long to go backwards, back to times colored by our selective memories in a rosy tint. It’s troubling to think that the wheels of time only go forward, that things won’t ever go back to the way they once were, that we’ll never have it like we once had it, that things change, that things will always change. It’s so troubling to some folks that they’ll do whatever they can to try to stem the momentum of history, to assuage the ever-advancing march of time. Why is it so troubling to us? Why do we long so often to go back, when the call of Christ and the inevitability of God’s kingdom call us forward? Isn’t it obvious? We long to go back for the same reason the first words to the Marys from both the angel and Jesus are “Do not be afraid.” The truth of Easter, the ever-onward call of the resurrected Christ, can be frightening.
It’s frightening because it’s a call to trust a God we can’t see to lead us to a place we’ve never been, most likely with people we’ve never met. The reality of Easter can be frightening as it calls us outside of those familiar spaces where we are comfortable, in control, places where we know the lay of the land and feel we’ve got it all figured out. The ever-onward call of Christ is frightening perhaps most of all because it requires trust—trust in the one who calls us out into the unknown, into uncertainty, into a world that may not always have our best interests in mind, to people who may not like us (or in fact, hate us). It requires faith, faith to stare death in the face, trusting that it will not have the final word. That’s frightening. That’s why the first words from the risen Christ on that first Easter morning are “Do not fear.”
The truth of Easter, however, isn’t only a source of uncertainty and fear. No, thanks be to God it is a source of joy! After all, doesn’t Matthew tell us that after the women heard the news from the angel about Christ’s resurrection that “they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples” ? Did you catch that? Fear AND great joy! How can two seemingly contradicting emotions take place in the same heart in the same moment? How can someone possibly be filled with “great joy” at the news that things won’t be the same, that things will never go back to normal, that things won’t return to the way they once were? How?! By faith; that’s how.
Yes, the women were overcome with fear at the news—the reality—that Jesus had been raised from the dead, and yes, some of that fear is grounded in the notion that things won’t ever go back to the safe, predictable, certainty of so-called “normal,” but there is joy to be found in the truth that this same resurrected Christ, this same savior who calls us ever on, this same God who raised Jesus out of the grave has done so with the promise that the best is still yet to come! The truth of Easter is that Christ calls us always forward because there is always more to show us, more to give us, more to which we are called. The truth of Easter is that we should never want to go back, because what God has instore for us will always—ALWAYS—be better than anything we’ve experienced.
The truth of Easter is that there’s no going back to normal, because God calls us to a higher way, above whatever we may label as “normal.” The truth of Easter is that there’s no going back to the “good old days,” because Christ is calling us ever on to better days, even beyond the reach of death itself! The truth of Easter is frightening as it calls us out of our places of comfort, out of our certainties, out from whatever tombs of complacency we have carved for ourselves, yet the truth of Easter is full of joy, for while it calls us out of our comfort, control, and certainty, it raises us to a new life of abundant joy and possibility with Christ! The truth of Easter may lead through death and a grave, but friends it leads through them! The ever-forward call of Christ does not end with death, and it does not end with this one day. It is an eternal call, a call that we follow even through death and on into resurrection. It is a call that fills us with fear and great joy. It is a call that Christ puts forth to you today. Will you answer? Will you seek to follow that ever-forward call of the resurrected Christ, or will you needlessly cling to the false hope that one day it’ll all go back to normal? Amen.
