Fear & Great Joy | Matthew 28:1-10 | 4.5.26

Grace and peace to you in the name of our Lord Jesus, who is the Christ.

Friends, this Lent we've been asking one question of ourselves every week since Sash Wednesday.

Can we be good news people in a world that is so often full of bad news?

And week by week, Jesus kept showing us what good news actually looks like.

It looks like a woman uninvited and unnamed walking into a dinner party and pouring out everything she owns.

And Jesus saying, Do you see her?

Not her labels or her work or her reputation, but her, do you see her?

It looks like five loaves and two fish passed from hand to hand through a crowd of 5,000 hungry people, and twelve baskets left over.

Not because the math worked out or made sense, but because the disciples were willing to share what they had.

It looked like Jesus crouching down in the dirt, calm and unhurried, while a mob stood ready to throw stones at a woman they'd already decided deserved it, and yet one by one they walked away.

It looked like children running toward Jesus while the adults are trying to manage the situation and keep their cool.

And Jesus saying, Let them come.

The kingdom belongs to ones like these.

And last week it looked like a man on a borrowed donkey, riding straight into a powder keg of a situation, but not riding on a war horse or with an army, just with himself, just giving himself.

And that's the good news that we've been tracing all lent long, and every one of those stories we told was told in the shadow of Jesus' betrayal and crucifixion and death.

Which means this morning, this morning is where this whole season has been headed all along, and it is the place, this morning is the place out of which we live as followers of Jesus.

But before we hear the scripture for today, I'd invite us to pray together.

Will you pray with me?

Holy One, all over the world, people are gathering to hear the same story.

All over the world, people are waking before dawn and lighting candles, filling sanctuaries and spilling out into parking lots and hillsides and living rooms, all to hear how death lost its sting.

All over the world, people are gathering together, hoping for a glimpse of you.

So, like our neighbors around the world, we pray.

Be here and speak to us today.

We come to you in the way those women came to the tomb.

In the morning and in the in-between of carrying our grief and our hope in the same two hands.

Meet us here.

Soften whatever in us has grown hard or tired or afraid.

Soften the calloused parts of our hearts until we can sense your Holy Spirit moving in our midst once more.

With eagerness and hope, we run to the tomb.

We sing allelujah and we bow our heads and we listen for you.

Amen.

We're gonna read the first ten verses.

Let's listen together for God's word to the church.

After the Sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to the tomb, went to see the tomb.

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.

And his appearance was like lightning and his clothing white as snow.

And for fear of him the guards shook and became like dead men.

But the angel said to the women, Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified.

He's not here, for he has been raised.

As he said, Come and see the place where he lay, and 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.

So they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy, and they ran to tell his disciples.

Suddenly Jesus met them and said, Greetings.

And they came to him and they took hold of his feet and they worshipped him.

And then Jesus said to them, Do not be afraid.

Go and tell my brothers and sisters, go to Galilee, and there they will see me.

This is God's word for God's people.

Thanks be to God.

It was as dark as it gets.

The long night that the women had to wait.

It had been the Sabbath.

So they couldn't yet carry their oils and spices to the tomb where they had laid their friend.

Their grief and their love had to be held back momentarily from being poured out in his honor.

They had not fled or denied him or gone into hiding like the others.

Perhaps because they had been so often overlooked, they did not shrink under the gaze of the occupying Roman army.

They knew his grave would be guarded, but they would not let that stop them from giving his body the care and the proper rituals that any member of their community deserved.

But while it was darkest, on that Sabbath, they had to wait for the sun to rise.

And when it rose, it was not a quiet, peaceful sunrise.

The birds did not chirp as the sky gently changed hue.

It was an earthquake.

The ground shook, lamps fell from their stands, the soil cracked beneath their feet, and everyone who was asleep awoke, and everyone already awake grabbed for a door frame or a post or anything that might help them stay upright.

The earth shook when the sun arose that morning.

Matthew's chosen word in the Greek is seismos.

It's where we get seismic activity.

It's that same word that he uses when he says the guards shook in fear and were like dead men.

The shaking, that same shaking that split the temple curtain in two at his death.

The seismos of death complete and death defeated.

We know what it's like to live in a shaking world.

We know what it's like to wake up to the news of a new war.

We know what it's like to wake up to the shock of a school in lockdown, the shaking of our shoulders as the sobs of grief and loss set in.

We know what it's like for the paycheck that had afforded groceries and childcare last month to not quite cut it this month.

But when we wake up with work to do and with loved ones to care for, and with a burning in our heart for a better world, sometimes we just have to do it scared.

The women felt that same fearful shaking of the earth.

And yet they went to the tomb anyway, and when they arrived, I can only imagine the terror when they met that the loved one that they wanted to meet wasn't there, but a strange messenger.

So bright they could only bear to squint in his direction as he sat atop the boulder that had until moments earlier protected Jesus from vandalism or grave robbery.

They received their message from the angel.

They've been given in their darkest hour a task.

And turning to go.

Their eyes still adjusting to the light, they fled the tomb quickly, with fear and great joy, the text says.

And I'm certain that this is one of the most honest lines in all of Scripture.

Matthew doesn't feel the need to resolve any tension between those two feelings.

They're both present.

He doesn't say that the fear went away when the joy arrived.

Both are real.

And of course, their fear is real.

The earth is shaken, their friend and teacher is gone.

They have been nearly blinded by an angelic being asking them to believe that Jesus, who they watched take his last breath with their own eyes, is alive again.

If this is true, it changes everything.

But of course, their fear is real.

The streets that they'll have to take to deliver their message are still streets occupied by a hostile army.

The stone has been rolled away, but the people who killed Jesus are still there.

The ever-present threat of the empire has not been rolled away.

And yet, just as true as their fear is the rebirth of their great joy.

He is not here.

He is risen.

The one they loved is alive.

The story isn't over.

It might be just beginning.

And friends, the same is true for us.

We don't have to resolve this tension before we run the race set before you and I.

When those first preachers of the gospel ran from that tomb, they ran with both the fear and the joy.

And so can we.

When we take risks in our lives, risk for the good of the world, of course there is fear, trepidation, hesitation.

But we can also have great joy at the invitation to participate in the resurrection of all of life around us, even when it means that things will never be the same.

It's often noted by us preacher types that do not be afraid is the most repeated command in all of Scripture.

God keeps having to say it, which tells us something honest about the human condition, doesn't it?

It wouldn't be in there so much if it wasn't very natural for us to be afraid sometimes.

It wouldn't have to be said if our if our fears weren't a very normal response to a lack of control.

Our fear can teach us what's important to us.

But God calls us not to let fear sit in the driver's seat.

Notice that neither the angel nor Jesus tell them to stop being afraid before they can move.

The command isn't feel no fear and then go.

It's do not let fear be what governs you and go anyway.

Do not move the way fear makes you move.

The resurrection doesn't eliminate the trembling, but it gives us something stronger and more beautiful to run toward.

We must let the beauty we love be what we do.

And I know that our little corner of God's church is more than capable of doing hard things in the face of fear and uncertainty.

In just our brief 76 or so years of history at Lake Forest, we have opened up our community's first ever public library before the city built one.

We have cared for many children in need.

We've hosted and helped to resettle a refugee family from half a world away.

And despite public splits and opportunity after opportunity to be the community that shames and excludes, we have chosen to be a space of grace and welcome and belonging as best we can, which we know isn't perfect.

Not that we've always gotten it right.

But maybe we have some examples of how to do hard things scared.

And whatever you're facing in your life right now, whether you call Lake Forest home or not, you have things in your life that feel like the foundation is shaking under your feet.

Take those next shaky steps with trust, because Jesus is going ahead of you, and you will see him there.

This is the quiet miracle inside the miracle.

The risen Jesus doesn't just say, wait here, and I'll come back.

He says, I'm already on my way, meet me there.

It was after they began their journey that Jesus came into view for the women and he greeted them, confirming and deepening their great joy and encouraging them onward to Galilee.

Now Galilee is important.

It is not Jerusalem.

Jesus could have said, Go to Jerusalem, I'll meet you there.

He didn't.

He took them back to the beginning.

Galilee is not the center of religious power.

It is not the seat of empire.

Galilee is the margins.

It is a fishing village.

It is ordinary and humble and unglamorous.

And it is the place where all ministry begins.

The resurrection doesn't send the disciples back to the halls of power to take it.

It sends them back to the beginning, back to their roots.

Radicalis, back to the ground, to the earth from which they grew.

What are our Galilees, friends?

What are yours?

How do we get back to our roots as people of faith, to the radical faith, the rooted and radical faith of Jesus as resurrection people?

At Lake Forest, we have the opportunity to return to the roots of our work for children and students, for education and equity in service to South Knoxville and our surrounding communities through our work with folks like Justice Knox, like Eukirk, who was here last week with us, our growing support of our local food pantry, the fish food pantry, and by revisiting the stewardship of our property and resources through our Good Futures task force.

Friends, these are not programs, and I'm not listing them for you to feel nice.

I'm telling you, these are places where Jesus is already waiting for us.

The invitation of Easter is not to stay at the tomb marveling at its emptiness.

It is not to return to the way things used to be.

It is not to go back to the upper room and pretend like betrayal and brokenness and sadness and death didn't happen.

The invitation of Easter is to go.

And to meet the risen Christ in the humble and the beautiful and the poor and the vulnerable.

The risen Christ who goes before us and who will meet us again in our own Galilees.

And when we meet him on the way, can we, like those first faithful women, can we take hold of his feet and worship the one who brought us through it?

I can see the gospel in this moment where the women find themselves again at Jesus' feet.

They're on the road, they have a mission, but this moment is intimate and it is physical and it is communal.

They do it together.

And Jesus sees and honors what they're going through in the middle of their journey.

They haven't completed their task yet.

But the good news is here, friends.

It is embodied.

And it's passed hand to hand, person to person, like bread through a crowd.

It is found in the face of a child.

It is found in the dirt where Jesus writes, and in the borrowed donkey, and in the woman with the alabaster jar.

The resurrection community is formed around the feet of Jesus.

Which means it is formed low to the ground, close to the earth, and near to the people the world overlooks.

And friends, the world will keep shaking.

I know this isn't a surprise to you.

The world will keep shaking.

Matthew's size moss doesn't stop when the stone rolls away.

You will wake tomorrow to news that unsettles you.

To grief that comes back again that you thought maybe was gone.

To a paycheck that doesn't quite stretch.

To a country that seems to have forgotten what it means to be human.

Fear and joy will keep arriving together.

Don't stop feeling them.

The tension doesn't resolve just because we say hallelujah.

And the empire will keep insisting that it has the last word, but here is what we know this morning: the tomb is empty.

Death has lost its sting, and so the ways of sin and death are never going to give us life.

In fact, life has been given to us.

And Jesus is already in Galilee.

Jesus is already in the war-torn villages and in the food pantries and in the school hallways.

Already in South Knoxville, already among the children, already with the ones the world keeps stepping over.

He didn't wait for us at the tomb.

He went ahead and he is there.

He is in the humble places, the honest places, the place where your real life happens, and he is waiting for you to meet him.

So go.

Go with the fear if the fear is real.

Do it afraid.

Go with the joy if it is flickering back to life in you.

Trust that joy when it comes up.

Don't squash it.

And go with your oils and your spices and your grief and your hope and your worries and your concerns.

And carry all of those things in your two hands.

Because we are Easter people.

We are good news people.

And the good news, friends, the aching and beautiful and earth shaking good news, is that it really is good.

We know that it is good because it is alive and we have seen it already at work in the world.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.