SERMON FOR EASTER SUNDAY, APRIL 12, 2020.          TEXT: MATTHEW 28:1-10

          This week the editor of The New Yorker filed this report from the epicenter of the Covid-19 virus in the United States: “Because New Yorkers are not medieval monks, we mostly chafe at the imposed solitude. We do our best to overcome it through technologies . . . . We text. We Zoom. We send one another links about virology. (We are all immunologists now.) . . . .The hours are as long as evening shadows.

            “But then something happens. Joy comes at seven. . . .Every evening, in many neighborhoods across the city, cheering breaks out, the way it would when the Yankees clinched another World Series title. It spills from the stoops and the sidewalks, from apartment windows and rooftops, for all the nurses, orderlies, doctors, E.M.T.s. — everyone who cannot shelter in place and continues to go about healing the people of the city.

          “We take out our smartphones and record the whooping, the tambourines and wind chimes, the vuvuzelas. The guy across the street is a master of the cowbell. Before it all dies down, we’ve sent off the recording to a loved one who works as an E.R. doc — and to others who are sick in bed or out of range of our anxious, canyoned city . . . .”

          “That Easter Day with joy was bright,” the hymn proclaims, “the sun shone out with fairer light.” But according to Matthew, that first Easter Day was marked by a great earthquake and the appearance of a heavenly messenger so terrifying that those guarding the tomb “shook and became like dead men.” Luke tells us that the women at the tomb, those first witnesses to the resurrection, “were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground” (Luke 24:5). And according to Mark’s account, the women, after hearing that Jesus had been raised, “went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid” (Mark16:8). In today’s Gospel the angel’s words of reassurance to the women, “Do not be afraid,” are not enough to dispel their anxiety. The news he brings is unnerving as well as exhilarating. They leave the tomb quickly with fear and great joy.

          I have shared this story with you before, so bear with me as I repeat myself. I have come back to it time and again in the years since my friend Don first told me about this experience almost 30 years ago. Don taught New Testament at the seminary, and like most of us on the faculty, he was regularly out and about doing gigs at various congregations. One year he was offering a series on the Gospel of Matthew for an adult group. A member of the class regularly showed up with her teenaged son in tow. She didn’t have time to go home after picking him up from sports practice. So he collapsed in his chair, sweaty, bored and hungry for dinner, while the Bible study went on around him. Through weeks of conversation he never said a word.

          The last session was a discussion of Matthew’s resurrection account. Don pointed to the power of the story — the sudden fracturing of the earth, the angel descending from heaven, breaking into the world with brilliant light. “He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said,” the angel tells the women. He summons them from fear and uncertainty to action, “Do not be afraid . . . go quickly and tell his disciples . . . .” And then the sudden appearance of Jesus himself. He confirms what the angel told them. He has indeed been raised. He calls the women to be his witnesses. “Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers . . . . .” Jesus makes them part of this new reality, where death is no longer the last word. Don concluded, “This is truly good news for us all.”

          And right then the young man erupted, “I don’t think so.” Dumbfounded, Don asked him, “Why?” “I don’t think it’s such good news. Because once Jesus is out of the box, who knows what will happen next?!”

          It is striking that the gospel accounts do not explain Christ’s resurrection. They announce it; they do not tell us what it means. Generation upon generation of Christians have learned by experience what the power of the resurrection is. They have formed a great cloud of witnesses, telling us of their fear and great joy in the face of danger and uncertainty. They have confessed as well to doubt and resistance when overwhelmed by misery.    They celebrate faltering hopes that grew strong in the midst of suffering and were not disappointed. Now it is our turn. That first Easter Jesus greeted the grieving, bewildered women with words of reassurance, “Do not be afraid.” Now he speaks those words to us. He calls us to rely on what have learned from him, that we love one another as he has loved us, that we forgive others as we have been forgiven, that we take up our cross and follow him wherever it leads. The psalmist declares, “Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning.” That is the promise of Easter. Amen.