{"id":9074,"date":"2002-03-07T19:49:58","date_gmt":"2002-03-07T18:49:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theologie.whp.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/?p=9074"},"modified":"2025-04-23T10:59:20","modified_gmt":"2025-04-23T08:59:20","slug":"matthew-281-10","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/matthew-281-10\/","title":{"rendered":"Matthew 28:1-10"},"content":{"rendered":"

„Easter As An Earthquake“ | Easter | March 31st, 2002\u00a0| Matthew 28:1-10 | William H. Willimon |<\/span><\/h3>\n

„Suddenly there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord,
\ndescending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it.“
\n<\/b>John says that they got to the tomb on Easter morning, and it’s empty. Then,
\nthey go back home.
\nGo back home?<\/i> Reminds you of the two disciples in Luke on the way
\nto Emmaus. „Some women told us that Jesus had been raised from the
\ndead, but we had already planned to have supper over in Emmaus, so we
\ncouldn’t change our reservations\u0085“
\nA man is raised from the dead and you can’t cancel lunch? How dumb are
\nthese disciples?
\nSo my friend Stanley Hauerwas, in dialogue with dear Marcus Borg of the
\nerrant Jesus Seminar says, „Marcus thinks the disciples had an experience.
\nThey said, ‚Wasn’t it great being with Jesus before they killed him? You
\nremember those great stories he told? The lectures, er, sermons<\/i>?
\nJust thinking about it makes him seem almost still here. Yep, by God,
\nhe is still here. Let’s all close our eyes and believe real hard the he’s
\nstill here. Okay?“
\nHey, Jesus Seminar, the disciples weren’t that creative! These were not
\nimaginative minds we’re dealing with here. They were the sort of people
\nwho could see an empty tomb and not let it spoil lunch. You don’t get
\nan idea like the bodily resurrection of Jesus out of people
\nwith brains like Simon Peter’s.
\nIn short, the disciples were people like us<\/i>.
\nPeople like us are the sort of folk who like to believe that you can have
\nresurrection and still have the world as it was yesterday. We want to
\nhave Easter and still have our world unrocked by resurrection. We are
\namazingly well adjusted to the same old world.
\nI think that’s why Matthew says that when there was Easter, the whole
\nearth shook. Luke does Easter as a meal on Sunday evening with the Risen
\nChrist. John has resurrected Jesus encounter Mary Magdalene in the garden.
\nBut Matthew? Easter is an earthquake with doors shaken off tombs and dead
\npeople walking the streets, the stone rolled away by the ruckus and an
\nimpudent angel sitting on it.
\nI’ve been in an earthquake, even though I’m not from LA. I was preaching
\nin Alaska and during my sermon, the earth heaved a moment that seemed
\nforever. The little church shook. The Alaskan Methodists sat there like
\nit was another day at the office. Their only response was the woman who
\nsaid, „How about that, the light fixtures didn’t fall this time.“
\nI ended my sermon immediately. I was shaken by the earthquake, but also
\na bit shaken by those nonchalant Alaskans. Afterwards (at lunch!) I asked
\nthe pastor, „What the heck would it take to get this congregation’s
\nattention? I’d hate to have to preach to them every Sunday.“
\nMatthew says, Easter is an earthquake that shook the whole world.
\nWe modern types try to „explain“ the resurrection. One says
\nthat Jesus was in a deep, drugged coma and woke up. Another said that
\nthe disciples got all worked up in their grief and just fantasized the
\nwhole thing.
\nBut you can’t „explain“ a resurrection. Resurrection explains
\nus<\/i>. The truth of Jesus tells on the faces of the befuddled disciples
\nwho witnessed it. Not one of them expected, wanted Easter. Death, defeat,
\nwhile regrettable, are utterly explainable.
\n„It was a good campaign while it lasted. But we didn’t get him elected
\nMessiah. Death has the last word. We had hoped\u0085but you’ve got to
\nface facts. You want some lunch?“
\nThe world is in the tight death-grip of the „facts.“ All that
\nlives, dies. The good get it in the end. Face facts. It may be a rather
\nsomber world, but it is our<\/i> world where things stay tied down and
\nwhat dies stays that way. And there are few surprises. This is us.
\nBut Easter is about God. It is not about the resuscitation of a dead body.
\nThat’s resuscitation, not resurrection. It’s not about the „immortality
\nof the soul,“ some divine spark that endures after the end. That’s
\nPlato, not Jesus. It’s about God, not God as an empathetic but ineffective
\ngood friend, or some inner experience. It’s about God who makes a way
\nwhen there was no way, a God who makes war on evil until evil is undone,
\na God who raises dead Jesus just to show us who’s in charge here.
\nI don’t know this for sure, but I think Matthew’s Easter earthquake angel
\nperched on the rock rolled from the tomb was the same angel who, earlier
\nin Matthew 1 (vv.8-25) shook Joseph awake one night with the news that
\nhis fianc\u00e9e was pregnant. (Talk about an earthquake!)
\nSee my point? God did on Easter in invading the tomb what God did on Christmas
\nin a virgin’s womb. Made a way when there was no way. Took charge. The
\nsame angel who was sent to tell Joseph, „Name the baby, Emmanuel,
\nGod with us,“ was the angel who told the women, „Don’t be afraid.
\nHe isn’t here. He’s been raised.“
\nLittle God with Us grew up, got crucified, made the earth shake, and is
\non the move to take back the world.
\nOn the cross, the world did all it could to Jesus. At Easter, God did
\nall God could to the world. And the earth shook.
\nYou don’t explain that. You witness it. That’s why the Risen Christ appeared
\nfirst to his own disciples. They had heard him teach, seen him heal, watched
\nas he loved the poor and attacked the rich, watched him be arrested by
\nthe soldiers, tried by the judge, and crucified.
\nWhy would Jesus come back first to his disciples? Because they were the
\nones able to recognize that this Risen Lord was none other than the Crucified
\nJesus. Crucifixion wasn’t just an unfortunate mistake in the Roman legal
\nsystem, the First Century Judean equivalent of the O. J. Simpson fiasco.
\nCrucifixion was the inevitable, predictable result of saying the things
\nJesus said, and doing the things Jesus did, and being the Savior Jesus
\nwas. This is what the world always does to people who threaten the world.
\nFace facts.
\nBut\u0085on Easter God inserted a new fact. God took the cruel cross and
\nmade it the means of triumph. God (the same Creator who made light from
\ndarkness, a world from void, a baby in a virgin’s womb), God took the
\nworst we do–all our death-dealing doings–and led them out toward life.
\nAnd the earth shook.
\nA new world was thereby offered. Jesus came back to forgive the very disciples
\nwho had forsaken him. The world is about forgiveness, as it turns out,
\nnot vengeance. And the earth shook.
\nJesus picked up a piece of bread and ate it and you could see the nailprints
\nin his hands. The world is about life, as it turns out, not death. And
\nthe earth shook.
\nIn the fifties, in China, there was a devastating earthquake. But as a
\nresult of the quake, a huge boulder was dislodged from a mountain thus
\nexposing a great cache of wonderful artifacts from a thousand years ago.
\nA new world suddenly came to light.
\nWhen the stone was rolled away, and the earth shook we got our first glimpse
\nof a new world, a world where death doesn’t have the last word, a world
\nwhere injustice is made right, and innocent suffering is vindicated by
\nthe intrusion of a powerful God.
\nThe women came out to the cemetery to write one more chapter in the long
\nsad story of death’s ascendancy, one more episode of how the good always
\nget it in the end. This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but
\na whimper of resignation at death’s dark victory.
\nAnd then\u0085the earth heaved, an angel appeared, the stone was rolled
\naway, Caesar’s soldiers shook. The angel plopped himself down on the stone
\nin one final act of impudent defiance of death, and the soldiers, and
\nall that, and said to the women, „Don’t be afraid.<\/i> You’re
\nlooking for Jesus? He isn’t here.“
\nThen that angel turned to the soldiers and said, „Be afraid. Everything
\nupon which your world is built on is being shaken.“
\nWe will never go back home by the same path we came. Alleluia.<\/p>\n

\n

William H. Willimon
\nDean of the Chapel and Professor of Christian Ministry
\nDuke University
\nDurham, North Carolina USA
\nE-Mail: will@duke.edu<\/a>
\nwww.chapel.duke.edu<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

„Easter As An Earthquake“ | Easter | March 31st, 2002\u00a0| Matthew 28:1-10 | William H. Willimon | „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.“ John says that they got to the tomb on Easter morning, and it’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8543,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,727,157,853,108,110,305,349,3,704,109,1699],"tags":[],"beitragende":[],"predigtform":[],"predigtreihe":[],"bibelstelle":[],"class_list":["post-9074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-matthaeus","category-archiv","category-beitragende","category-bibel","category-current","category-engl","category-kapitel-28-chapter-28","category-kasus","category-nt","category-ostersonntag","category-predigten","category-william-h-willimon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9074"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9074\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23176,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9074\/revisions\/23176"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9074"},{"taxonomy":"beitragende","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/beitragende?post=9074"},{"taxonomy":"predigtform","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/predigtform?post=9074"},{"taxonomy":"predigtreihe","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/predigtreihe?post=9074"},{"taxonomy":"bibelstelle","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bibelstelle?post=9074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}