April 16, 2017 Easter Sunday Matthew 28:1-11
We all like things to be clear, crisp
and straightforward. We want to know
what is right and what is wrong. Is it
true? Is it false? One of the things I found appealing in high
school level science classes, and introductory chemistry and physics in
college, is that the world seemed to fit into such neat and tidy categories.
But then I started to get into upper
level classes. Class work became not
only more complex, but also less precise.
Right and wrong wasn’t so clear anymore.
One class in designing foundations for buildings and bridge piers always
stands out in my mind as the epitome of uncertainty. We were to design the footing for a bridge
pier in a swamp; having no bedrock to speak of.
Steel or wooden piles would have to be driven deep into the muck, but
how deep and how many? There are
mathematical equations you can use and scientific research to help you, but you
don’t get anything definite. All my
classmates and I came up with the best answers we could. Then to be sure we doubled or tripled the
strength of our designs to make up for all the unknowns and to have a good
factor of safety.
The professor said we were all
wrong. He said we should be using a
factor of safety of at least five if not seven.
Five to seven times stronger than necessary! And then he said something I’ll never
forget. “You use a factor of safety of
five to seven; and then you just hope it stands.”
You just hope it stands?!? That’s the best you can do? All your brilliance and all your resources
and you just hope it works! I don’t like
that answer.
We long for life to be simple, but
it’s not. We want clear answers, but we
don’t get them. We want there to be no
ambiguity, but it exists everywhere.
These days many people consider
Christian faith and the Bible to be childishly simplistic; quaint at best, an
insult to intelligence at worst. If
you’ve been here in worship over the last few months you’ve heard almost the
entire gospel of Matthew read. You know
well that it is anything but simple or childish. It is more like the work of a literary genius
expertly using the highly sophisticated Jewish storytelling style. You know well that Matthew likes complex
things. He’s not afraid to wade into
even the murkiest of waters. And he’s
not afraid to leave his readers scratching their heads.
If you ever deeply immerse yourself in
Matthew’s resurrection account you discover that it is loaded with
contradictions and impossibilities. You
almost wonder if Matthew isn’t toying with you the reader and getting a good
laugh at your expense. There’s also a
lot of subtle humor.
I want to look at just one – the most
obvious one - and let it also speak for the rest.
Matthew sets the scene for us: It is dawn on Sunday. Mary Magdalene and another woman named Mary
go to see the tomb. They aren’t going to
be able to do much because according to Matthew guards have been posted at the
tomb to insure no one steals the body and claims he was resurrected.
The women get there. We aren’t told how long they wait but
suddenly there is an earthquake and an angel descends from the sky. I don’t know how you picture an angel, but I
wouldn’t imagine some cute little cherub with wings and a halo. No, picture a muscular body builder; totally
ripped. Matthew says his appearance is
like lightening and his clothing is white as snow.
He’s so terrifying the guards shook
and became like dead men – appropriate given that they’re already in a
cemetery! The women are terrified
too. The angel says to them, “Do not be
afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus who has been crucified. He is not here; for he has been raised, as he
said. Come, and see the place where he
lay.”
Did you put your detective hat on and
pick up on the problem? The tomb is sealed
with a stone. It’s guarded. An angel comes down and rolls the stone
away. And the next logical thing that has
to happen is that the resurrected Jesus walks out of the tomb and says
something like, “It’s good to be alive!”
Or, “Wow, what a night!” Or, “Being
dead can give you such a crick in your neck!”
But he doesn’t walk out of the tomb!
Despite being sealed with a stone and guarded by soldiers the tomb is
empty!
Where’d he go? Is Jesus a ghost? If so, then where is the corpse?
The women don’t get it either. Nothing makes sense. Dead people stay dead. Sealed and guarded tombs just don’t turn up
empty. Every clear, logical, reasonable,
scientific understanding of reality they have is gone! But it gets weirder.
In their fear and confusion and joy
they run to tell the disciples. Suddenly
Jesus meets them! How can this be? How could he have gotten ahead of them? They come to him and clasp his feet and
worship him.
They clasp his feet? Okay, so he’s not just some nebulous
spirit. He’s real. He’s solid.
But then, …how did he get out of a sealed tomb?
If you’re familiar with all the
recorded resurrection appearances of Jesus you know that they are all
strange. Jesus comes and goes through
locked doors. He suddenly appears, then
just as suddenly disappears. Yet he lets
people touch him. He talks to
people. He eats with them. One time he even builds a campfire and cooks
breakfast for some of the disciples.
Critics of our faith have long looked
at these accounts and labeled them the imaginative ramblings of Jesus’ early
followers who just wouldn’t accept that their leader had been executed. We must admit that they have a point. Doubts easily creep into our hearts too.
Yet if you’ve learned anything about
Matthew as we’ve read his gospel you discover that he’s not an imaginative
rambler. At the very least you must
admit he is a literary genius. Of course
that doesn’t prove anything at all, but it does show that you are learning
about your Savior in the hands of a thoughtful and careful teacher.
I’m quite certain that if Matthew
could have given us bedrock proof of the resurrection that we could build the
bridge pier of our lives upon in absolute confidence and certainty he would
have done so. But that is not the nature
of faith. And that is not the nature of
life.
Reality is not like a high school
science class, is it? You know that I
love to push science to its limits – the absolute extremes of what the human
intellect can discover. Take quantum
physics – that’s about as far as you can get:
Time is relative, not absolute? Matter doesn’t really exist without
energy? Distance is an illusion? Quantum physics tells us that everything we
think is solid and reliable and predictable isn’t. All of those thoughts prove nothing,
certainly nothing about God and nothing about Jesus’ resurrection. I can’t prove that. No one can.
But in my mind at least, as I encounter what Matthew (and other gospel
writers) have done, I realize they are struggling to grasp the ungraspable. They are speaking of realities beyond what any
human mind can comprehend. Inasmuch as
they can, they are describing God and what God has done.
It is pretty hard to expect someone to
believe something that you can’t even describe to them. It is sure to leave doubts. That goes for anything: faith, science,
history, philosophy. But as we read on
in Matthew’s gospel we’re going to discover something remarkable. Matthew knows his readers are going to have
doubts. He knows they’ll struggle to
believe the resurrection actually happened.
That it was for real, and not just a fairy tale.
In two weeks we conclude our reading
of Matthew’s gospel and we’ll discover that doubts and disbelief are actually
part and parcel of Christian faith. Said
differently, Matthew’s gospel teaches that to have faith is also to have
doubts. For Matthew the opposite of
faith is not doubt. The opposite of
faith is fear.
What Matthew does ask us to do is to
trust in God. In the children’s sermon I
talked in very simple terms about good guys and bad guys; would that life
really were so simple. But simple or
complex, full of doubts or solid in belief, we trust. We trust that God is indeed capable of making
good on promises. And that those
promises will be make good on in this life and the next.
Whether you believe whole heartedly or
are riddled with doubts, whether your life is simple or complex, and whether
all things are calm and in order or if your life feels like chaos; trust in
God’s goodness and God’s ability to do the impossible.
No comments:
Post a Comment