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Monday, April 17, 2006
Easter Earthquakes
Psalm 118:1-2,14-24; Mark 16:1-8
Mark's Gospel has a surprise ending -- Easter morning... empty tomb... angel's great good news... and the women run away in terror! The end. What shall we make of that?!
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We look back 2,000 years to that first Easter Sunday, and we're just days away from the 100th anniversary of the great San Francisco earthquake. Interesting coincidence. If there really is such a thing.
One family who survived the quake but lost everything in the fire that followed, arranged with their rabbi to hold their son's Bar Mitzvah as scheduled on April 20. A Torah scroll was located, set on a table, and the boy read his prayers, right there in the midst of all the tents. A few hundred onlookers gathered round, most of them not Jews. They clearly needed some kind of spiritual focus amidst all the chaos, confusion, and loss of their earthly possessions.
It's a terrifying thing to feel the ground rocking and rolling under your feet!
Where can you put your weight down now for a secure footing in life? What will be your foundation now for any kind of predictable future? Everything you took for granted is suddenly up for grabs.
Matthew's Gospel says there was an earthquake on Easter morning, when an angel rolled back the huge stone the Roman soldiers had forced into place at the entrance to Jesus' tomb.
Mark tells it differently.
When the women get there, the stone's already off to the side, and the angel sits there patiently waiting for them. He tells them Jesus has risen and will meet them very soon. They must go announce the invitation to his disciples. Then the women beat a path out of there.
But not to tell the angel's message to anyone. No, they run away in terror! End of story.
What a strange way to end a Gospel -- which means "good news." More like bad news. Freaky news.
Think of it as Mark's version of the earthquake story. Those women ran away in open-mouthed horror because Jesus' resurrection turned upside-down everything they assumed about the way the world works. There's your ultimate earthquake -- inside your heart and soul.
And their story resonates with yours and mine, if we take Easter seriously.
I mean, I love fresh green grass, budding trees, and blooming flowers as much as anyone. But all those springtime-fresh goodies are coincidental to Easter's timing on the calendar. Easter is not about bunnies and eggs, either. Natural fertility is also coincidental to Easter's story of resurrection into eternal life.
Shift into metaphorical reverse with me, and consider all those cuddly elements as signs and symbols that point us to Easter as the heart of the springtime matter.
In this day of The DaVinci Code and a Gospel of Judas, it seems easier, for many people, to believe in spiritual conspiracies than in Jesus' resurrection.
Would you rather worry that the Pope and his minions are out to get you? Or trust that God has overpowered all the powers of death and sin and the Devil?
I'm betting that God shook up the world we thought we knew so well, when Jesus got back on his feet that first Easter Day. Death is not the last thing in life! And that means everything we think, and choose, and say, and do every day of our lives now adds up differently -- with eternal consequences. For every one of us, and for all of us together.
Earthquakes come and earthquakes go -- under our feet, inside our hearts.
But, like angels always say when they show up, "You don't have to be afraid. Never ever again."
Happy Easter!
posted by Jack Buckley at
2:19 PM
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