April 16, 2017 (Resurrection of our Lord – Easter Sunday) -Matthew 28:1-10
Matthew 28:1-10
Joy in the Midst of Fear
Resurrection of our Lord – Easter Sunday – April 16, 2017
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
I love Easter Egg Hunts.
I loved them as a kid, and I love them as an adult.
I even love Easter Eggs embedded in dvds and such.
For me, the enchantment of the Easter Egg hunt is that while everything looks the same as it
did the day before Easter Sunday morning –
now you know there is wonder hidden among the ordinary.
Things are different on Easter Sunday morning – they may look the same, but they are different.
The couch, the chairs, the sideboard – they all looked the same as they did the
other 365 days of the year, but now there was magic sprinkled about.
There was delight amidst the drudgery, like Easter Jokes sprinkled about the sermon.
Why exactly was the Easter Bunny so upset?
He was having a bad hare day.
On that first Easter Sunday morning way back when, things looked pretty much as
you would have expected them to – things seemed to have gone back to normal.
The Roman Empire had apparently won.
The Jewish upstart had been executed.
He was dead and buried in a sealed tomb.
Life went on as it had before.
Violence, threat, and intimidation ruled.
Its predictable consequences were poverty, illness, injustice, and fear.
A lot of fear – for there was indeed a lot of fear going around in those days.
And the fear on that morning for those who had followed and loved Jesus was just this:
that their hopes and dreams for a better, more just world had been dashed –
and that everything was as it was before.
Well, we are not that different.
There is a lot of fear in the air once again.
As I write this, the number one headline is the threat of thermo-nuclear war as
the sabre rattling between the United States and North Korea continues.
Subsidiary headlines speak of the continued threat of terrorist attacks,
the threat of Russian spying, escalating gun violence in our cities and
tainted water supplies in our towns.
Closer to home, the child is sick, the diagnosis is not good, work is uncertain, or
and what is there to live for anyway?
And then we come to Easter Sunday morning, and Matthew’s Gospel seems tailor made for us:
Matthew addresses the question of fear on Easter Sunday morning more than
any other Gospel writer.
There is a lot of good news in that, and it makes Matthew very contemporary.
Why do we paint Easter Eggs?
Because it’s too hard to wallpaper them.
The women who go to the tomb are afraid.
The guards are paralyzed by fear.
The angel tells the women, “Do not be afraid – he has been raised!”
Interestingly, they then leave the tomb to go tell the good news to the other disciples,
as the angel instructs them to, but they leave with both “fear and great joy.”
On the face of it, you might not think those two things can exist at the same time: fear and joy.
But then you think about it, and you think,
“Actually, I am totally capable of feeling more than one thing at the same time.”
I know that is certainly true for myself, which is why, I think, it’s always hard to tell
what exactly I’m feeling at any given time.
When you look at it like that, maybe it’s not so difficult to imagine that the women were feeling
both fear and joy at the exact same time.
When you start a new job, you might be feeling exactly both those things:
great joy and a little fear.
I think Matthew is trying to tell us that the joy of the resurrection
doesn’t negate the fears we have, it doesn’t spell the complete end of them.
We still worry about the state of the world, we still worry about our children,
we still worry about our friends in the hospital, we still worry about our futures.
And yet, and yet – the resurrection, as David Lose says, does make it possible to experience
joy alongside of what might otherwise be crippling fear.
The resurrection of Jesus doesn’t end all problems.
It doesn’t remove us from the hardships and challenges of our lives.
But it does create possibilities and it does create hope that didn’t exist before
The resurrection means that God creates something new, something unexpected,
something delightful amid the uncertainties and difficulties.
In the 23rd Psalm, God promises to set a table before us in the presence of our enemies.
God doesn’t do away with the enemies – God sets a table for us and protects us,
maybe even with the unexpected hope that the enemies, too, will be invited to the table.
I don’t know – I just know that the resurrection of Jesus means that God is always, always,
always creating new possibilities out of old dead lives.
The Easter Eggs are liberally sprinkled about us – they’re just hard to see sometimes.
How does the Easter Bunny stay so healthy? Eggsercise. A lot of hareobics.
When Jesus finally encounters the women, the first thing the Risen Jesus says to them is –
no! Not “Greetings” as our translation has it.
Literally, in Greek he says, “Rejoice!” Yes! Rejoice!
The first word out of the Risen Jesus’s mouth is, “Rejoice!”
Then, he too tells them not to be afraid.
But he doesn’t just comfort them and call it a day. Oh no!
He commissions them! He invites them into a particular way of life. He gives them a job.
He says, “Here is the work God is giving you!”
He says, “Go and tell my other brothers and sisters!
Invite them to the mountain in Galilee where I gave the Sermon on the Mount,
where you can all renew your commitment to living the life I spoke of there:
to share what you have, go the second mile, love your enemies,
do not judge others, do unto others what you would have them do to you.”
Then Jesus tells them that he is going ahead of them, is leading them,
into this new life of hope and forgiveness and service and love.
The resurrection isn’t over – it is just beginning.
Easter is on-going. Easter Sunday was just the start.
For the risen Jesus is still going ahead of us, is still leading us,
is still meeting us in all kinds of places
is still inviting us to be his agents in the ongoing transformation of the world.
And that is what makes joy possible amid the world’s continuing difficulties.
That is what makes delight and wonder and rejoicing possible amid the continuing fear and
worry in our lives: knowing that Jesus is there, ahead of us, and with us.
That is what makes our work as Christian disciples possible.
Jesus has already assured the disciples in Matthew’s Gospel that when the faithful ones
feed the hungry and visit the imprisoned and welcome the stranger,
they are doing these things to him.
He is there, bringing joy amid the fear, with us, always, as he says at the end of Matthew,
to the end of the age: I am with you always.
When Mother Teresa was commissioned by God to work in the slums of Calcutta among
The poorest of the poor, she was afraid!
But in the faces of poor, she saw the face of Jesus.
He had gone ahead of her, and was waiting for her.
He was already there, although hidden, and that made everything different.
The world in some ways looks the same after Easter Sunday morning, but it is totally different.
Like Easter Eggs hidden in the same old house, Jesus is hidden, but very present,
in this same old world.
And that makes joy and delight and rejoicing a possibility and a reality.
It makes serving one another and welcoming the stranger and feeding the hungry a joy.
It means finding delight in the midst of drudgery.
It means finding wonder in the midst of work.
It means finding love in the midst of listlessness.
What do you get when you cross the Easter bunny with a leprechaun? The Easter Blarney.
Be full of courage on this Easter Day.
Be consoled – do not be afraid, but rejoice,
for the resurrection means there is wonder hidden among the ordinary.
It means Jesus is there.
So go out into the world on this day in peace – be of good courage.
Hold fast to that which is good.
Return no one evil for evil.
Strengthen the faint-hearted, support the weak, calm the afflicted, honour all people.
Love and serve the Lord your God, wherever you going,
knowing that he is there, and so rejoicing in the power of the Holy Spirit.
And together, let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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