“With Fear and Great Joy”

by Rev. Charles Hoffman

March 31, 2002 Jeremiah 31:1-6 Matthew 28:1-10

I love Easter Sunday. And I love preaching on Easter Sunday. The reason is quite simple. It might surprise you to hear me say this, but on Easter Sunday I’m off the hook.

I used to labor under the pressure of Easter. I used to think that this was the day of all days when I had to perform. After all, in the circus that we call the church this is the main attraction. Easter takes place under the big tent. Easter is what people come for. Everything else is secondary to the Resurrection of Jesus.

But that’s just my point. Resurrection is the main attraction. Resurrection has center stage; the preacher doesn’t have center stage. Not even the choir assumes that place. We are all here this morning because of something that happened two thousand years ago. We aren’t here because of what’s going to happen in the sixty minutes of worship.

I read one preacher who said that the preacher’s job on Easter Sunday is like that of the one who offers a toast at a wedding reception. In that case the wedding is the point; today resurrection is the point. And the preacher’s job is to address it as respectfully and succinctly as possible (Barbara Brown Taylor, Exilic Preaching, p. 105).

Today in churches all over the world Christians are gathered to celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus. This is the focal point of our worship. And it is bigger than all of our songs, our sermons and our finery put together.

The story of the first Easter is told in all four of the Gospels. Each writer relates the event but each has his own unique emphasis. This year we turn to the Gospel of Matthew. Two women who share the name Mary come to the grave. One is Mary Mag’dalene and the other is identified simply as “the other Mary.” What they experience is unlike anything they have ever known or ever will know in their lifetimes.

An angel arrives to the accompaniment of an earthquake. In snow white clothing and the brilliance of lightening the angel removes the stone from the entrance to the tomb.Sitting on the stone, the angel addresses the two Marys:

“Do not be afraid; for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has risen, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples that he has risen from the dead, and behold, he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him. Lo, I have told you.”

With those instructions we are told that the two women ran to find the disciples. We are told that they went “with fear and great joy.” On the way they are met by Jesus, the risen Lord. And in that encounter Jesus repeats the angel’s instructions and encourages the women not to be afraid.

So it’s with fear and great joy – those are the emotions of Easter in its 2002 edition – fear and joy. Not joy alone, but fear as well. A strange combination? Maybe and maybe not.

Take joy first. Under the circumstances joy is easier to understand than fear. After all, these women had just witnessed the horror of his execution. Their spirits were cold with despair and bound by grief. So it’s pretty easy to understand their joy when the angel gives them the good news. That chilly morning they had carried heavy hearts to the cemetery and in a moment their burden is lifted. It’s always touching to see joy catch someone unawares, which is exactly what happens here.

By the way, I understand that the English words joy and jewel come from a common source. Just like a jewel, joy is a thing of beauty and great value. Both are “greatly prized. But unlike a jewel,” says Marcus Borg, “[joy] can neither be purchased nor possessed. It is a gift” ( The Living Pulpit, O/D ’96, p.5). So imagine taking that painful walk to the tomb and stumbling over the gift of joy. Those women experienced “great” joy.

But why fear? And how come both fear and joy? I might have thought one or the other, but not both of them together. When you think about it, it’s not so unusual. New parents, for example, stand by the cradle where the baby sleeps. They bask in the joy that has come into their lives. But that’s not all they do. They also know fear. Will we be able to give her the home she needs? Will we be able to keep her safe? Will she outlive us? Both fear and great joy.

We’re talking about fear and joy in the same breath. Try another scene. They finally get the house of their dreams. They admire it from the front lawn, this thing of beauty and joy. But will they be able to handle the mortgage?

Easter is something like that. It’s called buyer’s remorse. You are happy, if not thrilled with the purchase. But can you keep up with the payments? Those sorts of feelings keep people awake at nights.

Two grieving women went to a new grave. Already they were beginning to sort out their feelings. Perhaps they felt that a visit to the place of burial would help them deal with their loss. They’d done it before. It was difficult but it was a way of moving on with life. But when they got to the cemetery Easter broke out like a crack of thunder and a blaze of lightening. This is a road they’d never traveled before and they weren’t sure they wanted to now.

They knew how to handle death; they didn’t know how to handle resurrection. With death there was a system in place. With death you did your grieving and then you did your best to get on with life. But up to this point there had been no reason to think of a system to deal with resurrection. It was great, absolutely the most awesome thing that they had ever experienced, but could they make the payments? He said that they were to meet him up in Galilee. What did that mean? And could they handle it? It was all a bit frightening.

In one way we expect Easter to bring a sense of relief. The nightmare of the crucifixion is over and now people can return to a predictable routine of life. After all, that’s what happens in a horror movie. Once the monster has been brought to an end people go back to the normalcy of living. But Easter doesn’t work that way. If you read the story of those first Christians following the Resurrection you will see that their lives have been thrown into disarray. They don’t return to their old patterns. That’s over, done with. Things are changed forever and there’s no turning back (see Homiletics, M/A 1999, p. 47).

Julia Esquivel is a Guatemalan poet who has fought against the human rights violations in her country. One of her poems has the curious title They Have Threatened Us With Resurrection. The poem recalls the deaths of so many innocent people – more than a hundred thousand Guatemalans. And it expresses the impact that Resurrection has on those who, like her, are “exhausted from the endless inventory of killings since 1954.”

Being threatened with Resurrection keeps her and her compatriots from sleeping their way through life. It demands that they continue to love life and refuse to accept the threat of death.

Ms. Esquivel issues an invitation to those who read her poem:

Accompany us then on this vigil and you will know what it is to dream! You will then know how marvelous it is to live threatened with Resurrection!

(the poem is quoted by Donald E. Messer in Calling Church and Seminary into the 21st Century, pp. 79f.).

You see, Resurrection doesn’t mean that we get to return to the old way of life. “Resurrection,” says Tom Troeger, “is something greater than returning to the life that once was” ( Preaching While the Church Is Under Construction, p. 95).

O course, those women who went to the tomb that first Easter morning had no idea what it all meant. How could they? But in the face of the unknown they found their joy tempered by fear. With fear and great joy – that’s what it says. Maybe they knew that things would never be the same again. I don’t know for sure, but once you have an experience such as they had that morning you’ve introduced a whole new ingredient into the mix of life.

If you understand resurrection as merely the resuscitation of a corpse you sell it short and miss the point. If you think Easter is only about a dead person coming back to life you haven’t thought far enough. If you say that it’s simply a sign of the immortality of the soul you won’t be able to support your idea from the Bible.

Easter is about God creating a way when all the evidence says that there is no way. Easter is about a whole new way of seeing things. Easter is about a God who will not accept the status quo, about a God who refuses to be sealed in tombs of death and injustice, a God who calls his people to join him in the battle against all that disrespects the dignity of humanity and denies the sacredness of creation.

In the long history of living with the idea of Easter people have found ways to say what the Resurrection of Jesus means. Take, for example, the Moravians. I’ve read that the Moravians greet the Easter sunrise from the cemetery. There among the grave markers they gather to wait the dawn. And when the sun splits the darkness they break into song and march to the church for the Easter celebration.

Writer Andrew Pratt says that if we want to find the meaning of the Christian faith we have to begin in the cemetery. That is, “the search begins in the darkness of human grief and brokenness. For it is only in that place where we will hear the word that Christian faith has to speak. ‘He was here but he is not here any longer. This is not the end. There is more. Go find him!'” ( Lectionary Homiletics, April 1999, p.5).

Winston Churchill would probably be surprised to know that his life is often invoked by preachers, not only at Easter but at other times of the year as well. He doesn’t come across as a particularly religious person. But he had some things right. That he planned his own funeral service is not a surprise. It was held in Saint Paul’s Cathedral in London using the beautiful liturgy of the Church of England. It included great hymns of the church as it made its way to the closing benediction.

Following the benediction and from high in the dome of Saint Paul’s, a trumpeter played what is known as Taps, the universal signal that the day is ended. The congregation must have been moved to hear the service end in this way. But it wasn’t over. Churchill had one last word. From another part of the dome came the sound of another trumpet. And this one played the Reveille, the universal sign that the day is beginning: It’s time to get up. It’s time to get up. It’s time to get up in the morning.

Says John Claypool, “That was Churchill’s testimony that at the end of history, the last note will not be Taps, it will be Reveille. The worst things are never the last things” (quoted in Homiletics, M/A 1999, p.51).

So it is that Easter redeems the past and invokes the question, What now? And therein lies the fear. If Easter, then what? If Easter, then everything is changed.

The instructions of the risen Lord were for the disciples to return to Galilee, i.e., to get back to the tasks at hand. So they did, but now it was with a new reality of resurrection that forever changed the contours of their lives.

We are an Easter people! Thanks be to God. Amen.

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