Matthew 28:1-10
“An Opening”
April 12, 2020 Easter Sunday
“There’s a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in” said songwriter Leonard Cohen. With the crack of the earth, Jesus died to this world and then just a few days later another earthquake marked a new beginning for the Son of Man.
It was in awe that the centurion witnessed Jesus taking his last breath and then the light came in and he realized that “Truly this man was God’s Son!” Then the Marys learn that Jesus is back and has gone ahead of them, bearing the light after another crack of the earth.
The actual resurrection took place between Jesus and God and still the light that was created is for all of us to see and feel still now. Jesus was in a tomb and then he wasn’t and it is up to the women to go out into the world to tell the story as the first witnesses, not to the actual act of resurrection but to the light that broke forth because of it. No cell phones were whipped out to capture the moment. Instead it is the legacy of love that survived or as William Sloane Coffin offered, “Easter has to do with the victory of seemingly powerless love over loveless power.”
Through that crack an old life came to an end and a new one was begun. As we each sit in our respective homes on this most unusual of Easter mornings, we are still being graced with a love more powerful than death.
So many stories have been told this past month of dedicated nurses and doctors who have faced death down in hospitals all over the world, believing that within each life is a light. And each one of those lighted lives is worth taking a risk on and not deserting.
Ours is a faith that tells us that the light within each one of us is the love and mystery and power of God, the light that Jesus came to show us, through the cracks of a broken world. Here in Matthew’s telling there is an angel saying don’t be afraid and encouraging them to see that the space that once held a dead body now doesn’t.
Fear plays a tremendous role in this story and there is very real fear in our midst right now. Many are terrified of coming down with this virus. Others are truly frightened of losing income or having no job to go back to. For some parents there is fear for their children’s education which is looking so different. For many of us there is terror that the crack in our world, leaving a new reality, will be totally different and it is the unknown that can leave us frozen zombie-like, resembling those guards outside Jesus’ tomb.
Maybe, though, this crack in everything we know, after we resume life outside of our homes, has the potential to make us a better and more loving world.
The Indian writer Arundhati Roy last week offered that “Historically, pandemics have forced human to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is not different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.”
She continues, “We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.” (The Financial Times, April 3, 2020)
Jesus’ resurrection signals a whole new world where life and death and life again is what God has in store for us. We are people of the Resurrection and out of this hard, hard time there is the promise of new life and new light. That is certainly Good News worthy of our Alleluias. Amen.