Do Not Be Afraid, by He Qi, used by permission.
You can watch a video of this sermon here, at location 01:42:10.
The earth herself shakes with Good News, and the faithful women are there to see and feel it. They came to the tomb, but not to visit their beloved dead, not to accept the finality of death, not to “pay their respects” — “pay their respects,” what a flat phrase. No, these women had been paying attention. Like all the other disciples, they had heard his many predictions of resurrection on the third day, but unlike them they had taken it all in. They had listened carefully. Then – again, unlike the other disciples – they stayed and kept watch as Jesus died, and they stayed and kept watch as he was buried. These are not fools, not silly optimists. They have seen death.
But now they are back to see something else, again because they listened. They paid attention. They remembered his promise that life would defeat death. And so, when the earth herself shakes with Good News, the faithful women are there to see and feel it.
And they invite us to join them. They are afraid but also thrilled; they are bone-tired from grieving but also enthused, overcome, shaking with the Good News. Like the guards at the tomb, the earthquake frightened them, but while the guards – who represent all the vain human powers of the world – were knocked unconscious to the ground, the women took the earthquake into themselves, shaking with fear, sure, but also shaking with the Good News.
And like the soldiers who seized him in the arrest, grabbing him roughly and handing him over to his trial and execution, the shaking women seized him, too. They seized the feet of the Risen One. But of course they seized him not in savage contempt, but in joyful awe. And we can do the same, if not exactly the same. The human body of Jesus of Nazareth is not here, but the Risen Christ is palpably here, powerfully here, appearing before us in broken bread and brimming cup; appearing beside us in the bodies of our friends; appearing over and around us in the gathered communion of saints; appearing outside these doors in the bodies of our neighbors.
And so we too can seize the Risen One on this bright morning. We will seize the Risen One in our embrace of one another, sharing the deep peace of Christ, which happens a few moments from now, after we pray in Easter hope for the whole world. And we will seize the Risen One again soon after that, when we draw together at this Table to receive the Bread of Life and the Cup of Salvation. And then we will be sent from here, shaking with our joyful alleluias, on our mission to proclaim the Good News – in word and action – to all we meet along the way.
And I have to say, all of this is happening none too soon. Like the women, many of us are bone-tired from grieving.
Has it been Lent for three years? It sometimes feels that way. Has it always been winter? It sometimes feels that way.
But be encouraged; take this into your heart: all this long winter, the women who watched the death of Jesus, kept vigil at his tomb, and returned expecting his promised resurrection – these same women have listened with us. They have watched with us. They have been with us all this time. We just sang their names in the litany of saints, for we trust that all the saints of God are here with us. All the saints of God take their places at this Table.
The women who witnessed the Resurrection have been with us all this time, and though they never let their attention wander from the troubles we’ve suffered, they also have noticed all the tiny buds on the trees in our garden. They have tracked the barely perceptible minutes of increased light, sunset by sunset, sunrise by sunrise. They have seen what we may not have noticed, so preoccupied have we been by loss and transition, by disease and anxiety, by the commotion and trauma of all that’s happening in this world:
The shaking women have seen that the faithful here have continued to do church, fiercely, sustaining our neighborhood ministry, our pastoral care ministry, our hospitality to our newest members, our learning at the feet of our greatest sages—the children, and so much more.
The shaking women have seen that authentic hope is rising as the pandemic’s deathly grip is (ever so slowly) loosening, and they have seen that we are emerging wiser, more conscious, more decisive and responsive on behalf of the most vulnerable ones in our midst.
The shaking women have seen that even on a planet quaking with climate catastrophe, voices of sanity are growing stronger, and momentum is building to halt the damage wrought by our species on this living earth. And the shaking women help us do our part in all of that.
Like them so long ago, and with them alongside us today, we face a world torn apart by war, oppression, greed, violence, and fear. The first Easter and the two-thousand-twenty-third Easter have a lot in common: the Good News isn’t just a day in the park, a giggly picnic under fair skies. We face serious challenges, and though the powers of Sin and Death are being routed, it obviously isn’t happening overnight. The resurrection earthquake is felt down all the long centuries, and we have a long way to go. But the trees are budding; we are learning — if slowly — to be Christ’s Easter people, to be true signs of new life in this grief-weary neighborhood. And even if nothing we do will be completed in our lifetimes, everything we do is a proclamation of resurrection.
The wise women do not expect everything to end in hopeless death. They know that resurrection is happening, and they can feel the first little tremors of the earth. They know that if we don’t proclaim the Good News, the very stones will cry out; if we go from here and say and do nothing about all we have witnessed, then the earth herself will shake with the Good News. Either way, the news is getting out. Life is rising up.
And the poet Denise Levertov tells us that this is just the beginning. We are only beginners in the task of proclaiming the Good News. We are just getting started. We have our whole lives to get better at this, and the generations following us can get even better than that. The joyful resurrection earthquake strengthens over time.
I want to read you a poem by Denise Levertov. She first annotates this poem with a scrap of words from another poet, a couple of verses from Algernon Swinburne’s 18th Century poem about the bittersweet gift of mortality. Swinburne gives us a wan, elegiac poem that glumly welcomes the finality of death. In that poem, we are set free from “too much love of living;” and we are set free from “hope and desire;” and finally, like a weary river emptying into the sea, we gladly succumb to eternal death. Well, not for Denise Levertov. (And not for me.) Like the faithful women, Levertov doesn’t deny the reality of death, yet she comes to the grave expecting life. For her, life is just beginning. Here is Levertov’s poem, titled Beginners.
But we have only begun
To love the earth.
We have only begun
To imagine the fullness of life.
How could we tire of hope?
-- so much is in bud.
How can desire fail?
-- we have only begun
to imagine justice and mercy,
only begun to envision
how it might be
to live as siblings with beast and flower,
not as oppressors.
Surely our river
cannot already be hastening
into the sea of nonbeing?
Surely it cannot
drag, in the silt,
all that is innocent?
Not yet, not yet--
there is too much broken
that must be mended,
too much hurt we have done to each other
that cannot yet be forgiven.
We have only begun to know
the power that is in us if we would join
our solitudes in the communion of struggle.
So much is unfolding that must
complete its gesture,
so much is in bud.
***
Preached at the Great Vigil of Easter (Year A), April 9, 2023, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington.
Matthew 28:1-10