There You Will See Him
Text: Matt. 28:1-10
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia! We stand at the very center of our faith this morning: the resurrection of Jesus. It’s the foundation of everything we believe. So for that reason, we dwell on the fact of Jesus rising from the dead. We sing about it in hymns, we speak and chant about it in the service. We hear about it from the readings from different angles and points of view, with four different evangelists—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—all describing the same event, but with slightly different details and emphases. And this morning, we have had the account from St. Matthew’s pen—with all of its peculiarities and strangeness.
One detail that St. Matthew gives us is the earthquake. He’s the only one who records it. The others sprint to the races alongside the women and the Apostles, but Matthew takes a deep breath just before announcing that the Lord is risen and he says, “Behold, there was a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone and sat on it.” Most of us glide past the earthquake. That may be because it’s contained in just a couple of words. Or it might be because we’ve grown somehow accustomed to earthquakes in Matthew’s gospel. After all, there was one that just happened in the chapter right before. The earth shook at the death of Jesus on Good Friday. Rocks were split, tombs were opened, the veil of the temple tore in two. Creation itself cried out in horror at the death of its Creator and the very fabric of the world was ruptured and torn.
And now the earth shakes again. This is no accident, for it’s signaling that something else has happened. Things are reversing—the one-way flow of life to death is starting to turn back. The guards who were placed to keep the dead man now become as dead men themselves out of fear. The one who had been laid in the tomb by others is now walking out Himself. The sealed stone, rolled into place, has now been removed; and where it had sat with a sense of finality, it now is sat upon by the angel. Everything that was done is now being reversed and undone.
And yet the most earth-shattering event in all of history happens in silence, before all this noise and shaking. It happens before dawn, without anyone seeing it happen. The stone is not rolled away to release Jesus—this isn’t like Lazarus’ resurrection where the stone had to be moved and the linen strips had to be taken off of him so he could be freed. No, the earthquake and the angel are trailing behind something. Jesus is already gone by the time the witnesses—creation itself, the angel from heaven, and the Marys—arrive. As they find out once they get there: “He is not here, for He has risen, as He said. Come, see the place where He lay.”
In the wake of that reality-changing resurrection of Jesus, the stones themselves cry out in joy in the earthquake. Earthquakes have long tradition in the Scriptures: at Mount Sinai, scattered through the Psalms, and in the writings of the Prophets, the earth shakes when God arrives. Angels descend from heaven, as they do in Genesis, Exodus, Judges, Isaiah, Daniel, and all throughout Scripture, when the Lord is about to make Himself and His will known. So here the angel explains what all of this means: “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.” All those previous earthquakes, from Sinai right up to Calvary, the birth pangs of creation have now broken into delivery. What was fractured and broken at the cross has been turned around and reset. The new age, the age of the Messiah, has broken in and the former things have passed away. Something new is starting, filled with life that cannot be conquered, filled with a God who cannot die, filled with all the wonder and glory that life itself can contain.
But the immense weight of that glory doesn’t stay out there in the abstract, glittering far away somewhere. It rushes into the places that are familiar to Jesus’ faithful. The angel tells the women, “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.” Galilee is a very real place. It’s not a myth or a once-upon-a-time fairy tale land. It’s where fishermen lowered nets and then had to mend them on the seashore. It’s where people got sick and were healed. It’s where the crowds listening to Jesus’ sermons got hungry on a hillside. Galilee was ordinary life for these women who had followed Jesus from there. And that’s where they were being sent back to.
The resurrection doesn’t put Jesus out of our reach, in some kind of long long ago in a place far far away. It didn’t keep Him beyond the touch of His beloved disciples. No, He goes ahead of them to Galilee; the specific, unglamorous geography of everyday life. It’s there that we’re promised to see Him, on all the familiar roads and landscapes, the places where ordinary things happen to us, now touched and made holy by resurrection life.
That means that your Galilee is somewhere you already know. That’s where Jesus is going on ahead of you. The place He’s sending you is the place you drove from this morning. It’s the room you’re dreading going back to. It’s the job where you earn daily bread. It’s the unopened envelope on the table with the news you can’t quite bring yourself to read yet. He’s going on ahead of you there; not to the places where everything is perfectly resolved, where you’ve gotten your life together and ironed out, where you know exactly what you’re doing every moment of the day. No, He’s going ahead of you to the places where you actually live. And He arrives before you do. There you will see Him. See, I have told you.
So the women leave the empty tomb running, with fear and great joy. They’re afraid and joyful simultaneously. Notice that St. Matthew doesn’t feel the need to resolve the tension between those two emotions. It’s an extremely honest detail, and one that we can associate with. You know the good news of Easter, you have joy singing these hymns—I can hear it in your singing and see it in your faces from here. But that doesn’t mean that everything is paved over and smooth in your heart or mind. There can still be fear about what Monday is going to look like, or what next month will bring, or later this year, or in ten years. But just as the women ran with that mix of powerful emotions when Jesus met them, so He meets you when you’re in the middle of all that internal mess. He didn’t meet them at the tomb. He didn’t wait for them to process it all or come to a perfect understanding of what was happening because He was risen. No, He meets them on an ordinary road, midstride, in that unresolved state—still afraid and joyful, still running, still trying to figure what they’re even going to tell the Apostles. He doesn’t withhold Himself until the fear subsides or wait until they’re only all smiles. He meets them first. And then, He speaks peace into their fear.
This is how your Lord comes to you this morning. He’s not waiting for you to get everything right in your head or heart. He’s not keeping Himself from you until you’re all sorted out. He’s coming to you now and He’s speaking peace to your situation—ordinary, strange, happy, sad, or a mix of it all. He’s coming to you in the midst of your troubles, the big ones and the little everyday ones. He’s speaking peace and forgiveness to the life you have that’s a whirlpool of highs and lows, good deeds and shameful sins, moments of wisdom and foolishness. He’s here, in His Word, His greeting, His proclamation of eternal life for you. He’s standing on the road in front of you in His body and blood, given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins and the strengthening of your faith in body and soul to life everlasting. He’s with you on the road. He’s with you in the unresolved middle. He’s already ahead of you in your own Galilee, the places you live, having arrived before you did. And that’s where He will meet you, even before you’ve finished being afraid, even before you have it figured out and settled.
The earthquake shook things to the very core. The ground that shook on Easter morning is still the ground under your feet. The shaking that reordered the universe reaches all the way to you. But it’s the announcement that something great has happened. The tide has turned. Jesus has defeated sin and death. They can’t touch you anymore. And the One who left the tomb on Easter ahead of everyone else is already there, ahead of you, and He will meet you there. Alleluia! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia! In the name of Jesus, the Living One. Amen.
