Earthquakes and Resurrections

Here is my message for Easter Sunday. The text was Matthew 28:1-10:

Have you ever had a resurrection take place in your life?  Maybe it was that houseplant that you thought you had killed, but somehow it came back stronger and greener, or maybe it was an appliance you thought for sure was a goner, but somehow it was able to be fixed and kept running.  Maybe it was a relationship or a job that you thought were over, but was somehow renewed and given new life and vitality.  Or maybe, like author and commentator David Sedaris, you’ve seen a more dramatic resurrection in your life.  He recounts the time when the family dog Duchess gave birth to a litter of puppies.  After all the puppies were born, one of them appeared to have died but Sedaris’ mother took the puppy arranged it in a casserole dish and popped it into the oven.  When Sedaris and his sisters reacted with horror, their mother responded “Oh, keep your shirts on.  I’m not baking anyone, this is just to keep him warm. The heat revived the sick puppy,” Sedaris said, “and left us believing that our mother was capable of resurrecting the dead.”

What stories of resurrection remind us is that resurrection is only needed; indeed resurrection is only possible when things appear to be at an end.  You cannot resurrect something that is going well. Only relationships on the rocks can be resurrected.  Only careers and jobs that are lapsing can be resurrected.  Only failing health can be resurrected.  Only when the baseball season appears to be over before it has started can it be resurrected.  Only lives that have ended can be resurrected.  I say all this because while it might be obvious that death and resurrection go together, I think that sometimes we forget it, and so especially in this time of quarantines and shelter at home orders we need to remember, in this time in which we so desperately want and hunger for a return to normal, we have to remember that resurrection comes out of the darkness and despair of Good Friday, it only comes from the death and the tomb, and it means so much because of those things. Indeed this Holy Week and this Easter have a different meaning for most people, I think because of what we are experiencing as a town, a state, a nation and a world. And we have much in common in our situation with the women and the disciples this day.