What Day is Today

Text: Matthew 28:1-10

This is not a day of sweet contentment. This is not the day that resolves Holy Week’s mysteries. This is not the explanation. It is instead a day of disruption. Of new mysteries made.

Today is a day of confusion. A day of joy and fear. This is the day that Mary Magdelene and the other Mary went to see the tomb.

Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb where Jesus had been placed, his death clear to everyone and attested to by the soldiers who went out to make sure. The two disciples went to watch the tomb, in Matthew’s story, not to anoint the body—that is in another Gospel. But to keep a vigil, to keep watch. Jesus was dead. The last scene had closed, the credits had rolled off the screen.

But then an angel appeared, an angel in white, looking for all the world like lightning, with a message: Do not be so quick to draw conclusions. Take a look, see what you see. The angel rolled away the tombstone, and—behold!—as a result the earth shook. Behold! it says. And the guards shook too.

Where was Jesus? Not here, the angel said. He is not here, which was obvious by then. That was confusing. Perhaps there were possible, reasonable explanations why he was not there: Perhaps someone spirited him away (as the guards later think in verses we did not read). Perhaps this was the wrong tomb. Perhaps Jesus had only appeared dead (though they knew otherwise).

None of those things is the reason, says the messenger. Jesus has been raised. That is the reason Jesus was not there. And the angel says again: Jesus has been raised from the dead. And a third time, the same message in a different form: You will see him soon, here, on this earth. And they did.

In the Gospel of Matthew, this story is short and clear. There is no magical realism of the sort found in the Gospel of John. This is an account as straightforward as Matthew can make it. This is what happened, here is who said what to whom. Yet the earthquake and the lightning-like angel—to say nothing of the amazing message—tell us that straightforward and commonplace are two different things. The story is not easily told in natural terms. Yet Matthew’s deadpan delivery makes it clear that it is not unnatural. A surprising and unexpected simple event.

Yet there is an urgency underlying Matthew’s version of this event. Behold! the angel says. The word repeats four times in this short passage, but never translated that way in our Bible. It comes out as “suddenly.” Suddenly there was a great earthquake. But it is really: Behold! A great earthquake! The word comes from a word about sight, about seeing. Seeing with urgency. Pay attention! might be better. Or Look here! Pay attention, Mary Magdelene and the other Mary! Jesus is going ahead of you. Behold! Jesus met them and greeted them.

Expectations get us stuck in a kind of dreary landscape. It is not that the two women had run out of hope. Rather, they saw that what happened to Jesus is what happens to everyone. Promising beginnings give way to disappointed middles or tragic ends. The promise of a new world was not so much dashed as it fizzled out. They arrived at the tomb expecting to find things as things always are. It is not that they could have been prepared for what happened (though Jesus does try to warn his disciples ahead of time). But if everything works out as predicted, then there is no new world. There is no transformation. If our lives follow the expected route, if we understand exactly how things work, then there is no surprising future.

Behold! says Matthew. Behold! says the angel. Mary Magdelene and the other Mary are filled with fear and joy. Both coming as a result of expectations shattered. Is everything going wrong or is everything going right? Should they be afraid that things that cannot happen have happened, or should they be joyful for what has happened? Behold! says the angel. Can they believe their own eyes?

Fear and joy. It is a recipe for confusion. The angel tells them not to be afraid. And Jesus says the same. And he tells them to be joyful (not Greetings as our Bible puts it, but more than that: an encouragement to joy. Great to see you! he says.)

It is confusing. Yet it is only in the midst of this kind of holy confusion that change happens, and new futures are revealed, hinted at. Unfold in us and in front of us. And out of which new worlds are formed, or new ways of being in the world. New kingdoms. The kingdom of God. When expectations are not met, and both joyfully and fearfully so.

Though we sometimes seek out these times of confusion, stepping into adventures unknown, on paths untrodden. More often—if we are blessed—they come upon us, as they did Mary Magdelene and the other Mary. We can and do run from them. In Matthew’s story, the two women are told to tell the other disciples to meet Jesus in Galilee. In Mark’s version, they are told the same. But in Mark, they say nothing to anyone, and run away. In Matthew, they run to the disciples in fear and joy to announce the good news. By their actions, the church is born. A new thing.

Faith is not an antidote to confusion. It does not ensure a predictable life that fulfills our expectations. Such a life closes off all avenues for re-birth and renewal. Rather, faith lets us not only endure that state of fear and joy, it lets us welcome it. To seek it.

God is certainly not done with us. There are bound to be more fearful, joyful disruptions ahead. More mysteries to unfold. Faith enables us to remain confused and not to flee, trusting in God, awestruck at what God has done, and eager to see—Behold!—what will happen next.

Thanks be to God.