A very Happy Easter

It was thrilling to be back in church with the allotted socially-distanced mask-wearers....all greeting each other with care and great enthusiasm. I shared how 'jazzed' I was to be preaching on this greatest day of the year.  Matthew’s account is dramatic (Matt. 28:1-10) Because he tells us that at dawn the first Easter Day there was an earthquake.  The very ground shook violently.  Matthew also tells us that when Jesus died the earth shook. Here is God at work. I focused on two major aspects of God's work with us. 

The POWER of God.  On Jan 12 2021 I was sitting at the kitchen table in our small extension when suddenly, the whole section of the house was shaken by a huge shock wave that hit the French doors with violence and seemed to move everything.  I imagined the extension would have cracks coming apart from the main house.  Outside, neighbours had gathered because the shock.  Carol was sure it was a sonic boom and later the RAF confirmed that Quick Reaction Alert Typhoon aircraft had been launched to intercept an aircraft that has lost communication. We were assured they were authorized to fly at supersonic speeds and sure enough sonic boom had blasted a wide area.  Apparently it can have force of 100 megawatts per square metre and sound loud at 200 decibels! 

Now, I mustn’t let imagination run wild, but the way Matthew tells it - at the same time as the Angel of the Lord comes down from heaven and going to the tomb rolls back the stone, with appearance like lightning and clothes white as snow, the earthquake occurs. An extraordinary shaking divine intervention. A godly POW.  At the epicentre, guards were so afraid  they shook and became like dead men.  Angels were there are the beginning of the story with Elizabeth and Mary and at Christmas their message ran: Don’t be afraid, We bring good news.  And here in a convulsion in the very fabric of the universe the angel announces: Fear not (why wouldn't you be frightened?) He's not here, he is risen. Go and look in the empty tomb. He's alive and on the move. Everything is shaken to the core.   

How God breaks the rules! All that we thought we knew about life and death is transformed. God has dealt with Man’s first enemy SIN as his only son dies to bear the consequences of our sin and to set us free, the righteous for the unrighteous. God has dealt with man’s last enemy DEATH as his only Son rises from the dead.  He guarantees life has ultimate meaning.  Up until the first Easter nobody could tell us what life was about and how it was to end. Of course people speculated. Philosophers philosophized, optimists optimized, pessimists pessimized. But no one knew for sure until that first Easter when God acted in power to show us  definitively, that human life has purpose far beyond what we see. And that the Lord who declared: I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life' really is!  He is the Resurrection and the Life.  Everything is changed for the better.