Matthew 28:1-10

The Life That Will Not Stay Hidden 

The King is coming! This is what we witnessed last Sunday on a road strewn with palm branches, a road that led into Jerusalem, the city of the great king.
 
“Hosannah! Save us now!”, the people cried out. Can this really be happening? Will the hope of the ages now finally be fulfilled?
 
The moment was pregnant with possibility. History hung in the balance.
 
But in the end these words were far from the hearts and lips of the scribes and high priests, who colluded with the Roman officials to have Jesus put to death.
 
“He saved others, but he could not save himself.” Affixed above his head was the charge against him: "The King of the Jews."
 
His executioners meant it to mock him. But to us it is the supreme irony. For irrespective of their intention, they are not wrong. This is the King of the Jews! This is the King of kings and Lord of lords!
 
Today we celebrate Easter, the greatest day in the Christian calendar. This is a time of abundance and joy, of feasting and thanksgiving. Our Lenten journey has led us here, to this place, the empty tomb, in which it culminates. Easter is the summit of the Christian year.
 
Let the Halleluiahs resound! Let the Hosannas, once silenced, ring out again! For our King is not dead, but lives. Long live the King!
 
Let us acclaim him as king! Behold, the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed! He is the Living One, once dead, but behold! is alive forever and ever!
 
In Italy there’s a small town named Sansepolcro, meaning Holy Sepulcher. The town itself is named after the tomb of Christ.
 
At the center of the town is a museum. In it hangs a magnificent painting named The Resurrection, the exquisite creation of Renaissance painter Piero della Francesca. (A copy appears on the cover of your bulletin.)
 
Christ stands at the mouth of the tomb — upright, composed, majestic. He holds the banner of victory, just like a king returning from conquest.
 
His posture is calm, serene, and projecting sovereign authority. His gaze is direct, almost judicial, as though he is surveying the world he has just reclaimed.
 
Beneath him lie the soldiers — agents of secular power, representatives of the violent empire that presumed to rule the world.
 
But here they are powerless, slumped at his feet. Their armor gleams, but their strength is gone. Their weapons are useless. Their vigilance has failed. They cannot keep watch against the King who rises.
 
Make no mistake. This is not Jesus merely alive again. This is Christ in the act of royal appearing. This is the King who breaks open the way to go forth (cf. Micah 2:13).
 
Who can stand opposed to him? Even those who make war on the earth will have ultimately to bow to him.
 
As if to express this very truth, there’s a story of a British officer who was ordered to shell Sansepolcro as allied forces moved through Italy in a campaign during the Second World War.
 
But the officer had seen the painting. He knew the truth that it proclaimed. At great personal risk, he disobeyed the order.
 
He refused to destroy the place where the image of the risen Christ stood. Even in the madness of war, this painting was judged worth preserving: a vision of the One whom death could not keep hidden.
 
This is not what the women expected. Mary Magdalene and Mary went to the tomb, not motivated by a vision of the risen Christ, abounding with life, but rather to see the tomb, an image of death. They were unprepared for what was about to happen.
 
The Gospel authors grope to find words to describe the enormity of the event. How can it be otherwise? How do you express the inexpressible?
 
Matthew, for his part, prefers the word seismos. We see it in our word “seismic.” The presence of Jesus in our world is “earth shaking.”
 
Do you remember Palm Sunday? When Jesus entered through the gates of Jerusalem, the holy city shook. And on Good Friday, when Jesus died on the cross, the earth shook, and the rocks split apart, and graves broke open (Matt. 27:51).
 
And on this day too, Easter Sunday, the earth shakes. “For an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it” (Matt. 28:2).
 
The posture is suggestive. With Herculean effort, the combined authority of Rome and the religious establishment moved a stone to seal the mouth of the tomb, erecting a monument to death. Without struggle, the angel sits on the stone, serene, untroubled, next to an empty tomb, a monument to life. 
 
In contrast, it is the soldiers guarding the tomb who shook and became like dead men (Matt. 28:4).
 
The armed deputies of the empire now lie prostrate, at the feet of the angel, an image of the authority that God delegates to the King at his right hand: [You shall reign] until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet” (Psalm 110:1).
 
Clothed in heaven’s brilliance, the angel would have had the same effect on the women, if it were not for his supporting command: “Do not be afraid” (Matt. 28:5).
 
The great biblical revelations are terrifying. When the Lord descended on Mount Sinai to give his people the Law, there was thunder and lightning, blazing fire, and a loud trumpet blast. Indeed, the sight was so terrifying that Moses himself said: “I am trembling with fear.”
 
No wonder then that throughout the entire resurrection account, the women remain speechless. Only from God’s side, to which the angelic belongs, can the resurrection event be spoken.
 
And that is good, because news this good can only come from God. We need to hear a word from God, whether spoken by an angel or a man, because our minds cannot conceive of an event of this magnitude. While the women have no words, the angel does.
 
Remarkably, the angel does acknowledge that it is Jesus the women are seeking. "O God, you are my God, early in the morning will I seek you" (Psalm 63:1). The words of the Psalmist find their deepest meaning, their deepest fulfillment, in the women's early morning walk to the tomb.
 
These women came looking for Jesus. And their witness to what they found is reliable. If the Gospel authors had invented a tale about the resurrection, they certainly would not have cast women as the central characters in the drama.
 
Jewish law at that time did not accept the testimony of women. As the historian Josephus recorded: "From women let no evidence be accepted, because of the levity and impertinence of their gender."
 
The church fathers were of a different opinion. St. Augustine said: "The woman Eve in the Garden announced death to her husband Adam. Now the women in the church announce salvation to the men. The Apostles were to announce the Resurrection to the nations, but the women announced it first to the Apostles."
 
Many of you perhaps know that Mary of Magdalene has been dignified with the title: "The apostle to the apostles."
 
Ironically, the angel does not entrust to the women an exotic or ecstatic message. It is not accompanied by choirs of angels, blasts of trumpets, or visions of glory. There is no mystical experience to report here.
 
There are only simple words with precise instructions: "Go and tell his disciples: he has been raised from the dead. He is going ahead of you to Galilee. There you will see him" (Matt. 28:7).
 
There is something earthy, something real about the angel’s message. Their encounter with the angel does not result in an ecstatic flight from the real, but in a task to be done in Galilee, in this world, in the here and now.
 
So also, when the Apostle Paul calls us in our epistle lesson to “set our minds on things above, not on things that are on earth” (Col. 4:2), he is not urging us to adopt an unhelpful unworldliness.
 
We should not misunderstand him here. He is not trying to turn us into people who are so heavenly minded that we are no earthly good.
 
Instead, he is inviting us to let our perspective on things in this world be shaped by the reign of the resurrected Christ, the King who is seated at the right hand of God.
 
Because Christ has been raised from the dead and now reigns victoriously, we of all people have reason to face the harsh realities of this world with courage and hope and even joy.
 
With the reception of this message comes conviction. It has taken root in the hearts of the women. It mobilizes them to go out and tell the disciples what they heard from the angel.
 
Here our lesson takes a dramatic turn. Before they reach the disciples, Jesus meets them. This is a royal appearing, the public manifestation of the king.
 
The Bible is one continuous story. This is what we have been learning in Sunday school with our girls, as I have shared before. That means that when we read the New Testament, we expect to hear echoes of the Old. We then see the links.
 
Long ago, Israel asked for a king. The prophet Samuel chose Saul. But when the decisive moment came for Saul to be presented to the public as king, he did not appear. When summoned into the open, before the people, he withdrew, hiding himself among their baggage (1 Samuel 10:22).
 
Saul stands as a foil to Jesus. Jesus is hidden in the grave. Yet it is not fear, hesitation, or inadequacy that leads him there. His is the opposite movement. It is from the grave, that cannot keep him, that he comes out.
 
Saul is hidden because he is not equal to the throne. Christ was hidden — but the grave was not equal to him.
 
And behold, Jesus met them" (Matt. 28:9). Matthew uses "behold" deliberately. Look! Attend! This is the language of royal appearing. Your king is now present.
 
The King addresses them with a formal greeting. Matthew’s use of the word is charged.
 
Earlier, before his crucifixion, the soldiers use the same word to address a man they believed was defeated and destined for death.
 
Having twisted together a crown of thorns, they pressed it into his scalp, and mockingly cried, “Hail, King of the Jews!”
 
Now Jesus uses the same word to greet the first witnesses of the resurrection. The mockery becomes the public announcement. The word weaponized in the Praetorium becomes the first word of the resurrection morning.
 
The soldiers’ cruel irony is swallowed up in a deeper irony they never could have imagined!
 
That public announcement induces the women to fall at his feet and do obeisance to him as to a great king.
 
Should not the mood expressed in that announcement also infuse our worship of him today and all the days of our lives?
 
And yet this event does not terminate in worship, but in mission. Jesus repeats the message of the angel. The women are to tell the disciples to go and meet him in Galilee, as we have already heard.
 
And why Galilee? It is the place of beginnings. Galilee is the first place where Jesus preaches the kingdom of heaven. Galilee is the place where the disciples were called. Galilee is the place where Jesus first went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, thereby demonstrating that God was with him.
 
In instructing the women to tell the disciples to meet him there, Jesus is signaling that there will be new beginnings, for his disciples then, and for his disciples now. As long as this world lasts, we disciples will always have work to do in our own Galilees.
 
“He is not here, he has been raised.” To us, the church, God entrusts the Easter message of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead today.
 
But we are not to go in our own strength. We go in the power of Christ’s resurrection. For we have been baptized into Christ. In baptism, we have been joined to him not only in his death and burial but also in his resurrection.
 
That means we share in what he now is: his life, his victory, his kingship.
 
We share even now in his royal office. Not as those who rule by pomp and display, or by the recognition of this world, but as those in whom his resurrection life is already at work.
 
And that life will not stay hidden. It cannot remain buried beneath fear or silence. It cannot be motivated by the instinct to withdraw. For it is finally not your life that is at stake. It is his.
 
And that same life that brought him out of the grave now presses outward in us. It calls us out of concealment into the light.
 
Israel once had a king who hid himself among the baggage. But we belong to the King who comes forth, who stands before his people. He is not absent, not concealed, and not uncertain. He is present, alive and reigning.
 
And because you are his, your life, too, will not stay hidden.
 
The life of the risen Christ will not stay concealed — not in the grave, not in his people. He is risen. And his life is already appearing. Amen.