There are activities that I mentally label as ‘compulsory fun’. Like, when you’re at a conference and there’s an hour set aside for drinks and nibbles, with the expectation that you will be convivial with a bunch of strangers? That’s compulsory fun. Or, when you were at school, and there was the swimming carnival and there was an expectation that everyone in your house or faction would be giddy with enthusiasm and want to scream chants about it? Compulsory fun. Or when, at Christmas or Easter, everyone must, simply must, go around to Auntie Maud’s house for a roast lunch because the whole family must, simply must, be together on special occasions, even if this results in a screaming match with Uncle Neville. Compulsory fun.
Sometimes, for me at least, The Great Three Days includes an element of compulsory fun. Of course, I’m complicit in it, inflicting the traditions of the church and my most recent brain farts on an unsuspecting congregation. But I’m not immune to the effects either. On Palm Sunday, everyone needs to be loud, then quiet. Then on Thursday everyone must be introspective and humble. On Friday, sadness and melancholy is mandatory for everyone. Then, Easter Day arrives and everyone will be happy. Or else.
The liturgy does much of the work for us, enforcing alleluias on Easter Day and long, solemn silences on Good Friday. But we shouldn’t kid ourselves. Some of us come to Good Friday filled with delight at a new job or a new granddaughter, and others come to Easter Day carrying trauma, shame and disappointment. It is part of the nature of liturgy that even as we sing Joy to the World or Tell Out My Soul, our own joy may be sparse and our own soul may feel broken.
I sometimes wonder what it would look like if we celebrated Easter with all the complex emotions that feature in the biblical witness. This year, we read the empty tomb narrative from Matthew’s gospel, so let’s take a look at what has been happening in Matthew’s account. On (what we would call) Friday afternoon, Matthew tells us, the curtain in the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook and rocks were split. Tombs opened, and saints who had died came back to life. After Jesus’ resurrection they would, according to Matthew, enter the city and appear to people.
That’s not a part of the Easter narrative we focus on – dead loved ones coming back to life and visiting us in what could only be a distressing and terrifying experience. Nor do we focus on the experience of Mary Magdalene and Mary, the mother of James and Joseph. Sitting there. Just sitting there opposite the place where Jesus body was laid, while Joseph of Arimathea laid his body there and rolled a stone across it. Like that moment when the funeral is over, but nobody can bring themselves to leave the graveside.
On what we would call Sunday morning, the two Marys, the same two who had sat by his tomb on Friday, went back to the tomb. Maybe you’ve done this? Gone back to visit the place where a loved one is laid. Maybe you’ve been back again and again. There are guards there, according to Matthew. Suddenly there is an earthquake and an angel appears. He looks like lightning and his clothing is white as snow. The guards, comically, go into convulsions and fall over. The angel rolls back the stone and invites the Marys to look inside, then he sends them to tell the other disciples that Jesus is raised and is going ahead of them to Galilee. On the way – not at the tomb as some depictions would have it – Jesus meets the Marys and says G’Day, and tells them to keep going and let the other disciples know what’s going on.
I don’t know about you, but if I was a Mary, by this stage I would be a heaving mess of adrenaline and nausea. Not to mention the running – I’m not recommending we should include running in the liturgy, or indeed in anything – but there’s a breathlessness in the story, the kind of anxious, wobbly rushing that accompanies an emergency. The women at the tomb are not merrily prancing down Jerusalem’s cobbled streets singing ‘Jesus Christ is Risen Today’. They’re frantic and confused and probably terrified.
The resurrected Christ, via the Marys, tells the eleven disciples to go to Galilee. This is not a small request. It is four solid days of walking to get from Jerusalem to Galilee. You would want to be pretty sure that something good is going to happen once you’re there. Once you’re in Galilee, you have to climb a mountain. But finally, the disciples are on top of the mountain, and we get the heart-wrenchingly beautiful scene of Jesus and his mates at the peak. He gives them ‘the great commission’ – go and baptise in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and remember I am with you always until the end of the age’. It’s epic stuff. The string section swells with rich chords and the shot widens to show them all looking wistfully into the future with a new hope! Christ is Risen! He is Risen Indeed!
Except that’s not quite what the text says. ‘When they saw him, they worshipped him, but some doubted.’ Can you imagine walking for four days, including quite a difficult climb up a mountain, and your recently executed hero appears to you in person, but you think ‘um…. is this for real? We’ve walked a long way, Zombie Jesus, could you give us something to work with?’. Actually I can imagine the doubt. The whole situation is really quite baffling. Why didn’t Jesus just pop in to someone’s house in Jerusalem like in Luke’s gospel? And what is he talking about – the end of what age? And how, exactly, is he going to be present with them? Their most recent experience involves a very long walk to make contact with the Risen Christ. Will it always be like this?
Matthew’s gospel does not depict the resurrection of Jesus from the dead as the happy epilogue to a tragic tale. Really, none of the gospels do, but Matthew in particular really piles the tension on thick. He has been getting us ready throughout the whole gospel. There’s parables about readiness, parables about coming judgement, and, just before the story of Jesus last days, the Little Apocalypse, in which Matthew’s Jesus anticipates the end of the world, and describes how God will separate the nations of the world like a shepherd separating the sheep from the goats. Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, for Matthew, is the visible, tangible climax of the story that Jesus has been telling all along. God is getting all up inside the world and bringing about a new kingdom. The resurrection is the sign of this new kingdom, and the disciples now need to live that resurrected life alongside Jesus. But we’re not home yet. The end of the age, the end of the eon, has not arrived yet. We are in the in-between times.
So when we celebrate today, we are not just rejoicing in Christ’s rising from the dead. We are also delighting in the open secret about the end of the age. Jesus will be with us until the end of the age, and when the end comes, what an end it will be - with peace and justice, compassion and freedom for all of God’s children, in the new creation which continues forever!
But until the end of the age? Geez, this place is a munted mess. Of course we come to today with fear and uncertainty, with doubt and anxiety. With joy, too, probably. And hope! It’s all here. Today wouldn’t be complete without the full spectrum of human emotions.
Today we’re really celebrating the fulfilment of the story, the bit that hasn’t happened yet. Down the track is when our joy will be complete. But right now, we’re still in the middle of the story. The tale is incomplete. We are not yet at the end of the age.
But our hearts, I hope, can still be strangely warmed – by the new fire and the light of the candle, by the splash of water and the precious body and blood of the one who said ‘Remember, I am with you always, even to the end of the age’
Christ is risen. Alleluia! Alleluia!