Beyond the Beginning Jeremiah 31:1-6, Matthew 27:57-28:15

For everything there is a season, says the preacher in Ecclesiastes,
and a time for every purpose under heaven.
A time to be born and a time to die. (Eccl.3:1-2).
In other words, we all know there is a beginning to things and an end to things

We expect beginnings: the birth of a baby, our first real job.
And we expect endings: the last page of a good book, our final breath.
Beginnings usually make us happy.
Endings we sometimes deny
like when we put off writing a will,
or bitterly resist giving up a driver’s license.
Yet, on some level we know,
there is a time to be born and a time to die;
a time to begin and a time to end.

There was nothing to suggest that Jesus’ life was going to be any different.
If Jesus’ beginning was special, as Matthew suggests,
his ending must have been a huge disappointment to those who knew him.
To be Jesus’ disciple in those final days of his life
must have been like trying to steer a car that’s hit a long patch of ice.
In moments like that things move in slow motion
and nothing you do or say or even scream makes one bit of difference.
All you can do is watch in horror as things spin out of control
and you head straight toward a giant tree – or, in Jesus’ case – a giant cross.

It didn’t help that Jesus kept hitting the accelerator instead of the brakes
as he hurtled toward the cross.
Every word he said, every action he took
seemed calculated to provoke those who wanted to do him harm.
Can we really blame the disciples for opening the doors at the last minute
and bailing out before the big collision?
Just because Jesus seemed determined to speed up HIS end,
didn’t mean they should, too.

Maybe they DID feel bad about the way they just abandoned Jesus in his last days.
Matthew tells us that Peter wept bitterly after the third time he denied knowing Jesus.
But, the scene Matthew paints for us of events following the crucifixion
doesn’t include a single one of the regular cast of Jesus’ most intimate confidants;
Not Peter, not James, not John – none of them.

It’s Joseph of Arimathea, in a cameo performance, who offers a final resting place –
a substantial tomb with an extra heavy stone
with which to keep OUT jackals and grave robbers and keep IN the smell.
And it’s Mary Magdalene and another Mary,
two women who were of no consequence in first century Jerusalem;
who kept vigil as Jesus was laid to rest.

There is a time to be born and a time to die.
All things have both a beginning and an ending.
It’s what we expect.
It’s how we order our lives.
Everything we do – eat, sleep, love, fight –
everything we do, we do with the end in mind,
in most cases, trying our best to keep our end as far as we can in the future.

Knowing what we know about death, about the end,
it’s easy to let ourselves obsess about it;
easy to let our dread of the end contaminate every other decision we make.
We store up treasures and, when we run out of storage space,
we build bigger barns because we’re scared we won’t have enough.
If others don’t have enough, well, that’s just too bad.
They’re not getting any of mine!
The assumption, of course, is that the more I have socked away,
the longer I can put off coming to my end.
It’s a faulty assumption, of course, but I still can convince myself it’s true.

We build bigger armies, finance more sophisticated weapons,
give up our expectations of privacy just so we can feel more secure.
I reinforce my stereotypes of those I perceive to be my enemies
so I can more easily identify those who might be a threat to me,
again, assuming that perfect security is a goal I can achieve
and, if I achieve it, my fantasy is that my end can be put off indefinitely.

All indications are that Mary Magdalene and the other Mary
went to the sealed tomb expecting all they knew about beginnings and endings
to be confirmed.
They knew, like we all know, that there is a time to be born and a time to die
and that the fear of death can sometimes make us
a little bit greedy and cowardly and mean
There was no reason at all for them to expect anything other than
to find a guard of bored, leering soldiers on cemetery duty
keeping watch over a sealed, occupied tomb.

But, as Matthew, puts it, “A new day was dawning”
as the two Mary’s went to pay an early visit to Jesus’ tomb.
Tom Long, in his commentary on Matthew writes,
“Somewhere along the path to the cemetery…they left one world and entered another.
Without even knowing that they had crossed the border, they left the old world,
where hope is in constant danger, and might makes right,
and peace has little chance, and the rich get richer,
and the weak all eventually suffer under some Pontius Pilate or another,
and people hatch murderous plots and dead people stay dead,
and they entered the startling and breathtaking world of resurrection and life.1

Everything these two women thought they knew about beginnings and endings
was rendered obsolete that Sunday morning.
They knew, they absolutely KNEW, that the stone sealing the mouth of Jesus’ tomb
would still be in place, because once in place, huge stones don’t move.
They KNEW without a shadow of doubt,
that the Roman guard would be menacing and strong.
Occupying soldiers NEVER show mercy to the occupied.
They KNEW without question that the “behind the scenes” manipulations
of the Jewish elite signaled the end of Jesus’ grand experiment in Truth and Grace.
There’s no getting past the roadblock of powerful men.

But a close reading of Matthew’s gospel tips us off to what the women will find
even if we’d never read about the empty tomb before.
A close reading of Matthew’s gospel leads us to suspect
that the power equation we all think we understand is about to be turned on its head
and what we KNOW to be the end of Jesus is not the end at all.

Way back in chapter one, Matthew has already told us
that when it comes to starts and finishes, beginnings and endings,
Jesus breaks the mold.
Remember? Mary is found to be pregnant.
It should have been the end of her relationship to Joseph,
who was, after all, a righteous man.
But an angel appears to Joseph (there’s that angel)
and rolls away the stone of Jewish law and cultural prohibition
and clears the way for Jesus’ birth.

The Wise Men come to pay homage to Jesus, stopping in Jerusalem first
to pay a courtesy call to King Herod.
Troubled by this potential threat to his power, Herod representing Rome,
consults with – oh look! – the scribes and chief priests - the Jewish elite,
and Herod tries through deceit and finally violence to squash the threat.
But Jesus and his family escape to Egypt
until Herod’s death signals that it’s safe to return home.

When it comes to beginnings and endings, Matthew has already shown us
that, with Jesus, all bets are off.
With Jesus we have to recalibrate what we think we know.

The women come to the tomb and, always one to put on a show,
God gives a drum roll in the form of an earthquake.2
Lightning flashes, the stone rolls away, and an angel appears, sits on the stone,
and crosses its arms as if to say, “What do you think of THAT!”
The angel says to them, “Come, look inside if you must just to satisfy your need to know
but don’t waste your time here.
Don’t waste your time HERE. There’s nothing to see HERE.

This place that you thought was the end is nothing.
Go quickly and tell his disciples that he will meet them in Galilee.
Go quickly and tell his disciples that he’ll meet them back at the beginning,
not so they can do it all over and hope to get it right this time,
because it was done right the FIRST time.
But tell them to go to Galilee because everything they thought was the end
is really a new beginning.
Everything they thought was the curtain coming down on all their hopes
is nothing more and nothing less than the curtain coming up
on the first act of a new life WITHOUT FEAR!”

The women ran – quickly like the angel said.
The women ran from the tomb laughing and sobbing, dancing and stumbling.
They ran from the EMPTY tomb to tell the disciples what had happened
and along the way they bumped into Jesus
and what could they do but fall at his feet and worship?
When the door has been opened to you
and the way has been cleared for you to step through into a new reality
where political power and military power and even death itself
have been revealed as nothing but paper tigers and candy clowns
what can you do but fall at his feet and worship?

“Do not be afraid,” Jesus tells them. That, and “Go tell my brothers to meet me.”
This is most important.
The disciples – the eleven who were left after Judas –
had abandoned Jesus in his time of need.
They had scattered in fear,
scattered because they bought into the lie that Rome and the Jewish elite
had power over beginnings and endings.
When the chips were down they had believed what their experience
had told them to believe and not what Jesus had told them to believe.
But with the resurrection that first Easter morning,
Their betrayal was put under a spotlight;
their fear and unbelief hung out for all to see.

Yet Jesus had a message for them.
He has a message for us.
“Fear is a powerful thing. Intimidation is scary.
By all accounts, death looms large like a huge stone
ready to drop on our heads at any moment.
You have given into the fear sometimes.
You have made unfaithful choices as a result of your fear –
choices that look greedy and mean and cowardly.”

“But let’s not dwell on that,” Jesus says,
“Let’s not allow those past choices be the stone that keeps you in the tomb.
Let’s begin again, you and I, not as teacher/student, not as Lord/subject,
but as brothers, as sisters.
Let’s go beyond the beginning, you and I,
into a life where the stone is rolled away,
and fear does not determine our every move
and Easter faith is our guide.

_________
1 Long, Tom, Matthew, Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997, p. 322.
2 Ibid.