- Sermon - Mickey Anders

Text: Matthew 28:1-10

How would you like to live in "bubbleland?" That's what many people call the part of Kentucky that is not contiguous to Kentucky. It is also called the New Madrid Bend or Kentucky Bend. Perhaps you were aware that there was 17 square miles of Kentucky totally surrounded by Missouri and Tennessee, not connected at all to the rest of Kentucky, and called an "exclave." It is part of Kentucky but is totally surrounded by Missouri and Tennessee. According to the 2000 census, there were 17 people living on this land removed from the rest of the state. The only road into this bubble is Tennessee State Highway 22. Isn't that one of the oddest bits of trivia about Kentucky?

Obviously, the border of Kentucky is the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. When the river changed its course, it left this bit of Kentucky hanging. We would normally think such a change would take thousands of years, but this one happened overnight on February 7, 1812.

This exclave was created by the New Madrid Earthquake. Notice the little town at the north part of the bend. That's New Madrid, Missouri, and it was the epicenter for the largest earthquake ever recorded in the contiguous United States.

The earthquake had a magnitude of 8.0 on the Richter scale. Church bells were reported to ring in Boston, Massachusetts and sidewalks were reported to have been cracked and broken in Washington, D.C. Large areas sank into the earth, new lakes were formed, and the Mississippi River changed its course, creating numerous geographic exclaves, including Kentucky Bend. Some sections of the Mississippi River ran backwards for a short time. (Wikipedia)

What a powerful earthquake! The river changed its course. The landscape was forever changed.

Each of the Gospels focuses on the Easter event in a different way. Mark has a bare eight verses. The women had been saying to one another, ‘Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?’ When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe… He said to them, ‘Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him.

Luke emphasizes the Sunday evening meal with Jesus and those travelers on the road to Emmaus.

Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus… and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing him.

They invited Jesus to share a meal with them. So he went in to stay with them. When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight. They said to each other, ‘Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?’

John stresses the encounter between Jesus and Mary Magdalene in the garden.

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb.

Peter and the other disciple came looked and left, but Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb;

She turned round and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus.

Jesus said to her, ‘Mary!’ She turned and said to him in Hebrew, ‘Rabbouni!’ (which means Teacher).

Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, ‘I have seen the Lord’; and she told them that he had said these things to her.

But in Matthew, he tells the story this way:

After the sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. And suddenly there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow. For fear of him the guards shook and became like dead men.

In Matthew, Easter is an earthquake with doors shaken off tombs and dead people walking the streets. Matthew's version tells us that the Resurrection was shocking stuff! The earth shook. The ground heaved. The dead walked. The landscape was forever changed.

Matthew argues that the story of Jesus is one about powerful changes. Not rivers, but lives changed their course, and the spiritual landscape was forever changed.

Before Jesus was born, an angel appeared to a young woman named Mary, and her life changed course. She sang,

‘My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.

And she foretold changes to the political landscape of the day:

He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.

His cousin, John the Baptist predicted changes to the landscape:

He proclaimed in the words of Isaiah, ‘The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” ’

A fisherman named Simon was tending his nets, when this itinerant preacher approached and said simply, "Follow me." Simon laid down his nets, and the course of his life changed. After living with Jesus for almost three years, Simon was changed. Even his name was changed from impetuous Simon to Peter, the rock. At Caesarea Philippi, Jesus asked, "Who do you say that I am?" It was Simon Peter who blurted out ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.’

Jesus hung on the cross between two criminals. One derided him saying, ‘Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!’ But the other criminal recognized something special in this third man dying on a cross that day, and his eternal destiny was changed when he said, ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.’ Jesus replied, ‘Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.’

Even after his death, lives continued to be changed. A secular Roman centurion witnessed the death of Jesus. How many crucifixions had he seen before? But this one was different. When Jesus died, the centurion proclaimed, ‘Truly this man was God’s Son!’

The followers of Jesus were even bolder after his death. They went everywhere proclaiming that this Jesus had literally been raised from the dead. Their message created such a stir that some of the believers were dragged before the city authorities, and the people shouted, "These people are the people who have been turning the world upside down."

One Pharisee spent all his time obsessed with persecuting this new sect. As he made his way to Damacus to persecute some more of these followers of the Way, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?’ He asked, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ The reply came, ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. It was an earthquake that would change the course of his life and the course of human history.

Saul the converted Pharisee would put into words the spiritual earthquake that Jesus caused. He interpreted the change in the spiritual landscape. According to Paul, the Easter earthquake destroyed the power of sin. In the book of Romans, he argues that sin came into the world through one man, Adam. He says, “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” "For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." "God commends his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."

Paul even argues that the Easter earthquake put an end to the power of death itself. He says "death came through a human being (Adam) , the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being (Jesus); for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ."

He is so convinced of the power of Christ's resurrection that he argues for our resurrection as well.

"When this perishable body puts on imperishability, and this mortal body puts on immortality, then the saying that is written will be fulfilled: ‘Death has been swallowed up in victory.’ ‘Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?’ The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ."

An earthquake often changes the landscape. In 2004, an earthquake off the west coast of Sumatra, Indonesia, caused a tsunami that killed more than 225,000 people in eleven countries. It was the second largest earthquake ever recorded and caused waves 100 feet high. Whole villages were wiped away.

Matthew tells us that Jesus' Resurrection caused a spiritual tsunami, a mighty wave of God's spirit, that has swept the world. If we have ears to hear and eyes to see, that earthquake can change the course of our lives as well.