Angelic
Instructions – An
Easter Sermon reflecting on Matthew 28. 1-10 – Preached
at The Dunmore Presbyterian Church, Dunmore, PA on April 5, 2026
One
of our family stories involves my wife and an on-line, on-camera conversation
with our granddaughter when she was a toddler. Jan told Addie about taking our
dog, Maggie, for a walk at our home in Susquehanna County. Then as now, we share the acreage with eight
or ten deer that feed in our meadow. If we’re out and about, they’ll give us a
look and go back to manicuring the field.
That day, one of the young fawns, a
curious sort, made a move toward Jan and the dog. The brown bundle of energy was dancing and
prancing the way she does when it plays with its twin. Jan told our little one “the deer wanted to
play with Maggie, but I think Maggie was scared of the little deer.”
The little person on the screen
looked at her grand-mother, pointed a finger for emphasis, and summoning all
the authority granted to someone two-plus years old, said: “Grammy, when I come
to your house, I tell Maggie: “No be scared, Maggie!”
In Matthew’s Easter morning story,
both the angel and Jesus speak to the women, “Do not be afraid.” The phrase
links the last stories of the Gospels with the first. What did the angel say to Mary before telling
her she was about to be with child? “Do not be afraid.” What did the angel in
Joseph’s dream say that change his mind about divorcing his pregnant fiancée?
“Do not be afraid.” What did the angel
say to “certain poor shepherds in fields where they lay keeping their sheep?”
“Do not be afraid.”
Like the other Gospels, Matthew
tells of Easter morning happenings the others don’t. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John differ in
telling who went to the tomb and why; when and how the stone covering the
tomb’s entrance was rolled away; who spoke to whom, and who did or not see
Jesus. Each of the Easter morning reporters had some things they wanted their
readers to notice. Today we’re focusing
on what Matthew wants us to see. In other words, this is Matthew’s story and
we’re sticking to it!
To do that, we must turn back a page
or two to look and listen and feel what was going on in the day leading up to
that morning full of surprises. No need to go back and replay all the grim and
grisly scenes most people avoid by being elsewhere on Maundy Thursday and Good
Friday. Even those services of worship
usually stop telling the story at the point where a Roman Centurion at the
foot of the cross speaks, “Truly this man was the Son of God.”
Matthew’s
crucifixion account doesn’t end there. It concludes with a list of witnesses
and their credentials: He writes: “Many women were also there, looking on from
a distance; they had followed Jesus from Galilee and had provided for him.
Among them were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and
the mother of the sons of Zebedee.” (Mt. 27. 55-56
In two scenes we rarely hear about,
Matthew tells what happened next, setting the stage for the events we have heard
about this morning. Taking us back to
just before sunset on Good Friday, Matthew lets us know how the women knew
where to go at Sunday’s sunrise. He writes: “When
it was evening, there came a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph, who was
also a disciple of Jesus. He went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus; then
Pilate ordered it to be given to him. So Joseph took the body and wrapped in a
clean linen cloth, and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn from the
rock. He then rolled a great stone to the door of the tomb and went away. Mary
Magdalene and the other Mary were there, sitting opposite the tomb.” (Mt. 27.
57-61)
In Matthew, the women don’t go to
the tomb to anoint the body of Jesus. They don’t have to do that because they have
witnessed how Joseph prepared the body for burial. The presence of the two
Mary’s in the background, at the foot of the cross, as Joseph rolled the stone
to seal the tomb, and lastly as the angel rolled it away, stand as the two
individuals required by Jewish law to give testimony.
Back to Joseph for just a moment.
Though he doesn’t figure in the story of Easter morning, his respectful care of
the body of Jesus, the use of his own brand new tomb, the effort to roll the
stone, point to one reason for fear in his or any other life: going against the
crowd. N.T. Wright points to Joseph as one of those individuals who summon courage
at just the right moment to do what needs to be done. Joseph steps into the picture as one of those
people who put their own grief aside to take care of business when death
intrudes on a circle of family and friends.
Wright says this about Joseph’s
approach to Pontius Pilate: “Peter and the others had run away to hide because they
were afraid of being thought accomplices of Jesus. Joseph had no such qualms
even after Jesus’ death.” Wright continues: “Some of Jesus’ followers might
well have thought that, if the Romans had crucified him, he can’t have been the
Messiah, so he must have been a charlatan. They might willingly have let the
Romans bury him in a common grave, as they usually did after a cruci-fixion. But
Joseph didn’t see it that way. A clean linen cloth; the tomb he had prepared
for himself; and
Matthew includes a second story
before moving on to tell about the two Mary’s going to view the tomb early on
the first day of the week. The calendar
has dropped a page to the floor as Matthew adds another feature that comes into
play in his Easter story.
“The next day, that is, after the
day of Preparation, the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered before Pilate
and said, ‘Sir, we remember what that imposter said while he was still alive.
‘After three days I will rise again.’ Therefore command the tomb to be made
secure until the third day; otherwise his disciples may go and steal him away,
and tell the people, ‘He has been raised from the dead,’ and the last deception
would be worse than the first.’ Pilate
said to them, ‘You have a guard of soldiers; go, make it as secure as you
can.’ So they went with the guard and
made the tomb secure by sealing the stone.” (Mt. 27.62-66)
Contemplate that meeting of
religious and political power brokers for a moment. On one level it is a simple story of
conspirators cooking up a cover story.
On another it is the height of hypocrisy. Those who so often pointed the finger at
Jesus for defiling the Sabbath by works of healing are doing business on the
holy day. Pick your caption for the picture: “Do as I say, not as I do,” “The
End justifies the Means,” or “Politics makes strange bedfellows.” Whichever we choose, it should not surprise
us that such backroom deal making went on. I’ve heard such shenanigans still go
on, haven’t you?
Now we’re ready to see what happens
when all heaven breaks loose! How do you describe something that is indescribable? In the Gospel of Matthew, the answer is bring
on the angels! Heaven’s messengers
haven’t been seen in the Gospel since the last of Joseph’s dreams back when
Jesus was a boy. Now one of them is back
to announce the Resurrection.
The gray of the dawn is suddenly
brightened as the angel descends. Apparently, some angels have a heavy step,
because his arrival on earth triggers an earthquake. The angel steps toward the stone like Samson
on the day he grasped the Philistine temple pillars and brought the house
down. With a mighty grunt, shoulder to
the wheel, so to speak, the stone is rolled back from the tomb’s gaping mouth. Dusting off angelic hands, the messenger
climbs atop the stone and takes a breath before speaking to the startled women.
Meanwhile the soldiers sent to make sure the seal on the tomb remained unbroken
are quaking in the gladiator boots, laid out prone like the rest of the
cemetery inhabitants.
An earthquake occurs…all hell breaks
loose…and fear is rampant. We’ve seen evidence of that whenever a quake strikes
and the security cameras roll. Images
captured show groceries dumped from shelves onto the floor, chandeliers
swaying, and volunteers digging in rubble to save people trapped beneath
crumbled buildings. People running out of buildings in panic after each
aftershock.
Only
in Matthew are we invited to witness who did, and by inference, who did not
open that grave. Barbara Brown Taylor
shows us what Matthew is up to, explaining, “A grave robber did not do it. A Messiah sympathizing soldier did not do
it. A band of guerilla disciples
certainly did not do it. An
God did it. Each time Jesus told his disciples he would be
arrested, tried and killed, he had told them what God would do. He didn’t say “I’m going to pull off the
Great Escape!” He said that he would be
raised…something only God could do. Now
it had been done.
The angel speaks. And what does he say? “Do
not be afraid!” But wait, there’s
more! There always is with an
angel. “Angel” means messenger and every
one of them had something more to share once they offered those fear calming
words:
“I
know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he
has been raised, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. Then go quickly
and tell his disciples, “He has been raised from the dead, and indeed he is
going ahead of you to Galilee, there you will see him.” (Mt. 28. 6-7)
Perhaps this is the moment to talk
about the difference faith makes when it comes to facing fear. The stricken soldiers, who are just there to
do a job and collect a paycheck presumably hear all the angel says, but it
means nothing to them. The women, on the other hand, who stuck with Jesus to
the very last, who had heard what he taught, and in Mary Magdalene’s case, had
been healed by Jesus, got it.
Not only do they get it, they act on
it. They run to tell the disciples and
come face to face with the Risen Lord. Though our translation told us he said:
“Greetings!” in the original language he issued a command: “Rejoice!” Once again they respond as a disciple should:
they obey. They rejoice! They “fall on
their knees with their face to the Risen Son. O Lord, have mercy!”
He does. He snaps them out of it
with just the right words: “Do not be afraid!” Then reminds them they are
messengers on a mission: “Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee, there they will see me.” And off they go
again.
“Do
not be afraid.” What is it about those words?
Martin Copenhaver offers this: “When an angel says, “Do not be afraid,”
or when Jesus says “Fear not,” it is not an assurance that nothing can go
wrong, because often things do go wrong.
It is not assurance that everything turns out for the best, because, if
we are honest about it, it seldom does.
Rather, it is assurance that, whatever may happen to us, whatever a day
may hold, God has the power to strengthen us and uphold us; that whatever we must face, we do not face it
alone; that nothing we encounter is stronger than God’s love; that ultimately God
“Do not be afraid.” What is it about those words? Maybe it has something to do with who says
them, and why. Both the angel and Jesus
speak those words to gain a hearing for the rest of what they have to say. Both the angel and Jesus have comfort to
offer along with a task for the women to do. The angel speaks of a reunion: “he
is going ahead of you to Galilee, there you
will see him.” It turns out they don’t have to wait that long. The task and the promise of renewed presence
are there again. “Go and tell my
brothers to go to Galilee, there they
will see me.”
Seeing Jesus must be the key.
Experiencing the presence of Jesus is what Resurrection is all about. Frederick Buechner wrote: “in the last
analysis what convinced the people that Jesus had risen from the dead was not
the absence of his corpse but his living presence. And so it has been ever
Why did the angel and Jesus insist
on meeting in Galilee, the place where it had all begun by the lake? Cameron Murchison provides this answer: “The theological point of telling the
disciples to meet him in Galilee is straightforward: the risen Jesus is to be
expected in the places of his once and future ministry, in all those places of
grace-full endeavor, where healing, feeding, teaching and even suffering
“Do
not be afraid. Go and tell…” It is in the combination of those words that
we find direction for our lives. Jesus
is found when we get out of this place and do what he said, when we live up to
our purpose as people called to be Christ’s hands and feet in the world. We dis-cover ourselves in his company,
whenever we offer a hand up instead of just a hand out; when we leave
selfishness be-hind and embrace servanthood; when we refuse to cower before all
the powers that think they are in charge, and in-stead bow to the One who came
to serve not to be served.
In Letters to a Young Doubter, the late William Sloan Coffin wrote:
“Easter has less to do with one person’s escape from the grave than with the
victory of seemingly powerless love over loveless power. And let us also emphasize this: …Easter represents a demand as well as a
pro-mise, a demand
So that is Matthew’s Easter story. A
quiet dawn interrupted by an earthquake, and a lightning and thunder snow angel
rolling the stone away to reveal God bringing life where there was death. Two
faithful women, the last to see Jesus buried become the first to meet the risen
Lord and to share his message. Our Risen Lord going to the Galilees we know, at
home, at work, and all the other places where there are needs Christ sends us
to meet. Go and tell, live and love, following “with reverent steps
Knox Press, (c) 2010), p. 348
[ii] N.T. Wright, Lent for Everyone, Matthew, Year A, (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), p. 141
[iii] Barbara Brown Taylor, Feasting on the Gospels, Matthew, Vol. 2, (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2013), p.359
[iv] ibid., Copenhaver, p. 348 & 350
[v] Frederick Buechner, Listening to Your Life, San Francisco, Harper Collins, © 1992, p. 102
[vi] D. Cameron Murchison, Feasting on the Word, Year A, Vol. 2., Louisville, WJK, © 2010, p. 350
[vii] William Sloan Coffin, Letters to a Young Doubter, (Louisville, KY, Westminster John Knox Press, (c) 2005)
[viii]John Greenleaf Whittier, “O Brother Man,” The Hymnal, (Philadelphia, Presbyterian Board of Christian Education, 1933, Thirtieth Printing, 1962), Hymn 403, verse 3
