The story of the first Easter sunrise is something like this. It all begins with an earthquake which freaks out the burley, battle hardened Roman soldiers guarding Jesus’ tomb. They faint. Apparently, it wasn’t just an earthquake. According to the story, an angel, who is bright as lightning, shows up and rolls away the stone that has sealed the tomb’s entrance.

There’s a unique detail in Matthew’s account of the event (Matthew 28:1-11). Having rolled the stone away, the angel sits on it. Now, think about that for a moment. There are plenty of images of angels in my mind, and in art. Some are scary and some are quite ridiculous, everything from these huge winged creatures weilding swords, to little cupid and his bow and arrow and girly looking angels carrying harps. Sitting down on top of a stone is not one of the popular images. You only find it in Matthew. In Mark, the angels freak the women out when they enter the tomb. The account is similar in Luke. John doesn’t mention angels at all.

Throughout the centuries, Bible students, both believers and skeptics have wrangled about the differences in the resurrection stories. Skeptics tend to say that the stories contradict each other and therefore, they must have just been made up. As for me, I think its rather fascinating that no one thought to sit down and align the stories and get the facts between the four different accounts straight before the Bible went to publishing. Last year, both of our kids were at the same church camp during the same week. Their stories were pretty different, yet, it never crossed our minds that one of them might have been not be telling the truth. In fact, if their stories were just alike, we’d probably have thought they were trying to hide something from us. Imagine that there was a car accident at an intersection. Four witnesses observed it, all from different corners at the intersection. There’s no way the accounts of the accident would be the same. However, each one would tell you that there was an accident and be able to tell you a different aspect of it.

So, when you read the accounts of Jesus life, death and resurrection, it’s a good idea to listen to the each individual story on its own merits and from its particular perspective. The account in Matthew’s gospel has the angel sitting on the tomb stone. What’s up with that?

I did a little searching and discovered that, in Matthew’s gospel, every time Jesus teaches, he is sitting down. In Matthew 5, Jesus sits down and gives the sermon on the Mount. In chapter 13, he sits by the lake and teaches, and when the crowd gets too big and too close, he gets into a boat sits down in it and teaches. In Chapter 26 at his trial, he talks about having sat in the temple all week, teaching. In chapter 23, he talks about the Pharisees and teachers “sitting in Moses’ seat,” indicating a special authority to teach the scriptures. The role of Jesus as teacher is big in Matthew. That being said, it seems pretty clear that the angel sitting down means that he’s got something to teach us.

But there’s something else. Sitting seems to correlate with power. James and John’s mother asked Jesus if her sons could sit at his right and left in His Kingdom (chapter 20). It also speaks of judgement (see chapter 25) as the Son of Man sits in judgment.

So, here we are at the empty tomb with an angel on a rock and a company of passed out soldiers and some scared women. The soldiers were overpowered—and apparently, so was death. That the grave was empty showed that Jesus was judged by the real judge and vindicated. Conversely, the powers that executed him and tried to contain him, now stood condemned. And then, these words. “Do not be afraid.” The guards had something to be afraid of. The women who had followed Jesus had no reason to fear anymore. The angel’s teaching is clear: Jesus’ resurrection means that you are no longer need to be a captive of fear; fear of worldly power, fear of judgment, and even fear of death.

A few years later, the writer of Hebrews says about Jesus:
Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil—and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.
         (Hebrews 2:14-15).

The world around us lives on fear—fear of economic collapse, debt, war, moral decline. We get fed a steady diet of of it from the media, politicians, extreme religious groups…it just keeps ramping up. But the teaching of Easter is that we need no longer be captivated or motivated by fear. Perfect love has cast it out.

My prayer for you and for me this Easter, is that this perfect love that comes to us from the Risen Christ may sink in deeply and that we might experience the glorious freedom, power and love that Christ has won for us.

Yours for the Journey,

Pastor Tom