April 5 - “Get Out of Town”

Get Out of Town!

Matthew 28:1-10

5 April 2026 – Easter Sunday

First Congregational Church UCC, Williamstown MA

Rev. Mary W. Nelson

Will you pray with me, please? May the words of my mouth…

Happy Easter! It’s a joy to be together this blessed and chilly morning! 

The thing nobody thinks to mention about Matthew’s gospel is how hilarious his telling of the Resurrection is. Most of the book of Matthew isn’t particularly full of humor—it’s not boring, it’s just not that funny—but if this Resurrection story were a short film, critics would call it “a raucous slapstick romp!” I’ve tried imagining which comic actors would play which part in the story, and there are so many great options to consider: like, having some of the old Monty Python guys be the guards at the tomb would be a great reference. Or maybe the guards should be the current lineup of late night hosts, Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel and John Oliver and Seth Meyers… Matthew doesn’t give a specific number of guards, so we could pick as many as we want!

The humor that Matthew injects into this scene is such an unexpected twist after two full chapters of Jesus’s betrayal, arrest, and crucifixion. After twenty-plus chapters of Jesus’s teaching and miracle-working and community-building. There is so much serious business in Matthew’s telling of Jesus’s story, so many spiritual lessons, so many questions about community identity, so much political subversion! Matthew’s main goal through the whole of the Gospel is to convince his audience (us!) that Jesus is the Son of God. And the Resurrection is THE ultimate proof of that point. The Resurrection the single-most important moment of revelation that there is in the whole of human history! The Resurrection verifies the claims that Jesus has made about God, and the claims that humans have made about Jesus as the Son of God. 

And Matthew chooses that moment to make us laugh, with the angel rolling away the stone and then cheekily sitting on top of it. Pontius Pilate’s big tough guards fainting in fear (they’re supposed to be guarding the dead man, but they “become like dead men” themselves instead), while the two Marys remain watching. (Which one is which? Who the heck is “the other Mary”? There could be two or three possibilities!) The angel says to them, “Do not be afraid,” which is what angels always say to humans, but the women don’t seem like they’re afraid because only the guards fainted! And, of course, in the moment the earth quakes and the stone rolls away, it just seems absurd that there are guards at the tomb at all. Silly Pilate, don’t you know that no human force can keep God contained? 

God is laughing, and Matthew is letting us in on the joke!

What we didn’t read in our scripture passage today was a little subplot that only appears in Matthew’s gospel: the chief priests and Pharisees go to Pilate the day after Jesus is buried and they tell him about something Jesus was said to have taught, that after three days he would rise again. They expressed concern that Jesus’s disciples would try to steal his body and claim that Jesus had risen. Sure, there was already a big stone rolled in front of the opening, but that just didn’t seem secure enough. So Pilate told them to take a guard of soldiers and “make the tomb as secure as you can.”

This is why God is laughing. Make the tomb as secure as you can: ha! Secure against an earthquake? Secure against an angel? Secure against God’s resurrecting power? Sure, make that tomb as secure as you can! No matter how many soldiers you post, they will faint and they will fail. And that angel will sit on that rolled-away stone and talk with the women.

“You’re looking for Jesus of Nazareth,” the angel says, “He’s not here, see for yourselves. He has been raised from the dead.” The very thing the chief priests and Pharisees were afraid the disciples would say fraudulently—it turns out to be true! The joke’s on them. 

Now, what the angel says to the women next is interesting-funny, not ha-ha-funny. The angel says, “Go tell the other disciples that Jesus has been raised from the dead, and he is going ahead of you to Galilee, and you’ll see him there.” We’ll come back to this in a moment…

In the bit after our passage today, the guards who had been at the tomb go back into the city and they tell the chief priests what had happened. The priests then instruct the guards to spread the rumor that it WAS the disciples who’d stolen Jesus’s body. They would rather lie and make themselves look weak, as if they’d been overpowered by Jesus’s disciples, than acknowledge the truth and admit that they’d been overpowered by God. They would rather commit the very fraud they went to Pilate to “prevent.” Now we’re not in ha-ha-funny or even interesting-funny territory, we’ve crossed into sad-funny. The lengths some people will go to, not to admit they were wrong! The mental gymnastics and moral lapses they will commit, just to maintain their sense of power—which is false!

Matthew’s community in first-century Syria, it appears, is a place where such rumors undermining the resurrection story had found a foothold. Today we might think of them as conspiracy theories. The people in Matthew’s community had limited ability to trust what their leaders were saying, what the news reports told, and they didn’t know who to believe. And sure, it’s hard to know, with a story as fantastical as the Resurrection. It’s pretty hard to wrap our heads around it. It’s much easier to buy the story that Jesus’s disciples broke into the tomb and stole the body and just said that he’d been resurrected. 

Matthew goes to great lengths to dispel that rumor. The whole book of Matthew, the entire Gospel, is really pointing to this moment: we know it’s improbable, we know it’s hard to believe. But we also know that Resurrection isn’t something humans can do, it’s something only God can do. There are stories of resuscitation in the gospels. There are stories of revival. Jesus himself brings back to life the daughter of Jairus, a leader in the community where Jesus is healing one day—it’s one of his first big miracles in Matthew’s gospel, he hasn’t even called all of his disciples yet. And he foretells his own death and resurrection multiple times in the course of his ministry. Jesus can heal folks who are dead or nearly-dead, bringing them back to life, but resurrection is different: only God can raise someone to new life. And if Jesus has been raised, then he must be God’s Son. Matthew has been building his case for truth and faith this whole time. It’s hilarious, and deeply serious, at the same time. 

So, back to the angel’s message: “Go and tell the disciples that Jesus has been raised from the dead, and he is going ahead of them to Galilee, he’ll meet them there.” The women believe the angel, and they obey – they take off that very minute, heading to find the disciples and give them the message. And on the way, Jesus himself appears to them and repeats the same message: “Tell the disciples to go to Galilee; there they will see me.” 

Galilee is the region where Jesus’s ministry began, where he chose to live as an adult. But Galilee isn’t just a random place up north where Jesus started his preaching career. For Matthew, Galilee has theological and social significance. There is a sense, for the disciples, of rootedness and returning home, perhaps for some respite and regrouping after a traumatic event. But for Matthew’s community in Antioch, the importance of Galilee is also that it’s a diversely-peopled land, and differently-diverse from cosmopolitan, pilgrimage-heavy Jerusalem. Like Antioch, Galilee isn’t a place lots of people visit for a week or two, it’s an unglamorous place where people choose to live alongside one another and make community in the ordinary day-to-day. Jerusalem may be the big city where exciting things happen, but Galilee is where the disciplines of daily life shape who we are, and we all live with our differences and diversities in common. It’s where we practice being in God’s kingdom come on earth. Galilee is where OUR ministries begin, as well. 

When the Risen Jesus does meet the disciples in Galilee, he speaks only briefly before the gospel ends entirely. We are left with the closing instruction we now call the Great Commission: “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations… I am with you always, to the end of the age.” To make disciples has gotten twisted over the years, imbued with implications of conversion, sometimes manipulation, even violence – think the Crusades, the Inquisition, forced baptisms and the wiping out of cultures. But the word “disciple” means “student,” and has nothing to do with converting or even convincing someone to believe anything. To make disciples is really about studying, learning alongside one another, asking questions, exploring, experimenting. To make disciples is to dwell together in humility and uncertainty and openness. The angel tells the women to tell the disciples to go to Galilee; Jesus tells them the same thing. It’s in Galilee, their home, their community, that they begin the ministry of discipleship all over again, and spread the good news of the Risen Christ.

That news is still true, and still good, today. Go home and start there–be students, wrestle with the revelations of God, and share your questions with one another. Inject your lives with a little humor to balance what is serious. And know, above all, that the Risen Christ is with you always, to the end of the age. 

Thanks be to God. Amen.