Come the Dawn

[00:00:00] Speaker A: If you'll bow your heads with me, Startle us, O God, with your truth and the power of the resurrection, that we may be astonished and transformed. Speak to us, O God, the power of your spirit that we may learn to see you, and in doing so, to see anew. In the name of the Father, the Son and Holy Spirit. Amen. Our scripture today comes from the Book of Matthew, chapter 28, verses 1 through 10. After the Sabbath, as the. 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. But the angel of the Lord said to the women, do not be afraid, for 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. This is my message for you. So they left the tomb quickly, with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples. Suddenly, Jesus met them and said, greetings. And they came to him, took hold of his feet and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers and sisters to go to Galilee. There they will see me. This is the word of God for the people of God. [00:02:05] Speaker B: The stages of grief have been famously compared to a family answering a doorbell. First stage, denial. This cannot be happening. All of the people allowed to be in this house are already in this house. Maybe it was the tv. Please be the tv. Is the TV on? Stage two. Anger. Who does this? Who violates boundaries by ringing a doorbell in broad daylight? Who would do this? What is the world coming to? Third stage, Bargaining. Everyone, don't move. Be quiet. Maybe. Maybe the doorbell ringer will just go away. Fourth stage, depression. Why us? Why anyone? Why is life so hard? Fourth, Fifth and final stage. Acceptance. Oh, the horror. The horror. You, little one. Yes, you. Put on some pants, act normal and go answer the door. I don't care if you're only four, go do it. Grief. It is the process of enduring some tragic event and processing that loss. Going through a series of stages where you can move from that. Losses. First initial hit. Where it's overwhelming to slowly enter a place where you can accept it. And maybe even respond appropriately. As the body, after a laceration, goes through a healing process, a scab is formed. So those who've studied grief note how our bodies need to go through an emotional process where we can actually heal. And as we go through that, we move to a place of acceptance, even of being able to see a new day. The English word trauma comes from the Greek word trauma, which means wound or injury. And from back in ancient times, people have recognized a wound or injury can come not just to the body, but to the heart. And it can come to a community. When a member of that community or multiple members of that community have suffered loss, grief comes in its wake. Well, as Matthew's Gospel tells the Easter story, it begins, it unfolds in chapter 28 with grief. It begins in the aftermath, you might say, of trauma. It begins with the followers of Jesus Christ trying to come to terms with a truly horrific, torturous death of their friend, teacher and leader. Near the end of chapter 27 in Matthew's gospel, we were told that a group of women that included Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Joseph were there looking on from a distance as Jesus breathed his last breath on the cross. And we're also told at that time that these women were not just there looking on from a distance, but in fact they had been there following Jesus from all the way back in Galilee. That's revealed in chapter 2:27. They were there at the cross after all the male disciples had fled. And they were there when Jesus body was laid in a tomb. As Matthew's Gospel tells it, it is the female disciples who stay faithful to the end. It is they who bear witness to our Lord's death and burial. And it is they who first engage in that hard but crucial process, grieving. In the passage Jess just read from chapter 28, we read of how these two Marys go to the tomb at the dawn of a new day. Now, in Matthew, in Mark and Luke's telling of this story, the women bring with them spices to anoint Jesus body. But in Matthew's telling, no mention is made of spices. Instead, we read, they go to see the tomb. What are they trying to see at a graveyard? Well, we know that seeing a tomb, seeing a gravestone, seeing a place that marks a particular loss can help the heart to grieve. It helps you process what you've lost or who you've lost, to let its reality sink in, perhaps even to have a conversation with the one departed and begin slowly to come to terms with the new relationship. You have with that person who's passed on and with life after that loss. Well, many of you know I love rock band documentaries, and there's a new one that's just come out and it's all about memorializing or grieving the loss of a loved one. This just came out on Netflix, and the band member whose loss is eulogized is grieved. In this documentary is named Hillel. This guitarist was a close friend of both the bassist and the lead singer from all the way back to when they were children. Hillel suffered an accidental drug overdose at the age of 26, right when this band was starting to reach fame and critical acclaim. This happened back in 1988. And the documentary details how the band processed that loss, came to terms with it, and ultimately came to accept it and greet a new day with that band member's memory and impact still at work in them. The band, of course, is called the Red Hot Chili Peppers, but you knew that. And the bassist for the band has long called himself Flea. Quite a noble title, isn't it? He speaks of visiting his former guitarist Grave while the band was making their first album after Hillel's passing. I nearly went every day to Hillel's gravestone, Flea says, to sit with him, talk to him, to the point where people were thinking I was weird. Like, what are you doing? I don't know. It just felt right. It just felt right. I would say the reason it felt right is that the heart and spirit are often drawn to heal after a tragic loss, a trauma to one's core community. Flea so often referred to that band as a family he never had. Why did the two Marys go to the grave? According to Matthew, surely the reason many of us go to a tomb to process, to weep, to feel, to accept, and to allow our heart space to heal so we can greet a new day. Well, there are times I have studiously avoided going to site of Jill's in my former house in Altadena. And other times I've been drawn to it. On the one year anniversary of the fires, before coming to this sanctuary and being part of a service of remembrance with so many of of you. Jill and I went to that street, to our former neighborhood, and met with other neighbors. Not a single house stood other than one on the very north east corner. Every other house was gone and they were empty lots. But something about being there with neighbors, processing that, letting its reality seep in, going through that emotional process, but also knowing in that we, we're not alone, we have neighbors. We have hope and there will be a new day dawning. I felt that gathering with so many of you this evening. Lord have mercy. If you're going to go through grief, man, is it helpful to have others in the journey with you? I love in Matthew's Gospel how Mary Magdalene is spoken of in connection with the other Mary. We presume the Mary of that was mentioned earlier in that passage in John's Gospel. Only Mary Magdalene is mentioned in this text. Matthews There are two Mary's, as if to say two or more people there. You've got a community, you've got somebody to hold your hand through the grieving process. You have somebody to be there with you as you journey through to acceptance and ultimately to greeting a new day. But then something shocking happens to these two Marys as they visit the tomb. We presume to mourn and to grieve. Something takes place that's so world shaking, reality upending mind and heart unsettling that Matthew's gospel describes it like an earthquake. For nothing else can describe the reality of how the world shifted. It's like the very boundary between heaven and earth was broken. And that's enough to give everything, anyone vertigo. The women see an angel descending from heaven and sitting on this rock after it's rolled away from in front of the tomb. And this angel says to them, I know what you're looking for. The one you seek, the crucified Jesus is not here, for he has been raised. See for yourself, see the place where his body lay and then go tell his disciples that he's going before you to Galilee and there you will see him too. And as the women leave the tomb, as they run to tell the disciples, we're told they were overcome with two emotions, two fear and great joy. And Lord have mercy, when you go through grief, a whole lot of mixed emotions are a part of it. And when you get a glimpse of a new day, a whole lot of mixed emotions are a part of it. Well, the women with this mix of fear and great joy had to tell the disciples. And they meet, we read Jesus and they see something, see something they had not seen before. They see what other disciples had seen back when they were on a boat in chapter 14 of Matthew's gospel. There, you might recall, there was a group of disciples that were rowing in adverse winds and a storm and they saw Jesus walking on the water. And then when Jesus entered the boat and said to be still and the winds were still, they we read, worshiped Jesus saying, this is the Son of God. It's like they saw something they had not seen once they had made it through the storm and seen the very presence of Christ approach them and get in the boat with them. Well, that's what we read these two Marys experience in today's passage. The first to experience it in terms of the post resurrection Jesus. They see the risen Jesus and they fall at his feet and they worship. They saw God at work. They saw the presence of God in this one who had been teacher and leader and healer. According to Matthew's Gospel. That illumination comes for these women after the crucifixion and death. After that trauma. At literally the dawn of a new day. As chapter 28 of Matthew's Gospel comes to a close, bringing the whole book of Matthew's Gospel to a close, Jesus shows up for the disciples in Galilee, as the angel said he would, as Jesus himself told the two Marys he would. And these disciples too, worship him. And Jesus tells them, go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. And teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And remember, I'm with you. I'm with you even to the end of the age. The extraordinary events of Chapter 28 don't undo the horror and the trauma that Jesus community had gone through. Matthew's gospel makes it absolutely clear. The risen Christ is the crucified Christ. This is not going back and having that suffering, death and loss not magically disappear. But in the wake of tragedy, a new day dawns. That not merely coming to terms with the past, there is a new day. One where the disciples have a new intimacy with Christ wherever they are. And in this new day, with this new relationship now with a Lord who is now risen from the dead, they have a new mission. Make disciples not just of those in Galilee, not just in this region, but of all nations, of all places. The church, the Jesus community becomes something new right here in the 28th chapter of Matthew. It becomes a community that has gone through death and resurrection, loss and restoration. Whores hope beyond anything they had dreamed of. As chapter 28 comes to a close, the disciples have more than they had before Jesus death. They have resurrected life, life with Jesus, One who they now see is more powerful than even the worst that sin and death can throw at him. All authority in heaven and on earth, Jesus says, had been given to me. Well, friends, I want to leave you with a concept that I found helpful. This past year especially, it's been helpful personally and in my understanding of my neighborhood, my community of Altadena. This church, Knox Presbyterian, and the broader Christian church post resurrection. The concept was introduced to me by the Reverend Dr. Grace park, my dear friend from Fuller seminary days. Her church, Pacific Palisades Presbyterian church, like many congregations in Altadena, lost their campus to the January 2025 fires. She and I had been members of a club back in the 90s called Fuller Theological Seminary. In January 2025, we became members of a new club, one that neither of us would have ever wanted to join. The entrance fee is way too high. But in the clubhouse of 2025 California fire survivors, I see my friend Grace. Oh, you're here. Wow. Let's catch up. Let's talk about family and church. Let's grieve what we've lost, and let's share our hopes for the future. I don't recommend anyone joining a club, but if you have to be a part of it, some fabulous people who will be there with you. Grace introduced me to the concept of post traumatic growth. Post traumatic growth? Back in the 1980s, two psychologists, Richard Tedeschi and Lawrence Calhoun, began interviewing people who had survived difficult experiences. Some had lost loved ones. Some had suffered in war. Some have been through battles themselves. Others had faced debilitating illnesses. And these researchers thought that talking to these survivors, they might learn something about wisdom. So they interviewed them. And what they found in their research was that time and again, survivors describe not merely arriving at a place of acceptance after loss or injury or trauma, they actually describe growth, getting to some new place, getting new insight, a new sense of mission, a new recognition of the wonder of life. They often describe spiritual or religious transformation in the wake of trauma, even conversion. Tedeschi would put it like this. We heard time and again of the positive changes that occur in the aftermath of a trauma as the result of the process of a struggle with those traumatic events. Now, to be absolutely clear, their research did not and does not indicate the traumatic events themselves were positive. The trauma these individuals suffered was awful, in some cases, absolutely horrific. And yet, after the trauma, in the process of grieving and reflecting and exploring what life looks like in the wake of that loss, people describe time and again, not merely getting to where they were before before, but getting someplace new of being transformed. They see the dawn of a new day, sometimes with the glory of God visible right before them as they had not seen it before. The research often looks at those who suffered in war, for war unleashes extraordinary trauma and loss and suffering. War is a horrific thing. One only needs to hear the story of Anyone whose village or school has been bombed or whose loved ones have been lost in a war or who served their country in the military in active duty and seen the killing and destruction associated with war up close. To hear the horrors war inflicts on all who are a part of them, body, mind and spirit. Lord have mercy. What an awful thing war represents. Well, DJ is one of the survivors of a war who tells his story of post traumatic growth. He joined the US army as a young man who had grown up in Tacoma, Washington and was sent into active duty in Iraq. There, his unit faced what seemed like certain death. DJ survived, but with wounds that would confine him to a wheelchair. And many in his units, fellow soldiers who had become like family to him, died that day. DJ tells of coming back after that and entering a kind of hell as he faced new physical limitations, grieved the loss of loved ones, and tried to process psychologically, emotionally, spiritually, the horrors he had witnessed and the people of Iraq he had seen killed. There were days that followed his return. He thought he could not go on. But then he writes of a day some friends of his from the Presbyterian church he grew up attending with his family went to visit him and told him they were going climbing. And they told him, you are coming too. And he said, I'm in a wheelchair. They said, we don't care, you're coming with us. They packed his bag, rolled him into the van and they took him with them. And there at a climbing wall there out in nature, they laughed, they told jokes, and DJ discovered something. He discovered that he actually could engage with climbing with the right equipment, with the right support, with the right supervision. And he also realized just how valuable these folks from his church community truly were. It was a value he had not seen before, but it was life giving for him. He found that day out at that climbing wall not only a sense of connection with others, but he also found his mission. He would go on to found a non profit called Paradox Sports. Paradox Sports, it would be explicitly for those who had suffered an injury and yet it would invite them into discovering athletic excellence, athletic performance in the wake of that loss, Paradox Sports, he found a mission and he found it after the trauma. He says today. I hate the word resilience. I hate that word. I don't want to go back to who I was before. I'm a new person and I want to embrace that. Yes, the loss was horrific, but I'm now in a new day. I'm a new person. He describes something we would call post traumatic growth well, one way to see the story of the two Marys, the story of the Jesus community post resurrection, is to see it as an example of post traumatic growth. It doesn't remove from the past the sin, the injustice, the, the wrong that led to our Lord's death on a cross. Nor does it say trauma and loss are somehow good things. They are not. What it does say is in the wake of trauma and loss, growth, transformation, a new day can come, Wonders can happen. And when it comes to the Christian church, an earth shaking transformation happened that's still reverberating today and has brought us all together. The church at the dawning of this day we read about in Matthew 28, had what you would call a post traumatic growth experience, one called resurrection. The community of Jesus followers that had known death and trauma and loss is met by God at the dawn of a new day with a new mission, a new sense of divine presence and a Savior once crucified, now, now resurrected. Well, friends, whatever injury you might have suffered, whatever pain you have endured, whatever loss you've known, whatever horrors you have seen or perhaps been a part of, hear the good news of Easter. By the power of God at work in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, a new day has dawned and a new day lies ahead. The promise we hold with Easter is not merely recovery or resilience, great as those might be. Our promise is that in Christ all will be transformed, all will be made new. Even today, right now, the risen Christ has given you so much. You have a mission. You have life. Life with God through Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, life with one another as a body, a hand to hold yours as we go through the hor horrors and the joys of life together. You have a Savior who is with you to the very end of the age. Whatever shadows loom, whatever midnight you face, hear the Easter story. After the darkness of Golgotha comes the dawn. And that's, that's the Church's story. It's more than post traumatic growth. It's resurrection. In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, Amen.