Everything Changes
The way Matthew depicts the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ suggests that a new day has begun and everything has changed. But before we arrive at that new day, we have to sit for a moment in the old one. The Roman and Jewish leaders seemed to have won. Their temples of stone, their city walls, their fortresses, their strongholds, their armies—it all appeared effective. Jesus was dead. He lay in a sealed tomb. And the women who had sat at his feet now sat and stared at his grave, idle again, but this time not from peace. From grief.
We might even find ourselves asking the questions that were surely swirling in their minds. Why didn’t Jesus use his power to help himself? He had healed others. Why couldn’t he prevent his own death? But here is what we come to understand: Jesus left nothing to the imagination. He allowed the full force of the world to do its worst—even to put him to death—precisely so that when he exercised his power, there would be no question about its limits and no doubt about the greatness of his victory. Man’s greatest power is the power to take a life. Jesus let man use it. Fully. Without restraint. And then he showed us that true, limitless power is not found in the taking of life. It is found in the giving of it.
Matthew shows us this in a sequence so quiet and so devastating that by the time it is over, you realize the war was already won before anyone knew it had begun. At the dawn of the first day of the week—a new Genesis, a new creation—an angel arrives. Not a host. One angel. Because that is all it takes. The stone is rolled away. The guards, the full military strength of Rome, become like dead men at the sight of him. Mighty men, rendered powerless, and Jesus has not yet lifted a finger. Sorrow turns to joy with a single declaration: he is not here, for he has risen. The women who had been sitting still at the grave are suddenly on the move, carrying the first resurrection message the world has ever heard. And the sons of Adam are summoned back to Galilee—back to the beginning—to start again.
That is the pattern Matthew is showing us. The end of Jesus’ story echoes his beginning—born from the womb, now born from the tomb; an earthquake at his birth, an earthquake at his resurrection; an angel with instructions, an angel with instructions; and always the call back to Galilee. The life of Jesus is not simply a story to be admired. It is a pattern to be inhabited. Jesus sends his disciples back to where it all started so that from there, their lives will reenact the life he lived in front of them—this time walking in the power of his resurrection.
And that includes you. The story of resurrection leads us back to the beginning to live a new life that walks in Jesus’ footsteps. Not empty-handed, but with the power of his resurrection—the power to move stones, the power to render powerless the strongholds of this world, the power to turn sorrow into joy, the power to set the motionless in motion, the power to live life as it was always intended to be lived. The road ahead will look familiar. It will have rejection. It will have a cross. It will pass through death. But it will end where Jesus’ road ended. In resurrection.
So here is the question Easter puts to every believer: Will you wield this power? Will you move like Jesus moved—not when it is safe, but when the world has done its worst and you are still standing because the God who raises the dead lives inside you? Will you take every step in his ways, carry your cross without turning back, and spread life throughout the earth? Today is the day of resurrection. A new day has dawned. The tomb is empty. The stone is rolled away. Now it is your turn. Begin the journey of life afresh, walk in his footsteps, and you will have your own resurrection story to tell.
Peace be with you,
Pastor Bruce
