Two Earthquakes

[HKHaugan]

Two Earthquakes

In last year’s college playoff game Clemson beat Alabama in the last play of the game. It was not expected and totally a shock, especially to Alabama fans. There was an earthquake in the sports world. The same was true a few years ago when little Appalachian State in North Carolina beat Michigan on Michigan’s home field. Years ago an American Olympic hockey team with amateur college players beat the Russian Olympic team comprised of professionals. They’re still talking about them on TV sports shows.

But at the end of the Alabama-Clemson game the Clemson coach said this, “Alabama was the best team in the nation until the last play.” The point being that Alabama had a history of winning almost every year but not Clemson. It changed the way people viewed football. Now almost any team can come out of nowhere and challenge the best. History is dotted with the unexpected. They are earthquakes of a sort. Earthquakes happen in everything; politics for instance, the Trump election. In finance, the exposure of ‘ponzi’ schemes like the Madoff spectacle or a governor going to jail for attempting to sell a senate appointment. Both positive and negative physical and social events can elicit all kinds of reactions. You can find a shaking of the foundations in almost everything whether it is physical, intellectual or unseen. When it is spiritually founded that’s when we are called to pay attention because everything is ultimately only understood in its spiritual context.

That’s why we continue with the Matthew 28:1 verse, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary (Mary mother of James Mk.6, Lk.24) going to the tomb. Vs.2 tells us that there was an earthquake “for an angel of the Lord came down from Heaven.” There was an earthquake.

Why?

Because the greatest shock, the greatest unexpected event, the greatest earthquake was the one following the Resurrection of Jesus. It was not just the earth shaking, it was what that event caused to shake in the hearts of mankind everywhere. Earthquakes always had an inner effect on people. Why me and mine? They were always concluded to have spiritual meaning. For the Jewish mindset it was God speaking. The Jew took an earthquake personally and seriously. Was it any wonder when the two Mary’s went to the tomb, God would shake the earth, have an angel roll back the stone to reveal the empty tomb and let them in? Who cares if people who weren’t there were skeptical and dismissive of the women’s experience? It happened and history was changed from that moment. The way things were, the mindset of the Greco-Roman world, the tradition of Judaism, the believer, the cynic, the apathetic, the average tradesman and local worker, experienced a shaking in their preconceptions, a challenge to the way they thought the world and its people worked. Rome was the greatest civilization, the Greeks had the greatest minds, the Jews their superior religion, the Ephesians had Diana to which can be added the widespread beliefs of the many pagan cults. However, the Resurrection upset, shook all these, and said, “They were yesterday, but this is today and forever. Jesus is God alive and revealed, the way, the truth and the life.”

Tell me that’s not an earthquake. Tell me it wasn’t a wake-up call, a ‘heartquake,’ a ‘mindquake,’ a ‘spiritquake’ when you received Jesus as Lord. It’s the end of religion and the beginning of a real relationship. Tell me it didn’t cause an emotional challenge to pride and what you fear most. Tell me it didn’t confront the way you thought life worked and the way you spend so much energy fitting in to other people’s views and opinions always learning how to look good to others. Tell me that religion was not belief in how good we think we are and church membership as proof. Tell me it didn’t cause an eruption in the bricks and mortar of what you considered to be life’s most important goals and the methods used to achieve them. And again, it was not only a heartquake but also a mindquake and a spiritquake as well. And tell me that guilt, regret, remorse and all the emotional baggage they bring didn’t have to be dealt with.

When we consider this Resurrection earthquake it certainly has far more significance than just its seismic record. It makes us hearken back to all the other physical events recorded in Scripture from the Garden of Eden episode to the great Flood, the parting of the Red Sea and culminating in the shaking of the earth at the Crucifixion. These two earthquakes make every earthquake a reminder of the presence of God and His purposes for each of us.

Now get this really important energizing insight:

The Resurrection makes us look back at the Cross and the Cross becomes our lifestyle. Tell me that is not an earthquake and the graves of our past lifestyle of thought and behavior are not opened and exposed to the world. The old lifestyle was really a deathstyle. Sin and its self-centered pride, its author, the devil and the evil of the world without God were exposed and beaten on the Cross through Jesus’ faith. Scripture tells us, “At that moment the curtain of the Temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook and the rocks split, the tombs broke open and the bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs and after the Resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many people (Mt.27:51-53).” Just what are the rocks, the tombs, the curtain, the walking dead and the holy city all about? They all happened because of the Resurrection of Jesus!

Because of the Resurrection the world is turned upside down. The world doesn’t rule the human heart any longer. That’s what makes this passage loaded with truth and promise. It’s the truth about who and what we are and the promise of eternal life replacing false life in this world. Those of us who were spiritually dead lived in lonely temples and the secular tombs the world dictated for us. Religion with all its impersonal rituals and rules governed us. Our earth was us in our physical bodies. We had no personal access to the one God who created it all. The curtain in our personal temple was the way we were conditioned to adapt to our external demands. Our life belonged to our society as a god and its survival strategies as its rules. Our spiritual curtain was the devil’s self-centering sin and its companions were the rocks of fear and pride.

With the Resurrection we see the Cross accompanied by an earthquake that shook life in this world to its very core. Now we see things in an eternally spiritual perspective. When Jesus was crucified the curtain of defensively protecting our personal temple tomb was torn from top to bottom. In Jesus we have personal relational access to God. It means our bodies are no longer tombs but the means we have been provided to experience the living God personally through faith. The physical tombs into which we were born and filled with aloneness, were broken open and the image of God freed in us. The bodies of those who were faithful raised from the death of eternal aloneness. They came out of that aloneness into a relationship with the living God in the new holy city, the Body of Christ. That’s the promise the physical events set for every future generation; that those who believe in Jesus have eternal life in an eternal family in the presence of God. Of course there was an earthquake! Everything was shaken, the visible and the invisible.

So, just as we see the fulfillment of the Resurrection as the life of faith, our cross, and follow Jesus, He directs us in the power of the Holy Spirit. Talk about relational. That’s it. This second earthquake is what gives the first one its significance. This is what gives our present every next moment its meaning. We look backward in order to look forward. We embrace the Cross because the Resurrection means we are created to faithfully approach each succeeding moment, conscious of Jesus’ presence and leading. This is the earthquake ready to happen in those we meet along the way. It’s the earthquake when we find our fear of sharing, meeting new people, feeling uncomfortable among strangers or strange places or even scary places. The earthquake is the Holy Spirit shaking us within to live His life out there wherever we are.

Remember, this is Mt.28:1 “After the Sabbath.” We are in the post Sabbath time, the post Law time, the post ritual time. The past has been fulfilled and Jesus has risen from the dead. This is the dawning of a new age for mankind. Death ruled until that moment Jesus came forth from the tomb. Now He rules.

Back to what the Clemson coach said about Clemson’s win that Alabama was the best until the last play. Rome, Greece declaring human power and authority were the best until the Cross and the Resurrection of Jesus. They were God’s last play and now our first and last. Paul said, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith (2Tim.2:7).” He’s handed the earthquakes to us.

[Mary Toney]

It's hard to choose just one, or even a handful of statements from this post that I had to read more than once, Whitey, but often, when I felt I couldn't take one more step, I used to ask Emma and Marilou, "Remind me what I already know". So when you said, "This second earthquake is what gives the first one its significance. This is what gives our present every next moment its meaning. We look backward in order to look forward.", it spoke volumes to me. 

I can truly say I never ask Why when life tosses me around, because the ability to run the race at all lies in what God did in the midst of those life-jarring moments. I also know when I step out of whatever dark day I may be inhabiting at the moment, I will have been strengthened to press forward toward the prize, and FINISH THIS RACE.