There are places that mark time in relation to natural disasters. In Galveston, Texas, everyone remembers the 1900 hurricane. Tohoku, Japan is still reeling from the devastating tsunami of 2011. New Orleans, Louisiana, is not the same after Hurricane Katrina. Things were better before the catastrophes; things will always be worse afterwards.
But this natural disaster is remembered in a different way. It was both a natural disaster and a supernatural event. While one person died, everyone lived after it.
If you go to the Holy Land today, you can see the scar left in the earth by this cataclysmic event. You can put your hand on the spot. It’s as if the earth opened its mouth in death and was frozen in time. When no one else cried out for justice, the earth did.
It’s one of the eerie details of St. Mat thew’s account of Jesus’s passion. Jesus is ominously silent as he approaches the cross. How can he be anything else? He’s said what he needed to say. He’s done what he needed to do. What can he say now that will change the world’s mind? Even his disciples have lost their nerve. Whatever he says will be used against him. Better to remain silent. Until his dying words on the cross, he has nothing left to say. Or at least, that’s what we think.
But after Jesus’s final cry and last breath, there are more words that will be spoken. First, there is a moment of stillness. It seems to those standing by that death has the concluding word. Hanging in the air are the lies used to nail Jesus to the cross. Hanging in the air is the suicidal despair of Judas, who couldn’t forgive himself. Hanging in the air are doubt and skepticism about the claims of Jesus. Hanging in the air is the unspoken question: where is God?
And then, it happens. It’s the natural disaster that will leave the world changed forever. For centuries to come, people will measure their lives by this event. We still do. From out of the silence, there’s the ripping of the curtain in the Temple from top to bottom, from heaven to earth. There’s the rumble as the tectonic plate of human sin rubs up against the tectonic plate of eternal life. There’s a crack as rocks are split. And the earth heaves and opens up. Jesus approaches his death with silence, but out of that silence, creation itself groans. These are the birth pangs of a new creation.
And the tragedy is that an earthquake is what it takes for the centurion and his companions to confess Jesus as God’s Son. Peter may already have proclaimed Jesus as Messiah, but his cowardly denial has belied his confession. Now, when sentient beings have failed to tell and receive the truth, it’s the earth that must speak.
It groans, and it cracks open. It’s a visible sign that God’s good creation has been marred and broken. The tangible reminder that can still be seen today is a cleft in the earth where the tectonic plate of sin has ground against the tectonic plate of eternal life. In this cleft is the silence of Jesus’s final moments before he breathed his last. In this cleft is the silence before evil. In this cleft is the silent complicity in the face of yet more children killed at school. In this cleft are the insidious lies that protect our own comfort and the inner resentments and prejudices that have become our idols. In this cleft are the false accusations of death.
But in this gap in the natural earth, we also have a hint that the story is far from finished. Now, there are aftershocks. We begin to hear movement below the surface of the earth as tombs open. Those who have been dead are no longer so, but they have not yet come out.
This is too much. Inanimate creation itself has spoken when animate beings remain silent, and so animate beings must do their best to seal up the truth. Roll a stone over the truth. Seal it up with lies.
But the final words of this story will not be silenced. They are yet to be spoken. Although the earth has spoken, another voice will speak. This is only the beginning. People will measure the rest of their lives by this event, but unlike other disasters, what rises from this cleft in the earth is a creation that has been entirely remade.
Now, on both sides of a gaping hole in the earth, despair is turned into hope. Peter’s denial is forgiven. Our struggle to pray, which echoes the inability of Jesus’s disciples to pray with him, gives way to the Holy Spirit praying within us. Lies are not erased, but the truth speaks, if quieter, with a stronger voice. Because of the cleft in the earth, things will always have the potential to be better.
We’ve heard it foreshadowed before. The stones themselves will cry out when human beings are silent. And, indeed, the stones have groaned and heaved. The earth has been opened. And in just a few days, a stone rolled across the opening of a tomb will not be able to prevent this voice from speaking the final word. Because this voice is never silent.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday
April 2, 2023