The Easter season is replete with images and narratives that stir our imagination.  One of the images that has caught my attention this year is that of the earthquake.  We only hear about the earthquake every three years when we read the Passion of St Matthew on Palm Sunday and listen to his account of the empty tomb at the Easter Vigil.  The other two years we will hear the Gospel of St Luke or Mark.  On Good Friday we always read St John.

Matthew mentions an earthquake twice.  At the moment that Jesus dies he tells us: ‘…the earth quaked; the rocks were split; the tombs opened and the bodies of many holy people rose from the dead.’  At the Easter Vigil we read the account of the women going to visit Jesus’ tomb.  We are told that on their arrival ‘all at once there was a violent earthquake, for the angel of the Lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled away the stone and sat on it.’

When we experience an earthquake our lives are changed.  An earthquake literally moves the ground from under us.  Our whole universe is thrown off balance.  Things will never be the same again.  An earthquake exposes just how vulnerable we are as human beings.  It reminds us of the sometimes fragile and tenuous hold that we have on life, and it can shake us to our core.

It is interesting that Matthew draws on this image to talk about the death and resurrection of Christ.  Jesus’ death on the cross is an earthquake moment.  An innocent person is put to death by an angry crowd and a series of political handballing.  God’s self-offer of unconditional love is nailed to the cross … and the earth quakes.  Is this the sign that God is throwing us off balance?  Is this the sign that the human way of doing business has come to an end?  Is this God’s testimony that there is to be no more violence and death?  The full answer is found at the empty tomb … when the earth quakes a second time.

At the empty tomb, an angel appears with the message that the one they are looking for is not here.  ‘He has risen, as he said he would.’  The earthquake throws them off balance again.  The dead one should be dead.  But he is alive!  Nothing can be the same again.  Gods self-offer of unconditional love cannot be bound up in a tomb!  Despite human weakness and frailty, the attack on the innocent, the fickleness of the political world and the killing of innocence, the love of God prevails.  It is an earthquake moment.  The resurrection – the dawning of a new day without darkness and death.

And aren’t our lives full of earthquake moments.  Small and large.  We experience moments when the ground shifts from beneath us.  It maybe when we get news of an illness.  It can be when we are shocked or shattered in a relationship.  It may be when we are tired and worn out from the constant effort to care for another.  It can happen when we feel betrayed, abandoned or forgotten.

Earthquake moments can happen to us as individuals and to peoples and nations.

It is in these earthquake moments that love breaks through.  That, at least, is the claim of St Matthew.  When we feel the earth move from underneath us, when we seem lost and vulnerable it is there that the risen Christ stands waiting for us.  ‘Do not be afraid’ he declares. ‘I am with you till the end of your days.’

By Fr Brendan Reed