“Thundersnow”
By Rev. Dr. Jason Byassee
Sunday, April 5, 2026
Reading: Matthew 28:1-10
Spring has been slow in coming this year, hasn’t it? We’ll have a warm day and then two cold ones. I’ve been struck by the rain too — accompanied by thunder. What a sound. We lived in Vancouver and for years had light rain often but almost no thunder or lightning, just soundless and flash-less wet. That’s what a temperate rain forest gives you. There’s a reason the trees are so gorgeous out there: they’re happy because well-watered. But here in central Canada we get proper thunderstorms. Maybe not prairie level but some reverb. The two times—two! —we heard thunder in seven years in Vancouver were both during snowstorms. And we learned a term we hadn’t known before: thundersnow. I’m sure one of you sciency types could explain to me why snow makes thunder more likely than regular old showers. But it’s a good term, isn’t it? Thundersnow. Lord, spare us, and bring the spring.
Matthew is the thundersnow of the four gospels. The other gospels portray the resurrection as quiet. The women arrive to anoint Jesus’ body and it’s already been raised, an angel explains he’s not here, he’s going to Galilee, go meet him up there. Matthew is a bit different. This is the resurrection depicted by Hollywood, with effects from Lucasfilm, there is CGI involved, thunder and lightning and, well, you heard it.
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. 3 His appearance was like lightning and his clothing white as snow. 4 For fear of him the guards shook and became like dead men.
I mean, if you’re going to have a resurrection, make it big, right?
When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back. 5 As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed.
Quieter. Unplugged. Not even anything supernatural necessarily, just some dude in white. No earthquake, no angel descending, no rolling a stone, no sitting on it, no lightning or snow or thundersnow, no catatonic guards. Matthew is loud. Mark is shh.
And this is one reason I believe the story. These two tell it so differently. So, it is with any story worth telling. Two master storytellers will shade the same story differently. Matthew is into pyrotechnics. Mark is into quiet mystery. They’re both telling the truth. And like all human truth, it comes from different vantages. Luke tells the story differently still. The angel includes this magnificent question: “Why do you seek the living among the dead?” More of this please. And then, in John, the risen Christ makes a bee line for St. Thomas who’d demanded to see his wounds in hands and side before he’d believe. Jesus runs right toward our doubt and meets us there. That’s John. But today, in Matthew, we have pyrotechnics and thundersnow.
To wit. Notice the soldiers being struck down like dead men. I’ve got some images of this. This is an ancient fresco in a ruined church. The angel is far left, the women far right with their spices. Looking very much like the three kings in the Christmas story, more than one of you pointed out in Bible studies this week. And the soldiers. Cowering behind their shields, looking not like imperial world-beaters but like pathetic cowards. The artist has made the women into giants, godlike, serene and reposed. The soldiers who are meant to frighten look frightened. Try this one. Looks like a battlefield filled with those slain. Only it’s Christ emerging with resurrection power, not violence, that mows down the soldiers. I like this one even more. The rising Jesus steps out of his tomb on a Roman soldier. The others look on, bug-eyed and terrified. You can see this in our sanctuary too—in our Ascension window a soldier cowers under his shield. The thing he’s been told will protect him is no use against resurrection power. The Roman centurion terrorized the mediterranean world for millennia. Here they’re asleep, knocked catatonic, their weapons useless.
Here’s another image of the soldiers dead to the world. These are the same guys who crucified Jesus on Friday. Who put down every rebellion in the region for centuries. Here they look like infants taking a nap, like their mamas remember them. This image is in a city hall in Italy where counsellors meet to discuss trash pickup and police budgets. Do so in light of the defeat of death, your eminences. Notice here too Jesus’ right, our left is barren, wintry, a ruin. But behind his left, our right, spring has sprung, new life has erupted and is transforming everything. The resurrection is not just about Jesus; it’s about the whole new creation he is bringing with him. Every molecule in this building. Every atom in this creation. All is going to be renewed. Jesus’ resurrection is the beginning, but not the end of Easter. It’s coming for every created thing.
Here’s another pyrotechnic in Matthew’s thundersnow account. You might not have noticed it. Who are the disciples at the tomb? All women. Almost all named Mary it seems. In some gospels there are three or four women, here there are two, but most of them are named Mary. A friend of mine named Mary grew up knowing all the women at Jesus’ tomb had her special name. All those Marys. In the ancient world, women couldn’t be witnesses in court. They were considered untrustworthy, flighty, and, so, bad witnesses. Well, the first witnesses to the resurrection of Jesus Christ are women. If you were going to make this story up, you wouldn’t do that. You’d go find the boys wherever they’d skedaddled to and say hey, say he’s alive, will you say as much? You’re a boy, you’ll do. Not Jesus’ way. Word of his resurrection comes from women alone. And the rest of us had better believe the women because without them, we’d never have heard the good news. I mean if a resurrection happens in a forest and no women see it, does the world ever hear? Luke adds to this story this way:
Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this to the apostles. 11 But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.
Eastern Orthodox churches are even more resistant to ordaining women than the Roman Catholics, but even so they call these women “the apostles to the apostles.” An apostle is one who’s been sent. The twelve are the first ones sent. But before they can be the first ones sent, they have to be told, to hear, and believe. None of that happens without all the Marys.
And what do they say?
Well, first they go to the tomb. They’re crushed by Jesus’ loss, the collapse of his movement, the hopelessness for the future. They can at least go and prepare his body for burial though. The way ancient Mediterraneans buried people then was to lay a body on a shelf in a family tomb, anoint it, and then let it decay for a year. They’d come back after a year and gather the bones into an ossuary, a bone box, so the shelf could be reused. It’s better to anoint a body immediately upon death, but the cross been just before the sabbath, so they go home first and come back first thing Sunday. You can see the heavy load in this image. They’re trudging on under the weight of death, like they’re carrying their own crosses.
I’ve found few artists daring enough to depict what happens next, the thundersnow itself. But one brave heart is Canada’s own William Kurelek, with this image on display in Niagara Falls Ontario. The angel has descended in a flurry of wings and light to roll away the stone and sit on it. You can see the limbs of soldiers and women knocked backwards at this vision. And the light is so bright I have to almost squint to look at the slide. I guess that’s what such lightning would look like. Another artist depicts a solo Mary this way. The tomb erupts with light. And she in her mourning clothes is taken aback; but look at the tray of spices she still holds level! She’s not spilled a drop! Now that’s a Mary who’s used to multi-tasking, and to serving other people at table.
I was sitting with a friend from the Jewish community this week, talking about our present rash of antisemitism in Canada, and how to defeat it. It’s Passover in the Jewish community, bless our neighbours, Lord. And he got even more serious and bore down into me: are you people ready over there at the church? For what? Well, all this economic insecurity from war and energy and AI, the fraying social order in Canada, you know what’s about to happen? No, what? People are going to come back to church. Really? Sure. People want to know if there’s more to live for than a scant job market and vanishing pension and lonely existence in between. I just want to make sure you’re ready for the wave coming over at the church. Are we ready? And do you know which churches are already seeing the wave? The oddest ones. Pentecostals. Latin mass Catholics. The ones with magic languages. The ones most out of step with what our wider culture is doing. They’re the ones that say, ‘there is something beyond this world.’ They feel authentic. There’s a reason Lord of the Rings was so popular, and then Game of Thrones as its nihilist antithesis: people want another world, with different rules, as weird and extravagant as possible.
What weirdness do we have to offer? An empty tomb. A fiery angel. A promise of new life. A whole world being restored. We had Thor the donkey in here last week to commemorate Palm Sunday. We clergy noted, with alarm and jealousy, that the line to greet Thor and get selfies with him was rather a lot longer than the lines to greet us clergy. We’re here every week; the donkey was the shiny new object last week. What if we get a dragon in here? A unicorn? A wizard? That’s what people want. How about a resurrected rabbi?
Here’s another community that’s growing: the Jewish community. My rabbi friends call it “the surge.” Since October 7th, 2023, and Hamas’ murderous attack and Israel’s response, Jews here in Canada have been targeted with insults, threats, shots fired at schools and synagogues, whether they support Israel’s military response or not. They’re not asked, they’re just assumed to be targets. But you know what else has happened? Jewish people have gone back to shul. Apparently, they’ve figured, well, if people hate us, we might as well figure out why. And attendance and membership have boomed. Jews are always at least slightly out of step with their neighbours: different ways of eating, raising kids, dressing, being. I wonder if we were a little more outlandish, church, a little more out of step, then others out of step with our world might join our ranks too?
The angels direct the women to go to Galilee. That’s some 200 kilometres away from Jerusalem. I think of it as a couple of hours on the tour bus. In that day it’d be a few days’ ride on an animal, or ten days’ walk. Why Galilee? Well, it’s where Jesus grew up. And the original disciples, and these women. It’s where the Jesus movement began, with the miracles and the feedings and the teachings. It’s where people started to wonder, hey, is this guy the deliverer of Israel, the one to save us all? The cross seemed to snuff that hope out. Nope. Move on. But the empty tomb says something else. This life is not all there is. There is more life waiting. Indeed, it’s already here. The women start out for Galilee. No planning, no provisions, no transportation. I guess when a lightning angel rolls and sits on a rock and tells you what to do, you go. But immediately there’s Jesus in front of them. The conqueror of death, the One who reigns. They fall down in worship. We may set out on a long journey to find God, but God interrupts us right away and says I’m already here, go no farther.
The resurrection of Jesus Christ stretches all our horizons. How would you live if this life were not all there is? If there is another life coming, one that’s already exploded with pyrotechnics into this one? What if our every action echoes into eternity, and every creature we see is an immortal? Because this is no fantasy. It is here. And it is coming in full very soon. Many, if not most of us, are stuck in one way or another. This illness. That relationship. This work, or none. That financial obstacle. We’re like the women coming to the tomb, all we can do is manage the fallout of death, anoint it, hide its smell, mourn it. But the tomb is ransacked. The angel is triumphant. And the directive is to go meet the risen Christ and tell others about him. Death is not all there is. Quite the opposite. Life is all there is.
I’ve been struck in holy week that we don’t have a proper greeting for one another. What are we supposed to say on Good Friday? Happy Good Friday? That hardly works. But on Easter we have a good one. It’s this: I say, Christ is risen. And you say, he is risen indeed. Let’s try that. Christ is risen (he is risen indeed). Okay, let’s up the challenge level a bit. The New Testament is in Greek, so the first record we have of this greeting is this way. I say Christos anesthe. And you respond, alethos anesthe. Got that? I say Christos anesthe. And you say alethos anesthe. You ready? Christos anesthe. Good.
Now let’s practice saying it in all of life. In all the places we might say something as ordinary as hello, good morning, excuse me or a good Canadian sorry. Christ is risen on the streetcar, in the elevator, on the 401, on a long day at work. Christ is risen in every cemetery, every bank or library, every block of this city or any city. He’s risen in every warzone and despite every headline. He is risen not just in your and my hearts, but in every atom of creation. He is risen indeed and he is coming soon with pyrotechnics to make the first Easter look dull. Christos anesthe. Happy Easter. Alleluiah. Amen.