“It’s a Miracle: Earthquake”
Matthew 27:51
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus.
It was late in the afternoon of March 27, 1964, Good Friday, a little after 5:30, when the ground suddenly began to shake. Apparently, a tectonic fault some eighty miles east of Anchorage, fifteen miles deep underground, ruptured. The 9.2 magnitude quake would last nearly five minutes and would be the most powerful quake recorded in North American history and the second most powerful recorded in world history.
As the quake hit, the ground heaved. Buildings collapsed. Highways fractured. An oil tank farm caught on fire. A school was torn in half. Before it was over, one hundred and thirty-nine people would die.
And just as soon as the earthquake hit, tsunami waves roared across the sea, affecting as many as twenty countries as far away as New Zealand, Japan, Papua New Guinea, Antarctica and Peru. The largest wave was recorded in Shoup Bay, Alaska, with a height of twenty-two stories, two hundred and twenty feet high. The ground in Houston, TX was lifted four inches. The ground in Florida was lifted two.
Today, we know it as the great Alaskan earthquake and, because of the day on which it fell, the Good Friday earthquake. It was a quake that was felt all across the earth.
I only have to mention the word “earthquake,” and it instantly conjures up images in our minds. When we hear the word, we can’t help but think of the people of Haiti, New Zealand and Japan. Or we can go back a little farther and remember quakes that have hit Chile, Indonesia and Turkey.
But no matter when they happened or where they happened, they all have one thing in common—the devastation they leave behind—death, destruction and lives forever changed.
So it was on that first Good Friday. Listen to the words of Matthew chapter 27: “Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up His spirit. And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. The earth shook, and the rocks split.”
Anyone could have told you the ground had been rumbling for years, ever since John the Baptist began to preach in the wilderness, “Prepare ye the way of the Lord. Every valley shall be filled and every mountain and hill be made low.”
“You brood of vipers!” he cried. “Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you, out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham.”
And as Jesus began His life and ministry among us, His voice rang out the same song: “Woe to you scribes and Pharisees!” He said. “Blind fools! Hypocrites! You tithe mint and dill and cumin, yet neglect justice, mercy and faithfulness. You strain out a gnat and swallow a camel.
“You clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside are full of greed and selfishness. You travel across land and sea to make a single convert and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are. You’re like white-washed tombs—so beautiful on the outside, but on the inside are full of dead men’s bones.”
And as moneychangers hawked their wares in the temple and argued over price and profit, He made a whip out of cords and overturned their tables. “How dare you turn My Father’s house into a market!” He cried.
No wonder the chief priests and Pharisees met under the cover of night to ask, “What are we going to do? For this Man performs many signs. And if we let Him go on like this, everyone will believe in Him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.”
“You know nothing at all,” Caiaphas answered. “Is it not better that one Man die for the people, than that the whole nation perish?”
And from that moment on, the Bible says they plotted to take His life.
So early in the morning on that first Good Friday, they had Him right where they wanted Him--bound and chained and sentenced to death. “He’s possessed by Beelzebub!” they said. “By the prince of demons, He casts out demons.” And they said, “He’s out of His mind. Why listen to Him?” And to Pilate, they said, “This Man subverts our nation. He opposes payment of taxes to Caesar. And we have no king but Caesar!”
And if that wasn’t enough, even as He hung on the cross, those who passed by hurled insults at Him. “Save Yourself!” they said. “Come down from the cross, if You are the Son of God. He’s the King of Israel. Let Him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in Him.”
Then, the deepest blow of all, even His own Father rejected Him. “My God, My God,” He cried. “Why have You forsaken Me?”
No wonder the ground shook, rocks split and buildings crumbled the very moment Jesus died.
“This was no carpenter,” muttered a nameless centurion under his breath. “This was no peasant, no ordinary man.”
And had he not said it, the soldiers with him most certainly would have. And had they not said it, the angels, the stars, even the demons would have said it: “Surely, this Man was the Son of God.”
In the words of poet W. H. Auden, “He was my North, my South, my East and West, my working week and my Sunday rest, my noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong. The stars are not wanted now: put out every one; pack up the moon and dismantle the sun; pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood. For nothing now can ever come to any good.”
When the earth shook that fateful Good Friday, it reminds us of a time it happened once before. Remember?
As Moses went up to meet the Lord on Mt. Sinai, the Bible says there was thunder and lightning, a thick cloud and a trumpet blast. The mountain was wrapped in smoke as the Lord descended in fire. And as smoke went up like from a kiln, the whole mountain shook.
Sinai was the prophecy; Calvary, the fulfillment. Sinai, our wretchedness and ruin; Calvary, our hope and blessedness. Sinai, God’s voice of condemnation; Calvary, His promise of peace and pardon.
As Paul wrote to the Corinthians: “The foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength.”
Actor Jim Caviezel who once played Jesus in the movie, The Passion of the Christ, talked about his awe and fear in being the one who would depict Jesus’ suffering and death.
What he said was good to hear. He said he was overwhelmed with the responsibility and kept praying that people would see Jesus and not him.
While the film was being made, he suffered a separated shoulder. While he hung on the cross, he suffered from hypothermia and was even struck by lightning. All these things, he said, helped him to better understand Jesus’ suffering and to appreciate His immense anguish on the cross.
When asked if he would ever play the part of Jesus on the cross again, he said no. Then he said, “It was so cold, it was like knives coming through me. I had hypothermia. I was so cold, I could barely get the lines out. My mouth was shaking uncontrollably. My arms and legs were numb. I was suffocating on that cross.”
As our Savior Jesus died on that first Good Friday, no wonder the earth shook and rocks split. No wonder the temple’s veil tore. No wonder darkness blotted out the sun. For Jesus, the spotless, sinless Son of God, suffered and died, the just for the unjust, the sinless for the sinful, the righteous for the unrighteous, that we, even we, might be saved.
If anyone was shocked that the earth shook and rocks split that day, there was more in store. Lots more. For the miracles would keep on coming.
For three days later, as morning dawned that first Easter Day, the earth would shake once more, announcing that Jesus was risen from the dead. Women would stand in wonder as angels were privileged to say, “Why do you seek the living among the dead? He’s not here. He’s risen as He said!”
Fifty more days would pass and a loud, rushing wind would sweep through the streets of Jerusalem. And tongues of fire would rest on disciples’ heads. Peter would preach: “Repent and be baptized everyone of you in the name of Jesus Christ, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” Before the day was done, three thousand people would believe.
And as a zealous, self-righteous Pharisee strutted north to Damascus to persecute the followers of Christ, Jesus Himself would strike him down to the ground and say, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute Me?”
And as the months and years went by, God would draw even more to Christ. And every one was a miracle. Men like Clement and Polycarp, Origen and Athanasius would confess and believe, just as we do, in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth. A monk named Martin Luther would say, “Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me.” And men, women and children would sing the songs even we sing today, like, “Come to Calvary’s Holy Mountain,” “In the Cross of Christ I Glory,” and “Go to Dark Gethsemane,” every one a miracle.
You know the earth shook the day Jesus died. And as it rumbled then, the day will come when it’ll shake once more. As Jesus said, “After the tribulation of those days, the sun will be darkened, the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from the sky, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken.”
Then what? Then Jesus will come on the clouds of the sky with great power and glory.
Even so, Lord Jesus, quickly come.
Dear Father, on that first Good Friday, the earth shook in grief and wonder at the death of the sinless Son of God. May that day come soon when the earth will shake again, that we may share in Your glory. This we ask in Jesus’ name. Amen