Recently, a friend on Facebook posted a quiz for older generations to test how well they know the slang of Generation Z. And if you want to make sure that only older generations participate in your quiz, posting it on Facebook is definitely the way to go.
I actually did quite well, which I think is one of the fringe benefits of having an 18-year-old son.
Like every generation before it, Generation Z has produced its 
own rich and creative patois that is a constant in conversation, so I have picked a few things up. Some of it is fairly intuitive, like, “it would be so cringe if I stood up here in a pulpit and used a bunch of Gen Z words and phrases in my preaching to be more ‘relatable.’”
Some of it is impenetrable if you don’t get to hear it used regularly in context; it took me awhile before I really figured out what “no cap” means (cap means a lie, if you don’t know, so that’s at least one thing you can take home from this Easter sermon). Some of it is a reclamation of older slang, like saying “bet” when you agree with someone, which was popular back in the 90s. And some of it, most confusingly for us older generations, reclaims older slang but uses it differently.
The word “shook” is one of those. It originated as slang in the 1990s to mean “shaken with fear,” and was popularized by the rap group Mobb Deep in their two-part song, “Shook Ones.” (Don’t worry, that reference is going to go by even some of my fellow Gen Xers, but they were an influential group back in the day.)
Anyway, both parts of the song are an uncompromising depiction of the realities of gang violence, and the “shook ones” of the song title are people who act tough but run away in fear when actually confronted with those realities. And so, the word “shook” began to be used to describe any situation in which someone finds themselves surprised and scared by something they encounter.
This all came to mind for me when I was reading Matthew’s version of the Easter morning story. Things are literally shook as the story opens, with “a great earthquake” occurring after the two Marys have arrived at the tomb where Jesus’ body had been laid, resulting from the appearance of an angel of the Lord alighting atop the stone that was used to seal the tomb. With all that happening, the guards that the Romans posted to make sure Jesus’ disciples didn’t come and take away the body are shook, too: “For fear of him,” Matthew tells us, referring to the angel, “the guards shook and became like dead men.”
While I’d be surprised if Mobb Deep took their inspiration for “Shook Ones” from Matthew’s Easter story, it’s literally exactly what they meant: the burly, well-armed, and well-trained guards, projecting their own strength and that of the Roman Empire by extension, shake with fear to the point of passing out when confronted with the reality of the angel of the Lord’s appearance and power.
Which, to be fair, is a reasonable reaction: pretty much anytime an angel shows up in Scripture, the first thing they say is, “do not be afraid,” because their appearance is so terrifying to humans otherwise. Which is what happens in this case; the angel says to the women, “do not be afraid.” He does NOT include the guards in that reassurance, whether because they’re already unconscious with fear, or because they and what they represent SHOULD be afraid of the angel and what he represents, or both.
In any case, he reassures the women that they should not be afraid, that he knows they have come looking for Jesus, but that Jesus is not there. And then he shows them the empty tomb to prove his point. Then he has a job for them. “Go quickly and tell his disciples, ‘he has been raised from the dead, and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee, there you will see him. This is my message to you.”
There are a number of things about Matthew’s version of the Easter story that are unique, particularly the earthquake and the guards being shook, but it’s also significant that there’s no mention of the women being there with spices to anoint Jesus’ body. It’s an argument from silence, of course, so it’s not necessarily in conflict with the other stories, but Matthew doesn’t specify that as the reason for why the women came out to the tomb. But the dramatic effect is that, in isolation, it seems that the women are there for no other reason than to be faithful in their attendance to Jesus.
It’s a stark contrast with Jesus’ male disciples, who were already so shook by Jesus’ arrest that they scattered before the crucifixion even happened, while the women stood a silent vigil from a distance during the crucifixion itself. It is the women who are the ones with both the faithfulness and the credibility to bear the angel’s message, in other words, which would never have even happened if it depended on the male disciples to show up and receive it.
That doesn’t mean, though, that the women have no fear. Despite the angel’s reassurance, Matthew describes them leaving his presence and heading for the disciples as doing so “quickly, with fear and great joy.” That sounds like an odd combination: fear and great joy. In general, most of us would put “fear” and “great joy” at the opposite ends of some kind of emotional spectrum rather than combining them together, unless you’re an adrenaline junky into bungi jumping or free climbing or something. But that actually brings us back to the Gen Z adaptive re-use of the word “shook.”
You see, it no longer just means “sudden and profound fear,” the way it did in the Mobb Deep sense of the 1990s. The word “shook” has a more complex level of meaning now, because while it still has a sense of overwhelming surprise, it doesn’t necessarily mean overwhelming fearful surprise the way it used too. Now it can mean overwhelming joyful surprise, as well; if you unexpectedly met Beyoncé, for example, you might very well immediately call up your best friend and say, “I just met Beyoncé! She said she loved my outfit! I am shook.”
Being shook in the sense of fear and great joy seems like absolutely the right response to what the women have just experienced at the tomb. There is no way that a human being could go through an earthquake, an angelic visitation, and the realization that Jesus has been resurrected from the dead after witnessing his brutal death and definitive burial, all within the span of a few minutes, and not be shaking with fear. Yet at the same time, those very same things would cause you as a follower of Jesus to shake with joy, as well, overwhelming joy that what seemed like the end is actually a new beginning, that things are already in motion to the point that everyone has to catch up, because Jesus is already headed back to the Galilee and they need to go there and meet up with him.
I think that combination of fear and great joy is particularly good news to us right now, because there are so many ways in which so many of us feel shook now in the old sense of being overwhelmed by the scary realities in front of us. In just the first few months of 2023, we have seen the devastation caused by tornadoes in the Southern and Midwestern United States and by earthquakes in Turkey and Syria; we have seen a cycle of school shootings that seems to have no end; the war in Ukraine is dragging on with a constant threat of escalation in multiple ways; the warning bells of climate change continue to grow louder and more insistent; and the political polarization of our nation continues to deepen and coarsen. Given all that, it would be strange if we were not feeling shook in that way on some level.
And yet what this story of Christ’s resurrection invites us to do is to be “Shook Ones” in the way that the two Marys are: acknowledging the ongoing reality of our fear, but also embracing the good news that brings us great joy, as well. The empty tomb is a witness in and of itself to that good news: it says that humanity does not have the power to contain or bury God’s life-giving, transforming, reconciling love from running loose in this world, and that is greater cause for great joy than anything I can think of.
The resurrection shakes the very foundations of reality to its core: the greatest certainty in life, death itself, is no longer certain; its fingers have been prised off of humanity and its power has been broken. Literally anything is now possible, the empty tomb proclaims, and nobody can ever claim again that the way things should be are a nice fantasy, but the reality of the way things are always wins in the end.
But the empty tomb says even more than that; it says that Jesus really is on the loose. He didn’t stay at the tomb to sign autographs and take selfies with people who came to things out. No, Jesus is off and running basically as soon as he gets out of the tomb, already heading back to Galilee to meet up with his followers and equip them for going out into the world to spread the good news of God’s redeeming love. Already, his followers have to hurry just to catch up to him, as they always have before and have needed to ever since.
Because that is the good news and the calling that is here for us on Easter: in the words of the angel, “he has been raised from the dead, and indeed he is going ahead of you.” Which means that we don’t need to try and fumble our own way ahead; we are challenged and invited to follow, to go where Jesus goes and do what he does, with the assurance that when we do so, we will meet him just as he promised: in loving our neighbors, in loving our enemies, in welcoming strangers, in standing with those who are singled out for exclusion, in feeding those who are hungry, caring for those who are poor; in loving one another, just as Jesus loved us, in all those ways and so many more we can follow him and meet him, just as he promised.
Jesus’ instructions to his disciples in Galilee at the end of Matthew’s gospel are traditionally called “The Great Commission,” but the truth is that right here, on Easter morning, is the greatest commission: “Go quickly,” the angel tells the women, whom he commissions to tell Jesus’ other disciples that “he has been raised from the dead, and indeed he is going ahead of you, to Galilee, there you will see him.” Without that commission being given and followed, the so-called Great Commission wouldn’t have happened at all. But the women are shaken into action from both their fear and their great joy, and the world has never been the same since.
So on this Easter morning, and in every day that follows, we are all invited to be “shook ones,” those who are shaken with both fear and great joy at the sight of the empty tomb and the reality of the resurrection. May we go forth shaken into action, shaken into love and justice and compassion and peace, until the whole world shakes with the joy of God’s grace… because Christ is risen; he is risen indeed.