Easter Sunday

Who Will Roll Away the Stone?
by Anne LeBas

“Who will roll away the stone…?” Three anxious women set out at sunrise on
that first Easter morning, but even as they set out they knew that this was
really a fool’s errand. “Who will roll away the stone…?” they asked each
other - none of them has an answer.

Jesus had been buried – they saw it happen – in a rock cut tomb. A stone
had been put across the entrance. A large stone. They have no hope of
shifting it by themselves.

With the best will in the world, this is a very ill-thought out mission.
And they know it.

It’s not just the stone that will be the problem either. They’ll also be
faced with guards, put there by the people who crucified Christ precisely
to prevent the disciples getting at his body. Guards who’ll be taking note
of whoever comes to this place, so that they can identify and root out
Jesus’ followers.

These women are putting themselves, and the rest of the disciples, in great
danger. That’s probably why they are on their own. Peter, James, John and
the rest have gone into hiding somewhere in the back streets of Jerusalem.
They are hoping that if they lie low, the fuss will die down and they will
be able to slink quietly back up north to Galilee. But now these women,
these foolish women, with their ridiculous trip to the tomb are risking
everyone’s safety. They’ll lead the authorities straight back to the
disciples. And what for? So that they can anoint Jesus’ body! It’s a nice
idea – doing things properly, the way they ought to be done. But what
difference will it make? He’s dead!

If the other disciples had got wind of what these women were up to, I’d bet
there’ been a humdinger of a row about it. Personally, though, I suspect
that they kept their hare-brained scheme to themselves, because they were
obviously well aware that this expedition was unwise.  “Who will roll away
the stone…?” they ask each other uneasily.” what the hell are we doing?” is
the unspoken question.

And yet, they do it anyway. They gather their spices. They pack them into
their baskets, and they set off. Somehow they know that they aren’t
finished with this story, this story of Jesus, who has healed them, taught
them, loved them, shown them a new world and a new way of living. They
can’t just walk away from him, and all he has meant to them, even now when
it seems all to have come to nothing.

And what they discover, of course, is that just as they are not finished
with this story, this story is not finished with them. God is not finished
with them. This is not an end, but a new beginning.

When they arrive at the tomb, there are no guards there, the stone is
already pushed back, and the body is gone. To say that this was unexpected
would be an understatement. No wonder they were terrified, amazed, rendered
speechless. They didn’t know what they would find when they set out for the
tomb, but it certainly wasn’t this.

A young man in white – they are too startled even to speculate on who or
what he is – tells them that Jesus has risen, and that they will soon see
him for themselves.

Those who know me will know that I am not a fundamentalist. I don’t believe
that we have to take every word of the Bible as literally true. And yet of
all the possible explanations for this empty tomb, Resurrection has always
seemed to me to be the obvious one. People have suggested that, perhaps,
Jesus wasn’t really dead when he was buried and somehow revived and
escaped, or was rescued, battered and bruised though he was. People have
suggested that someone – the authorities or the disciples – stole the body,
and that’s why the tomb was empty. But if that was the case, someone knew
that the tales of Resurrection which started circulating almost immediately
were nonsense. If the authorities were responsible for the disappearance of
the body, they could have scotched the rumours by producing it – it would
have ended there - but they didn’t. If the disciples had taken it, or
rescued a still living Christ from the tomb, why bother to concoct these
stories of Resurrection at all. What was in it for them? Nothing. Those
first followers, who had been there, who knew the truth, had nothing to
gain by lying – there was no glory, wealth or power on offer for them. In
fact they had everything to lose. Most of them suffered persecution, many
of them were killed, simply because they insisted that Jesus had risen from
the dead. If they knew it wasn’t true, why say it was? It didn’t make their
message any easier for people to accept – in fact it was and still is
decidedly awkward.

It is their stubborn insistence that Jesus had died, and had risen, despite
the cost to them, that convinces me, liberal that I am, that something
happened in that tomb which is beyond our normal understanding of life and
death – that Jesus rose.

But in a way debating the in's and out's of the Resurrection can be a bit of
a red herring. We can get so hung up on these questions that we miss the
deeper, more vital issues. It’s not the “how” of Resurrection that really
matters in the end, but the “why?” and the “so what?” and the “what about
me?”.

Those who claimed to have met the risen Christ in those days after the
first Easter share one thing in common. And that is that they were all
transformed, utterly changed, by the experience. They discovered the
indestructability of God’s love – nothing could kill it, not even the
cross. It wasn’t just that Christ had risen that mattered. It was that they
had risen too. They had risen from fear, risen from hopelessness.
Frightened, disillusioned men and women became bold preachers. They formed
new, revolutionary communities where they were all equal, all respected.
Those who had thought themselves of no account – the poor, women, children -
 found themselves valued and loved. Those who’d anxiously clung to the
security of material wealth and social status – the rich and powerful -
found the far deeper, truer security that comes from knowing you are God’s
child. People who longed for change in their lives, found that longing
satisfied. The resurrection of Christ proclaimed that things didn’t have to
be as they always had been. Even the dead could live.

Two thousand years on people still experience that longing for change. We
want resurrection. Not just life after death (though I expect we want that
too) but life before death - true life, lively life, life that means
something. Like the women who set out for the tomb on that early morning,
we may not always know how our longings will be answered. We may not be
able to put them into words, but they are powerful and  compelling. We are
not finished with the story either. We still set out as they did, to search
for truth, meaning and hope for our lives, in all sorts of ways and places.
Churches may not be as full as they were, but 70% of people still say they
believe in some sort of God or spiritual realm. Many of those who wouldn’t
call themselves regular churchgoers are nonetheless fascinated, comforted
and challenged by the stories of Christian faith. They want Christian words
spoken at their marriages and funerals. They want their children to have a
faith to belong to in Baptism. They – you – we – still come here at Easter
and at Christmas to hear stories of Christian faith again, to reconnect
with something, to reach out for something.

It’s not always an easy journey – our exploration into God. We too can find
our minds filled with the awareness of the obstacles ahead. “Who will roll
the stones away that lie in our paths?
What are those stones?

We may be afraid of the very changes we long for in our lives – better the
devil you know than the God you don’t. We want to go forward, but we dare
not.

We may be afraid of how others will react if we start to take our spiritual
journeys seriously – afraid they’ll think we are turning into Bible
Bashers, that we’ve gone peculiar.

We may feel drawn to Christian faith, but worry that real Christians
believe all sorts of things we can’t get our heads round, and have an
unshakeable certainty that seems unreal to us (it usually is unreal!)
We may just hate the thought of being associated with the Church – it can
come across as boring, petty, intolerant. It can be all those things, of
course, because it is full of fallible humans, but it can also be a place
of great love and great encouragement, a place where people grow and change
and work for good.

We may just feel that our lives are too much of a mess for us to come
closer to God, or that he won’t accept us because of something we’ve done
or the way we are.

OftenI hear these sort of fears spoken. “I’d like to know more, pray more,
believe more, but…” Our journeys of faith can feel just as much of a fool’s
errand as did that journey to the tomb with those hastily packed spices.
Who will roll away those stones of doubt and fear? Impossible. Why bother?

The message of the Resurrection, though, is that however big and heavy
those stones seem to us, they are never too heavy for God– and it is he
that moves them, not us. We may feel it is impossible for us to know God,
or for God to know and to love us, but in reality he is already there,
closer to us than we are to ourselves. The transforming power of God’s love
which those first disciples discovered is offered to all of us if we reach
out for it.

So, whether you are here every Sunday, or just visiting today, the Easter
message is the same. Listen to your longings, keep travelling, reach out to
God - with all your doubts and fears - because the God who surprised those
fearful women at the tomb on that first Easter Day stands waiting for us
too, with hope and healing in his hands. Amen.

(Comments to Anne at annelebas@DSL.PIPEX.COM.)