Who Can Move the Stone?

The women rose early Sunday morning to attend to Jesus’ body. They had to wait because of the Sabbath. Now, on their way, they begin to discuss the task that lays before them. Jesus’ body had been wrapped in linen cloth and placed in a borrowed tomb. Joseph of Arimathea had lent the new tomb to hold the body as the sun went down on the Passover. It would be a lot harder to get in than other tombs.

Tombs were hewn in the rock so prevalent in the hills of Jerusalem and they would be used for the whole family. Just inside the door were areas to place bodies. After a year, the bones were placed in an ossuary, a small box and into a niche in the wall. The cave-like tombs were sealed with a large, round rock, rolled in front of the door. Over time, the track for the rock would become packed down and rolling the rock would be manageable. But this was a new tomb, and there was no packed down, established track for the stone in front of the door. How would they move it?

Their realization on the way is so real. They’ve prepared other bodies for burial. It hasn’t been a problem in the past to open the tomb. But then they realized it was a new tomb, and it would be hard to open…maybe impossible. I am struck by the authenticity of their realization.

Frederick Buechner wrote about the Easter accounts in his book, Whistling in the Dark: A Doubter’s Dictionary. He reflects on the fact that “The Gospels are far from clear as to just what happened. It began in the dark. The stone had been rolled aside. Matthew alone speaks of an earthquake. In the tomb there were two white-clad figures or possibly just one. Mary Magdalen seems to have gotten there before anybody else. There was a man she thought at first was the gardener. Perhaps Mary the mother of James was with her and another woman named Joanna. One account says Peter came too with one of the other disciples. Elsewhere the suggestion is that there were only the women and that the disciples, who were somewhere else, didn’t believe the women’s story when they heard it. There was the sound of people running, of voices. Matthew speaks of “fear and great joy.” Confusion was everywhere. There is no agreement even as to the role of Jesus himself. Did he appear at the tomb or only later? Where? To whom did he appear? What did he say? What did he do?

It is not a major production at all, and the minor attractions we have created around it—the bunnies and baskets and bonnets, the dyed eggs—have so little to do with what it’s all about that they neither add much nor subtract much. It’s not really even much of a story when you come right down to it, and that is of course the power of it. It doesn’t have the ring of great drama. It has the ring of truth. If the Gospel writers had wanted to tell it in a way to convince the world that Jesus indeed rose from the dead, they would presumably have done it with all the skill and fanfare they could muster. Here there is no skill, no fanfare. They seem to be telling it simply the way it was. The narrative is as fragmented, shadowy, incomplete as life itself. When it comes to just what happened, there can be no certainty. That something unimaginable happened, there can be no doubt.”

A couple of years ago, when we traveled to Bermuda, we visited one of the most beautiful sites I have ever seen. There, on the top of a hill, on a beautifully lush lawn, rises the ruins of a gothic building. It is known as the Unfinished Church, and I was struck by its story. The gothic structure was begun in 1874 by St. Peter’s Church. Both the World Heritage Site placard on the site and St. Peter’s website agree on that date. The rest of the story is not as clear. According to the placard, the first problem the new building ran into was that the church split and half the congregation went to worship down the street. Then, the Cathedral on the island burned down and the money originally earmarked for St. Peter’s was diverted to rebuilding it. Finally, they completed the roof in 1899 by private donors, and the rest was almost complete. But the church decided to renovate the old St. Peter’s Church building. So the church stands unfinished, in ruins.

If you go to the church’s website, you get a slightly different story. The church’s history recounts a time 5 years before they started building that there was a rare gathering of parishioners – rare because they all agreed to building a grand new church. Construction went slowly, they couldn’t agree on the design of the new altar and pulpit, the Diocese diverted the money its building from St. Peter’s to the Cathedral when it burned, so building went slowly, and eventually, the roof was put on in 1897, but – I love the poetic way their website describes the situation – “Meanwhile, during all this time, venerable old St Peter’s had continued to serve as the parish church and by now, animosities had faded away. Old and antique was fashionable, and the desire for a new church was no longer there.”

Like the Gospels in telling the Easter story, the World Heritage Site placard and the church website tell the same story, just from different points of view. It is a story of dreams falling apart and divisions tearing down the church. Not the kind of story that you would expect to hear on Easter Sunday, except that I think that is exactly why we need the story of Easter. We need to hear that there are stones that stand in our way that we can’t move on our own. The Good News of Easter is that God is moving those stones. St. Peter’s Church in Bermuda is a beautiful old building on the same site that the congregation has worshiped since 1612. They renovated in the 1950’s and celebrated 400 years of worshiping in that place in 2012. It is the oldest Protestant church in continuous use in the New World.

I don’t know what those stones are in your life right now. Maybe you have had dreams fall apart, the Good News of Easter is that God will bring something new and beautiful out of the ruins. Maybe you have experienced divisions within your family, or a disagreement with a friend, the Good News of Easter is that God can work for good even through differences. Maybe you have experienced a shift in finances that leaves you frightened and unsure, the Good News of Easter is that where you believe your path is blocked, God has already moved the stone.

The Good News of Easter is that God moving the stones in our world:

• In research laboratories and repurposed factories and sewing rooms, as scientists seek a cure for the novel coronavirus that has spread across our globe and workers in factories and sewing rooms and at dining tables fashion masks and gloves and gowns and ventilators.
• In emergency rooms and ICU suites through doctors and nurses, housekeeping and nutrition specialists, through respiratory therapists and chaplains, who seek to bring healing and nurture, wholeness and comfort.
• In police cars, fire trucks, and ambulances, first responders arrive on the scenes of our tragedies and begin to move the stone.
• In Google Hangouts and Zoom calls and GotoMeetings, phone calls and texts, we reach out and greet one another and the weight of the stone is lightened.
To be sure, we are in the midst of an Unfinished Church, God’s unfinished creation, God’s unfinished Kingdom. God hasn’t abandoned the work, though it may be slow and at times it may be difficult.

Many of you know that my prayer through both of my battles with cancer has been Psalm 121, “I lift my eyes to the mountains, where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.”

The truth of the Easter story is that sometimes, we don’t know how we will move the stones that are too big, too heavy, too new for us. And the Good News of the Easter story is that God is already moving them, making a way where there was no way, bringing light in darkness, and out of death, resurrection.