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Easter Sunday March 23, 2008 "Roll Away the Stone" Luke 24:1-12 |
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Location: Blogs Brad's BlogBrad's Sermons |
 | | Posted by: Brad Miller | 3/25/2008 9:26 AM | This is the day we have been waiting for.
This is the day the Lord has made.
This is the day we rejoice.
This is the day we celebrate the resurrection. The day when the burial tomb was unsealed, the day the entrance was unblocked and God rolled away the stone of death. The day Jesus conquered death and by so doing offered life to all of the world. The day when each and every one of us was offered a chance to begin again, renewed, whole and at peace with God.
This is the day the Lord has made.
So what do we do about it?
We have arrived at this place along many different roads, but I would hazard a guess that they have not all been easy roads. We have arrived here in need of the comfort of this community, in need of the fellowship of like minded folks and in need of God’s presence in our lives. We have experienced good times and bad; times of despair and joy; loneliness and fulfillment. We are humans, after all.
But in our humanness, we recognize that we cannot do it alone. We recognize that there is a higher power, a Holy Spirit, a presence that is at work in the world. We also know that at some times that Holy Spirit seems distant. We long for an embrace, a touch, a swift kick in the pants to let us know that God is with us, but too often, we don’t feel the embrace, the touch, the kick. Oh, we know in our heart of hearts that God is always here. We know that we just aren’t looking hard enough or that we have turned completely around and have our backs to God, but we wish it were easier. We wish God would take some sort of direct action that we cannot ignore. Something spectacular. Something unbelievable. Something life changing.
God did…and this day, this day the Lord has made, is testament to that audacious, jaw dropping, wonderful action.
The people who followed Jesus had every right to be wondering just what was going on the first Easter day. They had been witness to the most horrific events possible. Without warning, their leader, their teacher, their beloved companion had been snatched away from them, convicted in a trial that made a mockery of justice, humiliated, beaten, and executed as a common criminal.
It wasn’t as if they had any warning of this. As far as his followers knew, Jesus did not ride into Jerusalem with a bounty on his head. It wasn’t as if they had long drawn out discussion of the possibilities that lay ahead. They weren’t going to make a statement, to offer up their friend as a martyr to prove a point. They were just continuing his ministry. And they had been so warmly welcomed, just a week before! If anything, they were at the top of the world! More and more people had responded to Jesus’ ministry. Every day the disciples became more and more comfortable with the idea that they were in the presence of true greatness, the messiah.
When Jesus was taken down from the cross and his body laid in the tomb provided by Joseph of Aramethea, God must have seen awfully far away from those who were there: Mary, his mother, Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and the other women.
But these women did what they could according to their tradition. They prepared the ointments and spice for the body. They lovingly wrapped the body in fine linens and left Jesus in the sealed tomb.
Somewhere else, we’re not sure where, the disciples who remained must have felt just as distant from God. They had no idea what would happen next. They had no idea who might be after them. They had no idea if they would survive the day.
On the Sabbath, the Saturday following Good Friday, they rested. As broken hearted, defeated, angry as they may have been, they still followed their religious tradition and took the Sabbath as prescribed by Moses and Jesus.
I think there is some importance to the fact that the disciples holed themselves up, walled off from the world when Jesus died. As Jesus’ body lay entombed in the garden tomb, the closest followers of Jesus were encased in their own tombs of fear, of anger, of confusion. They could no more shake these feelings than Jesus could stand up and walk out of his tomb!
Oh, but wait….that’s why we’re here, isn’t it?
The women returned to the tomb when the Sabbath ended. And the tomb was open. Someone had rolled away the stone. The tomb was empty.
Now, you have to understand something. Rolling away the stone from a tomb is no easy task. A stone in front of the tomb would have only been sort of round. It would have been cut to fit the opening, where it could be sealed with a natural putty-like sealant. It was not meant to be reopened, any more than a present day grave is expected to be reopened. It would have taken large men, strong men, with levers and time, to move the stone into place, and even more effort to roll it away.
But the stone was rolled away. The tomb was empty.
Can we really take this in?
Can we understand the swing of feelings from joyous entrance into Jerusalem, to the depths of despair on Good Friday, to the fear that gripped the disciples on Saturday, to the anger at having seen the grave disturbed, to the confusion at the words of the angels, to the overwhelming joy at realizing that Jesus has risen from the dead! I’m sort of surprised this whole episode wasn’t followed by people fainting or having heart attacks! How can we get our heads around this?
We who sit here 2000 years later have heard the story, we have come to accept the resurrection, we have come to worship God as the God of hope and possibilities. But how many of us would agree with Nora Gallagher, who when asked what the best gift she could receive would be, answered: “I want to believe in the resurrection.”
Oh, we believe in the resurrection.
But do we really BELIEVE in the resurrection?
In the act we participated in this morning, this sacrament of Baptism, we witnessed Andrew and Erik re-enact the resurrection for us. Dropped back into the water, they were symbolically buried with Christ, and with him, raised back up to a new life as a member of the Body of Christ. Today is when they get another chance to begin again.
But this is not the end of those chances.
The symbolism of the resurrected life in Jesus is powerfully exhibited in our baptism rituals. But underlying that symbolism is the reality of what the symbolism represents.
The reality of resurrection is that it is not a single act in history: it is an ongoing experience in our lives.
At different times in our lives we are entombed by the things that we let control us.
When we are overcome with guilt over our actions, we may find ourselves withdrawing from the world.
When we get so caught up in the accumulation of wealth and let our relationships suffer, we can become sealed off, alone.
When the pain of disease overtakes us, we can find ourselves alone, struggling against a seemingly impenetrable barrier.
When we let anger over a supposed slight take over our lives, we find ourselves unable to move forward, dead to the goodness of life all around.
When we let our sin grab hold of us and lead us where we know we should not go, our guilt can become a tomb impenetrable by anyone.
When we think only of our selves and refuse to look to the needs of others all around us, we wall ourselves off from the joy that God intended for us.
When our grief over losing a loved one drives us into solitude, the stone in front of us looks so heavy as to be immovable by any living being.
The reality of the resurrection is this: God came into the world in the form of a human to live among us, to be one of us, to teach us, to lead us into a relationship. In the death of Jesus, the sins of the world were gathered into his being, and in his resurrection, we were all afforded new life in him. Oh, this does not mean we are not sinners or that we will not sin. Rather, it means that we have a chance to roll away the stone that impedes us, step out of our tombs of sinfulness and leave the mistakes of the past behind, every single day of our lives. When someone asks me when I was saved I look at my watch and ask, “What time is it now?”
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The mystery and the beauty of the resurrection is that it is offered to us every day that we rise, every time we draw breath, every time we watch the sunrise on a beautiful Easter morning
Remember the disciples of Jesus? The doubting, fearful, denying, human followers of Jesus? Their resurrection came on Pentecost when they were convicted in the Holy Spirit to begin the hard, hard work of building Christ’s church.
Is there anyone else you can think of that seemed entombed in a life outside God’s purposes? Have you ever known someone who lived a life seemingly unworthy of God’s grace, yet somehow turned their lives around to be a living example of that same grace? I have. Some are probably sitting right here in this sanctuary or seated, or standing, up here in this chancel area.
Jesus rolled away the stone, and returned to life so that we might all have life, abundant life in him. And that means that we must also let God into our lives, so that we might roll away the stone of our own tombs and honor God in all we do.
Are you angry today?
Roll away the stone of anger and revel in the cleansing practice of God’s forgiveness.
Are you lonely today?
Roll away the stone of unwanted solitude and join with the fellowship of believers who seek to share God’s grace together.
Do career success and the accumulation of status and wealth rule your world?
Roll away the stone of acquisitiveness and know the true fulfillment that comes with living and loving for God’s purposes.
Does the guilt of sin make you feel unworthy and unredeemable?
Roll away the stone of that guilt, ask God’s forgiveness, and confidently join largest collection of sinners and miscreants the world has ever seen: the church.
Do past actions leave you feeling unforgivable?
Roll away the stone of the past. Your sins are forgiven.
Are you mired in a seemingly intractable morass of hopelessness and doubts about the future?
Roll away the stone and see the light of day that dawns all around.
Whatever tomb we find ourselves in, it is time to roll away the stone, embrace the new life that Jesus offers us, and rejoice! For in Christ, we are a new creation for a new day…
This is the day we have been waiting for.
This is the day the Lord has made.
This is the day we rejoice.
This is the day when we celebrate the resurrection.
And here’s the most beautiful part: tomorrow, when the dawn breaks, we will declare again, ‘this is the day we have been waiting for’…Amen and Amen.
Let us pray: What more is there to say on this glorious day? You have given us everything we need, you have forgiven all our sins, you have supplied us with a community with whom to share our journey, you have loved us beyond our imagining. In you, we have the power to roll away the stones that keep us from being all that you would have us be and all we can say is Thank you, Lord. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. This we pray in the name of our resurrected savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
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