Sermon: The stones that keep us in (Easter 2019)

Easter Sunday

April 21, 2019

Luke 24:1-12

Alleluia, Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia! Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Like much of the world this week, I was devastated to watch news of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris burning. This gorgeous work of art holds so much religious, historical, and artistic and cultural significance, and I couldn’t bear to watch it being destroyed in real time.

But then the post-fire pictures started appearing. And when I first saw one with the floor of the cathedral covered in ash and debris from the fallen roof, but above it all that gorgeous gold altar cross shining brightly – I thought, “This is Easter.” This is life after death. This is hope in the midst of despair. New life is possible, even though it may mean going through something pretty horrifying first.

And I thought of those words the angels say to the grieving women: “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” Every time I read Luke’s version of the resurrection, these first words the angels utter to the grieving women stop me in my tracks. I find them at once joyful, and a bit amusing (I mean, why wouldn’t they look for Jesus among the dead – he was, after all, dead the last they knew!). And sometimes I even find them a bit irritating. Why irritating? Well, I think it is because I know that I, and perhaps we, are all guilty of doing the same thing as the women: we live in the past, stuck on looking at and for things that are dead and gone, even as God is beckoning us to look up, see that golden cross, and walk in a new direction.

The women no doubt felt hopeless as they made their way to the tomb that early dawn. As they stood in the cave, perplexed by the absence of the body, they needed something to jolt them out of their despair, their clinging to what they thought they knew, and the angels offer it: “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” Wait…Huh? “He is not here,” they go on, with a heavenly twinkle in their eye, “but has risen.” And with that, everything changes!

         The women are not the only ones who need that jolt. We too, all too often, find ourselves in the hopelessness of the dark cave, unable to step out of death and into life. That hopelessness is something so many of us have experienced, in the various types of metaphorical darkness we endure in the journey of our lives: depression, loneliness, addiction, grief, difficult decisions, life-changing diagnoses, broken relationships, job losses, bullying… the list goes on. Any of these can feel like a cave, like a tomb even, and we are sealed in by a large stone, and it is very dark and seems hopeless.

         What interests me, though, is not so much the hopelessness we experience, but rather, considering what those stones that are keeping us in that cave, keeping us searching for life among the dead. Luke tells us that when the women arrived that early dawn, they saw that huge stone that had trapped Jesus in the tomb had already been rolled away! As if Jesus said, “Yeah, that’s not enough to keep me in this death hole forever. I’m just going to move that aside, roll it over, and walk out into resurrected life.” No mere stone could be more powerful than God’s plan for life!

         A stone could not keep Jesus in the tomb. But what about us? What stones are keeping us in our dark caves, whatever they may be? What needs to be cast aside? What is preventing us from walking out of death and into new and abundant life?

         I think they are some of the very same stones that held back the disciples. The women’s first response to the incredible news of Jesus’ resurrection is a feeling with which we are all familiar: they are terrified. Fear is so powerful in holding us back. Fear makes us blame others. Fear makes us exclude others, and judge others, even hate others. Fear keeps us from doing the hard work of examining our own hearts to find our own brokenness and seek healing. But one thing fear has never done is helped people to grow toward life. Yes, fear is very often the stone that keeps us trapped in the tomb, keeps us from walking out into new life.

         Another stone we might find at the entrance of the tomb is the stone of unmet expectations. When the women go to tell the disciples what they had learned, the disciples refuse to believe it, calling it an “idle tale.” They had an expectation, you see, about how the world works – namely, that the dead stay dead – and could not open their minds and hearts to the possibility that God might do something new and amazing. As a result, they almost missed that new thing entirely.

Unmet expectations can be crippling for us, too. We have held out hope before and been burned. We have never seen positive change before, so why would we now? We don’t dare hope that things will get better, because we will probably be disappointed at best, and deeply hurt at worst. Easier just to stay in the darkness of the cave.

         Another stone, which isn’t stated explicitly by Luke but is certainly an undercurrent is that of being stuck in our past, and the need for forgiveness. If you recall, the disciples have not been their best selves the last few days. Judas betrayed, Peter denied, the rest deserted. The only ones who hung around were the women. So when those women come to tell the disciples Jesus isn’t dead after all, I wonder if a part of the disciples’ quickness to dismiss their story as an idle tale is that they are disappointed with themselves, and have not forgiven themselves, or maybe, they have not forgiven each other.

This stone we understand all too well: being ruled by past events, either being unwilling to forgive someone who has hurt you, or bearing the burden of knowing that someone you have wronged has not forgiven you. We carry with us so much baggage from the past, baggage that taints our vision of the present and our hope for the future. This one is also tied up with all those unmet expectations we talked about before. And so our past also acts as a stone, sealing us into the tomb where death rules, rather than letting us out into where new life can begin.

         But here is the moment where the Easter story is truly remarkable and meaningful for us today: it was in that darkness, while still sealed in by a stone, where Jesus defeated death. Even while it was still dark, Jesus turned that tomb from a place of death, into a womb, a place where new life prepared to emerge. Then that stone that would have kept Christ sealed in death forever was moved aside, and he emerged, bringing into the world the promise of new life for all of us, too, as he stepped out of that dark cave and into the morning light.

         God will not leave those imprisoning stones in our lives; God will move them aside to deliver on the promise of new life, the great gift of the resurrection. As the stone was moved aside and Christ emerged from the tomb that morning, he showed us that no death or darkness can win the day. He showed us that tombs – those places that are so dark and hopeless – can, by God’s power, be turned into wombs, birthing us into new life. Like a golden cross towering over ashen debris, Christ overcomes the darkness of our lives with hope and possibility. God moves aside all that would keep us in despair, and beckons us into the morning dawn. God turns all of our deaths into new life.

         Alleluia! Christ is risen! Christ is risen, indeed! Alleluia!

Let us pray… Resurrected God, we sometimes find ourselves trapped in the darkness of the tomb. Just as you rolled away the stone to bring about new life, roll out of our way all that would keep us from growth and life, so that we might step out into the morning dawn and feel the light of new birth. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.