Sermon

Sermon

May 6, 2018:  Rev. Anna Fulmer Duke

Jesus is saying goodbye.  This passage is part of Jesus’ Farewell Discourse, and so since our seniors are saying goodbye to one school, I thought maybe they should hear some words of Jesus’ goodbye. Reminders to take on their journey. Right before this passage, Jesus says another, I am statement.  This time he says, I am the true vine—you are the branches. Remember this image, the image of Jesus as the vine and us as the branches as we read this passage together.

John 15:9-17

It might seem like Jesus in his final goodbye is rifting off of the Beatles hit, “All You Need is Love.” Maybe that’s just it, All We Need is Love—now we can go home.  Here in Scripture though, love is not a mushy gushy feeling. Its not this naive idea that everyone can get along. It’s a disciplined habit of care and concerned. Love is hard. Love is work. It’s a love we find first, in the love of God and Jesus.  In this text, John uses the Greek word agape for love—this kind of love is concerned with the good of other people. Its not possessive or dominating. It provides space for others to be. This love is the love of the Trinity, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—a love that does not objectify or lower another, it’s a mutual love, a love not concerned about the self but the other.

Jesus tells us he has loved us; therefore we are to abide in his love. Just as branches are connected to a vine—we are called to stay connected to Christ’s love. Abiding in Christ’s love means keeping his commandments—listening and doing what he has taught us and told us. Jesus knows he is going to die. He is telling his disciples goodbye and trying to condense everything he has taught them—hoping they will remember. John is writing this for the Johannine community, a community facing persecution and death themselves. The words of Jesus take on new meaning hearing them in a community that will live out these words—“No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” This community is living out this sacrificial love already, giving up their lives for the sake of Jesus and the love of their community. In light of Jesus’ death, how then can Jesus talk about joy—saying these things so that his joy may be in us, and our joy may be complete? This passage doesn’t bring me joy; it makes me want to cry with it’s beauty and sadness. I don’t want to say goodbye!  Goodbyes are hard.  And I do not like change.  Yet we know that death does not have the final word in all of this, that through death does come joy—joy and hope in the resurrection. Growing deeper and deeper into a faith-filled community does lead to deeper joy.  When we become so connected to the vine, to the other branches, we can’t help but find joy, peace, and love in the midst of trouble.

This Sunday, we say good luck and blessings to our graduates—some who will leave to go to college or jobs hours away, and others who will be in town, but who will be in a new phase of life. When I began at this church, these high school seniors were freshmen in high school.  And I know many of you have known them for much longer. I have heard countless stories about their births, their stints in our Mother’s Day Out and Preschool, the joy that many of you have had watching them grow into adults.  Even as we tell them goodbye, we do not let them go.  For we are connected.  No matter where you go or what you do, we stay connected because of Christ.  Christ in our vine.

If there is anything that I think this passage says to you and to us today, it is telling us to stay connected to the vine—abide in Christ.  Stay connected to the church. Wherever you are, find a church community.  And if you are going to school or work in town, we hope to see you here. Leaving doesn’t mean that you are suddenly cut off from the vine and have to navigate the world alone.  Instead, we are sending you out—still connected to us, still connect to Christ.  We have loved you as best we could. We have tried to teach you what we could.  And we now want you to go out and share that love with the world. Bear fruit that will last.

Find deep friendships, friendships you would sacrifice for and friends who will do the same.  Aristotle said, if you want a virtue, you must emulate those who embody it. The best way to emulate someone is to become their friend. “A friend is another self” (Aristotle).   Find others who you hope to become like—maybe they will be your age or maybe they will be younger or older, but find others who teach you how to love God in deeper ways. Find friends who are different than you—who challenge you; who help you grow, who teach you.  Christ does not find friends who a mini-versions of the Messiah—instead he befriends fisherman, Gentiles, women at wells, tax collectors, sinners, doubters, deniers, and betrayers. He finds strange people, unlikely people to become friends with. Yet these people have much to teach us, have much to teach our Messiah I think, and he has much to teach them too.

Yet, sometimes, no matter how good of friends you have, you will be lonely.  Even Jesus, was lonely. He was rejected and alone. And it’s okay to be lonely, in those moments, abide with Christ—become “friends with God”—for that is one of the goals according to Aquinas of the Christian life, to become friends with God. Read Scripture. Pray. Write music. Commune with others, and most importantly commune with God.

There will be challenges on the road ahead. You will make mistakes. Others will make mistakes.  But know this, no matter what you do, where you go, God loves you. We love you. Abide in God’s love. Stay connect to the vine, your source, your maker. Christ no longer calls any of us servants—instead, we are his friends.  We are his equals—because he has taught us what he knows—in case you forget what you have learned, read the Bible. That doesn’t just go to the graduates—that’s a challenge for all of us. If we want to deepen our friendship with Christ, we can’t do all the talking—we have to listen to what Christ says, what God says.  We have to read Scripture, pray, and love.

I know I know.  I am getting all preachy.  As our youth sometimes say, “I am getting all Manna on you—It’s the nickname they gave me—Mom plus Anna.  God has sought each one of us out. God has gathered us into community. And yes, God sends us out into the world. To love everyone. To befriend everyone. It’s God’s pattern. Over and over God seeks us, God brings us together, and we are sent to spread God’s love.  It’s what happens each week here.  You have been practicing this your whole life. So go, go and bear fruit.

Scripture

As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete. This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. I am giving you these commands, so that you may love one another.

This is the Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Sermon

April 22, 2018:  Rev. Dr. Buz Wilcoxon

“It’s supper time.” You know that’s what people will think if you plan your event too late into the evening. Anything past 6:00 PM and you’ve got to serve a meal. How many times have we thought through this timing detail in either a committee meeting planning a church function, or an after work activity, or a family gathering. If you spill into supper time, feeding people is expected and essential!

The feeding of the 5,000 is the only miracle story that appears in all 4 of the gospels. It’s a revelatory story that shows us something important about who Jesus is, who the disciples were, and who we are called to be as his followers today. Perhaps most importantly it teaches us that since the very beginning of the church potluck dinners have always been important.

As familiar as this tale may be to some of us, it holds more than meets the eye. This story is seeping with allusions other biblical stories. Its full of hyperlinks. You know how those work. When you’re reading a website, or email and you come across a word or a name or a brief phrase that’s underlined and usually in blue-colored font. You can just keep reading the words of the website in peace if you want, you can get the main point and move on. But if you desire to know more, to explore deeper what’s going on, you click on that link and it opens whole new pages, new stories, new worlds of meaning hiding behind one little word. This story is full of those kind of hyperlinks:

Jesus sees the crowd as “sheep without a shepherd,” he leads them to sit down on “greed grass,” and he feeds them a meal of overflowing abundance. Each of these details call to mind the beautiful 23^rdPsalm, which we sang this morning. “The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures.” “He prepares a table before me…my cup runneth over.” These hyperlinks help us to see the connections, that in this story Jesus is not just an inspiring human leader who teaches people to share. No, he is serving in the divine role of “the Lord” from the psalm.

At the same time, sprinkled throughout are other hyperlinks that take us to another pivotal point of the Old Testament story of Israel. The repeated reference to “a deserted place” or a wilderness and the surprising, miraculous gift of abundant bread there draws our minds back to the wilderness of Sinai, when the wandering Hebrews of Exodus would go out each day to gather manna—bread from heaven—provided to preserve their vulnerable community. So now, here in the gospel story, we find new manna in a new wilderness. Again, a theological claim is being made about Jesus’ divine identity as the giver of this miraculous bread.

Jesus is like the heroes and prophets of old but much greater. He is like Moses in the wilderness but much greater. He is like King David, the shepherd poet of the psalms, but much greater. These details, these hyperlinks in the story, reveal that it too is much greater that merely 5,000 simple acts of sharing and filling hungry bellies. It is a proclamation of the divine identity of Christ within the evolving story of God’s covenant with Israel but much greater, grander, expansive, and inclusive than all that has come before.

All of these hyperlinks pull our attention backwards to the past, but there is another set of them that pulls us forward, from the story itself into the worship life of the early church and into this very sanctuary today. Maybe you heard the familiar pattern when I read it earlier: Jesus took the bread, he blessed it, and broke it, and gave it to them. That series of verbs is packed with power and memory. It is precisely the same pattern that Jesus will later follow at the Last Super. It’s the pattern that the first audience of the gospel, the early church adopted when they gathered each week to worship on the Lord’s Day around the Lord’s table, to celebrate the Lord’s Supper. It’s the same pattern that we still follow each time we gather here at the Table, responding to Christ’s invitation, meeting him here as he promised. This story of the feeding of the 5,000 rushes to meet us here today, to connect the broken and scattered pieces of out stories. For it is here at this table that we meet the risen Christ who is still greater than all our hungers and needs today, greater than the greed of our self-serving society, greater than our fears of scarcity and insecurity, greater than the limits of the physical world.

Every time we gather around this table we meet him, the Good Shepherd and giver of manna. And he still calls to us. When we (like the disciples) are weary and worn out, when we need a rest, he calls us here to be fed, nourished, sustained for the journey by his very presence. But just like those first disciples, Jesus doesn’t call us here merely to be fed, but he tells us to go and feed the hungry world around us. To feed those who hunger to be cared for and welcomed, to be included, those who are thirsty to be accepted finally after a life-time of rejection

This call to gather and feed those who need it most reminds me of a story by one of my new favorite authors, Sean Dietrich. He writes under the pen name, Sean of the South, and his books, blog posts, and daily emails are filled with wit and wisdom. I enjoyed his writing from the start, but once I read more I realize that Sean is someone who appreciates the true fine things in life like BBQ, The Andy Griffith Show, Alabama football, and Conecuh Sausage. That’s a man after my own heart. In on of his stories he remembers going to communion for the first time in a long while. He writes:

I am standing in a single-file line of Episcopalians about to take Communion.

I don’t know these people. They wear large smiles on their faces, and they’re singing. They’ve either lost their cotton-picking minds, or I have.

In line ahead of me: the salt of the earth. Adults. Teenagers. Children. The elderly.

I meet two older women who were married a few months ago. A retired commercial fisherman who smells like the night before. Three attorneys, a few construction workers, a banker. A woman with breast cancer.

The bishop is white-haired, wearing a robe. He stands barefoot at the altar. He smiles at an elderly woman, then hands her what looks like a Ritz cracker.

The woman eats, and sips from a cup the size of a fishbowl Margarita. People embrace her. Everyone singing, everyone swaying back and forth.

These people might truly be nuts.

It’s my turn at bat.

The bishop hands me a cracker. “The Body of Christ,” he says.

I haven’t taken communion in years. Besides, my people do things different. We call it the Lord’s Supper—though it’s no supper. We have Tic Tacs and shot glasses of Southern-Baptist-approved Welch’s.

I’m drinking from the cup everyone sipped from. It’s real wine. It burns going down. I wipe my face with my sleeve. The priest smiles.

I don’t feel any different.

Then. I am side-tackled by an old woman. She kisses my forehead. I’ve never met her. She has cropped hair and wears cowboy boots. She says she loves me.

Another man slaps my shoulder. He calls me “brother.” A teenage girl shakes my hand and prays for me.

And I’m feeling something—whether I want to or not. It’s a warm sensation. Maybe it’s the wine.

Or, maybe I’m thinking about the Sundays of my youth. The framed pictures of a shepherd on the church walls of my childhood.

Maybe I’m thinking about ladies who sent poundcakes home with me after potlucks. Or the Kenyan missionaries who taught us to say “I love you” in Swahili.

I’m thinking about the Albertsons—the family of eleven, who wore the same ratty clothes every Sunday. I remember the groceries my father delivered to that family on Tuesday afternoons.

And my father’s funeral. What a service that was. I’m thinking about how hard finances got after he died. I’m remembering the casseroles folks graced our porch with on Tuesday afternoons.

I’m thinking about the clapboard chapel I married in. The leather-bound book Granny read. The miracles I begged heaven for when Mother was sick.

And I feel it.

It’s overwhelming. I think this must be what all the fuss is about.

I’m here. With these people. Black, white, Mexican, Jew, gay, Samaritan, and purple-haired hipster. Young, elderly, Baptist, Methodist, beer-drinker, teetotaller, prostitute, tax-collector, meth addict, and Friends of Bill. Attorneys, veterans, preachers, divorcees, newlyweds, English majors, high-school dropouts, and reprobate redheaded writers.

We are all drinking from the same cup.

Forgive me, Lord, I was wrong. These people aren’t nuts.

They are my family.[i]

Friends, around this table we are all family. A family much larger than just 5,000. Jesus calls us here to feast with him, and he sends us out to feed in his name as well.  Jesus calls us to have the heart and the guts of a good shepherd, risking our lives and our livelihoods to welcome and protect those most vulnerable in our community, serving them first and ourselves lasts.

And perhaps the most realistic and relatable part of this story is that Jesus calls us to feed even when we know that we don’t have enough! When our wells have run dry and our own cupboards are bear, when our cup is not running over but is empty and cracked. When we know we don’t have enough: enough bread or fish to feed the multitude, enough time or energy to devote to a cause, enough money or power to think we can make a real difference, enough information or proof to lead us to action, enough love to share after our hearts have been broken, enough hope in the face of disease, death, and grief. When we know we don’t have enough youthful vigor or enough age and wisdom, when we know we don’t have enough, we aren’t enough, and we never will be, and so what’s the point? Lord, just send them away to buy into the worn-out ways of the world. Lord, we just cant’ do it. Not now. Not with only this much to work with. Look at the numbers, it’s not realistic.

And in response, in the face of all our realist reasons why we just aren’t enough, Jesus, the Good Shepherd and giver of manna says to us. “It’s past 6:00, they’ll be expecting a meal. Go give them something to eat. It’s supper time!”

To God alone be the glory.

[i]Sean Dietrich, “Fairhope” on the website Sean of the South, October 2, 2017: https://seandietrich.com/fairhope/

Scripture

Mark 6:30-44

The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught. He said to them, ‘Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.’ For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. And they went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves. Now many saw them going and recognized them, and they hurried there on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them. As he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things. When it grew late, his disciples came to him and said, ‘This is a deserted place, and the hour is now very late; send them away so that they may go into the surrounding country and villages and buy something for themselves to eat.’ But he answered them, ‘You give them something to eat.’ They said to him, ‘Are we to go and buy two hundred denarii worth of bread, and give it to them to eat?’ And he said to them, ‘How many loaves have you? Go and see.’ When they had found out, they said, ‘Five, and two fish.’ Then he ordered them to get all the people to sit down in groups on the green grass. So they sat down in groups of hundreds and of fifties. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to his disciples to set before the people; and he divided the two fish among them all. And all ate and were filled; and they took up twelve baskets full of broken pieces and of the fish. Those who had eaten the loaves numbered five thousand men.

Sermon

April 15, 2018:  Rev. Anna Fulmer Duke

I let this year’s confirmation class choose the Scripture for today’s sermon.  I gave them endless possibilities, and they chose this passage. For me, it speaks to a depth of faith, and how they know that Christian faith is not just about what we believe but how we live.  This passage is probably familiar to many, but I heard it anew this year, reading papers our confirmands wrote and learning from them. Our confirmation class is comprised of seven youth, from seven different schools.

One of my favorite parts of my job is getting to read Confirmation papers.  You might be thinking, reading papers—that sounds like a doozy.  But this year, I got to read five papers written by our seven confirmands, and it was amazing. Often, you don’t get to read about what people are really thinking, but through these papers, I was able to hear about these confirmands’ role-models in faith, how they live out their faith, interviews they had with long-time church members, and what they believe. This is fun, because I get to see such a variety of explanations and creative outlets. This year, we had two pieces of artwork, two musical pieces, and three written explanations. But one caught me completely off-guard. On Tuesday, March 27 at 8:16 pm, I received an image of Spider-Man on my phone with the words, “Finished.” I was caught off guard.  What does Spiderman have to do with your faith? God doesn’t go swinging from web to web. I was on bated breath. I was pretty nervous because if there really wasn’t a good explanation….how was I going to tell this awesome youth, she was going to have to rethink her entire project. I had to wait a full week before I got the explanation. And it made complete sense. Spiderman is often considered a superhero, but for Katy Rice, God is her superhero. Through all the tough times in life, God is there. God shows us we are not alone.

God is our superhero. Yet, through this passage, we find God not in spandex swinging on spider’s web. We find God in the face of our hungry, thirsty, naked, sick, imprisoned neighbors. It seems completely opposite of what we expect. God is in disguise. But if we are wise enough, if we have developed our spidey-sense or God-sense, maybe we can pick up and see anew where God is today.

It’s your first day and you are sick to your stomach. What if no one talks to you? What if you have to sit at lunch alone? You get dressed and get ready for what? You are not sure. You walk into a room with a sea of new faces. You search the faces hoping you see a kind one, an open one, one that will welcome you in. You know that it might be hard to make friends, especially in a place where people have grown-up together and know each other. You wait for a moment breathless. Yet you are surprised. Everyone comes up to you, introducing themselves, welcoming you in. Instead of facing a sea of hostility, you are welcomed in and soon feel like the group. These moments—are glimpses of God’s kingdom on earth. What are we doing to create these spaces?

We have all probably been the new person—whether it is because of a move, a new job, a new school, a new opportunity. If you haven’t been in the uncomfortable situation of feeling new and out-of-place in a while—I encourage you to get out of your comfort zone. Because it is hard to move, to leave old friends behind and start again. Being the new person, is a quick way to know how it feels to be a stranger, and to hope for welcome. It is often through our experiences of being a “least of these” that we see the importance of caring for others. I remember my first experience of being excluded by a group of girls I thought were my friends. I didn’t get invited to the birthday party.  I remember my mother telling me, “Remember how this feels. Remember, so you never do this to someone else.” When we have experienced difficulty, often we have greater awareness and compassion—we gain spidey senses.

Yet, the people in today’s story aren’t really aware of what they are doing and why they are doing it.  Both groups of people—the sheep and the goats are clueless in very different ways.  Neither realizes what they have done—the sheep who have cared for the hungry, thirsty, strangers, naked, sick, and imprisoned are flabbergasted—when did we care for you, O King? The goats ask, when did we see you O King hungry, thirsty, a stranger, naked, sick, imprisoned and NOT care for you?  If we had known, O King, we would have surely done it. But that’s the cincher. This King notices. In fact, this King is where we least expect him. God is here, particularly in our neighbors who need us. Jesus is in the face of the needy, but we aren’t supposed to care for the needy because Jesus is looking—we are supposed to show compassion because we see another’s suffering.

Here Jesus is creating a new social structure—one that is not based on what I can do for you, but one where I freely care for my neighbor without expecting anything in return. Greco-Roman culture centered around a patronage economy—I will care for you and then you will become my debt slave—working your wages off year after year. Here Jesus mixes up who we might think is righteous and unrighteous.

We so easily can focus in this passage on whether or not we are a sheep or a goat. But there is a third option in this story. Sometimes, we are the least of these—sometimes we are hungry, sick, imprisoned, strangers, thirsty, or naked. If you haven’t been yet, wait, because you will be. We all experience moments when we are vulnerable—when we feel broken down, alone, and afraid. I think most of the time, we are in this space of feeling like we could use a little help, a friend. But here, Jesus does not separate people into three groups, sheep, goats, and least of these. He separates people into two groups—sheep and goats. We are all the least of these, but simultaneously, we are either sheep or goats too.

We all have things going on in our lives. Maybe for you it’s that parenting is really hard and no one told you it was going to be so hard and bills are piling up, and how will you even pay for another when its way too tight with one? Maybe it’s the stress of aging parents. Maybe it’s the stress and cost of getting older and dealing with health issues you can’t afford to. We all have complicated lives that are too much to handle, too busy, too stressful, just too much. Here though, Jesus seems to say, forget about yourself. Stop focusing on yourself and start worry about each other. Start worrying about your neighbor and caring for her. Listen to someone else’s troubles—care for someone through their troubles. Don’t do it, so you can dump your problems in return. Do it to show love. To love is to live.

Peter Parker is an ordinary teenager, who rejection, inadequacy, and loneliness…until one day he is bitten by a radioactive spider. Suddenly, he has extraordinary gifts, the ability to cling to most surfaces, web-shooters, and spidey-senses.  With these superpowers, he still experiences rejection, inadequacy, and loneliness. But he also learns that with “great power there must also become great responsibility,” so he uses his powers to help and to do good in the world. We all have great power; each of us has great gifts.  No matter if we are 8 or 88. Attune your senses, so you can hear and see what your neighbor often tries to hide. See your neighbor as God sees them, beloved and beautiful. Care for your neighbor—use your gifts, your spidey senses for good, to feed, clothes, visit, welcome, and love.  Not because God is watching, but because it is your calling. You will meet God there.

Growing up, it is easy to feel like an outsider—to feel like you don’t fit in and will never fit in. You worry about saying the right thing, doing the right thing, making the right choices. Unfortunately none of these feelings go away the minute you turn into an adult or the moment you choose to become an adult member of the church or the moment you become Spiderman. Instead, as Christians, we must constantly practice not focusing on ourselves—focusing instead on Christ and on our neighbors. It is not easy. You will sacrifice. You will be counter-cultural. You may be taken advantage of. But our crux of the Christian faith is that it is not about us. It is about God. It is about Jesus. It is about love, loving our neighbors.   Over and over we must learn and relearn this. Amen.

Scripture

Matthew 25:31-46

When the Son of Man come in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people, one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for your from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was  thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you? And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.’ Then he will say to those at his left hand, ‘You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ Then they will also answer, ‘Lord when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you? Then he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.

This is the Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Sermon

April 1, 2018:  Rev. Dr. Buz Wilcoxon

Easter Sunday

The stone of death has been rolled away! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!

This is the whole reason we are here. I don’t just mean the reason we are sitting in church today, but the reason there is a Church in the first place. This story, this truth, that Jesus Christ, who had been put to death by the sinful powers of the world was raised again to new life—this hope-filled proclamation is the entire foundation of the Christian faith. It is the defining hub at the center of the wheel around which everything else turns. From this moment, all of history beforehand and afterward is infused with new meaning, new purpose, new love. This is the dawn of the new creation; the death-blow dealt to the Death itself. It was the resurrection of Jesus, the rolling back of death, that transformed that ragtag group of dimwitted disciples into the one, holy, apostolic church, the communion of saints enduring through the ages all the way to today.

The story of the resurrection gives us the most important answer of all: He is risen! But it also inspires a slew of other questions. We are left wondering: Wow? How did this happen? What does it mean for the world? What does it mean for my own life, for life beyond life? What difference does it make? How am I to respond to this truth that feels too good to be true?

Those are some of the big questions of Easter, but early on in the story another question that guides the narrative. The author of the gospel of Mark goes out of his way to tell us that when Jesus died and his body was laid to rest in the tomb a very large stone was rolled in front of the entrance to close it off. To seal it shut. Literally, to provide closure. It must have been a pretty massive boulder, because three days later, after the Sabbath, when Mary and the other Mary and Solome head to the tomb they are worried about the stone preventing them from getting in, from performing their mission of mourning. “Who will roll away the stone for us?” They ask. Because, of course, they know what they will find. The scene will be just as they left it: the rock still lodged in place, the body still enclosed behind it, still as dead, as lifeless, as broken as it was when they buried him in a hurry.

These three faithful friends, these women who did not abandon him like their male counterparts—they must have had so much they wanted to share and discuss with each as they made that long mournful walk to the tomb. Such grief, such sorrow, such pain, such hopelessness seeping throughout their minds, their hearts, their souls. They had lost him. All creation had lost him. Denied him. Crucified him. And now these three lone mourners were the final, foolish tribute to the senseless ending of the One whom the world did not deserve. Surely, there was much that they wanted to speak about that morning, but all they can bring themselves to say to one another is, “What are we going to do about that rock? Who will roll the stone away?”

The reality of that questions stings in its genuineness. For don’t we do the same thing? In the face of death, we too fixate on what is practical, emotionless, benign rather than face the truth we can’t bring our hearts to accept. In the face of death we ask questions like: What are going to make for dinner? What color tie should he be buried in? What are we going to do with all her furniture? Do we have enough room in the fridge for the flood of casseroles that are about to come? What’s the appropriate length for a eulogy?

We cling to matters of small importance, and we do the same in the face of large-scale death and devastation. When the world grows addicted to war, addicted to kill, when brothers and sisters in our community and around the globe suffer from systemic poverty, when children of God are dying from starvation, dying from having to flee their homeland, dying as innocent victims of acts of terror—in the face of death’s dominion over our world we seek to distract ourselves, we simply change the channel. We ask questions like: How will this affect the stock market? Will I need to change my vacation plans? And by the way, what time is the game on tonight?

We focus on empty practicality, keeping the pain of reality at arm’s length. Maybe because we have to distract our minds from the truth. Maybe because we have to keep moving forward, maybe because we have to delay the onset of shotck. We ask our own versions of the question: “Who will roll the stone away?”

The first glimmer of hope in the story comes when they find that their practical problem has already been solved. “When they looked up, they saw that the stone…had already been rolled back?” How? When? By whom? The story doesn’t answer that question, because what matters much much more is the answer that lies inside. The truth. The promise fulfilled. The tomb is empty…except for an angelic figure with words too powerful to comprehend. “He has been raised!” the angel says. “He is not here!” He is not in the place of death anymore. He is not where we thought all our stories end. He is risen indeed!

And what did the three followers do when they heard this news? They ran home, whipped up some deviled eggs and strawberry short cake, they filled baskets with pastel colored candy, and set the table with the fine china. No. Of course not. Not on that first Easter. They stood there silent and transfixed, with mouths gaping as wide open as the tomb that they had just walked into. They stood petrified in complete shock as these words, this mystery reverberated throughout their minds and souls.

Then, the angel kept talking. With this wonderful news he gave them instructions—marching orders. Go back! Go back to the disciples. Gather together that fellowship of deserters, assemble the crowd of cowards who all fled for their lives when the going got tough. Roll those stones that have been scattered in fear back together! Call them back, and be sure to get Peter, you know, the one who vehemently denied three times that he ever knew who Jesus was. Get that fallen, fearful, failed group of followers back together. And journey together back to Galilee. Back to where this story all began. Back to where he first called them from their fishing boats and tax booths. Roll the stone of discipleship all the way back to its origin. Go back, because (in a grace that you cannot yet comprehend) he is already there, waiting on you. The adventure continues!

In light of Christ’s resurrection, the entire momentum of creation has begun to move in reverse: from death to life, stones sealed on tombs rolled back, the scattered community rolled back together, the journey of faith going back to where it all began.[i]This is the dawn of the new creation, and it does not flow in the order that we expect. The Triune God, the God of the Bible does not let our story end where we expect. This inertia of divine reversal is still at work today. The God who raised Jesus from the dead is still in the business of rolling stones back.

Our God is rolling back all the stones that we so vainly seek to set in place. Rolling back the obstacles we put in the way of our ourselves and our neighbors. The God of the resurrection is rolling back the hatred, the injustice, the exclusion, the denial of humanity that we place before those whose story is different than our own. The God of the resurrection is rolling back the fear, the worry, the disappointment the hate and resentment, when families crumble apart, when covenants are broken, betrayal is real, and the pain feels too heavy to carry. The God of the resurrection is rolling back the isolation, the loneliness, the shame and sorrow that is born by victims of terror, of violence, of bullying, of abuse. The God of the resurrection is rolling back the pride, the vanity, the arrogance, the greed that blind us with the sweet temptation of power while others suffer in oppression, scarcity, and insecurity. Our God, who raised Jesus from the dead is rolling back together the all broken and beaten, fearful and failed, shattered and scattered stones of our lives—rolling us back together and ultimately, rolling back the very dominion of death itself for each and every one of us!

The Easter answer is given: Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! The stones of death have been rolled back and no longer have the final word. But the Easter question still lingers: Are we willing to be rolled back as well?

[i]Ched Meyers, Binding the Strong Man, 398.

Scripture

Mark 15:

⁴⁶Then Joseph [of Arimathea] bought a linen cloth, and taking down [Jesus’] body, wrapped it in the linen cloth, and laid it in a tomb that had been hewn out of the rock. He then rolled a stone against the door of the tomb. ⁴⁷Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses saw where the body was laid.

Mark 16:

¹When the sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. ²And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. ³They had been saying to one another, ‘Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?’⁴When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back.

⁵As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. ⁶But he said to them, ‘Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. ⁷But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.’ ⁸So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.