ROLLING AWAY THE STONE
Mark 16:1-8
A sermon preached at First Presbyterian Church by Carter Lester on
Easter Sunday, April 5, 2015
On August 5, 2010, 33 miners went deep into the San Jose Mine in the Atacama
Desert in northern Chile, where gold and other precious minerals had been mined off
and on since 1889. They were a disparate group. One traveled 1000 miles each week
to work in the mine because the pay was much better than anything he could receive
closer to home. One miner stood out because he was an immigrant from Bolivia. One
miner was on his first day in the mine. Another had just had a fight with his wife and did
not get a goodbye kiss. There was a teenager and there was an older miner who had
lost fingers in a previous mining accident.
They were all deep in the mine when the mountain began “weeping,” as longtime miners described it. It was the sound of a distant but gathering storm. Then the
storm hit. There was the sound of rolling thunder followed by the sound of an explosion.
A giant shockwave traveled through the mine. Outside the mine, dust came billowing
out of the mine entrance to a degree never seen before. Inside the mine, the mountain
collapsed. All 33 miners deep in the mind miraculously survived, but between the men
and the mine entrance was a giant slab of mountain blocking the way. It was heavy and
clearly immovable, even with mechanized mining equipment. For the 33 miners, this
slab of mountain was cutting off light, air, and life. “It looked like the stone they put over
Jesus’ tomb,” one miner remarked at the time.1
The stone they put over Jesus’ tomb. Ancient Jerusalem has been described as
a city with a giant cemetery surrounding it. The hills around Jerusalem are composed of
limestone rock, and it was not hard for hand-dug tombs to be carved out of the soft
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limestone rock. Often a large stone would be rolled across the entrance to prevent
grave robbing.
It is early on a Sunday morning. Three women are on the way to the tomb where
people had hurriedly laid Jesus’ body after he was crucified. The women bear spices to
anoint Jesus’ dead body, a task that could not be completed on the day of his death
because the Sabbath was then fast approaching.
“Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?” one of the
women belatedly asks on the way to Jesus’ tomb. The stone in front of the tomb is
nothing like the slab of mountain blocking the way for those Chilean miners, but it is
certainly one that the women are not going to move themselves. Typically, it would take
several men working together to roll away such a stone.
“Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?” Consider
what this stone represents for these women here in Mark 16.2 The stone is a sign of
their weakness, defeat, and despair. In the past week, they have witnessed Jesus being
captured, beaten, abandoned, ridiculed, and killed by the religious and political
authorities whose power is unchecked. This Jesus whom they had followed, loved, and
hung their hopes on as Savior and Messiah, is now dead just like any other man.
Except his death seems worse because so much hope, joy, and love seemed to die with
him. All of this has happened, and the women could not do anything to prevent it then –
and do nothing now to reverse it.
The stone they cannot move? It represents all that is heavy and immovable now
that Jesus’ death seems to be the end of the story.
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Consider now what this stone represents for the religious and political authorities.
They were closely intertwined in Jesus’ day. The Jewish leaders like Caiaphas the High
Priest were Roman appointees and subject to their power. They were quick to
compromise their principles to curry favor with the Roman leaders. In turn, the Romans
wanted the religious leaders to do the dirty work of keeping the peace so that they
would not have to risk Roman blood to collect Rome’s taxes from these feisty,
independent-minded Jews.
Jesus had represented a threat to their combined authority. Healing on the
Sabbath, forgiving sins, and cleansing the Temple – what religious leaders could
condone that, or tolerate such a challenge to their authority? Being called a king and
Son of David by adoring crowds right here in Jerusalem – what political leader could
ignore that? But now Jesus has been tried, convicted, and executed as a criminal.
Now, he is dead and the threat he posed has been squashed like a bug under a falling
stone, a heavy, immovable stone. Once again, the power and might of the Roman
Empire has defeated an enemy and the threat has been removed. The stone has
sealed their hold on power.
Now for a moment, change your perspective and think about what the stone
might represent for you. What blocks the way between you and light and life? What
stands between you and God? Is there something that you have done – and regret
doing deeply – that weighs you down? Or is there something that someone else has
done, something that has happened to you that places an immoveable weight on top of
your life?
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Perhaps as with the women, the stone represents our weakness and defeat. Or
perhaps like the authorities, the stone represents all of the ways that we try to choose to
remain independent and in control. Either way, our stone can feel very heavy and
immoveable.
The slab of mountain that caved in the San Jose mine in Chile could not be
moved. But thanks to human ingenuity and 21st century industrial equipment, including
a Pennsylvania-manufactured drill, rescuers were able to drill down three quarters of a
mile to reach those Chilean miners. It took a while as you may recall – nearly two
months after they were first discovered to be alive – but all 33 miners found their way to
freedom, sunlight, and family, pulled to the surface in a specially made capsule, one at
a time, while an estimated 1.2 billion people watched on television.
Jesus’ resurrection was very different. Forget the cameras – no gospel or New
Testament text attempts to describe what happened. But there is evidence
nonetheless. It is evidence after the fact, the kind of evidence a wondrous child sees
when she wakes up to see a snowy white landscape replacing the bare ground she saw
when she went to bed. And the first piece of evidence for the women as to what has
happened is the stone: “When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very
large, had already been rolled back,” Mark tells us. And while it may not be clear to our
modern ears, the way that that sentence is written in the Greek meant for Mark’s first
readers that God is the One who has moved that stone.
The second piece of evidence for the women is what they see when they look
inside of the tomb: it is empty. Where Jesus’ body was laid on Friday is only empty
space now on Sunday.
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And then there is the third piece of evidence: the words of the angel who greets
the women. “Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was
crucified. He has been raised; he is not here.”
The stone rolled away, an empty tomb, a risen Jesus – this escape from the dark
ground is not a case of human ingenuity or machinery. There is no bypass of the
immovable rock with a newly drilled hole. No, the heavy and immovable stone is rolled
away. And this is all God’s doing. What God does here, changes everything.
Everything – for the women, for the authorities, and for us.
Jesus is raised – which means that Jesus is not simply another in a long line of
great moral examples whose death is final after living a good life. Instead, he is the
Son of God vindicated by his resurrection after being killed. He is the Savior of the
world and our Lord.
Jesus is raised – which means that our hopes in him are never in vain, nor are
the glimpses of joy and glory we get in his presence but a mirage.
Jesus is raised – which means that the powers of this world do not have as much
power as they think they do – or as we may think they do. Indeed, God’s power is
revealed in the apparent weakness and defeat of the cross. God’s power is not like the
powers of this world, but it is a power greater than any power in this world – whether it is
the power of Wall Street or Washington, the power of ISIS or the power of the U.S.
Army. Or even the power of sin or death. God’s love is a greater force than all of the
powers in this world. God’s grace is a greater force than all of the sin in the world. God’s
resurrection is a greater force than all of the deaths in the world.
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Jesus is raised: there is nothing that stands between us and God that God
cannot roll away. There is no weight we are carrying that God cannot lift off our chest –
so that we can breathe and live.
Jesus is raised: the cross is not the end of the story. Our sin is not the end of the
story; evil is not the end of the story; death is not even the end of the story. They are all
trumped by the resurrection.
But even the resurrection is not the end of the story. After the angel tells the
women that Jesus is not here, he adds: “But 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.” How do the
women respond? By “fleeing from the tomb for terror and amazement had seized them;
and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”
This is how Mark’s gospel ends. Is this any way to end a gospel? Some people
in the early church thought no, and in the first three centuries after Mark’s gospel was
originally written, other authors added three alternative endings to make the gospel
ending more of a tidy package. But those endings probably made Mark roll over in his
grave, if resurrected Christians can roll over in their graves.
Because Mark does not want to provide a tidy ending to his gospel, any more
than the angel wants these women to stop and rest at the empty tomb. Instead, the
women are pushed forward to look for the risen Jesus in Galilee, that is, where they
come from, where they live, work, and learn. In the same way, Mark pushes us forward
forward to look for the risen Jesus where we live, work, and learn.
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The resurrection is not the end of the story; it is the beginning of a new story.
And we are not merely readers and spectators; instead, we are called to be actors,
collaborators if you will3, in the story still being written by God with human beings.
The stone has been rolled away; Jesus is alive and on the loose. And that may
scare us at first, just as what the angel said on that first Easter scared the women.
Because we cannot confine Jesus to the past. This is no “once upon a time” story.
Jesus wants instead to be part of our present and future. We cannot keep Jesus locked
in quaint Biblical pictures. He meets us instead in our Pottstowns and Boyertowns, our
Gilbertvilles and Philadelphias, or wherever we go to school or work or live.
Like the women, we may still be nervous. Because Jesus is still shaking things
up. He is still challenging the status quo and the powers that be. He is still loving in the
midst of hatred, still offering forgiveness in the midst of sin, still healing that which is
broken, still giving life in the midst of death. And he wants us to be part of what he is up
to.
God is still moving immovable stones. Jesus will be showing up and looking for
us tomorrow. Will we join him in writing the story yet to be ended?
The stone has been rolled away. Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!
1
Hector Tobar, Deep Down Dark (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014).
I am appreciative of an April 21, 2011 sermon by Samuel Wells at Duke Chapel for this perspective on the text.
3
An image offered by Adam Hamilton in his book, Why?
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