The Stone Has Been Rolled Away

Mark 16:1-8; 1 Corinthians 15:1-11
Easter Sunday, 2012
We got stones at our house this week. Let’s make sure you all heard that correctly: stoneS with an “s” not a “d”! We’re working on the garden, and building a rock wall.
We had a truck load of lovely rocks dumped in a large heap at the top of the driveway. Getting stones from here to there is a long and time-honored occupation, and, I gotta say, I was more than a little jealous of the dump truck. In fact, I had a grand conversation with the incredibly jolly truck driver who delivered our rocks from the garden center. He was the one who rolled away the stones for us.
And, of course, now that the stones have been rolled away from the garden center onto our driveway the work begins. Friends, that’s just the way it is with Easter.
The stone has been rolled away from in front of the tomb. This was not my doing. This was not your doing, but the stone has been rolled away.
That first Easter morning the stone was rolled away to reveal an empty tomb, to point toward a risen savior, to invite us into the reality of resurrection.
But, as the gospel reading from Mark so clearly suggests, the initial reaction to this great revelation is one that we still have not gotten over: complete and utter fear!
As Mark tells us, in the earliest account of the Easter story: “So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to any one, for they were afraid.”
Of the four gospel accounts of that first Easter, I love most Mark’s abbreviated one that simply ends with the women who have witnessed the empty tomb returning to the fearful community, themselves too fearful to speak.
This open-ended story of the open tomb raises so many challenges and questions for us, and it provides no easy, simple answers.
Will we be like those women were at first?
In their fear it was as if they’d traded the bright light of living for the darkness of the tomb, itself. Will we make the same choice and, in our own fear, trade the bright light of living as followers of the risen Christ for the dark and fearful silence of the tomb?
So often we live as if we’re the ones in the tomb, as if we are bound in the dark behind a huge stone that we are powerless to move. When a neighbor needs our hands they remain bound to our sides. When the community needs the light that we could shed we stay back in the darkness. When the world needs our voice we remain silent as the grave.
But friends, the stone has been rolled away! This was not my doing. This was not your doing, but the stone has been rolled away! We can walk right out into the sunshine. We can … if we choose.
Mark’s gospel ends in this suspension. Jesus had come out of the tomb, and the rest was completely up in the air. Would the women come out and tell their story? Would the disciples come out, too, despite the risks? Yes, Easter is, perhaps first and foremost, a story of coming out.
As a community that has long been a place of both sanctuary and empowerment for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender persons of faith, this congregation has known a thing or two about coming out. We have known a thing or two about the courage it takes to claim one’s authentic identity, to speak one’s truth, to tell one’s story. We have known a thing or two about the fundamental importance of a community to listen with compassion, to bear one another’s burdens, and to stand up for one another even when such standing up is risky.
Through that shared experience we know a thing or two about feeling out of place and out of time. Maybe we understand a bit of what Paul was talking about in that letter to the Corinthians, because we know a thing or two about feeling unfit. Not to overstate it, but we know a thing or two about feeling persecuted. We also know a thing or two about fear and about silence, and about how fear and silence breed injustice and violence.
In the face of all that, we could – perhaps even reasonably so – choose to hole up in a safe, dark place and hide behind a stone wall of aggrieved and self-righteous anger.
You know, it’s kind of funny how that sometimes looks in real life. Sometimes we hide not so much behind stone walls as behind stained glass, and we decorate our safe places beautifully, and we share the safe places with like-minded friends, and we just stay put as if we cannot get out and, well, to be frank, we’d prefer not to come out. A heavy stone makes security a fine excuse for inaction.
But, whether we like it or not, the stone has been rolled away, and it’s not going back now.
You and I will live forever in the freedom of this miracle. That is God’s doing. What we choose to do with it is up to us.
Mark’s account of that first Easter ends, in what scholars believe is the original ending, with the women fleeing from the tomb in fear and, as the text says, saying nothing to anyone. But quite clearly at some point early on the first witnesses, the women at the tomb, overcame their fear, found their voices and told their story.
Jesus had come out of the tomb, and they came out, too, as his followers. They told their story first to Jesus’ disciples. Quite clearly that story-telling empowered them to share the good news with others, as well.
The story was a seed. They planted it, tended to it with care, and it grew and produced new seeds. They planted those and grew gardens of compassion that fed wider circles, that produced even more seeds, and that spread through the wind of the Holy Spirit across all kinds of borders and barriers.
Thousands of years on, here we are. We live in a land of incredible material wealth, but we still have hungry neighbors. Some, because we live also in a land of incredible inequality and economic injustice, suffer physical hunger. We are called to feed them. Many others, for all kinds of reasons, live with deep spiritual hunger. We are called to feed them, as well.
We cannot feed our neighbors if we stay safely behind stone walls.
Sisters and brothers, the stone has been rolled away. This is not my doing. This is not your doing. This is God’s doing. The question is: what are we doing in response? Amen.

Watch With Me

Palm Sunday, April 1, 2012
The gospel reading for this Palm Sunday stretches out to include all of Mark’s account of palms and passion; it runs several chapters and we’re not going to read all of it, but we’ll walk through its key moments.
As with so much of his account of Holy Week, Mark tells the Palm Sunday story with overtones of mystery, plots and conspiracy, beginning with the charge to go into Jerusalem and find a young colt. The scene unfolds like a movie – it’s classic street theater complete with the charismatic leader, adoring followers, and scores of extras lining the streets to cheer.
Chris Glaser compares the event to Pride Parades and asks if it’s Mardi Gras or a political protest march. He answers his own question with, “yes to both.”
Both a Jesus parade and Jesus march were an affront to Rome, the political authorities who ruled Palestine. Both a Jesus demonstration and a Jesus party would have been a challenge to the cultural “powers that be.” Both a political movement and a Mardi Gras celebrated at Passover time would have disconcerted the religious authorities of Jesus’ time.
Mark’s account of the passion picks up real steam just before the festival of the Passover, and Mark tells us that the scribes and chief priests are conspiring to be rid of Jesus but are wary of doing so publicly during the huge festival for fear of sparking a riot.
Imagine the inner circle of Hosni Mubarek this time last year, looking out at Tahrir Square whispering to one another, “yeah, we’d like to get rid of these kids but if we go after their leaders we’ll have a huge riot on our hands.”
And that’s only part of the equation. Passover – with its obvious theme of liberation – was always a politically volatile moment for the occupying Romans. The time was doubly fraught for Jesus’ opponents, and, thus, doubly dangerous for Jesus.
Mark introduces this incredibly dramatic moment, and then cuts to a curious domestic scene: a woman anointing Jesus with expensive perfumes while some of his followers criticize her extravagance saying, “why waste that when we could sell it and give the money to the poor?”
Both Mark and Matthew tell this story, and neither asks why the question is raised. John, to the contrary, puts the question in the mouth of Judas Iscariot and explains his inquiry not in terms of any concern for the poor but rather because he kept the common purse and wanted access to more.
Personally, I think Jesus’ response – “the poor you will have with you always, I will be with you for just a little while longer” – says more about the kind of community Jesus gathered than it does about either the death he faced or the motivations of the questions. Jesus understood that a community of his followers would never be a gated one, and that it would always include the poor. He understood the journey of discipleship as a sojourn – a journeying together of people who would keep faith with one another.
Thus he imagined that his community would forever operate at the edges and along the margins of the kingdoms of this world. Mark’s account of the Passover suggests as much, filled as it is with coded messages and conspiracy.
Listen to this part:
Jesus sent two of his disciples, saying to them, "Go into the city, and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you; follow him, and wherever he enters, say to the owner of the house, 'The Teacher asks, Where is my guest room where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?' He will show you a large room upstairs, furnished and ready. Make preparations for us there” (14:13-15).
It’s like something out of a John le Carre Cold War spy novel.
But from out there along the margins of society, where the poor will always be with us, Jesus calls forth a community that gets right to the heart of the matter.
The heart of the matter, it turns out, involves nothing more – but nothing less – than breaking bread and keeping faith.
That charge, “keep faith,” also turns into what for me has always been the most heartbreaking part of the passion story.
Mark tells it this way
“They went to a place called Gethsemane; and he said to his disciples, "Sit here while I pray."
Mark tells us that Jesus went off alone and prayed that the cup might pass from him, only to conclude, “your will be done, not mine.” Mark goes on:
“Jesus came and found them sleeping; and he said to Peter, "Simon, are you asleep? Could you not keep awake one hour?” (14:32-38).
Keep awake. Pray with me. Watch with me.
Wendell Berry has an enigmatic little story with that title: “Watch With Me.”
It’s about the time when Nightlife, who lived in Berry’s imagined community of Port William, Kentucky, went walkabout, as it were.
Here’s how Berry introduces Nightlife:
"Nightlife was an oddity, and no one could quite account for him. His mind, which contained the lighted countryside, had a leak in it somewhere, some little hole through which now and again would pour the whole darkness of the darkest night – so that instead of walking in the country he knew and among his kinfolks and neighbors, he would be afoot in a limitless and undivided universe, completely dark, inhabited only by himself."
Having been denied an opportunity to speak up at a worship service, Nightlife, well, he lost the light for a while. Unfortunately, when he lost hold of the light he grabbed hold of a shotgun and wondered off through the woods, down along the river, past many a neighbor, through a long night and well into the next day.
The shotgun he picked up belonged to Tol Proudfoot, and Tol follows Nightlife off through fields and forests and, over the many hours, is joined by a half dozen or so other men from the community.
In typical Berry fashion, not a whole lot actually happens. The gun appears in act one, as it were, and it never does go off except to dispatch a barn snake and put a large hole in the barn wall. Instead of fireworks, the ragtag group of men simply follow, at a safe distance, their troubled neighbor and keep watch. The community keeps Nightlife safe from his own darkness until they can usher him back into light.
I take the whole of the story as a profound reflection on the Gethsemane of our lives. We are all living through our own passion plays, stopping for a while, here and there, in the garden to pray that the cup of suffering might pass from us. Meanwhile, we know too well both the suffering of others, and our own pain along the way. What we mostly long for is companionship that we not suffer alone.
Companion is a wonderful word, drawing as it does, from roots that mean “with bread.” We all want someone with whom to break bread. We all want a place at the table. And we want someone to watch with us through the long, dark night.
Life is not going to be all parades all of the time. It just doesn’t work that way.
I picture Jesus, riding into Jerusalem, smiling and laughing with his friends, but also mindful all along the way that though the parade is fun and real and joyous, there is another darker destination ahead.
He invites us, as his followers, to journey with him, and to stay awake to watch with him when the night gets long.
It sounds so simple and so unthreatening yet the passion story reminds us otherwise. Jesus understood that the powers and principalities fear nothing so much as ordinary people devoted to one another, for in such solidarity fearlessness arises. Out of fearlessness change is born.
If, as William Slone Coffin often said, fear is the opposite of faith, then we can begin to see how authentic faithfulness threatens every unjust system, every autocratic ruler. When Jesus invites us to stay awake, he is inviting us to be his companions – to break bread together – to watch with him, wait with him and work with him for the coming of that kindom of belovedness in which all God’s children can sit at the welcome table.
Watching with Jesus is not always dramatic. It’s not always public. It’s certainly not always political, at least not in the impoverished way we have come to consider the political. It depends upon where we are – what stage of life, what stage of faith.
Sometimes it is as simple as picking up homework for a sick friend, taking an elderly neighbor to lunch, sending a card, showing up for one another. Sometimes it’s anointing someone with costly perfume. Other times watching with Jesus compels us into the public square in search of justice and peace.
At all times, though, watching with Jesus demands of us that we stay awake to the lives of others, to the lives of companions on our journey, and it also demands of us a constant effort to broaden the circle of those with whom we break bread and whose lives we are awake to.
If we are going to wave the palms this morning, the least we can do is stay awake and watch with one another after the parade is over. May we find the strength and fearlessness to do so. Amen.