"Roll
Away the Stones"
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Sermon, Sunday, March 23, 2008
Keene Unitarian Universalist Church
Rev. Olivia Holmes
Mark 16: 1-8
Oxford Annotated Bible
Sunday, March 23, 2008
And when the Sabbath was past, Mary Mag’dalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salo’me, brought spices so that they might go and anoint him. And very early on the first day of the week they went to the tomb when the sun had risen.
And they were saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the door of the tomb?”
And looking up, they saw that the stone was rolled back – it was very large. And entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe; and they were amazed. And he said to them,
“Do not be amazed; you seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen, he is not here; see the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him, as he told you.”
And they went out and fled from the tomb; for trembling and astonishment had come upon them; and they said nothing to any one for they were afraid.
“Roll Away the Stones”
Easter Sunday, March 23, 2008
Keene Unitarian Universalist Church
Rev. Olivia Holmes
This morning I chose to read the story of the Resurrection from the Book of Mark. I could have chosen Matthew or Luke or John. They all say the stone was rolled away from the tomb…by angel or earthquake or just plain gone. And not just the stone was gone, but so was Jesus, at least as those who loved him had known him before he died. Jesus had died, crucified on a cross like a common thief, and had risen again. The ancient story is told over and over at this time of year. To many committed Christians the story is literally true; a sign of God’s love and redemption.
To the Jesus Seminar, a group of 77 committed Biblical scholars, the story is false. The Jesus Seminar gathers twice a year to analyze the ancient story of the life of Jesus, and to decide as best they can what is true history and what is legend, myth, story. They believe that while the “historical” Jesus had an extraordinary gift for healing through the power of acceptance and love, he performed no miracles. He believed we all have the power of acceptance and love, and that through us a world of peace – a Kingdom of God – could be created in this life and not after it. The Jesus Seminar believe that Jesus surely lived on in the hearts of his followers, then and now, but that he did not physically rise from the dead. In fact, they believe his body was probably buried in a shallow grave.
A commentator on the work of the Jesus Seminar has observed, “If that’s who Jesus was, then every important article of the traditional Christian faith goes out the window – no virgin birth, no divine nature and, most devastating of all, no Resurrection.”
The Bible says the stone was rolled away, Jesus was gone, he had risen, and would go before his disciples to Galilee where they would see him again. The Jesus Seminar says he was probably buried in a shallow grave; no Resurrection. Seems to me there’s a lot of room for interpretation between the two, which puts a committed Unitarian Universalist right where we like most to be.
As Scott Alexander alludes, we Unitarian Universalists are, indeed, a theological mixed bag. Some of us grew up Christians. We cherish the old stories, the theological or metaphorical significance of Jesus’s resurrection, and come to church this day to honor and celebrate that tradition. Some of us grew up Christian, but have run away from the ideas of original sin, miracles, and salvation for all by the crucifixion of one. Some of us grew up Jewish, and carry the burden of persecution at the hands of Christians in our history. Some of us grew up Buddhist or Hindu, Muslim or Humanist or unchurched altogether. That hardly means that the best we can do to mark the passage of this holy day is dress up, eat candy, and sing happy songs.
The story of Easter really begins in Jericho, where Jesus tells his disciples to find a donkey, a lowly ass, to ride on his trip into Jerusalem. Before they start the trip, however, the disciples are already jockeying for positions in the hereafter. Zebedee’s wife pleads for her two sons: “Hey, Jesus,” she says, “Can one of my boys sit on your right hand, and the other on your left?” And Peter, according to Rev. James Crawford, asks, “Hey Jesus, what about me, can I have a big church? Or maybe chair the Finance Committee?” Jesus disappoints them all when he says, “No, my brothers, that’s not what we’re about; we’re about being servants of love.”
The Gospel stories tell of Jesus’s ride on his donkey into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, just a week ago today, surrounded by the multitudes, throwing their cloaks and palm fronds on the road before him, shouting loud Hosannas, which means, of course “Save us.” They called him King of the Jews. What they wanted was a savior to lead them out of bondage to the Roman Empire. What they got was a preacher who told them to clean up their own act; and who wasn’t very diplomatic in the way he did it.
In his book on the life and times of Jesus, Thomas Cahill takes a dim view of the potentates in Jerusalem in Jesus’s day. He points out that while it may be historically correct that they were, indeed, more devoted to Mammon than to higher spiritual aspirations, approaching them the way Jesus did left something to be desired in terms of the affirmation of the inherent worth and dignity of every human being. As he was preaching to them to clean up their act, as he was overturning the tables of the money changers, and generally stirring up a lot of trouble, he was also calling them hypocrites, blind guides, fools, faithless strainers of gnats and swallowers of camels, rapacious extortionists, white-washed tombs – lovely on the outside but filled with rotten dead men’s bones, serpents, vipers, and so forth.
Surely this is not the most productive, the most compassionate and loving approach we can think of today. It seems to me that in approaching those whom he hoped to change in this derogatory manner, Jesus contributed mightily to their desire to rid themselves of his presence and voice. Why is it that nobody ever points out the mistakes Jesus made on his trip to Golgotha?
Right now it seems to me that a critical lesson for anyone reading this ancient story is to see that even when we make the worst mistakes in our lives, there is still new life for us in facing our difficulties. Could the dark tomb be the place we’re stuck in until we gather up the courage to roll away the stones of our lives…the courage to own our mistakes and move on with our lives?
In the aftermath of his disappointing his disciples and disabusing the potentates of their ways, Jesus struggles toward the end he knows is coming. Imagine the agony that must have been his in that final hour on the cross. He’d been betrayed by Judas, abandoned by his closest friends, his disciples, denied 3 times by Peter (the guy who wanted the big church), accused of blasphemy by the priests, rejected in favor of a murderer by the crowd, mocked by the Sanhedrin, tortured by the Roman troops, spit upon, and scorned even by those who were crucified with him.
And people said that his final cry was one of despair, “Eli, Eli,” he cried, “la’ma sabach-tha’ni,” he cried. Was it a cry of despair? “My God, my God, why has’t thou forsaken me?” These are the first words of the 22nd psalm, a psalm of faith that God will never turn away from the afflicted. These are some of the words that follow:
“…I will tell of thy name to my brethren;
In the midst of the congregation I will praise thee:
You who fear the Lord, praise him!
All you sons of Jacob, glorify him,
And stand in awe of him, all you sons of Israel!
For he has not despised or abhorred
The affliction of the afflicted;
And he has not hid his face from him
But has heard, when he cried to him…”
When we cry to God in the moments of our greatest despair, God is with us. This is the faith Jesus lived in his last breath of life. Yes, it was a cry of despair AND it was a cry of faith in God’s presence. Jesus did not die alone.
As Unitarian Universalists we struggle to understand God; yet I say this. We all have faith in something, by whatever name, however understood. Faith in God, faith in our power to transform our difficulties into new understandings, faith in our power to grow spiritually and intellectually, faith in the power of life to renew itself, faith in our ability to roll away the stones of our lives. The lesson for us in this darkest moment in the story of Jesus is that in our own darkest hours we must reach out for that faith, for that promise of renewal, for that vision of overcoming. We must find it and cling to it, believe in it, and it will help us, as it helped him, to roll away the stones.
UU minister, Thomas Mikelson, thinks that Passover and Easter share a reverence for that moment in our experience just before a break-through. None of us ever gets to the breaking through without that awful time in the wilderness, without knowing our own walk to Golgotha is coming. There is no Easter without Good Friday. What Jesus tried to teach, I believe, in that last week of his life, is that we can only reach the one by courageously facing the other.
Scott Alexander preaches that “Easter is a decision, a decision of the human heart, a brave and beautiful decision to live – fully, recklessly, courageously – even in the face of death and despair itself. Easter doesn’t require colored eggs, flags, chocolate bunnies. It requires something deep inside me, inside us, a saving impulse of human hopefulness and defiance. Easter requires a stubborn, reckless and affirming heart…” And he goes on to boldly proclaim that Easter is not a noun, not a localized event occurring but once in all of history, but a verb: Eastering. You Easter. I Easter. We Easter when we decide, again and again, to search for the sources of our strength, of our hope, of our faith in our times of trial. Eastering is the faith of the human heart that encourages us to struggle on, no matter what, when what we’d really like to do is pull the covers over our heads and make the world just go away.
Eastering is what my own mother did one day, some time after she had begun to show signs of Alzheimer’s disease. She’d gotten to the point at which we had to check her clothing before she went out to visit her friends. Sometimes she’d have three pairs of panty-hose on under her skirt. Sometimes she’d have nothing whatever on under her coat. We had to check the stove whenever she went into the kitchen, because she’d forget to turn it off after she turned it on. She might start to run a bath and forget to turn the water off; which we discovered when it began pouring through the ceiling in the family den below.
But on this day of her own Eastering, my mother found a tiny baby king bird which had fallen out of its nest. It’s mother didn’t seem to be around anymore, so my mother adopted that baby bird. Every single day she groveled in the ground to find enough worms to feed that little guy. And that little bird had one voracious appetite. She fed him and fed him and fed him. She could forget the stove, forget the water, forget what she had on…or didn’t have on…but she never forgot to feed that baby bird. And you know what, that little king bird lived. He stayed in our garden all that summer, then flew away to wherever king birds go when the autumn arrived.
But the next spring, and every spring after that until my mother finally had to go to a nursing home, that king bird stopped by to visit for a few weeks. Every spring.
So it was that my mother, in her own darkening hours, gave the gift of servanthood and hope she alone could give. As long as we have that gift to give, we bring joy into the world, we renew the world and ourselves, and we make the world a better place.
In the gentle yet profound words of Kalidasa:
Look to this day, for it is life,
The very life of life…
Today, well lived,
Makes every yesterday a dream of happiness
And every tomorrow a vision of hope.
Look well, therefore, to this day.
On this Easter Sunday may you awake anew to the mighty purpose that is yours alone: rolling away the stones that weigh you down; rejoicing in the gift of your life, Eastering. Make of the gift of your life no brief candle, but a splendid torch, and hold it high, let it shine like the sun. Alleluia and Amen.
