Roll Back the Stone

Easter sermon, April 11, 2004

Lanny Peters

Oakhurst Baptist Church

There is a hymn written in 1912 by Austin Miles, which was inspired by the story of the meeting between Mary Magdalene and Jesus on that first Easter morning which began our worship service today. Many of you of a certain age and certain religious background will know it well; some love it and others loathe it. Why don’t those of you who know it join in singing the first stanza of “In The Garden.”

“I come to the garden alone, when the dew is still on the roses, and the voice I hear, falling on my ear, the Son of God discloses. And he walks with me and he talks with me, and he tells me I am his own, and the joy we share as we tarry there, none other has ever known.”

The hymn writer was trying to capture the depth of Mary’s joy and comfort at knowing Jesus was alive. One person has described it as a “sweet and sentimental evocation of this gospel scene, almost like a romantic silent movie. The picture fades as Mary and the risen Jesus walk hand in hand in a beautiful garden in the early morning dew.”

It is a comforting image, and still often requested for funerals. It is a reminder of one important meaning of the resurrection that we celebrate today. “The resurrection offers joy and comfort to each of us in our individual journeys through life. It reminds us that God’s steadfast love does indeed endure forever, in spite of death, disease or disaster. God is with us, walking beside us, bringing joy. That is good news.”

But there is more to the story than this. Left alone, this hymn “makes this incomprehensible miracle, this great good news, much too small. Yes, Jesus loved Mary, and he gave her a tremendous gift by appearing to her first. But the gift was not simply, or primarily, for her private comfort and joy. In fact, Jesus did not allow Mary much time at all to tarry there. In a moment, he was gone and she was running to tell the other disciples, “I have seen the Lord.”

This news should have brought great joy to them and you would expect they would run right out to find him. But later that evening, the disciples are still huddled together behind locked doors. They have heard that Jesus is alive, but they are still afraid. Perhaps they were afraid for their lives, that what had happened to Jesus could still happen to them. Perhaps they were afraid to face Jesus. After all, unlike Mary and some of the women disciples, the men had all betrayed, abandoned and denied him.

Or perhaps it was more like what Annie Dillard describes in this poem.

God, I am sorry

I ran away from you.

I am still running,

Running from

That knowledge,

that eye, that love

from which

there is no refuge.

For you meant

only love, and I felt only fear,

and pain.

So once in Israel

love came

to us incarnate, stood in the

doorway between

two worlds, and we were all afraid.

Jesus seems to understand this fear. The disciples do not go looking for the risen Jesus, so he comes looking for them. Suddenly, he appears and his first words to them are words of pure grace. He does not say, “Hey, where were you guys when I needed you?” Or to Peter, “What happened to your promise not to deny me? What he says is “Peace be with you.”

Jesus offers them Shalom. Shalom is one of the holiest tenets of Judaism and one that is not easy to translate into English. It has been said that the meaning of Shalom is approximated when people say that the peace they seek is not merely the absence of war or even of violence, but the presence, and continuous growth, of all creative human powers. Besides peace, shalom also includes such things as "wholeness," and "integrity."

This is what Jesus wants for the disciples. After the disciples had time to rejoice with Jesus, he said it again. Shalom alakem. Peace be with you. And then he added, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

Jesus offers them the gifts of grace and forgiveness. He also empowers them to offer the same to others. During Lent, we looked at the last words of Christ and saw that the way Jesus died was a reflection of the way he lived. Even from the cross, he offered forgiveness. Now that he was alive again, he wanted the disciples to carry on his reconciling work.

So did Jesus have to die for them to learn this? Spurred by Mel Gibson’s movie about the Passion of Christ, Time magazine’s cover story this week asked, “Why did Jesus have to die?” The article does a good job of laying out the major theories of atonement that have developed over the centuries in response to this central question.

They include the “Good versus Evil” theory, which we see epitomized in the popular Left Behind series of books and films, which draws heavily on the book of Revelation and other apocalyptic texts. Another school of thought embraces the ransom or paying-a-debt idea that focuses on how Christ sacrificed himself to make amends for sins against God. 

Gibson’s’ film opens with the devil and Jesus in conflict, a hallmark of the good versus evil theory, but the movie is focused mainly on how much Jesus paid for our sin. Another theory is the role model theory, or exemplary atonement. The article quotes a sermon by a Presbyterian pastor who espouses this approach. He saw in Gibson’s movie the assumption that the central purpose of Jesus’ existence was to offer himself as a sacrificial ransom to a God made angry by our sin. No, he says, “The mission and purpose of Jesus’ life and ministry was first, to model for humankind the fullness of mercy and forgiveness that God offers to us sinners, and second, to model for us the perfection of love that God is and that those who accept God’s forgiveness are invited, by God’s grace to become. It is not Jesus’ death that will save us, but his life!”

I find myself seeing an important truth in each of them. Recently as I read about the tenth anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda in which over 800,000 people were slaughtered, I could see forces of evil at work not only in what happened but also in the world’s response to it. I was painfully aware of how little this holocaust affected my own life and yet it surely tore at the heart of God.

The second theory is reflected in our own church’s Good Friday service liturgy, which serves to remind me each year how I participate in Jesus’ crucifixion. These first two explanations of the death of Jesus seem to be the most dominant among churches in our country, which is one reason for the popularity of Gibson’s movie.

But to focus on these alone makes Jesus’ life irrelevant. I grew up in a church with a “nothing but the blood of Jesus” theology. When I was exposed in college to the idea of Jesus as a model of how to live, it provided a perspective without which I probably would have just left the church altogether.  

Each of these approaches can be found in the New Testament, so it is a balance that is needed. In the article, Methodist Janet McLeod said, “We get our strength for living from (the way Jesus lived), from his parables and his mission work. In the Crucifixion, we get our hope for what comes next.” Someone else said, “To focus on whether his life or death was most important is “like asking which wing of the airplane is more important.”

We are all trying to understand a mystery.

For me personally I find it vital to keep this Easter Sunday firmly connected to the first day of Advent. Easter begins not in Lent but with the incarnation, the promise of “God with us.” Jesus as God incarnate showed us the true nature of God who turned out not to be vengeful and angry but committed to being with us in all our humanness and suffering, who refused to give in to hatred and revenge even when that love was misunderstood and even rejected.

Christ rose for us, to put love in our hearts, and more courage in our spines. “Christ rose to lead us, not from earthly life to something beyond life, but from something less than life to the possibility of being fully alive, fully what God intended us to be.” St. Irenaeus said that,  “The glory of God is a human being fully alive.”

Easter is not just about escape from the grave, it is also about escaping the powers of death on this earth. “It is about the triumph of seemingly powerless love over loveless power.”

I hear this in the words of the risen Christ: Shalom alakem. Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” Receive the Holy Spirit. Carry on my ministry of forgiveness and reconciliation. Be my resurrection people.

We can be resurrection people in many ways, large and small. Just as I had been deeply troubled, I was deeply touched by the story of Rosamond Halsey Carr who was living in Rwanda in1994. When the genocide began, she was forcibly evacuated by Belgian troops along with other foreign nationals. At age 92, she has returned to Rwanda, where she began an orphanage to care for some of the 100,000 children who lost their parents. She said, “All I can do-and I’m doing it everyday-is to try to insure that my kids are going to have a future.” (Atlanta Journal Constitution, April 7, 2004.)  Surely, this is resurrection work.

It also happens everyday in our midst. A couple of Sundays ago, Lynn Mouchet returned to church for the first time since beginning chemotherapy treatment for cancer. She was wearing a hat, having lost al her hair.  Near the end of the service, the sanctuary choir left the loft for the gospel choir to sing the postlude. Donna Woolf came and sat beside Lynn. Lynn began to think of Donna’s daughter Sarah, who died of cancer two years ago. When the service ended, Donna asked Lynn, “Does your head get cold.”

Why, yes it does,” Lynn replied.

Donna said, “Sarah’s head got cold after she lost her hair. We got her these nice little soft caps to help keep her head warm. Would you like to have them?”

The Brazilian theologian Leonardo Boff says, “Wherever, in mortal life, goodness triumphs over the instincts of hatred, wherever one heart opens to another, wherever a righteous attitude is built and the room is created for God, there the Resurrection has begun.”

I close with this poem by Janet Morley:

When we are all despairing;

When the world is full of grief; when we see no way ahead,

And hope has gone away:

Roll back the stone.

Although we fear change;

Although we are not ready; although we’d rather weep

and run away:

Roll back the stone.

Because we’re coming with the women;

Because we hope where hope is vain;

Because you call us from the grave

And show the way:

Roll back the stone.