Sunday, March 31, Resurrection of Our Lord

“Grace to Roll Away the Stone”

Psalm 22:22-31; Isaiah 25:6-9; 1 Corinthians 15:1-11; Mark 16:1-8

Hymns: #475 “Good Christian Friends, Rejoice and Sing”; #903 “This Is the Day the Lord Has Made”; #465 “Now All the Vault of Heaven Resounds”; #457 “Jesus Christ Is Risen Today”;#474 “Alleluia! Jesus Is Risen”; #633 “At the Lamb’s High Feast”; #480 “He’s Risen, He’s Risen”; #461 “I Know That My Redeemer Lives”

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Grace, mercy, and peace to you, from God our Father, and from Jesus Christ our Risen Lord and Savior.

One of my favorite walking routes is through the Oxford Village Cemetery. It’s a quiet and peaceful place; no traffic, about a half-hour walk from my house and back. More and more of my friends are in that place, the longer I stay here. I give them a nod and a wave as I walk by, and it’s good to remember them.

Gravestones are such powerful symbols for us, in a futile sort of way. Putting up a headstone is like shaking your fist at time. A stone with a name, a date, and an epitaph is all the hope we have that the world, or at least someone, will remember us when we’re gone. Some of the folks in Oxford Cemetery have been lying there for over a hundred years. Some of the markers are getting hard to read. The wind and weather and storms erode the words, and time erases the memory. One hundred years from now, will there be anyone left on earth who remembers your name, or what your voice sounded like, or what you liked to have for dinner?

But why, Pastor, on a beautiful Easter Sunday morning, are you talking about headstones, gravestones, and cemeteries? Because those awful stones are what Easter is all about! Do you remember Mel Blanc, the voice of Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck and all those Looney Tunes characters? His headstone reads, “That’s all, folks!” That’s all, folks. That’s what those headstones mean, and what they’ve always meant. This is it; this is the end. The end of hope, the end of life, the end of everything. Throw in a handful of dirt and a flower, wipe your hands, and walk away.

At least, that’s what it meant until Jesus came along. They rolled a stone in front of His tomb, and they thought it was the end. Joseph and Nicodemus wiped their hands and hurried away, while the woman watched from a distance with tears in their eyes. They wanted to do more; but it was Friday evening, with sundown marking the

beginning of the Sabbath, and Hebrew law didn’t allow them to “do for Him” until the Sabbath was over. They came as early as they could, at sunrise on Sunday morning, bringing their aromatics and embalming spices – the last thing they could do for Him.

But their question as they came upon the tomb was, “Who will roll away the stone for us?” It was bigger than they could move. Moving it was beyond their strength.

It’s the same for you and me. Who will roll away the stone? Who will roll away the stones that cover the graves of our loved ones and dear ones, and the stones that will cover our own graves one day? Who will roll away the stone of death and grief and sorrow? Who will undo the stone of hopelessness? Who will roll away the stone of what time and all the passing years have done to us? Who will roll away the stone of sin that causes all the death and grief and sorrow in the world?

In the 5th chapter of the Book of Revelation, St. John is given a vision of heaven. In His vision, He sees God the Father seated on His throne in heaven, holding a scroll with writing on both sides, and sealed with seven seals. (That’s the book of life!) A mighty angel proclaims in a loud voice, “Who is worthy to breaks the seals and open the scroll?” But no one can be found, in heaven or on earth, who is worthy to break the seals and open the scroll. And because of this, John begins to weep. But then, one of heaven’s elders says to John, "Do not weep! See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed. He is able to open the scroll and its seven seals." Then, says John, “I saw a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain, standing in the center of the throne.” Jesus, the Book of Revelation says, is “the One who can shut what no one can shut, and open what no one can open.” Who can roll away the stone? God can! Jesus can! Jesus has promised that one day He will “open our graves and bring us up from them.”

We’ve all heard these words we speak at our graveside services, when we put our loved ones in the ground: “May God the Father, who created this body; may God the + Son, who by His blood redeemed this body; may God the Holy Spirit, who by Holy Baptism sanctified this body to be His temple, keep these remains to the day of the resurrection of all flesh.” It’s going to be quite a scene at that cemetery on the day Jesus comes!

God knows your name. God knows who you are. He put His name on you when you were baptized, and He’ll know where to find you when Jesus comes again at last. The stone of our griefs, sorrows, and tears has been tempered by mercy. That awful stone

has been moved. The stone that threatened to separate us from our loved ones forever has been softened by hope. Not hope of the “Gee, I sure hope so” kind, but hope that is achingly, desperately real; all because Jesus died a real death on a cross for our sins, and has been raised up in glory from the dead.

God’s grace has moved the stone. The love of God to us in Jesus Christ has moved the stone. Death has been rendered temporary, reduced by Jesus to the status of waking up from a nap. “The child is not dead, but only sleeping… little girl, I say to you, get up!” “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but we’re going to wake him up again.” “You are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here. He is risen, just as He said.”

Mark’s Easter Gospel has that strange and rather abrupt ending: “Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.” Maybe not the ending we’d expect, but still an understandable one. Of course they were afraid. This isn’t something anyone would ever expect to happen. This isn’t the way things go in the world. Those cemetery stones don’t ever, ever move. The women at the tomb were looking at an empty tomb, at divine and epic and awesome miracle. Jesus had taken everything the devil could throw at Him, and He’d gotten the upper hand. He won the victory over the devil and sin and even death itself, by standing up from His grave to breathe the living air again. He was, and He is, alive. Those frightened women would see Him soon enough and have the proof their hearts needed, but for now they were just afraid. Miracles will do that to you.

We have the same difficulty, don’t we? It’s hard to believe, walking through a cemetery, missing and remembering people we love, that the grace of God has truly rolled away the stone. We’re being asked to believe, against all hope, and against all common sense, that death, as ugly as it is, isn’t all there is. The hope we have is as real as the Jesus the disciples “looked at and their hands touched”, and as real as the Rabbi the women put their arms around on Easter morning.

Our doubts and fears get the best of us sometimes, especially when all we have to look at is a name written on a stone. So good St. Paul, in our reading from 1st Corinthians on this Easter morning, is doing for his Corinthian Church what all good pastors do for their churches; or at least they ought to. He’s reaching through their doubts and fears and tears to remind them about the hope they have. “I want to

remind you of the gospel I preached to you,” he says, “which you received and on which you have taken your stand.” He’s lifting up their chins, looking in their eyes, wiping away their tears, and reminding them that through it all, there’s still Good News – Good News you can stand on, pin your hopes on, stake your very life on.

“By this gospel you are saved,” he says, “if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.” The Good News is that by this ray of Easter morning sunshine, by this earth-shattering, life-changing news that Jesus is alive, the stone has truly been rolled away. By this sweet Gospel you are saved – saved from sin and death and the grave – if (and what a big word ‘if’ is) you hold firmly to the Good News we’ve been telling you since you were a child. “If Christ has not been raised,” says Paul in another place, “then our preaching is useless and so is your faith.” If Christ has not been raised, then all those stones are staying right where they are. But, says Paul, “Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.” And that makes all the difference in the world.

“For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance,” Paul says. This is what you need to know, and what you need to believe to be saved. This is the Good News that will roll away the stone: Christ died for our sins. Your sins and mine have been paid for. The stones of guilt and loss and losing hope and giving up have been removed from us, “as far as the east is from the west.” Jesus died for everyone, including you. (The “universal atonement” we call that).

They buried Him. Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus the Pharisee took Him down from the cross, wrapped Him in ointment-soaked linens, according to the burial custom of the Jews, and laid Him in a tomb; then they rolled that heavy stone in front of the tomb and walked away. The end. That’s all, folks.

But the grace of God changed the equation forever. Every gravestone that ever was has been made temporary, by what happened on Easter morning. Every funeral – every Christian’s funeral, anyway – has been given a joy-note through the tears, an Easter victory note, a ray of blessed hope, because “Jesus was up raised on the third day.” “You are looking for Jesus, who was crucified,” said the angels to the women. “He is not here. He is risen, just as He said.” He appeared to Peter, and to the rest of the disciples, who touched His scars and watched Him eat a piece of fish. He appeared to Mary Magdalene, and to Mary His mother, and to those women who went to the tomb. He appeared to more than 500 witnesses at the same time. He appeared, it appears, in

many places in the 40 days between His Resurrection and His Ascension, proving to everyone who saw Him that He was very much alive.

And finally He appeared to a Pharisee named Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus, and turned him from his life of sin, to serve the living God. Paul says here he doesn’t deserve to be called an apostle on account of his sin, and because of the terrible things he’d done. You and I can say the same. We don’t deserve God’s marvelous grace. We don’t deserve forgiveness for our sin or mercy or hope; but the grace of God has rolled that stone away. For those of us who believe, grace and hope are ours on this blessed Easter morning.

“By the grace of God I am what I am,” says Paul. And by the grace of God, we are what we are. And as Paul says in another place, “What we will be has not yet been made known.” But man, isn’t what we will be going to be something? Jesus Christ has been raised from the dead, and by the grace of God, we and our loved ones and dear ones are going to be raised up, too, and live with Him forever. Thanks be to God for this wonderful gift of grace! Alleluia! Christ is risen! Alleluia! He is risen indeed! Amen.