For Whom Is the Stone is Rolled Away?

Photo courtesy of flickr user “Alwyn Ladell.” Used with permission.

Who needed the stone rolled away? For whose benefit did the angel come down to move earth and rock? Not Jesus. The God who raised Jesus from dead didn’t need to brush aside a physical barrier, imposing though it might be. When the stone rolled away Jesus was not there, he had already been raised, and he had no business being in a tomb. The risen, living Jesus didn’t belong in the grave, so he wasn’t there. And he didn’t need an angel to open the door for him. The stone isn’t rolled away for Jesus.

The stone is rolled away for us. It’s rolled away so that we can gaze into the rocky maw with all its damp silence and see the emptiness of the tomb.  The stone is rolled away to interrupt our mourning, to shake us loose from grief and hopelessness.  Sometimes the stone is all you can see, and it seems as though God is silent and sealed away.  But the stone is rolled away to show us that Jesus is not here, he has been raised.  “Come, see the place where he lay,” says the angel.  The one we thought was dead behind the stone is alive.  He greets us, he speaks to us, and he sends away those who came to mourn to be the bearers of the joyous good news.  And all this is possible not just because Jesus rose, but because the stone is rolled away.  It isn’t rolled away for Jesus.

So today may you see that the stone is rolled away. All your guilt and brokenness, all the brokenness of the whole world, can’t seal God’s love in the ground. Whatever hurt you’ve suffered, whatever anxiety or grief may dominate your life is real, just as real as that boulder. But God’s not trapped behind it. The stone is rolled away. And the risen Jesus is not in the tomb—he’s beside you, waiting to invite you to a new kind of life. Christ is risen, Alleluia! Alleluia, he is risen indeed!

These words are taken from a sermon I preached at Highlands Presbyterian Chuch on Easter Sunday, 2008.