“Who will roll away the stone?” fretted Mary Magdalene, Mary mother of James, and Salome as they trudged to the graveyard expecting to properly anoint the body of Jesus for His final burial. “Who will roll away the stone?” To their amazement and joy, they soon discovered that was a completely irrelevant concern. They found that the stone already had been rolled back and it really didn't matter how it had anyway. "Jesus is risen!” they were told. “He is not here. Go, tell the rest of the disciples, for the living Jesus will be going ahead of you and will reveal Himself to you, as you go forth to seek Him."
The women in the Gospel story lived within a hard, narrowly restricted cultural environment. All their lives, their limitations were pounded into their heads. Then they met Jesus, a rabbi like no other, who called out of them wonderful and beautiful gifts of great potential that they never had imagined they had. For centuries, people have tried to figure out what was in these women's past and what specific sins they must have committed. The Gospels are deliberately ambiguous, and for very good reason. It is irrelevant and useless to dwell on what they were before meeting Jesus. Such questions are as irrelevant as the worry over who would roll away the stone. The important thing about these women was not what they had been, but what they became. In effect they became not only first witnesses to Easter, they were also some of the very fruits of the resurrection.
Easter offers that possibility for all of us. It transforms our old worries and concerns and sends us forward on new journeys, asking new questions, seeking fresh answers, and traveling across boundaries into unexplored territory. Of course, like the two Marys and Salome, indeed like all the first disciples, initially we are very hesitant and doubtful. We simply never expect the reality of resurrection to break into our world, and the existing maps and guidebooks edited and published by the world are not much help. We all will discover the living Jesus in differing ways, but we have to leave behind our concerns based on our limitations and expectations of the world and learn to go forth framing questions based on the possibilities of God's limitless promises.
Very few of us would want to always live in the house we grew up in. Our childhood home may have been very comfortable and roomy. Yet, if we never ventured from home, think of all the significant people who have enriched our life, those we have loved and loved us, whom we never would have known. Very few of us would want to stay at the very same school in the very same classroom. We may have received a very good education there at the time and for our age, but think of the many other teachers, fellow students and subjects with whom we never would have come in contact. As we grew and time went on, how narrow and impoverished such an education would have been. Very few of us would always choose to vacation at the exact same spot where we vacationed as a child. Not that it was not a nice place, but think of all the other beautiful and varied places in the world we would miss. To leave home for the first time, to meet new people, to go to a new school, to advance through a course of study, to do something different or travel in the summer, involves the need to do some adjusting. It may not be comfortable, especially at first, and it promises to be a learning experience with plenty of uncertainty, if not surprise. Yes we would be changed. As anyone who goes to a class reunion knows, you are not the same person as when you graduated, and you really would pity someone who actually was. So please, don’t be afraid to accept Easter into your hearts.
The reality of the resurrection began to dawn on the two Marys and Salome when they forgot about who would roll away the stone, and their minds began to be filled with the possibilities ahead. We all have future journeys and there is no reason we will not discover the living Christ going on ahead and meeting us again and again. So, stop fretting about how to move heavy stones back and forth, covering and uncovering old graves, prolonging the past, denying the present, or holding off the future. Easter is not about resuscitation, denial, or reincarnation. Easter is about going forth, fully living in the present and expecting to use the past to frame new questions. It is about accepting new challenges of the abundant life that God promises, and about witnessing in our own lives that Christ has indeed overcome the repeating cycles of inhumanity, failed hopes, tragedy and death. Go from this service knowing that God has planned for all of us some great times ahead, amazing things we have never would have imagined. Christ is risen; the stone is rolled away. He is risen indeed, alleluia!
